Formalizing Information Flow in a Haskell Hypervisor

Separation kernels are the holy grail of secure systems, remaining elusive despite years of research into their design, implementation, and analysis. Though separation kernel research has achieved many successes, the disconnect between information flow theory and system implementation is a significant barrier to further progress. In this paper, we show how a particular branch of information flow theory, noninterference, can be utilized to formulate correctness and security properties of a microkernelstyle hypervisor. Thus, we not only provide a first step towards a formally verified separation kernel, but also reduce the gap between information flow theory and operating systems practice.