Static enforcement of security in runtime systems

Abstract

Underneath every modern programming language is a runtime environment (RTE) that handles features such as automatic memory management and thread scheduling. In the information-flow control (IFC) literature, the RTE is often part of the trusted computing base (TCB), and there has been little focus on applying IFC to the implementation of the RTE itself. In this paper we address this problem by designing an IFC language, Zee, for implementing secure RTEs, thereby removing the RTE from the TCB. We implement Zee and design and implement secure versions of garbage collectors and thread schedulers using Zee. We also prove that a faithful calculus of Zee satisfies a strong variant of timing-sensitive noninterference.