Information flow in object-oriented software

Abstract

This paper contributes to the investigation of object-sensitive information flow properties for sequential Java, i.e., properties that take into account information leakage through objects, as opposed to primitive values. We present two improvements to a popular object-sensitive non-interference property. Both reduce the burden on analysis and monitoring tools. We present a formalization of this property in a program logic – JavaDL in our case – which allows using an existing tool without requiring program modification. The third contribution is a novel finegrained specification methodology. In our approach, arbitrary JavaDL terms (read ‘side-effect-free Java expressions’) may be assigned a security level – in contrast to security labels being attached to fields and variables only.