2006 Technical Reports

Department of Computing and Information Sciences
Kansas State University



Report 2006-4. What you lose is what you leak: Information leakage in declassification policies completeness properties of static analyses and their logics by Anindya Banerjee and Roberto Giacobazzi and Isabella Mastroeni
This paper suggests the following approach for checking whether a program satisfies an information flow policy that may declassify secret information: (a) Compute a finite abstract domain that over-approximates the information released by the policy and (b) Check whether program execution may release more information than what is permitted by the policy by completing the finite abstract domain wrt. weakest liberal preconditions. Moreover, techniques based on the Paige-Tarjan algorithm for partition refinement can be used to generate counterexamples to a declassification policy: the counterexamples demonstrate that more information is released by the program than what the policy permits. Subsequently the policy can be refined so that the least amount of confidential information necessary for making the program secure is declassified.

Report 2006-3. Comparing completeness properties of static analyses and their logics by David A. Schmidt

Report 2006-2. Underapproximating predicate transformers by David A. Schmidt

Report 2006-1. Automata-based non-interference monitoring by Gurvan le Guernic, Anindya Banerjee, and David Schmidt
Abstract: This report presents a non-interference monitoring mechanism for sequential programs. Non-interference is a property of the information flows of a program. It implies the respect of the confidentiality of the secret information manipulated. The approach taken uses an automaton based monitor. During the execution, abstractions of the events occurring are sent to the automaton. The automaton uses those inputs to track the information flows and to control the execution by forbidding or editing dangerous actions. The mechanism proposed is proved to be sound and more efficient than a type system similar to the historical one developed by Volpano, Smith and Irvine.