research-article

HLIO: mixing static and dynamic typing for information-flow control in Haskell

Authors:

Dimitrios Vytiniotis,

Alejandro RussoAuthors Info & Claims

ICFP 2015: Proceedings of the 20th ACM SIGPLAN International Conference on Functional Programming

Pages 289 - 301

https://doi.org/10.1145/2784731.2784758

Published: 29 August 2015 Publication History

Abstract

Information-Flow Control (IFC) is a well-established approach for allowing untrusted code to manipulate sensitive data without disclosing it. IFC is typically enforced via type systems and static analyses or via dynamic execution monitors. The LIO Haskell library, originating in operating systems research, implements a purely dynamic monitor of the sensitivity level of a computation, particularly suitable when data sensitivity levels are only known at runtime. In this paper, we show how to give programmers the flexibility of deferring IFC checks to runtime (as in LIO), while also providing static guarantees---and the absence of runtime checks---for parts of their programs that can be statically verified (unlike LIO). We present the design and implementation of our approach, HLIO (Hybrid LIO), as an embedding in Haskell that uses a novel technique for deferring IFC checks based on singleton types and constraint polymorphism. We formalize HLIO, prove non-interference, and show how interesting IFC examples can be programmed. Although our motivation is IFC, our technique for deferring constraints goes well beyond and offers a methodology for programmer-controlled hybrid type checking in Haskell.

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Index Terms

HLIO: mixing static and dynamic typing for information-flow control in Haskell
1. Security and privacy
  1. Systems security
    1. Operating systems security
2. Software and its engineering
  1. Software notations and tools
    1. General programming languages
      1. Language features
      2. Language types
        Functional languages

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cover image ACM Conferences

ICFP 2015: Proceedings of the 20th ACM SIGPLAN International Conference on Functional Programming

August 2015

436 pages

ISBN:9781450336697

DOI:10.1145/2784731

General Chair:
Kathleen Fisher
Tufts University, USA
,
Program Chair:
John Reppy
University of Chicago, USA

ACM SIGPLAN Notices Volume 50, Issue 9
ICFP '15
September 2015
436 pages
ISSN:0362-1340
EISSN:1558-1160
DOI:10.1145/2858949
Editor:
Andy Gill
University of Kansas, Lawrence, KS
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Published: 29 August 2015

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https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3694715.3695984
Chen TSiek J(2024)Quest Complete: The Holy Grail of Gradual SecurityProceedings of the ACM on Programming Languages10.1145/36564428:PLDI(1609-1632)Online publication date: 20-Jun-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3656442
Tarkhani ZMadhavapeddy A(2023)Information Flow Tracking for Heterogeneous Compartmentalized SoftwareProceedings of the 26th International Symposium on Research in Attacks, Intrusions and Defenses10.1145/3607199.3607235(564-579)Online publication date: 16-Oct-2023
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3607199.3607235
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