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International Workshop on Formal Aspects in Security and Trust

FAST 2008: Formal Aspects in Security and Trust pp 20–34Cite as

Secure Information Flow as a Safety Property

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Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNSC,volume 5491))

Abstract

In this paper we argue that, in the perspective of developing “security-minded” programming languages, the secure information flow property should be defined (as well as disciplined access) as a standard safety property, based on a notion of a security error, namely that one should not put in a public location a value elaborated using confidential information. We show that this is the property guaranteed by a standard security type system, and that, for a simple language, it is strictly stronger than non-interference. Moreover, we show that this notion of secure information flow allows us to give natural semantics to various security-minded programming constructs, including declassification.

Work partially supported by the CRE FT-R&D no 46136511, and by the ANR-SETI-06-010 grant.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. INRIA, 06902, Sophia Antipolis, France

    Gérard Boudol

Authors
  1. Gérard Boudol
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Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Dipartimento di Informatica, Università di Pisa, Largo Bruno, Pontecorvo, 3, 56127, Pisa, Italy

    Pierpaolo Degano

  2. The MITRE Corporation, 202 Burlington Rd, MS S128, MA 01730, Bedford, USA

    Joshua Guttman

  3. Istituto di Informatica e Telematica - IIT Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche, C.N.R., Pisa Research Area, Via. G. Moruzzi 1, 56125, Pisa, Italy

    Fabio Martinelli

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Boudol, G. (2009). Secure Information Flow as a Safety Property. In: Degano, P., Guttman, J., Martinelli, F. (eds) Formal Aspects in Security and Trust. FAST 2008. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 5491. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-01465-9_2

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-01465-9_2

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-642-01464-2

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-642-01465-9

  • eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)

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