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International Conference on Current Trends in Theory and Practice of Computer Science

SOFSEM 2012: SOFSEM 2012: Theory and Practice of Computer Science pp 576–587Cite as

Securing the Future — An Information Flow Analysis of a Distributed OO Language

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Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNTCS,volume 7147))

Abstract

We present an information-flow type system for a distributed object-oriented language with active objects, asynchronous method calls and futures. The variables of the program are classified as high and low. We allow while cycles with high guards to be used but only if they are not followed (directly or through synchronization) by an assignment to a low variable. To ensure the security of synchronization, we use a high and a low lock for each concurrent object group (cog). In some cases, we must allow a high lock held by one task to be overtaken by another, if the former is about to make a low side effect but the latter cannot make any low side effects. This is necessary to prevent synchronization depending on high variables from influencing the order of low side effects in different cogs. We prove a non-interference result for our type system.

The research leading to these results has received funding from the European Union’s Seventh Framework Programme (FP7/2007-2013) under grant agreement no. 231620, from Estonian Science Foundation through grants No. 7543 and 8124, and from the European Regional Development Fund through the Estonian Center of Excellence in Computer Science, EXCS.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. University of Tartu, Estonia

    Martin Pettai & Peeter Laud

  2. Cybernetica AS, Estonia

    Martin Pettai & Peeter Laud

Authors
  1. Martin Pettai
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  2. Peeter Laud
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Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Faculty of Informatics and Information Technologies, Institute of Informatics and Software Engineering, Slovak University of Technology in Bratislava, Ilkovičova 3, 842 16, Bratislava 4, Slovakia

    Mária Bieliková

  2. Dept. of Intelligent Systems and Business Informatics, Alpen-Adria-Universität Klagenfurt, Universitätsstr. 65-57, 9020, Klagenfurt, Austria

    Gerhard Friedrich

  3. Department of Computer Science, University of Oxford, UK

    Georg Gottlob

  4. Security Engineering Group, Technische Universität Darmstadt, Hochschulstr. 10, 64289, Darmstadt, Germany

    Stefan Katzenbeisser

  5. University of Illinois at Chicago, Dept. of Math., Stat. and Comp. Sci, 851 S. Morgan Street, Chicago, IL 60607-7045, USA; and University of Szeged, Research Group on Artificial Intelligence of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, 6701 Szeged, Postafiók, Hungary

    György Turán

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© 2012 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg

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Pettai, M., Laud, P. (2012). Securing the Future — An Information Flow Analysis of a Distributed OO Language. In: Bieliková, M., Friedrich, G., Gottlob, G., Katzenbeisser, S., Turán, G. (eds) SOFSEM 2012: Theory and Practice of Computer Science. SOFSEM 2012. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 7147. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-27660-6_47

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-27660-6_47

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-642-27659-0

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-642-27660-6

  • eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)

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