Modern programmable network switches can implement cus-
tom applications using efficient packet processing hardware,
and the programming language P4 provides high-level con-
structs to program such switches. The increase in speed and
programmability has inspired research in dataplane program-
ming, where many complex functionalities, e.g., key-value
stores and load balancers, can be implemented entirely in
network switches. However, dataplane programs may suffer
from novel security errors that are not traditionally found
in network switches.
To address this issue, we present a new information-flow
control type system for P4. We formalize our type system in a
recently-proposed core version of P4, and we prove a sound-
ness theorem: well-typed programs satisfy non-interference.
We also implement our type system in a tool, P4BID, which
extends the type checker in the p4c compiler, the reference
compiler for the latest version of P4. We present several case
studies showing that natural security, integrity, and isolation
properties in networks can be captured by non-interference,
and our type system can detect violations of these properties
while certifying correct programs.
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Viaduct: an extensible, optimizing compiler for secure distributed programs
Modern distributed systems involve interactions between principals with limited trust, so cryptographic mechanisms are needed to protect confidentiality and integrity. At the same time, most developers lack the training to securely employ cryptography. We present Viaduct, a compiler that transforms high-level programs into secure, efficient distributed realizations. Viaduct's source language allows developers to declaratively specify security policies by annotating their programs with information flow labels. The compiler uses these labels to synthesize distributed programs that use cryptography efficiently while still defending the source-level security policy. The approach is general, and can be easily extended with new security mechanisms. Our implementation of the compiler comes with an extensible runtime system that includes plug-in support for multiparty computation, commitments, and zero-knowledge proofs. We have evaluated the system on a set of benchmarks, and the results indicate that our approach is feasible and can use cryptography in efficient, nontrivial ways.
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- Award ID(s):
- 1704788
- NSF-PAR ID:
- 10328578
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- PLDI 2021
- Page Range / eLocation ID:
- 740 to 755
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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- Free Publicly Accessible Full Text
-
Accepted Manuscript1.0
- Conference Paper:
- https://doi.org/10.1145/3453483.3454074
