UNIVERSITY OF HERTFORDSHIRE
             COMPUTER SCIENCE RESEARCH COLLOQUIUM

                            presents

    "Language Based Security for Functional Active Objects"

                    Dr. Florian Kammueller
       (Computer Science, Middlesex University, UK)

                    11 Janauary 2012  (Wednesday)
                      Meeting Room C152

                  Hatfield, College Lane Campus
                            1 -2  pm

                  Everyone is Welcome to Attend

                  Refreshments will be available

Abstract:

Programming in large networks of computers, like the Internet, poses new
problems of safely implementing parallel activities, code distribution,
and complex communication structures. This talk presents current work
on the security analysis of active objects in ASPfun -- our calculus
for functional distributed objects that communicate asynchronously.

In ASPfun requests to objects are method calls represented by so-called
futures; replies finally return the result to the object containing
the future.  We have developed and completely formalized ASPfun and its
properties in the interactive theorem prover Isabelle/HOL. This includes
a type system and a proof of type safety. We also provide a prototype
interpreter for ASPfun written in Erlang.

This talk addresses security issues for distributed active objects:
it introduces ASPfun using a simple running example to present the
language and the security problem we address. We introduce a formal
notion of information flow security. The main novelty presented is a
type system that enables static security analysis of ASPfun programs.
We wrap up by presenting our current plans on investigating notions of
security preserving refinement for active objects.

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Hertfordshire Computer Science Research Colloquium
http://cs-colloq.stca.herts.ac.uk