Sergio Maffeis

Refinement types for secure implementations

We present the design and implementation of a typechecker for verifying security properties of the source code of cryptographic protocols and access control mechanisms. The underlying type theory is a λ-calculus equipped with re¿nement types for expressing pre- and post-conditions within ¿rst-order logic. We derive formal cryptographic primitives and represent active adversaries within the type theory. Well-typed programs enjoy assertion-based security properties, with respect to a realistic threat model including key compromise. The implementation amounts to an enhanced typechecker for the general purpose functional language F#; typechecking generates veri¿cation conditions that are passed to an SMT solver. We describe a series of checked examples. This is the ¿rst tool to verify authentication properties of cryptographic protocols by typechecking their source code.

Code-Carrying Authorization

In authorization, there is often a wish to shift the burden of proof to those making requests, since they may have more resources and more specific knowledge to construct the required proofs. We introduce an extreme instance of this approach, which we call Code-Carrying Authorization (CCA). With CCA, access-control decisions can partly be delegated to untrusted code obtained at run-time. The dynamic verification of this code ensures the safety of authorization decisions. We define and study this approach in the setting of a higher-order spi calculus. The type system of this calculus provides the needed support for static and dynamic verification.

An Operational Semantics for JavaScript

We define a small-step operational semantics for the ECMAScript standard language corresponding to JavaScript, as a basis for analyzing security properties of web applications and mashups. The semantics is based on the language standard and a number of experiments with different implementations and browsers. Some basic properties of the semantics are proved, including a soundness theorem and a characterization of the reachable portion of the heap.

Object Capabilities and Isolation of Untrusted Web Applications

A growing number of current web sites combine active content (applications) from untrusted sources, as in so-called mashups. The object-capability model provides an appealing approach for isolating untrusted content: if separate applications are provided disjoint capabilities, a sound object-capability framework should prevent untrusted applications from interfering with each other, without preventing interaction with the user or the hosting page. In developing language-based foundations for isolation proofs based on object-capability concepts, we identify a more general notion of authority safety that also implies resource isolation. After proving that capability safety implies authority safety, we show the applicability of our framework for a specific class of mashups. In addition to proving that a JavaScript subset based on Google Caja is capability safe, we prove that a more expressive subset of JavaScript is authority safe, even though it is not based on the object-capability model.

Language-Based Isolation of Untrusted JavaScript

Web sites that incorporate untrusted content may use browser- or language-based methods to keep such content from maliciously altering pages, stealing sensitive information, or causing other harm. We study language-based methods for filtering and rewriting JavaScript code, using Yahoo! ADSafe and Facebook FBJS as motivating examples. We explain the core problems by describing previously unknown vulnerabilities and subtleties, and develop a foundation for improved solutions based on an operational semantics of the full ECMA-262 language. We also discuss how to apply our analysis to address the JavaScript isolation problems we discovered.

Discovering concrete attacks on website authorization by formal analysis

Social sign-on and social sharing are becoming an ever more popular feature of web applications. This success is largely due to the APIs and support offered by prominent social networks, such as Facebook, Twitter and Google, on the basis of new open standards such as the OAuth 2.0 authorization protocol. A formal analysis of these protocols must account for malicious websites and common web application vulnerabilities, such as cross-site request forgery and open redirectors. We model several configurations of the OAuth 2.0 protocol in the applied pi-calculus and verify them using ProVerif. Our models rely on WebSpi, a new library for modeling web applications and web-based attackers that is designed to help discover concrete attacks on websites. To ease the task of writing formal models in our framework, we present a model extraction tool that automatically translates programs written in subsets of PHP and JavaScript to the applied pi-calculus. Our approach is validated by finding dozens of previously unknown vulnerabilities in popular websites such as Yahoo and WordPress, when they connect to social networks such as Twitter and Facebook.

A Type Discipline for Authorization in Distributed Systems

We consider the problem of statically verifying the conformance of the code of a system to an explicit authorization policy. In a distributed setting, some part of the system may be compromised, that is, some nodes of the system and their security credentials may be under the control of an attacker. To help predict and bound the impact of such partial compromise, we advocate logic-based policies that explicitly record dependencies between principals. We propose a conformance criterion, safety despite compromised principals, such that an invalid authorization decision at an uncompromised node can arise only when nodes on which the decision logically depends are compromised. We formalize this criterion in the setting of a process calculus, and present a verification technique based on a type system. Hence, we can verify policy conformance of code that uses a wide range of the security mechanisms found in distributed systems, ranging from secure channels down to cryptographic primitives, including encryption and public-key signatures.

Isolating JavaScript with filters, rewriting, and wrappers

We study methods that allow web sites to safely combine JavaScript from untrusted sources. If implemented properly, filters can prevent dangerous code from loading into the execution environment, while rewriting allows greater expressiveness by inserting run-time checks. Wrapping properties of the execution environment can prevent misuse without requiring changes to imported JavaScript. Using a formal semantics for the ECMA 262-3 standard language, we prove security properties of a subset of JavaScript, comparable in expressiveness to Facebook FBJS, obtained by combining three isolation mechanisms. The isolation guarantees of the three mechanisms are interdependent, with rewriting and wrapper functions relying on the absence of JavaScript constructs eliminated by language filters.

A type discipline for authorization policies

Distributed systems and applications are often expected to enforce high-level authorization policies. To this end, the code for these systems relies on lower-level security mechanisms such as, for instance, digital signatures, local ACLs, and encrypted communications. In principle, authorization specifications can be separated from code and carefully audited. Logic programs, in particular, can express policies in a simple, abstract manner. For a given authorization policy, we consider the problem of checking whether a cryptographic implementation complies with the policy. We formalize authorization policies by embedding logical predicates and queries within a spi calculus. This embedding is new, simple, and general; it allows us to treat logic programs as specifications of code using secure channels, cryptography, or a combination. Moreover, we propose a new dependent type system for verifying such implementations against their policies. Using Datalog as an authorization logic, we show how to type several examples using policies and present a general schema for compiling policies.

On the computational strength of pure ambient calculi

Cardelli and Gordons calculus of Mobile Ambients has attracted widespread interest as a model of mobile computation. The standard calculus is quite rich, with a variety of operators, together with capabilities for entering, leaving and dissolving ambients. The question arises of what is a minimal Turing-complete set of constructs. Previous work has established that Turing completeness can be achieved without using communication or restriction. We show that it can be achieved merely using movement capabilities (and not dissolution). We also show that certain smaller sets of constructs are either terminating or have decidable termination.