Technical Report 2015-028

A Secure Compiler for ML Modules - Extended Version

Adriaan Larmuseau, Marco Patrignani, and Dave Clarke

September 2015

Abstract:
Many functional programming languages compile to low-level languages such as C or assembly. Most security properties of those compilers, however, apply only when the compiler compiles whole programs. This paper presents a compilation scheme that securely compiles a standalone module of ModuleML, a light-weight version of an ML with modules, into untyped assembly. The compilation scheme is secure in that it reflects the abstractions of a ModuleML module, for every possible piece of assembly code that it interacts with. This is achieved by isolating the compiled module through a low-level memory isolation mechanism and by dynamically type checking the low-level interactions. We evaluate an implementation of the compiler on relevant test scenarios.

Note: This technical report is an updated version of TR 2015-017 that serves as the companion report to an APLAS 2015 paper of the same title.

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