"Automatic Tools for Building Secure Systems"
Dawn Song
Computer Science Department
University of California, Berkeley
Building a secure system is a complex and error-prone process in
computing. System designers and developers face many challenges:
- What does it mean for a system to be secure?
- How do I know whether my system is secure?
- Will the security of my system break if I add a new component?
- SSL/TLS and other standard protocols do not work in my scenario.
How can I find ways to achieve security in my system efficiently?
- How can I make sure the implementation adheres to the design?
Finding answers to these questions is essential to building secure,
efficient systems; however, the complexity, subtlety, and interactions
among different components in a large system put the problem beyond
the reach of even experienced security experts, not to mention average
programmers who lack security expertise. As a result, the current design
and implementation process for secure systems is slow, expensive, and
often results in a vulnerable system.
I propose a new automatic approach for building security protocols. In
particular, I designed and built a suite of automatic tools, Athena,
containing three components: 1) APV: an Automatic Protocol Analyzer; 2)
APG: an Automatic Protocol Generator; 3) ACG: an Automatic Code Generator.
In this talk, I'll discuss how this toolkit enables a new automatic approach
for building security protocols that is more efficient, economical, and with
higher security guarantee than the current approach.
Monday, April 8, 2002
3401 Walnut - IRCS Large Conf. Rm.# 470
3:00 - 4:30 p.m.