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SCS DISTINGUISHED LECTURE SERIES
4:00 PM - Wean Hall 7500
3:30 PM Distinguished Donuts - Outside the Hall

Martin Abadi
Professor of Computer Science
Computer Science Department
University of California at Santa Cruz
and Senior Researcher, Microsoft

Protection in Programming-Language Translations

Since attackers do not always use our preferred high-level abstractions, security depends on many ingenious mechanisms that counter low-level threats. For example, verification techniques impede attacks by low-level mobile code; cryptographic protocols protect communication on untrusted networks. Ultimately, however, these mechanisms should offer higher-level guarantees. In this talk, we discuss abstractions for protection and the correctness of their implementations. As important examples, we consider the compilation of object-oriented constructs and (more briefly) cryptographic access control in protocols and for XML data. We also discuss the runtime enforcement of control-flow integrity, a practical technique that aims to align low-level software behavior with high-level intent.

This talk is partly based on a 1998 paper by the same title, and the title is itself based on J. Morris's "Protection in Programming Languages" (1973). However, the talk includes substantial new material.

Speaker Bio:

Martin Abadi is Professor of Computer Science at UCSC (since 2001) and Senior Researcher at Microsoft (since 2006). Earlier, he studied at Stanford University and worked at Digital's System Research Center and other industrial labs. His research is on computer and network security, programming languages, and specification and verification methods. He has contributed, for example, to the design and analysis of security protocols, to the foundations of object-oriented languages, and to temporal-logic verification techniques. www.soe.ucsc.edu/~abadi/home.html.

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