Big Boxed Security

George V. Neville-Neil MSB Associates gnn@neville-neil.com

Modern computer systems require fine grained security to protect users from attackers. Recent advances in computer hardware such as CHERI (Capability Hardware Enhanced RISC Instructions) and compiler software through MLIR (Multi-Level Intermediate Representation) mean that modern programming languages can now express these fine grained security boundaries at the programming language level. A system that exposes easy to grok computer language primitives that encourages programmers to build secure is challenging and possible. Your users are fellow programmers who want to build the most secure software possible, but they need the tools to do the job. Your project will produce an MLIR dialect that provides language primitives to describe compartments, the data that goes into them and the conditions under which data may enter or exit. With the dialect in place a new tool, or tools, can be built to take description of what data to protect, and turn that into the corresponding primitives. A stretch goal would be an end to end secure programming system that uses a small number these new programming language primitives, adds them to an existing compiled language such as Rust, C or C++, and uses the LLVM compiler toolkit to translate the primitives into effective CHERI compartments.