Noninterference for a Practical DIFC-Based Operating System

Abstract

The Flume system is an implementation of decentralized information flow control (DIFC) at the operating system level. Prior work has shown Flume can be implemented as a practical extension tothe Linux operating system, allowing real Web applications to achieve useful security guarantees. However, the question remains if the Flume system is actually secure. This paper compares Flume with other recent DIFC systems like Asbestos, arguing that the latter is inherently susceptible to certain wide-bandwidth covert channels, and proving their absence in Flume by means of a noninterference proof in the Communicating Sequential Processes formalism.