A Certified Compiler for Verifiable Computing

Abstract

In cryptology, verifiable computing aims at verifying the remote execution of a program on an untrusted machine, based on its I/O and constant-sized evidence collected during its execution. Recent cryptographic schemes and compilers enable practical verifiable computations for some programs written in C, but their soundness with regards to C semantics remains informal and poorly understood. We present the first certified, semantics-preserving compiler for verifiable computing. Based on CompCert and developed in Coq, our compiler targets an architecture whose instructions consist solely of quadratic equations over a large finite field, amenable to succinct verification using the Pinocchio cryptographic scheme. We explain how to encode the integer operations of a C program first to quadratic equations, then to a single cryptographically-checkable polynomial test. We formally prove that, when compilation succeeds, there is a correct execution of the source program for any I/O that pass this test. We link our compiler to the Pinocchio cryptographic runtime, and report experimental results as we compile, run, and verify the execution of sample C programs.