SECOMP: Formally Secure Compilation of Compartmentalized C Programs

arXiv:2401.16277v2 Announce Type: replace-cross
Abstract: Undefined behavior in C often causes devastating security vulnerabilities. One practical mitigation is compartmentalization, which allows developers to structure large programs into mutually distrustful compartments with clearly specified privileges and interactions. In this paper we introduce SECOMP, a compiler for compartmentalized C code that comes with machine-checked proofs guaranteeing that the scope of undefined behavior is restricted to the compartments that encounter it and become dynamically compromised. These guarantees are formalized as the preservation of …

arxiv code compiler cs.cr cs.pl developers large machine mitigation privileges security structure vulnerabilities