Gray-box runtime enforcement of hyperproperties
Abstract Enforcement of information-flow policies has been extensively studied by language-based approaches over the past few decades. In this paper, we propose an alternative, novel, general, and effective approach using enforcement of hyperproperties – a powerful formalism for expressing and reasoning about a wide range of information-flow security policies. We study black- vs. gray- vs. white-box enforcement of hyperproperties expressed by nondeterministic finite-word hyperautomata (NFH), where the enforcer has null, some, or complete information about the implementation of the system under scrutiny. Given an NFH, in order to generate a runtime enforcer, we reduce the problem to controller synthesis for hyperproperties and subsequently to the satisfiability problem for quantified Boolean formulas (QBFs). The resulting enforcers are transferable with low-overhead. We conduct a rich set of case studies, including information-flow control for JavaScript code, as well as synthesizing obfuscators for control plants.
Authors
- Borzoo Bonakdarpour (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1800-5419)
- Ezio Bartocci (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8004-6601)
- Andrew Wintenberg (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7522-5309)
- Tzu-Han Hsu (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6277-2765)
- Ana Oliveira da Costa (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8741-5799)
Institutions
- TU Wien (AT)
- Institute of Science and Technology Austria (AT)
- University of Michigan (US)
- Michigan State University (US)
Publication Details
- Journal
- Acta Informatica
- Published
- 2025-08-09
- DOI
- https://doi.org/10.1007/s00236-025-00502-1
- Primary Topic
- Security and Verification in Computing
- Type
- article
- Field-Weighted Citation Impact
- 0.00
Funders
- National Science Foundation
- Institute of Science and Technology Austria
- Vienna Science and Technology Fund
- Austrian Science Fund
- Division of Electrical, Communications and Cyber Systems