Cerisier: A Program Logic for Attestation in a Capability Machine

A key feature in trusted computing is attestation, which allows encapsulated components (enclaves) to prove their identity to (local or remote) distrusting components. Reasoning about software that uses the technique requires tracking how trust evolves after successful attestation. This process is security-critical and non-trivial, but no existing formal verification technique supports modular reasoning about attestation of enclaves and their clients, or proving end-to-end properties for systems combining trusted, untrusted and attested code. We contribute Cerisier, the first program logic for modular reasoning about trusted, untrusted and attested code, fully mechanized in the Iris separation logic and the Rocq Prover. We formalize a recent proposal, CHERI-TrEE, to extend capability machines with enclave primitives, as an extension to the Cerise capability machine and program logic. Our program logic comes with a universal contract for untrusted code, which captures both capability safety and local enclave attestation. Like Cerise, this universal contract is phrased in terms of a logical relation defining capabilities' authority. We demonstrate Cerisier by proving end-to-end properties for three representative applications of trusted computing: secure outsourced computation, mutual attestation and a modeled trusted sensor component.

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Publication Details

Journal
Proceedings of the ACM on Programming Languages
Published
2026-06-08
DOI
https://doi.org/10.1145/3808287
Primary Topic
Security and Verification in Computing
Type
article
Field-Weighted Citation Impact
0.00

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article

Cerisier: A Program Logic for Attestation in a Capability Machine

Dominique Devriese, Lars Birkedal, Thomas Van Strydonck, Steven Keuchel et al.
Proceedings of the ACM on Programming Languages
Security and Verification in Computing
article

Cerisier: A Program Logic for Attestation in a Capability Machine

Dominique Devriese, Lars Birkedal, Thomas Van Strydonck, Steven Keuchel, June Rousseau, Denis Carnier
article en

Abstract

A key feature in trusted computing is attestation, which allows encapsulated components (enclaves) to prove their identity to (local or remote) distrusting components. Reasoning about software that uses the technique requires tracking how trust evolves after successful attestation. This process is security-critical and non-trivial, but no existing formal verification technique supports modular reasoning about attestation of enclaves and their clients, or proving end-to-end properties for systems combining trusted, untrusted and attested code. We contribute Cerisier, the first program logic for modular reasoning about trusted, untrusted and attested code, fully mechanized in the Iris separation logic and the Rocq Prover. We formalize a recent proposal, CHERI-TrEE, to extend capability machines with enclave primitives, as an extension to the Cerise capability machine and program logic. Our program logic comes with a universal contract for untrusted code, which captures both capability safety and local enclave attestation. Like Cerise, this universal contract is phrased in terms of a logical relation defining capabilities' authority. We demonstrate Cerisier by proving end-to-end properties for three representative applications of trusted computing: secure outsourced computation, mutual attestation and a modeled trusted sensor component.

Proceedings of the ACM on Programming LanguagesVol. 10(PLDI)
Aarhus University (DK), Eindhoven University of Technology (NL), KU Leuven (BE)
Villum Fonden, European Research Council
Peace, Justice and strong institutions
Openalex Percentile: Top 4%
Security and Verification in Computing
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