Seminar: Language-Based Security for Distributed Systems

Form: Seminar - 3CP (2 SWS) Organizer: Prof. Dr. Heiko Mantel Contact: teachingmais.informatik.tu-darmstadt.de Time and Place: Block seminar, tentative dates: Thursday, June 13, Friday, June 14, and Monday, June 17, 2024 (please reserve all the 3 days, the exact schedule will be determined depending on the actual number of participants) Language: English Registration: in TUCaN (course id 20-00-1173-se) Max. participants: tbd Preparation meeting: Thursday, April 18 at 16:15 in room S2|02 A213 Literature: Will be provided in the preparation meeting.

Late Registration

Registration is still possible. If you are interested in registering for the seminar after the preparation meeting, please get in touch with us via e-mail at teachingmais.informatik.tu-darmstadt.de.

Material

Materials for the seminar, including the list of articles that we discuss, will be available in Moodle.

Content

This seminar connects contemporary challenges of securing distributed systems to the possibilities of modern, language-based approaches to IT security. Distributed systems feature an augmented attack surface, heterogeneous platforms, and multilateral security interests. This makes securing distributed IT systems a non-trivial challenge. Language-based approaches to security exploit properties of formal languages (i.e., of programming and specification languages) that are used in system construction. The use of semantic-based program analyses enables one to reliably check security requirements. The use of run-time mechanisms and of program transformations enables one to establish additional security guarantees. That is, language-based security can be employed both, for security certification and for hardening systems.

Learning Objectives

After successful participation in the course, you become acquainted with an unfamiliar subject by working with scientific papers. You are proficient in different techniques of library research (including accessing special databases). You can compare and contrast research results across multiple publications and perform an overarching evaluation of these results. You recognize the essential aspects of the examined works and are able to concisely present them to an audience with mixed prior experience on the subject, effectively applying a number of presentation techniques in the process. You are able to actively participate in a scientific discussion on the presented topics.

Prerequisites

Knowledge of Computer Science equivalent to the first four Semesters in the Computer Science Bachelor program.