Computer Security and Cryptography Seminar:
January 2006 Events

In this talk, I will review our work in building systems that achieve measurable integrity guarantees. As a result, we have found reasons to challenge some of the tenets of computer security. For example, well-accepted tenet is that the size of the system's trusted computing base must be minimized to improve security. A common interpretation of this rule is that only the operating system and a minimal number of system services should be trusted. While this interpretation has been practical for enforcing secrecy policies, our investigations have shown that integrity enforcement requires a practical approach to establishing trust in applications, thus expanding the trust boundary of the system. I have other heretical ideas related to formal assurance and designing programs for security based on our experiences as well. The resulting claim is that security tenets derived from military security needs for secrecy do not seem to apply for integrity. For integrity, an approach based on developing a precise understanding of security and mitigating security problems is more appropriate.

Trent Jaeger is an Associate Professor in the Computer Science and Engineering Department at Pennsylvania State University. Trent received his M.S.E. and Ph.D. in Computer Science and Engineering from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor in 1993 and 1997, respectively. Trent was a Research Staff Member at the IBM T.J. Watson Research Center (1996-2005) before joining the Penn State faculty in 2005.