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Type of T

alk: UTCS Faculty Candidate

Speaker/Affiliation: Mohit Tiwari/Universi

ty of California at Berkeley

Talk Audience: UTCS Faculty, Graduate St

udents, Undergraduate Students and Outside Interested Parties

Date/Ti

me: Tuesday, April 17, 2012, 11:00 am

Location: ACES 2.302

Hos

t: Emmett Witchel and Mattan Erez

Talk Title: Security Across the Soft

ware-Silicon Boundary

Talk Abstract:
The synergy between computer ar

chitecture and program analysis can reveal vital insights into the design o

f secure systems. The ability to control information as it flows through a

machine is a key primitive for computer security, however, software-only

analyses are vulnerable to leaks in the underlying hardware. In my talk, I
will demonstrate how complete information flow control can be achieved by

co-designing an analysis together with the processor architecture.

The
analysis technique, GLIFT, is based on the insight that all information

flows -- whether explicit, implicit, or timing channels -- look surprisin

gly alike at the gate level where assembly language descriptions crystalliz

e into precise logical functions. The architecture introduces Execution Lea

ses, a programming model that allows a small kernel to directly control th

e flow of all secret or untrusted information, and whose implementation is
verifiably free from all digital information leaks. In the future, my res

earch will use this cross-cutting approach to build systems that make secur

ity and privacy accessible to mainstream users while supporting untrusted a

pplications across cloud and client devices.

Speaker Bio:
Mohit Tiwa

ri is a Computing Innovation Fellow at University of California, Berkeley.
He received his PhD in Computer Science from University of California, Sa

nta Barbara in 2011. His research uses computer architecture and program an

alyses to build secure, reliable systems, and has received a Best Paper a

ward at PACT 2009, an IEEE Micro Top Pick in 2010, and the Outstanding Di

ssertation award in Computer Science at UCSB in 2011.