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Abstract for Seminar

Our society is increasingly dependent upon its computing and communications infrastructure. Unfortunately, that infrastructure is built using unsafe, error-prone C or C++ code where buffer overruns, format string attacks, and space leaks are not only possible, but frighteningly common. Safe languages, such as Java, Scheme, or ML do not admit these attacks but relatively little infrastructure (i.e., operating systems, databases, protocols, etc.) is built using a safe language.

For the past two years, we have been exploring and building type systems for C code in the context of a project called Cyclone. The challenge is to find type systems and type inference techniques that are (a) sound, (b) scalable, (c) admit common idioms (e.g., pointer arithmetic) without losing the benefits that C provides for writing systems code (e.g., control over data representations.)

Greg Morrisett is Associate Professor at Cornell University (currently on sabbatical at Microsoft Research Cambridge). His current research interests are in the applications of programming language technology for building secure and reliable systems. In particular, he is interested in applications of advanced type systems, certifying compilers, proof-carrying code, and inlined reference monitors for building efficient and provably secure systems.

He is Program Chair for PoPL'03, the 30th Annual ACM Symposium on Principles of Programming Languages, a member of the IFIP Working Group 2.8 (Functional Programming), an editor for the Journal of Functional Programming and an associate editor for ACM Transactions on Programming Languages and Systems.

Computer Science @ Kent

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