Ben Laurie

Ben Laurie

Authored Publications
Sort By
  • Title
  • Title, descending
  • Year
  • Year, descending
    Policy Transparency: Authorization Logic Meets General Transparency to Prove Software Supply Chain Integrity
    Andrew Ferraiuolo
    Razieh Behjati
    ACM Workshop on Software Supply Chain Offensive Research and Ecosystem Defenses, Association for Computing Machinery (2022)
    Preview abstract Building reliable software is challenging because today’s software supply chains are built and secured from tools and individuals from a broad range of organizations with complex trust relationships. In this setting, tracking the origin of each piece of software and understanding the security and privacy implications of using it is essential. In this work we aim to secure software supply chains by using verifiable policies in which the origin of information and the trust assumptions are first-order concerns and abusive evidence is discoverable. To do so, we propose Policy Transparency, a new paradigm in which policies are based on authorization logic and all claims issued in this policy language are made transparent by inclusion in a transparency log. Achieving this goal in a real-world setting is non-trivial and to do so we propose a novel software architecture called PolyLog. We find that this combination of authorization logic and transparency logs is mutually beneficial -- transparency logs allow authorization logic claims to be widely available aiding in discovery of abuse, and making claims interpretable with policies allows misbehavior captured in the transparency logs to be handled proactively. View details
    Towards making formal methods normal: meeting developers where they are
    Alastair Reid
    Shaked Flur
    Luke Church
    Maritza Johnson
    HATRA 2020: Human Aspects of Types and Reasoning Assistants (to appear)
    Preview abstract Formal verification of software is a bit of a niche activity: it is only applied to the most safety-critical or security-critical software and it is typically only performed by specialized verification engineers. This paper considers whether it would be possible to increase adoption of formal methods by integrating formal methods with developers' existing practices and workflows. We do not believe that widespread adoption will follow from making the prevailing formal methods argument that correctness is more important than engineering teams realize. Instead, our focus is on what we would need to do to enable programmers to make effective use of formal verification tools and techniques. We do this by considering how we might make verification tooling that both serves developers' needs and fits into their existing development lifecycle. We propose a target of two orders of magnitude increase in adoption within a decade driven by ensuring a positive `weekly cost-benefit' ratio for developer time invested. View details
    Expert and Non-Expert Attitudes towards (Secure) Instant Messaging
    Sauvik Das
    Iulia Ion
    Twelfth Symposium on Usable Privacy and Security (SOUPS 2016), USENIX Association, Denver, CO, pp. 147-157
    Preview abstract In this paper, we present results from an online survey with 1,510 participants and an interview study with 31 participants on (secure) mobile instant messaging. Our goal was to uncover how much of a role security and privacy played in people's decisions to use a mobile instant messenger. In the interview study, we recruited a balanced sample of IT security experts and non-experts, as well as an equal split of users of mobile instant messengers that are advertised as being more secure and/or private (e.g., Threema) than traditional mobile IMs. Our results suggest that peer influence is what primarily drives people to use a particular mobile IM, even for secure/private IMs, and that security and privacy play minor roles. View details
    A taste of Capsicum: practical capabilities for UNIX
    Robert N. M. Watson
    Jonathan Anderson
    Kris Kennaway
    Communications of the ACM, 55(3) (2012), pp. 97-104
    Preview abstract Capsicum is a lightweight operating system (OS) capability and sandbox framework planned for inclusion in FreeBSD 9. Capsicum extends, rather than replaces, UNIX APIs, providing new kernel primitives (sandboxed capability mode and capabilities) and a userspace sandbox API. These tools support decomposition of monolithic UNIX applications into compartmentalized logical applications, an increasingly common goal that is supported poorly by existing OS access control primitives. We demonstrate our approach by adapting core FreeBSD utilities and Google View details
    Drac: An Architecture for Anonymous Low-Volume Communications
    George Danezis
    Claudia Diaz
    Carmela Troncosco
    PETS 2010 (to appear)
    Preview
    Capsicum: practical capabilities for UNIX
    Robert N. M. Watson
    Jonathan Anderson
    Kris Kennaway
    Proceedings of the 19th USENIX Security Symposium (2010)
    Preview abstract Capsicum is a lightweight operating system capabil- ity and sandbox framework planned for inclusion in FreeBSD 9. Capsicum extends, rather than replaces, UNIX APIs, providing new kernel primitives (sandboxed capability mode and capabilities) and a userspace sand- box API. These tools support compartmentalisation of monolithic UNIX applications into logical applications, an increasingly common goal supported poorly by dis- cretionary and mandatory access control. We demon- strate our approach by adapting core FreeBSD utilities and Google’s Chromium web browser to use Capsicum primitives, and compare the complexity and robustness of Capsicum with other sandboxing techniques. View details
    (Under)mining Privacy in Social Networks
    Monica Chew
    W2SP 2008: Web 2.0 Security and Privacy 2008
    Preview
    Choose the Red Pill and the Blue Pill
    Abe Singer
    New Security Paradigms Workshop 2008
    Preview
    Preview abstract Selective disclosure for the non-cryptographer. View details