Logical Relations for Session-Typed Concurrency
For researchers in programming languages and concurrency, this work provides a foundational technique for reasoning about security properties in non-terminating concurrent systems with session types.
This paper scales logical relations to general recursive session types, developing a logical relation for progress-sensitive noninterference (PSNI) for intuitionistic linear logic session types (ILLST). It demonstrates soundness and completeness with regard to closure of weak bisimilarity under parallel composition and implements an information flow control refinement type system that ensures well-typed programs enjoy PSNI.
Program equivalence is the fulcrum for reasoning about and proving properties of programs. For noninterference, for example, program equivalence up to the secrecy level of an observer is shown. A powerful enabler for such proofs are logical relations. Logical relations only recently were adopted for session types -- but exclusively for terminating languages. This paper scales logical relations to general recursive session types. It develops a logical relation for progress-sensitive noninterference (PSNI) for intuitionistic linear logic session types (ILLST), tackling the challenges non-termination and concurrency pose, and shows that logical equivalence is sound and complete with regard to closure of weak bisimilarity under parallel composition, using a biorthogonality argument. A distinguishing feature of the logical relation is its stratification with an observation index (as opposed to a step or unfolding index), a crucial shift to make the logical relation closed under parallel composition in a concurrent setting. To demonstrate practicality of the logical relation, the paper develops an information flow control (IFC) refinement type system for ILLST, with support of secrecy-polymorphic processes, and shows that well-typed programs are self-related by the logical relation and thus enjoy PSNI. The refinement type system has been implemented in a type checker, featuring local security theories to support secrecy-polymorphic processes.