Distinguished Lecture Series presents Andrew Myers

Distinguished Lecture Series presents Andrew Myers on November 1, 2010.

• Title: Programming secure, composable distributed systems with a higher-level language abstraction
• Date: Monday November 1, 2010
• Time: 4pm
• Location: CSIC Building, Room 1115

Computation and persistent storage are rapidly moving into the distributed domain. Yet we are offered very weak security and privacy assurance, especially as complex information systems share information across trust boundaries. Fabric aims to improve this situation by introducing a higher-level abstraction for building complex distributed information systems securely and composably.

Fabric is a decentralized system that allows heterogeneous network nodes to securely share both information and computation resources despite mutual distrust. Its high-level programming language makes distribution and persistence largely transparent to programmers. Its Java-like object model is extended with data resources labeled with confidentiality and integrity policies, enforced by a combination of compile-time and run-time mechanisms. Optimistic, nested transactions ensure consistency across all objects and nodes. A peer-to-peer dissemination layer helps to increase availability and to balance load. Results from applications built using Fabric suggest that Fabric has a clean, concise programming model, offers good performance, and enforces security.