Year: 2026
Type: preprint
Abstract: Existing language-based information-flow control (IFC) tools face a fundamental tension: Denning-style systems that track explicit and implicit flows at the variable level typically require compiler modifications, while more coarse-grained approaches, including recent work Cocoon, avoid compiler changes but impose more restrictive programming models. We present Filament, a Denning-style static IFC library for Rust that requires no compiler modifications. Filament addresses three key challenges in building a practical IFC library for Rust. First, it enables fine-grained explicit-flow checking with minimal annotation overhead by leveraging Rust's type inference. Second, it introduces pc_block!, a lightweight construct for enforcing implicit flows via a compile-time program counter label, without requiring compiler support. Third, it provides fcall! and mcall! macros to support seamless and safe interoperability with standard and third-party libraries. Our evaluation shows that Filament incurs negligible compile-time overhead and requires only modest annotations. Moreover, compared to Cocoon, Filament offers a more permissive programming model, reducing the need for frequent escape hatches that bypass security checks.
Source: arXiv (Cornell University)
Authors: Ching, Jeffrey C., Zhou, Quan, Zhang, Danfeng
Institutions: Duke University, Google (United States)
Subfield: Artificial Intelligence
Field: Computer Science
Domain: Physical Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W7154776680
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