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Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Type Checker for Annotated Assembly Programs

Abstract

dc:description.abstract

The rise of speculative-execution attacks, such as Spectre, has presented a security challenge to developers. Speculation on secret data can expose it, but running without speculation is suboptimal for runtime. To fix this, researchers have been evaluating “smart” speculation schemes, which determine when to speculate and when not to in order to balance runtime with security. Our lab proposes Octal, a solution that utilizes software and hardware in tandem. Data values are marked as secret or public using type inference, and the veracity of inference is checked using a type checker. Then, hardware can separate the secret and public values. My contributions were to the type checker, as well as some scripting to evaluate results.

Degree

thesis:*
Name thesis:degree_name
Master
Department dc:contributor.department
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science
Grantor dc:publisher
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Year dc:date.issued
2025

Author and committee

dc:creator, dc:contributor.*
Author dc:creator
  • Zanders, Julian
Advisor dc:contributor.advisor
  • Chlipala, Adam

Rights

dc:rights
Statement dc:rights
  • In Copyright - Educational Use Permitted
  • Copyright retained by author(s)

Identifiers

dc:identifier.*
Handle dc:identifier.uri
https://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/163024
OAI identifier oai:identifier
oai:dspace.mit.edu:1721.1/163024

Chain of custody

source
Harvested from
MIT
Base URL
dspace.mit.edu/oai/request
Last updated
2026-07-22
Source record
OAI-PMH GetRecord
related terms
citation

Zanders, Julian. Type Checker for Annotated Assembly Programs. Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 2025. https://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/163024