Next semester I will tutor the Language-based Security lecture. Since I will be writing my master thesis, it seems that I will have enough time to prepare. So even if I don’t know much about it at this time, the topics are very interesting and I am quite excited to learn more about them.
So what is language-based security about? Well, as far as the lecture is concerned, topics like information-flow security, typed assembly language, proof-carrying code, and most important: analysis of cryptographic protocols. Everything builds on type theory, a well-known static analysis technique for enforcing safety properties of modern programming languages.
“Language-based” – I told you, you would end up as a computational linguist now that you are at the PS Lab.
The “I don’t know much about it at this time” no longer applies since I spent last week reading about it. Still many interesting things to learn but at least I know some basics.
[...] First, I will tutor a specialized lecture in Language-based Security (Prof. Backes, Matteo Maffei) and that will take some of my time. Then, I plan to hear Automata, Games and Verification (Prof. Finkbeiner). However, for both of these I don’t need credits, so no homeworks or exams for me there. Finally, there are other classes I find interesting, but I don’t think I will have time for them: Semantics of Higher-Order Logic (Chad Brown), the seminar in Security and Privacy in Decentralized Networks (Prof. Backes, Prof. Druschel) and maybe even Advanced Cryptography (Prof. Backes). Depending on the topics and on the schedule I might hear one of this three, from time to time at least. [...]