A Tamper-Resistant Programming Language
Speaker: Dennis Heimbigner

April 24, 2002

Abstract
--------
In this talk we demonstrate how a programming language -- specifically Lisp 1.5 -- can be used to provide a convenient and general mechanism for tamper-resistant utilization of the memory of an untrusted host by a secure processor such as a SmartCard. This means that any program written in the language, any computation carried out by such a program, and any data structures constructed using the primitives of the language is inherently resistant to tampering, and if tampering occurs it will be detected on-line and cause the computation to abort.

This approach is in contrast to the prior work in solving this problem, which has focused on providing specific data
structures stored in the host's memory and having the property that they are resistant to attempts by the host to tamper with the data structure, and any such tampering will be detected.