First Steps Toward a Cryptography-Aware Language and Compiler

When developing secure, high-performance cryptographic soft- ware, the programmer is presented with a wide range of problems. Not only must they be conversant with pertinent scientic results, they must ecien tly translate said results into a practical context. Unlike when writing normal programs, they are given little help from either the lan- guage or compiler: both are typically too general purpose to oer domain specic optimisation or analysis that would save the programmer time and reduce the potential for error. As a step toward solving this problem we present CAO, a cryptography-aware domain-specic language and as- sociated compiler system. Rather than being a panacea, we pitch CAO as a mechanism for transferring and automating the expert knowledge of cryptographers into a form which is accessible to anyone writing security conscious software.