Infrastructure for Proof-Referencing Code

We discuss ideas for using the Higher-Order Logic (HOL) theorem-proving system as an infrastructure for programs that reference or carry proofs of their correctness. Such programs, which we call Proof-Referencing Code (PRC), could be useful or even essential for applications where security of mobile code is important, but where authentication is impractical and runtime checking is expensive. We propose an experiment to determine if PRC can be used to provide a exible approach to providing security and performance in a more general context than has been shown before. Our goal is to develop a new kind of runtime system based on PRC.