The ConCert Project is concerned with making grid computing available to arbitrary developers without undermining the integrity or security of grid hosts. The ConCert framework exploits code certification to allow developers to certify compliance of application code with host policies. Certification takes the form of a machine-checkable proof that the application code complies with the host policy. The purpose of this project is to enhance the ConCert certification mechanism, and to deploy it for wide use in the "real world".

The current ConCert framework uses Typed Assembly Language (TAL-x86) as a code certification mechanism. While suitable as a proof of concept, the TAL-x86 formalism is not very flexible as a target language for certifying compilers. The project has developed, but not yet deployed, a much more general formalism, called TALT, that supports a much richer range of compilation and certification techniques. One goal of the proposed work is to integrate TALT into the ConCert framework.

A full-scale prototype of the ConCert grid computing framework has been built, and is now ready for deployment. Our plan is to deploy the framework first within the Computer Science Department on the scale of a few dozen machines. The next step is to deploy the framework on several thousand machines, which are being made available for use by the Pittsburgh Public School System. A full-scale deployment will require developing more sophisticated methods for controlling network usage (to avert denial of service attacks) and to permit simple installation by unsophisticated users. Another goal of the proposed work is to implement these extensions and to deploy the ConCert grid framework in the "real world".References: http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~concert