Privacy-preserving programming using sython

Programmers often have access to confidential data that are not strictly needed for program development. Broad privileges from accounts given to programmers allow them to view files, database table entries or even variables in team members' code that are not critical to their own code. The risk inherent in such unchecked access to possibly private and sensitive data is exacerbated in cases where software development is part of a larger functioning system with data already in place, and is especially severe in cases where development is contracted out to third parties. This paper focuses on the problem of providing developers with a programming language that incorporates privacy-preserving features. We present Sython, a preliminary prototype based on the Python programming language that incorporates such features, examining both implementation and the appearance of the system as viewed by a programmer. The main purpose of this paper is to explore the use of language syntax and underlying support for secure variables so that data owners can contract out programming tasks without worrying about information leakage.