745 research outputs found
Lower Bounds for Symbolic Computation on Graphs: Strongly Connected Components, Liveness, Safety, and Diameter
A model of computation that is widely used in the formal analysis of reactive
systems is symbolic algorithms. In this model the access to the input graph is
restricted to consist of symbolic operations, which are expensive in comparison
to the standard RAM operations. We give lower bounds on the number of symbolic
operations for basic graph problems such as the computation of the strongly
connected components and of the approximate diameter as well as for fundamental
problems in model checking such as safety, liveness, and co-liveness. Our lower
bounds are linear in the number of vertices of the graph, even for
constant-diameter graphs. For none of these problems lower bounds on the number
of symbolic operations were known before. The lower bounds show an interesting
separation of these problems from the reachability problem, which can be solved
with symbolic operations, where is the diameter of the graph.
Additionally we present an approximation algorithm for the graph diameter
which requires symbolic steps to achieve a
-approximation for any constant . This compares to
symbolic steps for the (naive) exact algorithm and
symbolic steps for a 2-approximation. Finally we also give a refined analysis
of the strongly connected components algorithms of Gentilini et al., showing
that it uses an optimal number of symbolic steps that is proportional to the
sum of the diameters of the strongly connected components
Symbolic Algorithms for Graphs and Markov Decision Processes with Fairness Objectives
Given a model and a specification, the fundamental model-checking problem
asks for algorithmic verification of whether the model satisfies the
specification. We consider graphs and Markov decision processes (MDPs), which
are fundamental models for reactive systems. One of the very basic
specifications that arise in verification of reactive systems is the strong
fairness (aka Streett) objective. Given different types of requests and
corresponding grants, the objective requires that for each type, if the request
event happens infinitely often, then the corresponding grant event must also
happen infinitely often. All -regular objectives can be expressed as
Streett objectives and hence they are canonical in verification. To handle the
state-space explosion, symbolic algorithms are required that operate on a
succinct implicit representation of the system rather than explicitly accessing
the system. While explicit algorithms for graphs and MDPs with Streett
objectives have been widely studied, there has been no improvement of the basic
symbolic algorithms. The worst-case numbers of symbolic steps required for the
basic symbolic algorithms are as follows: quadratic for graphs and cubic for
MDPs. In this work we present the first sub-quadratic symbolic algorithm for
graphs with Streett objectives, and our algorithm is sub-quadratic even for
MDPs. Based on our algorithmic insights we present an implementation of the new
symbolic approach and show that it improves the existing approach on several
academic benchmark examples.Comment: Full version of the paper. To appear in CAV 201
Distributed PCP Theorems for Hardness of Approximation in P
We present a new distributed model of probabilistically checkable proofs
(PCP). A satisfying assignment to a CNF formula is
shared between two parties, where Alice knows , Bob knows
, and both parties know . The goal is to have
Alice and Bob jointly write a PCP that satisfies , while
exchanging little or no information. Unfortunately, this model as-is does not
allow for nontrivial query complexity. Instead, we focus on a non-deterministic
variant, where the players are helped by Merlin, a third party who knows all of
.
Using our framework, we obtain, for the first time, PCP-like reductions from
the Strong Exponential Time Hypothesis (SETH) to approximation problems in P.
In particular, under SETH we show that there are no truly-subquadratic
approximation algorithms for Bichromatic Maximum Inner Product over
{0,1}-vectors, Bichromatic LCS Closest Pair over permutations, Approximate
Regular Expression Matching, and Diameter in Product Metric. All our
inapproximability factors are nearly-tight. In particular, for the first two
problems we obtain nearly-polynomial factors of ; only
-factor lower bounds (under SETH) were known before
Securing Databases from Probabilistic Inference
Databases can leak confidential information when users combine query results
with probabilistic data dependencies and prior knowledge. Current research
offers mechanisms that either handle a limited class of dependencies or lack
tractable enforcement algorithms. We propose a foundation for Database
Inference Control based on ProbLog, a probabilistic logic programming language.
We leverage this foundation to develop Angerona, a provably secure enforcement
mechanism that prevents information leakage in the presence of probabilistic
dependencies. We then provide a tractable inference algorithm for a practically
relevant fragment of ProbLog. We empirically evaluate Angerona's performance
showing that it scales to relevant security-critical problems.Comment: A short version of this paper has been accepted at the 30th IEEE
Computer Security Foundations Symposium (CSF 2017
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