Program logics for homogeneous meta-programming.

A meta-program is a program that generates or manipulates another program; in homogeneous meta-programming, a program may generate new parts of, or manipulate, itself. Meta-programming has been used extensively since macros were introduced to Lisp, yet we have little idea how formally to reason about metaprograms. This paper provides the first program logics for homogeneous metaprogramming – using a variant of MiniMLe by Davies and Pfenning as underlying meta-programming language.We show the applicability of our approach by reasoning about example meta-programs from the literature. We also demonstrate that our logics are relatively complete in the sense of Cook, enable the inductive derivation of characteristic formulae, and exactly capture the observational properties induced by the operational semantics

Program logics for homogeneous meta-programming.

A meta-program is a program that generates or manipulates another program; in homogeneous meta-programming, a program may generate new parts of, or manipulate, itself. Meta-programming has been used extensively since macros were introduced to Lisp, yet we have little idea how formally to reason about metaprograms. This paper provides the first program logics for homogeneous metaprogramming – using a variant of MiniMLe by Davies and Pfenning as underlying meta-programming language.We show the applicability of our approach by reasoning about example meta-programs from the literature. We also demonstrate that our logics are relatively complete in the sense of Cook, enable the inductive derivation of characteristic formulae, and exactly capture the observational properties induced by the operational semantics

Characterising Probabilistic Processes Logically

In this paper we work on (bi)simulation semantics of processes that exhibit both nondeterministic and probabilistic behaviour. We propose a probabilistic extension of the modal mu-calculus and show how to derive characteristic formulae for various simulation-like preorders over finite-state processes without divergence. In addition, we show that even without the fixpoint operators this probabilistic mu-calculus can be used to characterise these behavioural relations in the sense that two states are equivalent if and only if they satisfy the same set of formulae.Comment: 18 page

Through Modeling to Synthesis of Security Automata

AbstractWe define a set of process algebra operators, that we call controller operators, able to mimic the behavior of security automata introduced by Schneider in [Schneider, F. B., Enforceable security policies, ACM Transactions on Information and System Security 3 (2000), pp. 30–50] and by Ligatti and al. in [Bauer, L., J. Ligatti and D. Walker, More enforceable security policies, in: I. Cervesato, editor, Foundations of Computer Security: proceedings of the FLoC'02 workshop on Foundations of Computer Security (2002), pp. 95–104]. Security automata are mechanisms for enforcing security policies that specify acceptable executions of programs.Here we give the semantics of four controllers that act by monitoring possible un-trusted component of a system in order to enforce certain security policies. Moreover, exploiting satisfiability results for temporal logic, we show how to automatically build these controllers for a given security policy

Characteristic Formulae: From Automata to Logic

This paper discusses the classic notion of characteristic formulae for processes using variations on Hennessy-Milner logic as the underlying logical specification language. It is shown how to characterize logically (states of) finite labelled transition systems modulo bisimilarity using a single formula in Hennessy-Milner logic with recursion. Moreover, characteristic formulae for timed automata with respect to timed bisimilarity and the faster-than preorder of Moller and Tofts are offered in terms of the logic L_nu of Laroussinie, Larsen and Weise

Automated Synthesis of Enforcing Mechanisms for Security Properties in a Timed Setting

AbstractIn [Martinelli, F. and I. Matteucci, Modeling security automata with process algebras and related results (2006), presented at the 6th International Workshop on Issues in the Theory of Security (WITS '06) - Informal proceedings; Martinelli, F. and I. Matteucci, Through modeling to synthesis of security automata (2006), accepted to STM06. To appeare in ENTCS] we have presented an approach for enforcing security properties. It is based on the automatic synthesis of controller programs that are able to detect and eventually prevent possible wrong action performed by an external agent. Here, we extend this approach also to a timed setting. Under certain assumptions, we are also able to enforce several information flow properties. We show how to deal with parameterized systems

Partial mode checking, process algebra operators and satisfiability procedures for (automatically) enforcing security properties

In this paper we show how the partial model checking approach for the analysis of secure systems may be also useful for enforcing security properties. We define a set of process algebra operators that act as programmable controllers of possibly insecure components. The program of these controllers may be automatically obtained through the usage of satisfiability procedures for a variant of mu-calculus