10,343 research outputs found
The natural history of bugs: using formal methods to analyse software related failures in space missions
Space missions force engineers to make complex trade-offs between many different constraints including cost, mass, power, functionality and reliability. These constraints create a continual need to innovate. Many advances rely upon software, for instance to control and monitor the next generation âelectron cyclotron resonanceâ ion-drives for deep space missions.Programmers face numerous challenges. It is extremely difficult to conduct valid ground-based tests for the code used in space missions. Abstract models and simulations of satellites can be misleading. These issues are compounded by the use of âband-aidâ software to fix design mistakes and compromises in other aspects of space systems engineering. Programmers must often re-code missions in flight. This introduces considerable risks. It should, therefore, not be a surprise that so many space missions fail to achieve their objectives. The costs of failure are considerable. Small launch vehicles, such as the U.S. Pegasus system, cost around 4 million up to 73 million from the failure of a single uninsured satellite. It is clearly important that we learn as much as possible from those failures that do occur. The following pages examine the roles that formal methods might play in the analysis of software failures in space missions
Cirquent calculus deepened
Cirquent calculus is a new proof-theoretic and semantic framework, whose main
distinguishing feature is being based on circuits, as opposed to the more
traditional approaches that deal with tree-like objects such as formulas or
sequents. Among its advantages are greater efficiency, flexibility and
expressiveness. This paper presents a detailed elaboration of a deep-inference
cirquent logic, which is naturally and inherently resource conscious. It shows
that classical logic, both syntactically and semantically, is just a special,
conservative fragment of this more general and, in a sense, more basic logic --
the logic of resources in the form of cirquent calculus. The reader will find
various arguments in favor of switching to the new framework, such as arguments
showing the insufficiency of the expressive power of linear logic or other
formula-based approaches to developing resource logics, exponential
improvements over the traditional approaches in both representational and proof
complexities offered by cirquent calculus, and more. Among the main purposes of
this paper is to provide an introductory-style starting point for what, as the
author wishes to hope, might have a chance to become a new line of research in
proof theory -- a proof theory based on circuits instead of formulas.Comment: Significant improvements over the previous version
Reasoning About a Simulated Printer Case Investigation with Forensic Lucid
In this work we model the ACME (a fictitious company name) "printer case
incident" and make its specification in Forensic Lucid, a Lucid- and
intensional-logic-based programming language for cyberforensic analysis and
event reconstruction specification. The printer case involves a dispute between
two parties that was previously solved using the finite-state automata (FSA)
approach, and is now re-done in a more usable way in Forensic Lucid. Our
simulation is based on the said case modeling by encoding concepts like
evidence and the related witness accounts as an evidential statement context in
a Forensic Lucid program, which is an input to the transition function that
models the possible deductions in the case. We then invoke the transition
function (actually its reverse) with the evidential statement context to see if
the evidence we encoded agrees with one's claims and then attempt to
reconstruct the sequence of events that may explain the claim or disprove it.Comment: 18 pages, 3 figures, 7 listings, TOC, index; this article closely
relates to arXiv:0906.0049 and arXiv:0904.3789 but to remain stand-alone
repeats some of the background and introductory content; abstract presented
at HSC'09 and the full updated paper at ICDF2C'11. This is an updated/edited
version after ICDF2C proceedings with more references and correction
Formally Specifying and Proving Operational Aspects of Forensic Lucid in Isabelle
A Forensic Lucid intensional programming language has been proposed for
intensional cyberforensic analysis. In large part, the language is based on
various predecessor and codecessor Lucid dialects bound by the higher-order
intensional logic (HOIL) that is behind them. This work formally specifies the
operational aspects of the Forensic Lucid language and compiles a theory of its
constructs using Isabelle, a proof assistant system.Comment: 23 pages, 3 listings, 3 figures, 1 table, 1 Appendix with theorems,
pp. 76--98. TPHOLs 2008 Emerging Trends Proceedings, August 18-21, Montreal,
Canada. Editors: Otmane Ait Mohamed and Cesar Munoz and Sofiene Tahar. The
individual paper's PDF is at
http://users.encs.concordia.ca/~tphols08/TPHOLs2008/ET/76-98.pd
Beck and beyond: Selling security in the world risk society
©2010 British International Studies AssociationExpanding on the works of Beck and others on the growing business of risk, this article examines the role of the private security industry in the creation, management and
perpetuation of the world risk society. It observes that the replacement of the concept of security with risk over the past decades has permitted private firms to identify a growing range of unknown and unknown-unknown dangers which cannot be eliminated, but require permanent risk management. Using the discourse of risk and its strategies of commercialised, individualised and reactive risk management, the private risk industry thus has contributed to the rise of a world risk society in which the demand for security can never be satisfied and guarantees continuous profits
Controlling service work: An ambiguous accomplishment between employees, management and customers
In order to understand the control of service work, most service literature has focused on its production while treating the customer as secondary. The consumption literature emphasizes the customerâs role but lacks empirical evidence for its claims. Using an ethnographic study of an âexclusiveâ department store, this article aims to reduce the gap between these two bodies of literature by investigating how employees, management and customers control service work. The findings suggest that the maintenance of class difference combined with competing expectations of managers, employees and customers makes the management of service work highly ambiguous and reveals a continuing instability between managerial practices of
control and consumer culture
Towards Scientific Incident Response
A scientific incident analysis is one with a methodical, justifiable approach to the human decision-making process. Incident analysis is a good target for additional rigor because it is the most human-intensive part of incident response. Our goal is to provide the tools necessary for specifying precisely the reasoning process in incident analysis. Such tools are lacking, and are a necessary (though not sufficient) component of a more scientific analysis process. To reach this goal, we adapt tools from program verification that can capture and test abductive reasoning. As Charles Peirce coined the term in 1900, âAbduction is the process of forming an explanatory hypothesis. It is the only logical operation which introduces any new idea.â We reference canonical examples as paradigms of decision-making during analysis. With these examples in mind, we design a logic capable of expressing decision-making during incident analysis. The result is that we can express, in machine-readable and precise language, the abductive hypotheses than an analyst makes, and the results of evaluating them. This result is beneficial because it opens up the opportunity of genuinely comparing analyst processes without revealing sensitive system details, as well as opening an opportunity towards improved decision-support via limited automation
Intensional Cyberforensics
This work focuses on the application of intensional logic to cyberforensic
analysis and its benefits and difficulties are compared with the
finite-state-automata approach. This work extends the use of the intensional
programming paradigm to the modeling and implementation of a cyberforensics
investigation process with backtracing of event reconstruction, in which
evidence is modeled by multidimensional hierarchical contexts, and proofs or
disproofs of claims are undertaken in an eductive manner of evaluation. This
approach is a practical, context-aware improvement over the finite state
automata (FSA) approach we have seen in previous work. As a base implementation
language model, we use in this approach a new dialect of the Lucid programming
language, called Forensic Lucid, and we focus on defining hierarchical contexts
based on intensional logic for the distributed evaluation of cyberforensic
expressions. We also augment the work with credibility factors surrounding
digital evidence and witness accounts, which have not been previously modeled.
The Forensic Lucid programming language, used for this intensional
cyberforensic analysis, formally presented through its syntax and operational
semantics. In large part, the language is based on its predecessor and
codecessor Lucid dialects, such as GIPL, Indexical Lucid, Lucx, Objective
Lucid, and JOOIP bound by the underlying intensional programming paradigm.Comment: 412 pages, 94 figures, 18 tables, 19 algorithms and listings; PhD
thesis; v2 corrects some typos and refs; also available on Spectrum at
http://spectrum.library.concordia.ca/977460
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