Logic of Information Flow on Communication Channels (Extended Abstract)

We develop an epistemic logic to specify and reason about information flow and its underlying communication channels. By combining ideas from Dynamic Epistemic Logic (DEL) and Interpreted Systems (IS), our semantics offers a natural and neat way of modelling multi-agent communication scenarios with different assumptions about the observational power of agents

Combining behavioural types with security analysis

Today's software systems are highly distributed and interconnected, and they increasingly rely on communication to achieve their goals; due to their societal importance, security and trustworthiness are crucial aspects for the correctness of these systems. Behavioural types, which extend data types by describing also the structured behaviour of programs, are a widely studied approach to the enforcement of correctness properties in communicating systems. This paper offers a unified overview of proposals based on behavioural types which are aimed at the analysis of security properties

Actor Network Procedures as Psi-calculi for Security Ceremonies

The actor network procedures of Pavlovic and Meadows are a recent graphical formalism developed for describing security ceremonies and for reasoning about their security properties. The present work studies the relations of the actor network procedures (ANP) to the recent psi-calculi framework. Psi-calculi is a parametric formalism where calculi like spi- or applied-pi are found as instances. Psi-calculi are operational and largely non-graphical, but have strong foundation based on the theory of nominal sets and process algebras. One purpose of the present work is to give a semantics to ANP through psi-calculi. Another aim was to give a graphical language for a psi-calculus instance for security ceremonies. At the same time, this work provides more insight into the details of the ANPs formalization and the graphical representation.Comment: In Proceedings GraMSec 2014, arXiv:1404.163

Actor-network procedures: Modeling multi-factor authentication, device pairing, social interactions

As computation spreads from computers to networks of computers, and migrates into cyberspace, it ceases to be globally programmable, but it remains programmable indirectly: network computations cannot be controlled, but they can be steered by local constraints on network nodes. The tasks of "programming" global behaviors through local constraints belong to the area of security. The "program particles" that assure that a system of local interactions leads towards some desired global goals are called security protocols. As computation spreads beyond cyberspace, into physical and social spaces, new security tasks and problems arise. As networks are extended by physical sensors and controllers, including the humans, and interlaced with social networks, the engineering concepts and techniques of computer security blend with the social processes of security. These new connectors for computational and social software require a new "discipline of programming" of global behaviors through local constraints. Since the new discipline seems to be emerging from a combination of established models of security protocols with older methods of procedural programming, we use the name procedures for these new connectors, that generalize protocols. In the present paper we propose actor-networks as a formal model of computation in heterogenous networks of computers, humans and their devices; and we introduce Procedure Derivation Logic (PDL) as a framework for reasoning about security in actor-networks. On the way, we survey the guiding ideas of Protocol Derivation Logic (also PDL) that evolved through our work in security in last 10 years. Both formalisms are geared towards graphic reasoning and tool support. We illustrate their workings by analysing a popular form of two-factor authentication, and a multi-channel device pairing procedure, devised for this occasion.Comment: 32 pages, 12 figures, 3 tables; journal submission; extended references, added discussio

From FPGA to ASIC: A RISC-V processor experience

This work document a correct design flow using these tools in the Lagarto RISC- V Processor and the RTL design considerations that must be taken into account, to move from a design for FPGA to design for ASIC