On Bisimilarity and Substitution in Presence of Replication

International audienceWe prove a new congruence result for the pi-calculus: bisimilarity is a congruence in the sub-calculus that does not include restriction nor sum, and features top-level replications. Our proof relies on algebraic properties of replication, and on a new syntactic characterisation of bisimilarity. We obtain this characterisation using a rewriting system rather than a purely equational axiomatisation. We then deduce substitution closure, and hence, congruence. Whether bisimilarity is a congruence when replications are unrestricted remains open

Modal Logics for Mobile Processes Revisited

We revisit the logical characterisations of various bisimilarity relations for the finite fragment of the ?-calculus. Our starting point is the early and the late bisimilarity, first defined in the seminal work of Milner, Parrow and Walker, who also proved their characterisations in fragments of a modal logic (which we refer to as the MPW logic). Two important refinements of early and late bisimilarity, called open and quasi-open bisimilarity, respectively, were subsequently proposed by Sangiorgi and Walker. Horne, et. al., showed that open and quasi-bisimilarity are characterised by intuitionistic modal logics: OM (for open bisimilarity) and FM (for quasi-open bisimilarity). In this work, we attempt to unify the logical characterisations of these bisimilarity relations, showing that they can be characterised by different sublogics of a unifying logic. A key insight to this unification derives from a reformulation of the four bisimilarity relations (early, late, open and quasi-open) that uses an explicit name context, and an observation that these relations can be distinguished by the relative scoping of names and their instantiations in the name context. This name context and name substitution then give rise to an accessibility relation in the underlying Kripke semantics of our logic, that is captured logically by an S4-like modal operator. We then show that the MPW, the OM and the FM logics can be embedded into fragments of our unifying classical modal logic. In the case of OM and FM, the embedding uses the fact that intuitionistic implication can be encoded in modal logic S4

CaSPiS: A Calculus of Sessions, Pipelines and Services

Service-oriented computing is calling for novel computational models and languages with well disciplined primitives for client-server interaction, structured orchestration and unexpected events handling. We present CaSPiS, a process calculus where the conceptual abstractions of sessioning and pipelining play a central role for modelling service-oriented systems. CaSPiS sessions are two-sided, uniquely named and can be nested. CaSPiS pipelines permit orchestrating the flow of data produced by different sessions. The calculus is also equipped with operators for handling (unexpected) termination of the partner’s side of a session. Several examples are presented to provide evidence of the flexibility of the chosen set of primitives. One key contribution is a fully abstract encoding of Misra et al.’s orchestration language Orc. Another main result shows that in CaSPiS it is possible to program a “graceful termination” of nested sessions, which guarantees that no session is forced to hang forever after the loss of its partner

Separability in the Ambient Logic

The \it{Ambient Logic} (AL) has been proposed for expressing properties of process mobility in the calculus of Mobile Ambients (MA), and as a basis for query languages on semistructured data. We study some basic questions concerning the discriminating power of AL, focusing on the equivalence on processes induced by the logic $(=_L>)$. As underlying calculi besides MA we consider a subcalculus in which an image-finiteness condition holds and that we prove to be Turing complete. Synchronous variants of these calculi are studied as well. In these calculi, we provide two operational characterisations of $_=L$: a coinductive one (as a form of bisimilarity) and an inductive one (based on structual properties of processes). After showing $_=L$ to be stricly finer than barbed congruence, we establish axiomatisations of $_=L$ on the subcalculus of MA (both the asynchronous and the synchronous version), enabling us to relate $_=L$ to structural congruence. We also present some (un)decidability results that are related to the above separation properties for AL: the undecidability of $_=L$ on MA and its decidability on the subcalculus.Comment: logical methods in computer science, 44 page

Full abstraction for fair testing in CCS (expanded version)

In previous work with Pous, we defined a semantics for CCS which may both be viewed as an innocent form of presheaf semantics and as a concurrent form of game semantics. We define in this setting an analogue of fair testing equivalence, which we prove fully abstract w.r.t. standard fair testing equivalence. The proof relies on a new algebraic notion called playground, which represents the `rule of the game'. From any playground, we derive two languages equipped with labelled transition systems, as well as a strong, functional bisimulation between them.Comment: 80 page

The hitchhiker's guide to decidability and complexity of equivalence properties in security protocols (technical report)

Privacy-preserving security properties in cryptographic protocols are typically modelled by observational equivalences in process calculi such as the applied pi-calulus. We survey decidability and complexity results for the automated verification of such equivalences , casting existing results in a common framework which allows for a precise comparison. This uni ed view, beyond providing a clearer insight on the current state of the art, allowed us to identify some variations in the statements of the decision problems – sometimes resulting in different complexity results. Additionally, we prove a couple of novel or strengthened results

Bisimulations respecting duration and causality for the non-interleaving applied pi-calculus

This paper shows how we can make use of an asynchronous transition system, whose transitions are labelled with events and which is equipped with a notion of independence of events, to define non-interleaving semantics for the applied π-calculus. The most important notions we define are: Start-Termination or ST-bisimilarity, preserving duration of events; and History-Preserving or HP- bisimilarity, preserving causality. We point out that corresponding similarity preorders expose clearly distinctions between these semantics. We draw particular attention to the distinguishing power of HP failure similarity, and discuss how it affects the attacker threat model against which we verify security and privacy properties. We also compare existing notions of located bisimilarity to the definitions we introduce

Strong normalisation in the π-calculus

We introduce a typed π-calculus where strong normalisation is ensured by typability. Strong normalisation is a useful property in many computational contexts, including distributed systems. In spite of its simplicity, our type discipline captures a wide class of converging name-passing interactive behaviour. The proof of strong normalisability combines methods from typed λ-calculi and linear logic with process-theoretic reasoning. It is adaptable to systems involving state, polymorphism and other extensions. Strong normalisation is shown to have significant consequences, including finite axiomatisation of weak bisimilarity, a fully abstract embedding of the simply-typed λ-calculus with products and sums and basic liveness in interaction. Strong normalisability has been extensively studied as a fundamental property in functional calculi, term rewriting and logical systems. This work is one of the first steps to extend theories and proof methods for strong normalisability to the context of name-passing processes