Verifying Privacy-Type Properties in a Modular Way

Formal methods have proved their usefulness for analysing the security of protocols. In this setting, privacy-type security properties (e.g. vote-privacy, anonymity, unlink ability) that play an important role in many modern applications are formalised using a notion of equivalence. In this paper, we study the notion of trace equivalence and we show how to establish such an equivalence relation in a modular way. It is well-known that composition works well when the processes do not share secrets. However, there is no result allowing us to compose processes that rely on some shared secrets such as long term keys. We show that composition works even when the processes share secrets provided that they satisfy some reasonable conditions. Our composition result allows us to prove various equivalence-based properties in a modular way, and works in a quite general setting. In particular, we consider arbitrary cryptographic primitives and processes that use non-trivial else branches. As an example, we consider the ICAO e-passport standard, and we show how the privacy guarantees of the whole application can be derived from the privacy guarantees of its sub-protocols

A Multiset Rewriting Model for Specifying and Verifying Timing Aspects of Security Protocols

Catherine Meadows has played an important role in the advancement of formal methods for protocol security verification. Her insights on the use of, for example, narrowing and rewriting logic has made possible the automated discovery of new attacks and the shaping of new protocols. Meadows has also investigated other security aspects, such as, distance-bounding protocols and denial of service attacks. We have been greatly inspired by her work. This paper describes the use of Multiset Rewriting for the specification and verification of timing aspects of protocols, such as network delays, timeouts, timed intruder models and distance-bounding properties. We detail these timed features with a number of examples and describe decidable fragments of related verification problems

Eating paper: uncovering the dynamics behind household food security in South Africa’s urban spaces

A dissertation submitted to the School of Animal, Plant and Environmental Sciences, University of the Witwatersrand, for consideration of the award of MSc. Johannesburg, 31 May 2018.Urban food security has long been viewed as secondary to rural food security in South Africa. With the migration of the large numbers of people from rural to urban settings, it has become crucial to place more focus on urban food security, especially in some South African townships where there are high unemployment rates amongst the youth. Often the interventions towards reducing food insecurity in urban settings are taken from the interventions which were previously designed for application in the rural context. In this study the factors constraining and enhancing food security in Tembisa, South Africa are determined. This will in turn inform the umbrella approach that has often being adapted in order to combat urban food insecurity. In order to accomplish this FANTA‟s Household Food Insecurity Access Scale (HFIAS) is applied, which measures levels of food security and the Household Dietary Diversity Scale (HDDS), which measures the level of nutritional intake of households. Food prices of the formal and informal markets were also monitored over a period of 6 months. A significant decline in household food access over the previous four years (2013-2016) was observed in addition to relatively low quality diets. Cereals and meat were a major part of the dietary intake of many of the households. The most commonly used coping methods included borrowing either money or food from friends and neighbours, this was sometimes done in conjunction with various other coping strategies. Much of the declining food access was attributed to the inflation of food prices, the lack of formal employment and high household members to breadwinner ratios. Furthermore, government initiatives such as social grants and school feeding schemes have proven to be imperative in reducing the vulnerability to food insecurity of most households. Unfortunately, regulation of the local food system has proven to be a difficult task, and this calls for government to play a bigger role in ensuring transparency from local food value chain, whilst not undermining the role of informal markets in enhancing nutritional security in South African townships. In addition, a high reliance solely on financial capital remains a limitation to the livelihood of urban households. Keywords: Food security, food price inflation, nutrition, formal markets, informal markets, financial capital.LG201

International standards of rights in the field of social security

International standards of rights in the field of social security are a set of norms established in various international legal acts. These standards define decent living conditions for people, ensure personal development and social security, and have a significant impact on national legislation in the field of social security. The implementation of standards established at the international level in national legislation is a tool for the development of national legislation towards implementing the rule of law, equality, and social justice. Therefore, this article examines international standards of rights in the field of social security and analyzes the direction of their influence on the sources of social security law. The purpose of this work is to study international social standards and their legal characteristics. The research methodology includes various methods such as the dialectical method, the systemic method, the genetic method, the logical method, the structural-functional method, the formal-legal method, and the comparative-legal and sociological-legal methods. The research results indicate that international standards in the field of social security play an important role, as they must be observed as the minimum criteria for the protection of rights in the sphere of social security. The guarantees provided by a number of ILO Conventions and other international legal acts have been thoroughly investigated, and norms in current legislation that contradict international social standards have been identified. It is emphasized that it is necessary to consider these standards and create specific legal mechanisms that will enable the implementation of international norms and principles

Micro-finance as a Tool for Financial Access, Poverty Alleviation and Women Empowerment in Bindura District, Zimbabwe

The purpose of this study was to understand the role of micro-finance as a tool for women empowerment in Bindura Rural District of Zimbabwe. Qualitative methodology was used. Data collection methods used included semi-structured interviews, documentary search. The respondents for the study were drawn from rural women who had accessed loans from MFI, managers of MFI and the Zimbabwe Association of Micro Finance Institutions. The study found out that access to credit has positive outcomes on production, income, and consumption at household and macro-economic levels. Rural women in Zimbabwe lack adequate access to formal credit. The study found that that lack of adequate access to credit have significant negative effect on technology adoption, agricultural productivity, food security, nutrition, health, and overall welfare. The study concludes that the lack of collateral of the poor, their demand for smaller loans, and high transaction cost associated with small loans are the main factors that the poor are excluded from formal credit services

Homeland Security and the Police Mission

The terrorist attacks on America are seen as a pivotal period for the nation and for policing. They have thrust policing into a new mission that will have a wide ranging impact on the police role, organizational strategies, staffing, training and policy. State, local and tribal police are now at the forefront of Homeland Security activities, yet there remains a great deal of uncertainty about their mission.The ramp-up efforts by federal and state government are reminiscent of the staging for civil defense in the 1960\u27s. As a result of 9/11, there has been an invigoration for cities and towns to develop response plans for any localized terrorist incidents. The safety of the public is important and falls to government agencies.Community policing was intended to encourage community input and involvement. As communities and our country attempt to put safeguards in place and raise awareness, community and business leaders, and neighborhood groups should be enlisted to assist. The tenets of community policing can be utilized to plan and engage the community as police agencies endeavor to respond to a new mission.Using a sample of New England police agencies and police practitioners, this research will query whether police agencies are changing their organizational mission to integrate Homeland Security activities. The researchers used several methods to analyze police agencies and their role in Homeland Security. First, examining police agency mission statements through content analysis, the authors found little evidence of a formal Homeland Security focus. This research utilized a web-based survey tool to elicit officer perspectives on Homeland Security objectives

Semi-Automatic Synthesis of Security Policies by Invariant-Guided Abduction - Full version

We present a specification approach of secured systems as transition systems and security policies as constraints that guard the transitions. In this context, security properties are expressed as invariants. Then we propose an abduction algorithm to generate possible security policies for a given transition-based system. Because abduction is guided by invariants, the generated security policies enforce security properties specified by these invariants. In this framework we are able to tune abduction in two ways in order to: (i) filter out bad security policies and (ii) generate additional possible security policies. Invariant-guided abduction helps designing policies and thus allows using formal methods much earlier in the process of building secured systems. This approach is illustrated on role-based access control systems