Specifying and analysing reputation systems with coordination languages

Reputation systems are nowadays widely used to support decision making in networked systems. Parties in such systems rate each other and use shared ratings to compute reputation scores that drive their interactions. The existence of reputation systems with remarkable differences calls for formal approaches to their analysis. We present a verification methodology for reputation systems that is based on the use of the coordination language Klaim and related analysis tools. First, we define a parametric Klaim specification of a reputation system that can be instantiated with different reputation models. Then, we consider stochastic specification obtained by considering actions with random (exponentially distributed) duration. The resulting specification enables quantitative analysis of properties of the considered system. Feasibility and effectiveness of our proposal is demonstrated by reporting on the analysis of two reputation models

A standard-driven communication protocol for disconnected clinics in rural areas

The importance of the Electronic Health Record (EHR), which stores all healthcare-related data belonging to a patient, has been recognized in recent years by governments, institutions, and industry. Initiatives like Integrating the Healthcare Enterprise (IHE) have been developed for the definition of standard methodologies for secure and interoperable EHR exchanges among clinics and hospitals. Using the requisites specified by these initiatives, many large-scale projects have been set up to enable healthcare professionals to handle patients' EHRs. Applications deployed in these settings are often considered safety-critical, thus ensuring such security properties as confidentiality, authentication, and authorization is crucial for their success. In this paper, we propose a communication protocol, based on the IHE specifications, for authenticating healthcare professionals and assuring patients' safety in settings where no network connection is available, such as in rural areas of some developing countries. We define a specific threat model, driven by the experience of use cases covered by international projects, and prove that an intruder cannot cause damages to the safety of patients and their data by performing any of the attacks falling within this threat model. To demonstrate the feasibility and effectiveness of our protocol, we have fully implemented it

Proceedings of International Workshop "Global Computing: Programming Environments, Languages, Security and Analysis of Systems"

According to the IST/ FET proactive initiative on GLOBAL COMPUTING, the goal is to obtain techniques (models, frameworks, methods, algorithms) for constructing systems that are flexible, dependable, secure, robust and efficient. The dominant concerns are not those of representing and manipulating data efficiently but rather those of handling the co-ordination and interaction, security, reliability, robustness, failure modes, and control of risk of the entities in the system and the overall design, description and performance of the system itself. Completely different paradigms of computer science may have to be developed to tackle these issues effectively. The research should concentrate on systems having the following characteristics: • The systems are composed of autonomous computational entities where activity is not centrally controlled, either because global control is impossible or impractical, or because the entities are created or controlled by different owners. • The computational entities are mobile, due to the movement of the physical platforms or by movement of the entity from one platform to another. • The configuration varies over time. For instance, the system is open to the introduction of new computational entities and likewise their deletion. The behaviour of the entities may vary over time. • The systems operate with incomplete information about the environment. For instance, information becomes rapidly out of date and mobility requires information about the environment to be discovered. The ultimate goal of the research action is to provide a solid scientific foundation for the design of such systems, and to lay the groundwork for achieving effective principles for building and analysing such systems. This workshop covers the aspects related to languages and programming environments as well as analysis of systems and resources involving 9 projects (AGILE , DART, DEGAS , MIKADO, MRG, MYTHS, PEPITO, PROFUNDIS, SECURE) out of the 13 founded under the initiative. After an year from the start of the projects, the goal of the workshop is to fix the state of the art on the topics covered by the two clusters related to programming environments and analysis of systems as well as to devise strategies and new ideas to profitably continue the research effort towards the overall objective of the initiative. We acknowledge the Dipartimento di Informatica and Tlc of the University of Trento, the Comune di Rovereto, the project DEGAS for partially funding the event and the Events and Meetings Office of the University of Trento for the valuable collaboration

The legal and contractual aspects of networked cooperation for the building and construction industry

The construction industry is a project-based business bringing together many different organisations to complete a desired goal. The strategic use of Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) has enabled the goal to be completed more effectively. Two issues require addressing, the technology itself and the implementation factors of the technology. Such implementation factors should consider, among other factors, the legal and contractual issues associated with the use of ICT, training requirements and its effects on the organisational culture. To date the legal and contractual issues have not been extensively covered, and it is recognised that the technologies have not been properly covered by any recognised legal and contractual practices. This in turn is threatening to inhibit the growth and prosperity of the use of the technology on construction projects. This paper discusses these legal and contractual issues and describes methods and tools that can be used to enable the growth of technology to be used in a legal and contractually valid environment

Secure Cloud-Edge Deployments, with Trust

Assessing the security level of IoT applications to be deployed to heterogeneous Cloud-Edge infrastructures operated by different providers is a non-trivial task. In this article, we present a methodology that permits to express security requirements for IoT applications, as well as infrastructure security capabilities, in a simple and declarative manner, and to automatically obtain an explainable assessment of the security level of the possible application deployments. The methodology also considers the impact of trust relations among different stakeholders using or managing Cloud-Edge infrastructures. A lifelike example is used to showcase the prototyped implementation of the methodology

Taming the cloud: Safety, certification and compliance for software services - Keynote at the Workshop on Engineering Service-Oriented Applications (WESOA) 2011

The maturity of IT processes, such as software development, can be and is often certified. Current trends in the IT industry suggest that software systems in the future will be very different from their counterparts today, with an increasing adoption of the Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA) design pattern and the deployment of Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) on Cloud infrastructures. In this talk we discuss some issues surrounding engineering Software Services for Cloud infrastructures and highlight the need for enhanced control, service-level agreement and compliance mechanisms for Software Services. Cloud Infrastructures and Service Mash-ups