779 research outputs found
A note on two notions of compliance
We establish a relation between two models of contracts: binary session
types, and a model based on event structures and game-theoretic notions. In
particular, we show that compliance in session types corresponds to the
existence of certain winning strategies in game-based contracts.Comment: In Proceedings ICE 2014, arXiv:1410.701
Safer in the Clouds (Extended Abstract)
We outline the design of a framework for modelling cloud computing
systems.The approach is based on a declarative programming model which takes
the form of a lambda-calculus enriched with suitable mechanisms to express and
enforce application-level security policies governing usages of resources
available in the clouds. We will focus on the server side of cloud systems, by
adopting a pro-active approach, where explicit security policies regulate
server's behaviour.Comment: In Proceedings ICE 2010, arXiv:1010.530
Model checking usage policies
We study usage automata, a formal model for specifying policies on the usage of resources. Usage automata extend finite state automata with some additional features, parameters and guards, that improve their expressivity. We show that usage automata are expressive enough to model policies of real-world applications. We discuss their expressive power, and we prove that the problem of telling whether a computation complies with a usage policy is decidable. The main contribution of this paper is a model checking technique for usage automata. The model is that of usages, i.e. basic processes that describe the possible patterns of resource access and creation. In spite of the model having infinite states, because of recursion and resource creation, we devise a polynomial-time model checking technique for deciding when a usage complies with a usage policy
Contested novel ecosystems: Socio-ecological processes and evidence from Italy
In the context of contemporary global climate and environmental change, both natural and social scientists have stressed the role green areas play in global warming adaptation strategies and in improving the healthiness of the urban environment. Indeed, in recent years these spaces have become central to institutional political debates and various policies have been designed for their valorization. However, little attention has been paid to rewilded urban spaces, recently defined as novel urban ecosystems, and to their socio-ecological complexity. By adopting an interdisciplinary approach that links natural and social science perspectives, this article aims to highlight the role of novel urban ecosystems in the reconfiguration of urban policies. Indeed, this contribution analyzes ecosystem services coupled with the hybrid, contested socio-ecological nature of four case studies in Italy characterized by grassroots socio-environmental mobilization. Data were collected through comparative quantitative and qualitative methods. The evidence shows that the specific ecological features of novel urban ecosystems are strategic in terms of actual and potential ecosystem service provision for cities and suggests that citizens play a fundamental role in recognizing and valorizing them. In parallel, these spaces, reconceptualized as contested novel ecosystems, emerge as controversial hybrid urban socio-natures that enable community empowerment and produce a heterogeneous, grassroots political space oriented towards urban commons and environmental-climate justice
Predicting global usages of resources endowed with local policies
The effective usages of computational resources are a primary concern of
up-to-date distributed applications. In this paper, we present a methodology to
reason about resource usages (acquisition, release, revision, ...), and
therefore the proposed approach enables to predict bad usages of resources.
Keeping in mind the interplay between local and global information occurring in
the application-resource interactions, we model resources as entities with
local policies and global properties governing the overall interactions.
Formally, our model takes the shape of an extension of pi-calculus with
primitives to manage resources. We develop a Control Flow Analysis computing a
static approximation of process behaviour and therefore of the resource usages.Comment: In Proceedings FOCLASA 2011, arXiv:1107.584
On Symbolic Verification of Bitcoin's script Language
Validation of Bitcoin transactions rely upon the successful execution of scripts written in a simple and effective, non-Turing-complete by design language, simply called SCRIPT. This makes the validation of closed scripts, i.e. those associated to actual transactions and bearing full information, straightforward. Here we address the problem of validating open scripts, i.e. we address the validation of redeeming scripts against the whole set of possible inputs, i.e. under which general conditions can Bitcoins be redeemed? Even if likely not one of the most complex languages and demanding verification problems, we advocate the merit of formal verification for the Bitcoin validation framework. We propose a symbolic verification theory for of open SCRIPT, a verifier tool-kit, and illustrate examples of use on Bitcoin transactions. Contributions include 1) a formalisation of (a fragment of) the language; 2) a novel symbolic approach to SCRIPT verification, suitable, e.g. for the verification of newly defined and non-standard payment schemas; and 3) building blocks for a larger verification theory for the developing area of Bitcoin smart contracts. The verification of smart contracts, i.e. agreements built as transaction-based protocols, is currently a difficult to formalise and computationally demanding problem
Tools and verification
This chapter presents different tools that have been developed inside the Sensoria project. Sensoria studied qualitative analysis techniques for verifying properties of service implementations with respect to their formal specifications. The tools presented in this chapter have been developed to carry out the analysis in an automated, or semi-automated, way.
We present four different tools, all developed during the Sensoria project, exploiting new techniques and calculi from the Sensoria project itself
A decidable policy language for history-based transaction monitoring
Online trading invariably involves dealings between strangers, so it is
important for one party to be able to judge objectively the trustworthiness of
the other. In such a setting, the decision to trust a user may sensibly be
based on that user's past behaviour. We introduce a specification language
based on linear temporal logic for expressing a policy for categorising the
behaviour patterns of a user depending on its transaction history. We also
present an algorithm for checking whether the transaction history obeys the
stated policy. To be useful in a real setting, such a language should allow one
to express realistic policies which may involve parameter quantification and
quantitative or statistical patterns. We introduce several extensions of linear
temporal logic to cater for such needs: a restricted form of universal and
existential quantification; arbitrary computable functions and relations in the
term language; and a "counting" quantifier for counting how many times a
formula holds in the past. We then show that model checking a transaction
history against a policy, which we call the history-based transaction
monitoring problem, is PSPACE-complete in the size of the policy formula and
the length of the history. The problem becomes decidable in polynomial time
when the policies are fixed. We also consider the problem of transaction
monitoring in the case where not all the parameters of actions are observable.
We formulate two such "partial observability" monitoring problems, and show
their decidability under certain restrictions
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