1,720,999 research outputs found
Verification-as-a-Service for Parameter Assessment
When a professional or researcher faces the task of analyzing some real-world IT system, being it a security protocol, a piece of software, or something else, it comes the moment when the system parameters are enumerated and for each of them he/she has to define its possible values
Parameterized model checking of networks of timed automata with Boolean guards
Parameterized model checking is a formal verification technique for verifying that some specifications hold in systems consisting of many similar cooperating but indistinguishable processes. The problem is known to be undecidable in general, even when restricted to reachability properties. To overcome this limitation, several techniques have been explored to address specific system families, logical formulas or topologies of process networks. Some use the notion of cutoff, i.e. if a certain property is verified for systems up to a certain size (the cutoff) then it is verified for systems of any size. Here we analyze the case of networks consisting of an arbitrary number of timed automata that can synchronize by looking at which state the neighbors are currently. We show that cutoffs exist independently from the checked formula, with or without a distinguished process acting as controller. We show how, exploiting the cutoffs, we can obtain upper bounds on complexity of the parameterized model-checking problem. Finally, we show how to use the theoretical results in order to model and verify a distributed algorithm for clock synchronization based on gossip techniques
High-Performance Computing for Formal Security Assessment
Assessing the degree of security of a given system w.r.t. some attacker model and security policy can be done by means of formal methods. For instance, the system can be described as a Markov Decision Process, the security policy by means of a modal logic formula, PCTL∗, and then a probabilistic model checker can return the probability with which the policy holds in the system. This methodology suffices when all the system parameters and their values are known a priori. On the other side, in case the degree of security of the system depends on the values of the system parameters, the formally security assessment task must output a probability function which takes the system parameters and returns the probability of a successful attack to the security of the system. One simple way to describe such function involves solving many instances of the probabilistic model checking problem, one for each combination of the parameter values. In this scenario, probabilistic model checking, which suffers from the state explosion problem, may become an unfeasible task for traditional workstations or even servers.In this work we introduce the tool SecMC which drives the user in the task of modeling the system under analysis and the required security policies, together with the parameters that affect them. Next, the user can specify the range of values assumed by the parameters, and the tool can take care of iterating the probabilistic model checking task, distributing the computations among different local or remote nodes of a cluster, and collect the results to produce a combined picture of how the level of security varies w.r.t. the parameter values.In this paper we show how the tool can be used in order to formally assess security of probabilistic systems known from the literature, viz. a probabilistic cryptographic protocol, a synchronization algorithm for wireless devices inspired by fireflies in nature, and the privacy of dispersed cloud storages
An offline parallel architecture for forensic multimedia classification
Nowadays, the volume of the multimedia heterogeneous evidence presented for digital forensic analysis has significantly increased, thus requiring the application of big data technologies, cloud-based forensics services, as well as Machine Learning (ML) techniques. In digital forensics domain, ML algorithms have been applied for cybercrime investigation such as child abuse investigations, malware classification, and image forensics. This paper addresses this issues and deals with forensic analysis of digital images and videos. In particular, this work aims at proposing a multimedia classification tool with a parallel software architecture for a fast inspection, which is easy to use (to be used by officers during a search), requires limited hardware resources and it is built on an open-source software to limit its costs. Moreover, this tool must be able to quickly inspect multiple devices at a time. When positives are found in a device, such device will be seized for a deeper analysis later in the lab. It will not be seized otherwise, reducing the inconvenience for the suspect as well as the time required for the next analysis phase. As a case study, we focus on the identification of child pornography images. Experimental results show that the proposed architecture is capable of guaranteeing a high recall, a fast process and high performances in real scenarios
Balancing Technical, Human and Environmental Perspectives: A Model-Driven Development Framework for Stakeholder Inclusion
New and promising technologies constantly emerge. While they often show theoretical potential by defining high-value use cases, integrating them seamlessly into existing socio-technical ecosystems remains a significant challenge. This paper follows a Design Science Research approach to build a conceptual modeling-based framework to assesses how functional elements of new technologies align strategically with a set of technical, human, and environmental values. This approach is called the Model-Driven Framework for Security, Efficiency, Resiliency and Sustainability Value Alignment (MoDriSERSAl); it uses i* and Non-Functional Requirements (NFR) modeling tools to connect technical and human perspectives. The framework is materialized through a meta-model defining its concepts and a process fragment illustrating its application organization. We apply MoDriSERSAl to blockchain technology integration for Electronic Health Record (EHR) management to enable prioritization based on stakeholder inclusion (i.e. ensuring their needs and dependencies drive the integration process). MoDriSERSAl constitutes an effort towards stakeholder-based governance
Paradigms for database-centric application interfaces
The database-centric approach for industrial applications in the fourth industrial revolution has been proposed as a viable possibility in view of new trends towards distributed, autonomic, and intelligent control systems. In particular, with the RMAS architecture and its compliance to the new directions envisioned by the IEC 61499 standard, a suitable advanced instance of the database-centric paradigm was achieved. In this work, the focus is on the aspects that concern the impact of the database-centric paradigm in the realm of design of human-machine and machine-to-machine interfaces. A discussion of the implications and an example are provided in order to let the industrial informatics community start with an assessment of the proposed vision
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