A framework for automatic generation of security controller

Abstract

SUMMARYThis paper concerns the study, the development and the synthesis of mechanisms for guaranteeing the security of complex systems, i.e., systems composed by several interacting components.A complex system under analysis is described as an open system, i.e., a system in which an unspecified component (a component whose behaviour is not fixed in advance) interacts with the known part of the system. Within this formal approach, we propose techniques that aim to synthesize controller programs able to guarantee that, for all possible behaviours of the unspecified component, the system should work properly, e.g., it should be able to satisfy a certain property.For performing this task, we first need to identify the set of necessary and sufficient conditions that the unspecified component has to satisfy in order to ensure that the whole system is secure. Hence, by exploiting satisfiability procedures for temporal logic, we automatically synthesize an appropriate controller program that forces the unspecified component to meet these conditions. This will ensure the security of the whole system.In particular, we contribute within the area of the enforcement of security properties by proposing a flexible and automated framework that goes beyond the definition of how a system should behave to work properly. Indeed, while the majority of related work focuses on the definition of monitoring mechanisms, we also address the synthesis problem.Moreover, we describe a tool for the synthesis of secure systems which is able to generate appropriate controller programs. This tool is also able to translate the synthesized controller programs into the ConSpec language. ConSpec programs can be actually deployed for enforcing security policies on mobile Java applications by using the run-time framework developed in the ambit of the European Project S3MS.

Quantitative Evaluation of Enforcement Strategies

“…In this paper, we do not yet investigate this aspect of the framework; this is left as future work. In particular, we plan to use quantitative evaluation of security policies, specified by logic formulas, in order to extend previous work on automated verification and synthesis of (qualitative) controllers [21].…”

Preserving security properties under refinement

“…We also aim to apply the action refinement theory to cryptographic protocols specified by using Crypto-CCS [17] and GN DC. We also would like to go further in this direction by dealing also with the synthesis of controller program Y as in [19].…”

“…Here we extend the definition of GNDC by introducing a controller program as parameter of the definition. A controller program is a process that, by monitoring the behaviour of a possible malicious component according to a strategy defined by a controller operator , guarantees that a considered system is secure [19]. Hence, at high level of abstraction we have the following formalization, given in terms of process algebra [9], for our family of properties:…”

“…In particular a controller program is a process that, according to the semantics definition of the controller operator, denoted by , monitors the behaviour of all possible malicious components which behaviour (unknown a priori) aims to violate the security of the system. Hereafter, we consider a controller operator [19] semantically de-fined as follows:…”

Load-balanced Integrated Information Security Monitoring System

“…There are numerous methods for business process assessment, that can be used to evaluate all business processes of the organization, e.g. RAPID RE [17]. Obtained values, after normalization, provide business processes weights WBP i .…”