High-Level Guidance for Managers Deploying Formal Methods in Their Organisation

2013 ◽  
pp. 139-153
Author(s):  
Christophe Ponsard ◽  
Jean-Christophe Deprez ◽  
Renaud De Landtsheer
Keyword(s):  
Formal Methods ◽  
High Level

scholarly journals Continuous Verification of Network Security Compliance

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Claas Lorenz ◽  
Vera Clemens ◽  
Max Schrötter ◽  
Bettina Schnor
Keyword(s):  
Network Security ◽  
Complex Networks ◽  
Formal Methods ◽  
Formal Language ◽  
State Of The Art ◽  
Rule Sets ◽  
Compliance Verification ◽  
Security Compliance ◽  
High Level

Continuous verification of network security compliance is an accepted need. Especially, the analysis of stateful packet filters plays a central role for network security in practice. But the few existing tools which support the analysis of stateful packet filters show runtimes in the order of minutes to hours making them unsuitable for continuous compliance verification.<br>In this work, we address these challenges and present a solution which is based on the application of formal methods. First, we introduce the formal language FPL that enables a high-level human-understandable specification of the desired state of network security. Second, we demonstrate the instantiation of a compliance process using a verification framework that analyzes the configuration of complex networks and devices - including stateful firewalls - for compliance with FPL policies. Our evaluation results show the scalability of the presented approach for the well known Internet2 and Stanford benchmarks as well as for large firewall rule sets where it outscales state-of-the-art tools by a factor of over 41.

scholarly journals Mission Accomplished: An Introduction to Formal Methods in Mobile Robot Motion Planning and Control

2014 ◽  
Vol 02 (02) ◽  
pp. 201-216 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hai Lin
Keyword(s):  
Model Checking ◽  
Mobile Robot ◽  
Motion Planning ◽  
Formal Methods ◽  
Temporal Logic ◽  
Controller Design ◽  
Research Area ◽  
Natural Languages ◽  
High Level ◽  
Logic Model Checking

A new trend in the robotic motion planning literature is to use formal methods, like model checking, reactive synthesis and supervisory control theory, to automatically design controllers that drive a mobile robot to accomplish some high level missions in a guaranteed manner. This is also known as the correct-by-construction method. The high level missions are usually specified as temporal logics, particularly as linear temporal logic formulas, due to their similarity to human natural languages. This paper provides a brief overview of the recent developments in this newly emerged research area. A number of fundamental topics, such as temporal logic, model checking, bisimulation quotient transition systems and reachability controller design are reviewed. Additionally, the key challenges and possible future directions in this area are briefly discussed with references given for further reading.

Automated Formal Methods for Security Protocol Engineering

2011 ◽  
pp. 138-166
Author(s):  
Alfredo Pironti ◽  
Davide Pozza ◽  
Riccardo Sisto
Keyword(s):  
Formal Methods ◽  
State Of The Art ◽  
Security Protocols ◽  
Security Protocol ◽  
Research Progress ◽  
Engineering Practice ◽  
Key Factor ◽  
Level Model ◽  
High Level ◽  
Recent Research Progress

Designing and implementing security protocols are known to be error-prone tasks. Recent research progress in the field of formal methods applied to security protocols has enabled the use of these techniques in practice. The objective of this chapter is to give a circumstantial account of the state-of-the-art reached in this field, showing how formal methods can help in improving quality. Since automation is a key factor for the acceptability of these techniques in the engineering practice, the chapter focuses on automated techniques and illustrates in particular how high-level protocol models in the Dolev-Yao style can be automatically analyzed and how it is possible to automatically enforce formal correspondence between an abstract high-level model and an implementation.

A formal methods approach to interpretable reinforcement learning for robotic planning

2019 ◽  
Vol 4 (37) ◽  
pp. eaay6276 ◽  
Author(s):  
Xiao Li ◽  
Zachary Serlin ◽  
Guang Yang ◽  
Calin Belta
Keyword(s):  
Reinforcement Learning ◽  
Formal Methods ◽  
Learning Algorithm ◽  
A Priori ◽  
Generation Process ◽  
Learning Approaches ◽  
Learning Agent ◽  
Domain Specific Knowledge ◽  
Robotic Planning ◽  
High Level

Growing interest in reinforcement learning approaches to robotic planning and control raises concerns of predictability and safety of robot behaviors realized solely through learned control policies. In addition, formally defining reward functions for complex tasks is challenging, and faulty rewards are prone to exploitation by the learning agent. Here, we propose a formal methods approach to reinforcement learning that (i) provides a formal specification language that integrates high-level, rich, task specifications with a priori, domain-specific knowledge; (ii) makes the reward generation process easily interpretable; (iii) guides the policy generation process according to the specification; and (iv) guarantees the satisfaction of the (critical) safety component of the specification. The main ingredients of our computational framework are a predicate temporal logic specifically tailored for robotic tasks and an automaton-guided, safe reinforcement learning algorithm based on control barrier functions. Although the proposed framework is quite general, we motivate it and illustrate it experimentally for a robotic cooking task, in which two manipulators worked together to make hot dogs.

scholarly journals Continuous Verification of Network Security Compliance

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Claas Lorenz ◽  
Vera Clemens ◽  
Max Schrötter ◽  
Bettina Schnor
Keyword(s):  
Network Security ◽  
Complex Networks ◽  
Formal Methods ◽  
Formal Language ◽  
State Of The Art ◽  
Rule Sets ◽  
Compliance Verification ◽  
Security Compliance ◽  
High Level

Continuous verification of network security compliance is an accepted need. Especially, the analysis of stateful packet filters plays a central role for network security in practice. But the few existing tools which support the analysis of stateful packet filters show runtimes in the order of minutes to hours making them unsuitable for continuous compliance verification.<br>In this work, we address these challenges and present a solution which is based on the application of formal methods. First, we introduce the formal language FPL that enables a high-level human-understandable specification of the desired state of network security. Second, we demonstrate the instantiation of a compliance process using a verification framework that analyzes the configuration of complex networks and devices - including stateful firewalls - for compliance with FPL policies. Our evaluation results show the scalability of the presented approach for the well known Internet2 and Stanford benchmarks as well as for large firewall rule sets where it outscales state-of-the-art tools by a factor of over 41.

FACILITATING THE MAINTENANCE OF SAFETY-CRITICAL SYSTEMS

1994 ◽  
Vol 04 (02) ◽  
pp. 183-204 ◽  
Author(s):  
GERALD C. GANNOD ◽  
BETTY H.C. CHENG
Keyword(s):  
Software Development ◽  
Reverse Engineering ◽  
Formal Methods ◽  
Formal Specifications ◽  
Critical Systems ◽  
Safety Critical ◽  
Engineering Aspect ◽  
Forward Engineering ◽  
Safety Critical Systems ◽  
High Level

As software is increasingly used to control safety-critical systems, correctness becomes paramount. Formal methods in software development provide many benefits in the forward engineering aspect of software development. Reverse engineering is the process of constructing a high-level representation of a system from existing lower level instanti-ations of that system. Reverse engineering of program code into formal specifications facilitates the utilization of the benefits of formal methods in projects where formal methods may not have previously been used, thus facilitating the maintenance of safety-critical systems.

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