Probabilistic aspects: Checking security in an imperfect world

Abstract

We address the challenges arising from enforcing security policies in an imperfect world-in a system involving humans, a determined attacker always has a chance of circumventing any security. We motivate our approach by two examples: an on-line auction house; and a airport security system. In our work, security policies are enforced using a probabilistic aspect-oriented approach; policies are combined using a rich set of policy composition operators. We present the examples using a process-based language in which processes and local data are distributed across a number of locations (network addresses). The formal definition of the language gives rise to Markov Decision Processes. © 2010 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg.