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2021-03-15
Cortiñas, C. T., Vassena, M., Russo, A..  2020.  Securing Asynchronous Exceptions. 2020 IEEE 33rd Computer Security Foundations Symposium (CSF). :214–229.

Language-based information-flow control (IFC) techniques often rely on special purpose, ad-hoc primitives to address different covert channels that originate in the runtime system, beyond the scope of language constructs. Since these piecemeal solutions may not compose securely, there is a need for a unified mechanism to control covert channels. As a first step towards this goal, we argue for the design of a general interface that allows programs to safely interact with the runtime system and the available computing resources. To coordinate the communication between programs and the runtime system, we propose the use of asynchronous exceptions (interrupts), which, to the best of our knowledge, have not been considered before in the context of IFC languages. Since asynchronous exceptions can be raised at any point during execution-often due to the occurrence of an external event-threads must temporarily mask them out when manipulating locks and shared data structures to avoid deadlocks and, therefore, breaking program invariants. Crucially, the naive combination of asynchronous exceptions with existing features of IFC languages (e.g., concurrency and synchronization variables) may open up new possibilities of information leakage. In this paper, we present MACasync, a concurrent, statically enforced IFC language that, as a novelty, features asynchronous exceptions. We show how asynchronous exceptions easily enable (out of the box) useful programming patterns like speculative execution and some degree of resource management. We prove that programs in MACasync satisfy progress-sensitive non-interference and mechanize our formal claims in the Agda proof assistant.

2020-11-02
Bilanová, Z., Perháč, J..  2019.  About possibilities of applying logical analysis of natural language in computer science. 2019 IEEE 13th International Symposium on Applied Computational Intelligence and Informatics (SACI). :251–256.
This paper deals with the comparison of the most popular methods of a logical analysis of natural language Montague intensional logic and Transparent intensional logic. At first, these logical apparatuses are compared in terms of their founding theoretical principles. Later, the selected sentence is examined through the logical analysis. The aim of the paper is to identify a more expressive logical method, which will be a suitable basis for the future design of an algorithm for the automated translation of the natural language into a formal representation of its meaning through a semantic machine.
2017-10-13
Binsbergen, L. Thomas van, Sculthorpe, Neil, Mosses, Peter D..  2016.  Tool Support for Component-based Semantics. Companion Proceedings of the 15th International Conference on Modularity. :8–11.

The developers of a programming language need to document its intended syntax and semantics, and to update the documentation when the language evolves. They use formal grammars to define context-free syntax, but usually give only an informal description of semantics. Use of formal semantics could greatly increase the consistency and completeness of language documentation, support rapid prototyping, and allow empirical validation. Modularity of semantics is essential for practicality when scaling up to definitions of larger languages. Component-based semantics takes modularity to the highest possible level. In this approach, the semantics of a language is defined by equations translating its constructs (compositionally) to combinations of so-called fundamental constructs, or `funcons'. The definition of each funcon is a small, highly reusable component. The PLanCompS project has defined a substantial library of funcons, and shown their reusability in several case studies. We have designed a meta-language called CBS for component-based semantics, and an IDE to support development, rapid prototyping, and validation of definitions in CBS. After introducing and motivating CBS, we demonstrate how the IDE can be used to browse and edit the CBS definition of a toy language, to generate a prototype implementation of the language, and to parse and run programs.

2015-05-04
Yuying Wang, Xingshe Zhou.  2014.  Spatio-temporal semantic enhancements for event model of cyber-physical systems. Signal Processing, Communications and Computing (ICSPCC), 2014 IEEE International Conference on. :813-818.

The newly emerging cyber-physical systems (CPS) discover events from multiple, distributed sources with multiple levels of detail and heterogeneous data format, which may not be compare and integrate, and turn to hardly combined determination for action. While existing efforts have mainly focused on investigating a uniform CPS event representation with spatio-temporal attributes, in this paper we propose a new event model with two-layer structure, Basic Event Model (BEM) and Extended Information Set (EIS). A BEM could be extended with EIS by semantic adaptor for spatio-temporal and other attribution enhancement. In particular, we define the event process functions, like event attribution extraction and composition determination, for CPS action trigger exploit the Complex Event Process (CEP) engine Esper. Examples show that such event model provides several advantages in terms of extensibility, flexibility and heterogeneous support, and lay the foundations of event-based system design in CPS.
 

2015-05-01
Achouri, A., Hlaoui, Y.B., Jemni Ben Ayed, L..  2014.  Institution Theory for Services Oriented Applications. Computer Software and Applications Conference Workshops (COMPSACW), 2014 IEEE 38th International. :516-521.

In the present paper, we present our approach for the transformation of workflow applications based on institution theory. The workflow application is modeled with UML Activity Diagram(UML AD). Then, for a formal verification purposes, the graphical model will be translated to an Event-B specification. Institution theory will be used in two levels. First, we defined a local semantic for UML AD and Event B specification using a categorical description of each one. Second, we defined institution comorphism to link the two defined institutions. The theoretical foundations of our approach will be studied in the same mathematical framework since the use of institution theory. The resulted Event-B specification, after applying the transformation approach, will be used for the formal verification of functional proprieties and the verification of absences of problems such deadlock. Additionally, with the institution comorphism, we define a semantic correctness and coherence of the model transformation.