Choreographies with Secure Boxes and Compromised Principals

Marco Carbone, Joshua Guttman

Research output: Journal Article or Conference Article in JournalConference articleResearchpeer-review

Abstract

 

We equip choreography-level session descriptions with a simple abstraction of a security infrastruc- ture. Message components may be enclosed within (possibly nested) ”boxes” annotated with the intended source and destination of those components. The boxes are to be implemented with cryp- tography.

Strand spaces provide a semantics for these choreographies, in which some roles may be played by compromised principals. A skeleton is a partially ordered structure containing local behaviors (strands) executed by regular (non-compromised) principals. A skeleton is realized if it contains enough regular strands so that it could actually occur, in combination with any possible activity of compromised principals. It is delivery guaranteed (DG) realized if, in addition, every message transmitted to a regular participant is also delivered.

We define a novel transition system on skeletons, in which the steps add regular strands. These steps solve tests, i.e. parts of the skeleton that could not occur without additional regular behavior.

We prove three main results about the transition system. First, each minimal DG realized skeleton is reachable, using the transition system, from any skeleton it embeds. Second, if no step is possible from a skeleton A, then A is DG realized. Finally, if a DG realized Ais accessible from A, then Ais minimal. Thus, the transition system provides a systematic way to construct the possible behaviors of the choreography, in the presence of compromised principals.

 

Original languageEnglish
JournalElectronic Proceedings in Theoretical Computer Science
Issue number12
Pages (from-to)1-15
Number of pages15
ISSN2075-2180
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 2009
EventICE 2009 - 2nd Interaction and Concurrency Experience - Bologna, Italy
Duration: 31 Aug 200931 Aug 2009
Conference number: 2

Conference

ConferenceICE 2009 - 2nd Interaction and Concurrency Experience
Number2
Country/TerritoryItaly
CityBologna
Period31/08/200931/08/2009

Keywords

  • Choreography-level session descriptions
  • Security infrastructure
  • Strand spaces
  • Delivery guaranteed realized
  • Transition system on skeletons

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