Related papers: Information-Flow Interfaces
The disastrous vulnerabilities in smart contracts sharply remind us of our ignorance: we do not know how to write code that is secure in composition with malicious code. Information flow control has long been proposed as a way to achieve…
In this position paper, we consider some foundational topics regarding smart contracts (such as terminology, automation, enforceability, and semantics) and define a smart contract as an automatable and enforceable agreement. We explore a…
A key challenge in System of Systems (SoS) engineering is the analysis and maintenance of global properties under SoS evolution, and the integration of new constituent elements. There is a need to model the constituent systems composing a…
In workflows and business processes, there are often security requirements on both the data, i.e. confidentiality and integrity, and the process, e.g. separation of duty. Graphical notations exist for specifying both workflows and…
In this paper we describe an architecture which: Permits the deployment and execution of components in appropriate geographical locations. Provides security mechanisms that prevent misuse of the architecture. Supports a programming model…
We present the mathematical foundations of the contract-based model developed in the framework of the SPEEDS project. SPEEDS aims at developing methods and tools to support "speculative design", a design methodology in which distributed…
Contract theory studies how a principal can incentivize agents to exert costly, unobservable effort through performance-based payments. While classical economic models provide elegant characterizations of optimal solutions, modern…
Contemporary software architectures struggle to support autonomous agents whose reasoning is adaptive, probabilistic, and context-dependent, while system integration remains dominated by static interfaces and deterministic contracts. This…
Infrastructure in future smart and connected communities is envisioned as an aggregate of public services, including the energy, transportation and communication systems, all intertwined with each other. The intrinsic interdependency among…
The paper discusses design techniques for a seamless architecture of information systems (IS). A seamless architecture is understood as such an architectural de-scription of an IS, that defines explicit connections between elements of…
Information-flow interfaces is a formalism recently proposed for specifying, composing, and refining system-wide security requirements. In this work, we show how the widely used concept of security lattices provides a natural semantic…
When developing complex software and systems, contracts provide a means for controlling the complexity by dividing the responsibilities among the components of the system in a hierarchical fashion. In specific application areas, dedicated…
Background: Contract-based Design (CbD) is a valuable methodology for software design that allows annotation of code and architectural components with contracts, thereby enhancing clarity and reliability in software development. It…
Since the discovery of Spectre, a large number of hardware mechanisms for secure speculation has been proposed. Intuitively, more defensive mechanisms are less efficient but can securely execute a larger class of programs, while more…
Interfaces play a central role in determining compatible component compositions by prescribing permissible interactions between a service provider (server) and its consumers (clients). The high degree of concurrency in asynchronous…
Smart Contract Templates support legally-enforceable smart contracts, using operational parameters to connect legal agreements to standardised code. In this paper, we explore the design landscape of potential formats for storage and…
SAFE is a clean-slate design for a highly secure computer system, with pervasive mechanisms for tracking and limiting information flows. At the lowest level, the SAFE hardware supports fine-grained programmable tags, with efficient and…
We propose a methodology for verifying security properties of network protocols at design level. It can be separated in two main parts: context and requirements analysis and informal verification; and formal representation and procedural…
Smart contracts are regarded as one of the most promising and appealing notions in blockchain technology. Their self-enforcing and event-driven features make some online activities possible without a trusted third party. Nevertheless,…
Recent advances in large language models (LLMs) and vision-language models (VLMs) have enabled powerful autonomous agents capable of complex reasoning and multi-modal tool use. Despite their growing capabilities, today's agent frameworks…