Prerequisite confidentiality

  • Authors:

  • John P. Nestor;E. S. Lee

  • Affiliations:

  • Computer Systems Research Institute, University of Toronto, 6 King's College Road, Toronto, Ontario, Canada M5S 1A4;Computer Systems Research Institute, University of Toronto, 6 King's College Road, Toronto, Ontario, Canada M5S 1A4

  • Venue:
  • CCS '94 Proceedings of the 2nd ACM Conference on Computer and communications security
  • Year:
  • 1994

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Abstract

We introduce a new definition of confidentiality. It is demonstrated that this new definition, called prerequisite confidentiality, is more effective than previous definitions.We have developed a modelling scheme that is based upon event systems in order to study prerequisite confidentiality. The structure of the event traces is captured by formal languages and grammars. This provides a convenient and mathematically well-founded means for dealing with component specifications. The externally visible-behaviour of a component, including causal relationships between events, and possible nondeterminism, is successfully modelled using the approach. It is then possible to restrict the grammatical specification in such a way that the desired confidentiality property is satisfied. Since all of the grammars used in the specification technique fall into a particular class, we show that it is always possible to construct a recognizer that can be used to identify valid event sequences or determine whether an event sequence satisfies a desired property.