Ruggero Lanotte, Andrea Maggiolo-Schettini, Simone Tini, Angelo Troina, and Enrico Tronci. "Automatic Covert Channel Analysis of a Multilevel Secure Component." In Information and Communications Security, 6th International Conference, ICICS 2004, Malaga, Spain, October 27-29, 2004, Proceedings, edited by J. Lopez, S. Qing and E. Okamoto, 249–261. Lecture Notes in Computer Science 3269. Springer, 2004. DOI: 10.1007/b101042.
Abstract: The NRL Pump protocol defines a multilevel secure component whose goal is to minimize leaks of information from high level systems to lower level systems, without degrading average time performances. We define a probabilistic model for the NRL Pump and show how a probabilistic model checker (FHP-mur$\varphi$) can be used to estimate the capacity of a probabilistic covert channel in the NRL Pump. We are able to compute the probability of a security violation as a function of time for various configurations of the system parameters (e.g. buffer sizes, moving average size, etc). Because of the model complexity, our results cannot be obtained using an analytical approach and, because of the low probabilities involved, it can be hard to obtain them using a simulator.
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Federico Mari, Igor Melatti, Ivano Salvo, and Enrico Tronci. "Synthesizing Control Software from Boolean Relations." International Journal on Advances in Software vol. 5, nr 3&4 (2012): 212–223. IARIA. ISSN: 1942-2628.
Abstract: Many software as well digital hardware automatic
synthesis methods define the set of
implementations meeting the given system
specifications with a boolean relation K. In
such a context a fundamental step in the software
(hardware) synthesis process is finding effective
solutions to the functional equation defined by
K. This entails finding a (set of) boolean
function(s) F (typically represented using
OBDDs, Ordered Binary Decision Diagrams)
such that: 1) for all x for which K is
satisfiable, K(x, F(x)) = 1 holds; 2) the
implementation of F is efficient with respect
to given implementation parameters such as code
size or execution time. While this problem has
been widely studied in digital hardware synthesis,
little has been done in a software synthesis
context. Unfortunately, the approaches developed
for hardware synthesis cannot be directly used in
a software context. This motivates investigation
of effective methods to solve the above problem
when F has to be implemented with software. In
this paper, we present an algorithm that, from an
OBDD representation for K, generates a C code
implementation for F that has the same size as
the OBDD for F and a worst case execution time
linear in nr, being n = |x| the number of
input arguments for functions in F and r the
number of functions in F. Moreover, a formal
proof of the proposed algorithm correctness is
also shown. Finally, we present experimental
results showing effectiveness of the proposed
algorithm.
Keywords: Control Software Synthesis; Embedded Systems; Model Checking
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Federico Mari, Igor Melatti, Ivano Salvo, and Enrico Tronci. "Linear Constraints and Guarded Predicates as a Modeling Language for Discrete Time Hybrid Systems." International Journal on Advances in Software vol. 6, nr 1&2 (2013): 155–169. IARIA. ISSN: 1942-2628.
Abstract: Model based design is particularly appealing in
software based control systems (e.g., embedded
software) design, since in such a case system
level specifications are much easier to define
than the control software behavior itself. In
turn, model based design of embedded systems
requires modeling both continuous subsystems
(typically, the plant) as well as discrete
subsystems (the controller). This is typically
done using hybrid systems. Mixed Integer Linear
Programming (MILP) based abstraction techniques
have been successfully applied to automatically
synthesize correct-by-construction control
software for discrete time linear hybrid systems,
where plant dynamics is modeled as a linear
predicate over state, input, and next state
variables. Unfortunately, MILP solvers require
such linear predicates to be conjunctions of
linear constraints, which is not a natural way of
modeling hybrid systems. In this paper we show
that, under the hypothesis that each variable
ranges over a bounded interval, any linear
predicate built upon conjunction and disjunction
of linear constraints can be automatically
translated into an equivalent conjunctive
predicate. Since variable bounds play a key role
in this translation, our algorithm includes a
procedure to compute all implicit variable bounds
of the given linear predicate. Furthermore, we
show that a particular form of linear predicates,
namely guarded predicates, are a natural and
powerful language to succinctly model discrete
time linear hybrid systems dynamics. Finally, we
experimentally show the feasibility of our
approach on an important and challenging case
study taken from the literature, namely the
multi-input Buck DC-DC Converter. As an example,
the guarded predicate that models (with 57
constraints) a 6-inputs Buck DC-DC Converter is
translated in a conjunctive predicate (with 102
linear constraints) in about 40 minutes.
Keywords: Model-based software design; Linear predicates; Hybrid systems
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Giuseppe Della Penna, Benedetto Intrigila, Igor Melatti, Michele Minichino, Ester Ciancamerla, Andrea Parisse, Enrico Tronci, and Marisa Venturini Zilli. "Automatic Verification of a Turbogas Control System with the Mur$\varphi$ Verifier." In Hybrid Systems: Computation and Control, 6th International Workshop, HSCC 2003 Prague, Czech Republic, April 3-5, 2003, Proceedings, edited by O. Maler and A. Pnueli, 141–155. Lecture Notes in Computer Science 2623. Springer, 2003. ISSN: 3-540-00913-2. DOI: 10.1007/3-540-36580-X.
Abstract: Automatic analysis of Hybrid Systems poses formidable challenges both from a modeling as well as from a verification point of view. We present a case study on automatic verification of a Turbogas Control System (TCS) using an extended version of the Mur$\varphi$ verifier. TCS is the heart of ICARO, a 2MW Co-generative Electric Power Plant. For large hybrid systems, as TCS is, the modeling effort accounts for a significant part of the whole verification activity. In order to ease our modeling effort we extended the Mur$\varphi$ verifier by importing the C language long double type (finite precision real numbers) into it. We give experimental results on running our extended Mur$\varphi$ on our TCS model. For example using Mur$\varphi$ we were able to compute an admissible range of values for the variation speed of the user demand of electric power to the turbogas.
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Enrico Tronci, Giuseppe Della Penna, Benedetto Intrigila, and Marisa Venturini Zilli. "Exploiting Transition Locality in Automatic Verification." In 11th IFIP WG 10.5 Advanced Research Working Conference on Correct Hardware Design and Verification Methods (CHARME), edited by T. Margaria and T. F. Melham, 259–274. Lecture Notes in Computer Science 2144. Livingston, Scotland, UK: Springer, 2001. ISSN: 3-540-42541-1. DOI: 10.1007/3-540-44798-9_22.
Abstract: In this paper we present an algorithm to contrast state explosion when using Explicit State Space Exploration to verify protocols. We show experimentally that protocols exhibit transition locality. We present a verification algorithm that exploits transition locality as well as an implementation of it within the Mur$\varphi$ verifier. Our algorithm is compatible with all Breadth First (BF) optimization techniques present in the Mur$\varphi$ verifier and it is by no means a substitute for any of them. In fact, since our algorithm trades space with time, it is typically most useful when one runs out of memory and has already used all other state reduction techniques present in the Mur$\varphi$ verifier. Our experimental results show that using our approach we can typically save more than 40% of RAM with an average time penalty of about 50% when using (Mur$\varphi$) bit compression and 100% when using bit compression and hash compaction.
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Amedeo Cesta, Alberto Finzi, Simone Fratini, Andrea Orlandini, and Enrico Tronci. "Flexible Timeline-Based Plan Verification." In KI 2009: Advances in Artificial Intelligence, 32nd Annual German Conference on AI, Paderborn, Germany, September 15-18, 2009. Proceedings, edited by B. Ã. ¤rbel Mertsching, M. Hund and M. Z. Aziz, 49–56. Lecture Notes in Computer Science 5803. Springer, 2009. ISSN: 978-3-642-04616-2. DOI: 10.1007/978-3-642-04617-9_7.
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Flavio Chierichetti, Silvio Lattanzi, Federico Mari, and Alessandro Panconesi. "On Placing Skips Optimally in Expectation." In Web Search and Web Data Mining (WSDM 2008), edited by M. Najork, A. Z. Broder and S. Chakrabarti, 15–24. Acm, 2008. DOI: 10.1145/1341531.1341537.
Abstract: We study the problem of optimal skip placement in an inverted list. Assuming the query distribution to be known in advance, we formally prove that an optimal skip placement can be computed quite efficiently. Our best algorithm runs in time O(n log n), n being the length of the list. The placement is optimal in the sense that it minimizes the expected time to process a query. Our theoretical results are matched by experiments with a real corpus, showing that substantial savings can be obtained with respect to the tra- ditional skip placement strategy, that of placing consecutive skips, each spanning sqrt(n) many locations.
Keywords: Information Retrieval
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Marco Martinelli, Enrico Tronci, Giovanni Dipoppa, and Claudio Balducelli. "Electric Power System Anomaly Detection Using Neural Networks." In 8th International Conference on: Knowledge-Based Intelligent Information and Engineering Systems (KES), edited by M. G. Negoita, R. J. Howlett and L. C. Jain, 1242–1248. Lecture Notes in Computer Science 3213. Wellington, New Zealand: Springer, 2004. ISSN: 3-540-23318-0. DOI: 10.1007/978-3-540-30132-5_168.
Abstract: The aim of this work is to propose an approach to monitor and protect Electric Power System by learning normal system behaviour at substations level, and raising an alarm signal when an abnormal status is detected; the problem is addressed by the use of autoassociative neural networks, reading substation measures. Experimental results show that, through the proposed approach, neural networks can be used to learn parameters underlaying system behaviour, and their output processed to detecting anomalies due to hijacking of measures, changes in the power network topology (i.e. transmission lines breaking) and unexpected power demand trend.
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Giuseppe Della Penna, Antinisca Di Marco, Benedetto Intrigila, Igor Melatti, and Alfonso Pierantonio. "Xere: Towards a Natural Interoperability between XML and ER Diagrams." In Fundamental Approaches to Software Engineering, 6th International Conference, FASE 2003, Held as Part of the Joint European Conferences on Theory and Practice of Software, ETAPS 2003, Warsaw, Poland, April 7-11, 2003, Proceedings, edited by M. Pezzè, 356–371. Lecture Notes in Computer Science 2621. Springer, 2003. ISSN: 3-540-00899-3. DOI: 10.1007/3-540-36578-8_25.
Abstract: XML (eXtensible Markup Language) is becoming the standard format for documents on Internet and is widely used to exchange data. Often, the relevant information contained in XML documents needs to be also stored in legacy databases (DB) in order to integrate the new data with the pre-existing ones. In this paper, we introduce a technique for the automatic XML-DB integration, which we call Xere. In particular we present, as the first step of Xere, the mapping algorithm which allows the translation of XML Schemas into Entity-Relationship diagrams.
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Federico Mari, Igor Melatti, Ivano Salvo, and Enrico Tronci. "Undecidability of Quantized State Feedback Control for Discrete Time Linear Hybrid Systems." In Theoretical Aspects of Computing – ICTAC 2012, edited by A. Roychoudhury and M. D'Souza, 243–258. Lecture Notes in Computer Science 7521. Springer Berlin Heidelberg, 2012. DOI: 10.1007/978-3-642-32943-2_19.
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