A Formal Technique for Concurrent Generation of Software’s Functional and Security Requirements in SOFL Specifications

Formal Engineering Methods are a bridge from Formal Methods to industrial applications. In this paper I describe the relation between formal engineering methods and formal methods, and present a specific formal engineering method SOFL (Structured Object-Oriented Formal Language) for developing quality software systems. I explain how SOFL can be applied in practice through examples.

Currently, there are several systems in use to support paper submissions to academic conferences, but they still require program chairs to spend a lot of time in organizing paper reviewing. To further improve the situation and reduce the burden of the chairs, a completely automatic reviewing system is desirable. Our research presented in this paper is part of the effort toward realizing such an automatic system. Specifically, we focus on two functions of the entire system, which manage paper assignments to referees and paper evaluations based on the feedback from the referees. To ensure the quality of the system, we adopt the Structured Object-oriented Formal Language (SOFL) for the requirements analysis and design. In this paper, we describe how the requirements are analyzed through writing an informal specification and then refining it into a semi-formal specification. We also discuss how the design is carried out by constructing a formal specification in SOFL. Finally, we present the implementation and testing details on our system.

This paper presents an approach to capturing safety properties for safety critical systems using the Structured Object-oriented Formal Language (SOFL). The approach features a process and five keys for capturing safety properties that need to be verified based on a software model. The five keys include constraints of functions, domain knowledge for functions, developer's experience, real-time constraints on functions and input/output device.

End-to-end security in the cloud has gained even more importance after the outbreak of data breaches and massive surveillance programs around the globe last year. While the community features a number of cloud-based security mechanisms, existing solutions either provide security at the expense of the economy of scale and cost effectiveness of the cloud (i.e., at the expense of resource sharing and deduplication techniques), or they meet the latter objectives at the expense of security (e.g., the customer is required to fully trust the provider). In this paper, we shed light on this problem, and we analyze the challenges in reconciling security and functional requirements in existing multi-tenant clouds. We also explore the solution space to effectively enhance the current security offerings of existing cloud storage services. As far as we are aware, this is the first contribution which comprehensively explores possible avenues for reconciling the current cloud trends with end-to-end security requirements.

Security has become an important concern with the development of large scale distributed and heterogeneous multi-agent systems (MAS). One of the main problems in addressing security during the development of MAS is that security is often an afterthought. The cost involved to patch existing systems against vulnerabilities and attacks after deployment is high. If developers and designers can spend some quality time investigating security aspects before beginning to code then this cost can be reduced significantly. Also, using formal methods to specify the complex behavior of large scale software systems has resulted in reliable software systems. This research effort was focused on using formal methods early in the development lifecycle to specify security requirements for MAS. New solutions are emerging to fix security related issues, but how much thought gets in during the early phases of development in terms of security needs to be answered. In this paper, analysis of security requirements for MAS, existing solutions to secure MAS, and the use of formal methods to specify security requirements has been studied. Descartes-Agent, a formal specification language for specifying agent systems has been taken into study to model the security requirements of MAS early on in the development process. Functional specifications of MAS are modelled along with the non-functional security requirements using the Descartes-Agent specification language. This paper also describes the extensions made to the Agent Unified Modeling Language (AUML) to represent the security requirements of MAS. The extensions proposed to AUML are in accordance with the extensions made to the Descartes-Agent specification language. A case study example is used to illustrate the specification of security requirements in MAS using the Descartes-Agent.

Currently, the customer's demands have expressively amplified their expectations of getting software at a high-quality level. However, the non-functional requirements of the software products attention have been expanded in both the academic and the industrial fields; so, there is no framework for specifying and measuring such kinds of quality constraints for the security requirements of software product quality. This paper presents an integrated framework of the early specification and measurement of the functional and non-functional software security requirements. Such a measurement framework would help software and systems engineers to improve product qualities whether the software has already been delivered or has yet to be built. The main steps that have been followed include: identify, specify and measure the software security requirements based on ISO/IEC SQuaRE series of international standards for software product quality. A standard measurement framework used to measure the functional size of the software product quality to develop a functional size measurement of the functional and non-functional security requirements is described. As a result, a functional size measurement framework of the functional and non-functional security requirements (SPQNFSR) using international standards is proposed. An automatic teller machine case study for the measurement of security requirements based on perspectives of a software functional user requirements is presented. Finally, it is concluded that it is essential to develop such a functional size measurement framework for functional and non-functional security requirements to support developers to face the challenges derived from early dealing with such requirements.

Embedded systems shape and govern our world today. We can hardly imagine a life without these systems. Examples are mobile phones, DVD players, pacemakers, train control systems, and automotive components. Embedded systems are frequently part of complex safety-critical systems that can be found in the following domains: automotive, avionics, medical, consumer electronics, automation. A main characteristic of the development process of these complex safety-critical systems is the division of labour. The manufacturer usually decomposes the complex system into subsystems and assigns the development of these subsystems to divisions within the company or to external suppliers. Once they are developed, the manufacturer integrates them into the system. Of course, the suppliers get a list of requirements, that the subsystem they are responsible for, should fulfil. However, they usually have a lot of freedom in developing these subsystems. The manufacturer, on the other hand, has a black-box view on the supplied subsystems and is only able to make small modifications and, thus, integration of the subsystems into a complex system is a challenging task. The communication between suppliers and manufacturer can and should be improved. If each supplier develops not only his own subsystem, but makes also his expectations with regard to other subsystems and the overall system explicit, this would facilitate integration a lot. Yet, frequently, these expectations remain implicit and are not documented in a systematic and structured way. To facilitate integration, suppliers should document not only the requirements their developed subsystem fulfils but also the assumptions they make about the environment of the subsystem, i.e. the domain knowledge. However, it is not sufficient to tell developers to document domain knowledge. Since domain knowledge is knowledge about the environment and the environment is a part of the real world, the question is what to document. Actually, everything could be documented. Developers need guidance as regards the questions what to document and how. Of course, there are existing approaches that provide support in this regard. However, they do not take the peculiarities of embedded systems development and the challenges that arise from them into account. The main objective of this thesis is therefore to develop methods that support software documentation during requirements engineering and are tailored to the peculiarities of embedded systems development. An embedded system must satisfy different types of requirements. For each type of requirement, a different type of domain knowledge must be documented. In this thesis, we answer the questions which type of domain knowledge must be documented for which type of requirement and how it should be documented. We consider functional requirements, safety requirements, security requirements, trustworthiness requirements, and product line requirements. We consider functional requirements since these are relevant for each system. Safety requirements are important because embedded control systems are frequently part of complex safety-critical systems (like cars and airplanes). Today, these safety-critical systems are connected to the Internet which results in new challenges regarding security and trustworthiness of these systems. Therefore, we also consider security and trustworthiness requirements. Suppliers developing embedded control systems often use product line engineering approaches since they develop usually not only one system but different versions of this system to be able to supply the whole market and not only a single customer. Therefore, we consider also product line requirements. The methods that we developed are all problem-based. This means that we use problem diagrams for documentation, since they are well suited for this purpose. To illustrate the applicability of the developed methods, we use two case studies from the automotive domain.

Nowadays, security policies are the key point of every modern infrastructure. The specification and testing of such policies are the fundamental steps in the development of a secure system. To address both challenges, we propose a framework that automatically generates test sequences to validate the conformance of a security policy. The functional behavior of the system is specified using a formal description technique based on Extended Finite-State Machines (EFSMs), while security requirements are specified using XACML. We develop specific algorithms to integrate the security rules into the functional system specification. In this way, we obtain a complete specification of the secured system. Then, automatic test generation is performed using a dedicated tool called TestGen-IF which was developed in our laboratory. This generation is based on the security properties as test objectives. Finally, a case study is presented to demonstrate the reliability of our framework.

Security engineering is a new research area in software engineering that covers the definition of processes, plans and designs for security. The researchers are working in this area and however there is a lack in security requirements treatment in this field. Requirements engineering is a major action that begins during the communication activity and continues into the modeling activity. Requirements engineering builds a bridge to design and construction. The security requirements is one of the non functional requirements which acts as constrains on the functions of the system, but our view is that security requirements to be considered as functional requirements and to be analyzed during the earlier phase of software development i.e. Requirements engineering phase. An increasing part of the communication and sharing of information in our society utilizes electronic media. IT security is becoming central to the ability to fulfil business goals, build trustworthy systems, and protect assets. In order to develop systems with adequate security features, it is essential to capture the corresponding security needs and requirements. It is called as the Security requirements engineering, which is emerging as a branch of software engineering, spurred by the realization that security must be dealt with early during requirements phase. In this paper we have proposed a framework for Security Requirements engineering and applied on online trading system. Online trading systems form a critical part of the securities and capital markets today. By using security requirements engineering framework we are able to develop a secure online trading system. The results obtained using Proposed Security Requirements Engineering Framework is simple and better than the Haley and His Colleagues Framework.

Most people handle bank notes every day without giving them a thought, let alone pondering their complexity. Yet every aspect of a bank note is highly engineered to serve its purpose. Every facet of the bank note's existence, from the materials that comprise them to the equipment that produces them, from the machines that handle them to the shredders that destroy them, is carefully considered and designed. Layered on these functional requirements are human factors and the need to verify their authenticity, to be able to distinguish them from any other printed documents that clever would-be, ill-intentioned imitators might produce.In the context of today's print-on-demand environment and the glitter-and-glow appeal of craft and display products to all segments of society, the requirements for achieving this differentiation from the counterfeiters' best products are increasingly challenging.This presentation addresses how real bank notes are made, the practical factors that drive their function and form requirements and the interplay of these factors with their security requirements, to inhibit the manufacture of counterfeit bank notes.

Software systems, component-based systems (CBS) in particular, have a lot of vulnerabilities that may be exploited by intruders. Companies spend much time and money to patch them up. It is partly due to the fact that a system's security features are often added to the system after its functional requirements have been addressed. As such, system security features are not systematically designed into the system, and consequently the system has inherent security holes. Therefore, there is a strong need for a systematic engineering approach to developing secure and robust systems, especially distributed systems, by considering functional and security requirements at the same time. In particular, these systems should be highly adaptive and reconfigurable in order to resist different types of attacks and failures. This paper introduces a reference architecture, called Secrobat, for creating secure and robust CBS. It has several key features including defensive components and the adaptive and reconfigurable architecture with the hybrid peer/super-peer structure. The reference architecture is illustrated with an example gaming system.

: During the course of the IVAR project, the team members identified functions they thought a modern avian radar system should be capable of performing. The staff also measured or collected specifications for the level at which these systems should perform these required functions. This document presents those functional requirements and performance specifications, with the goal of providing them as a starting point for anyone who is interested in acquiring and using avian radar technology. The functional requirements and performance specifications provided in this document are based on the capabilities of the avian radar systems the IVAR project evaluated during its three-year study. These functions and specification are derived from the actual field studies conducted during the IVAR project: Thus, they represent the operational capabilities of systems that were on the market when that study concluded (2010). Nonetheless, the IVAR staff has endeavored to frame these capabilities in a generic and vendor-neutral form. In doing so, the objective is to use these specifications as a baseline to which additional functions, or better performance of existing functions, can be added from other systems on the market today or from new systems coming on the market. Avian radar systems are a new and rapidly developing technology; consequently, any list of functional requirements and performance specifications will, of necessity, be a dynamic document for the foreseeable future.

Recently, business transformation towards the used of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) is a necessity toward rapid industries and the paradigm shifted to sustain business competitiveness. The holistic electronic approach is one of business innovations, especially in handling a lot of tender documentations and process in an electronic environment namely as e-Tendering. Unfortunately, the existing tender process transformation in the electronic approach is not properly followed certain standard and guideline, especially in establishing a good e-Tendering functional requirements specification to ensure the organizations would be in the best served. This is important to ensure a good e-Tendering system can be developed by e-Tendering developers based on a good e-Tendering functional requirement specifications. The requirements specification is a process of documenting user and system requirements. Commonly, user and system requirements should be clear, unambiguous, easy to understand, complete, and consistent. In practice, this is difficult to achieve due to interpretation of the requirements in different ways by stakeholders, which are often inherent conflicts and inconsistencies of the requirements. The implementation of the existing e-tendering still remains uncertainties, especially in defining the functional requirements of the e-tendering system. Therefore, this study aims to construct the e-Tendering functional requirement model using requirement template in natural language representation approach. Moreover the development of this system requirement model may provide a consistency to the requirements representation. The study uses UN/CEFACT Business Standard of the e-Tendering Business. The identified functional requirements are designed by using Requirement Template to ensure the reliability and understandability of requirements. Besides, the proposed functional requirements is constructed by adapting the natural language and verified by expert review approaches. As a result, this study proposed a functional requirements specification of the e-Tendering that contains detailed description which can be referred by software practitioners in developing a secure e-tendering system effectively.

Specification and traceability of security requirements is still a challenge since modeling and analysis of security aspects of systems require additional efforts at the very beginning of software development. The topological functioning model is a formal mathematical model that can be used as a reference model for functional and non-functional requirements of the system. It can also serve as a reference model for security requirements. The purpose of this study is to determine the approach to how security requirements can be specified and traced using the topological functioning model. This article demonstrates the suggested approach and explains its potential benefits and limitations.

This paper describes an approach to formally prove that an implementation of the Java Card Remote Method Invocation protocol on smart cards fulfills its functional and security specification. For that, we refine the specification in two intermediate formal models: the functional specification and the high level design. These two models are both defined upon an existing complete formal model of the Java Card virtual machine, allowing to formalize all the security requirements. We focus on certifying the Java code portion since the native portion has been handled in a previous work. The correctness is showed to be preserved while composing the native and Java codes. Our refinement scheme has been designed to fulfill the requirements of a high-level Common Criteria security evaluation.