Modelling Illocutionary Structure: Combining Empirical Studies with Formal Model Analysis

This paper describes the application of Real-Time Maude to the formal modeling, simulation, and model checking analysis of the NORM multicast protocol standard being developed by the Internet Engineering Task Force. Because of its size and sophistication, real-time features, and the need to model and analyze subcomponents of NORM both in isolation and in combination, NORM poses a set of challenging problems for its formal specification and analysis. Our formal modeling and analysis efforts made us aware of ambiguities, inconsistencies, and cases of under-specification in the informal specification of NORM. Our work indicates that formal methods can successfully be applied by non-experts during the development of advanced Internet protocol standards.

FORMAL FAILURE MODELS

To cope with large data sets, distributed data stores partition their data across servers. However, real-world systems usually do not provide useful transactional semantics for operations accessing multiple partitions due to the delays involved in achieving multi-partition consistency. Read Atomic Multi-Partition (RAMP) transactions have recently been proposed as efficient light-weight multi-partition transactions that guarantee read atomicity: either all updates or no updates of a transaction are visible to other transactions. In this paper we formalize RAMP transactions in rewriting logic and perform model checking verification of key properties using the Maude tool. In particular, we develop detailed formal models---and formally analyze---a number of extensions and optimizations of RAMP that are only briefly mentioned by the RAMP developers.

Security analysis of the open banking account and transaction API protocol

In recent years, many firms have prioritized both pay equity (i.e., closing pay gaps associated with target groups such as women and racial minorities) and equitable representation (i.e., ensuring these target groups are fairly represented across a firm’s hierarchy). We use formal modeling and simulations to show how efforts to close pay gaps across multiple groups can undermine equitable representation. Specifically, our analysis suggests that pressure for pay equity creates a cost-based financial incentive to enact a subtle form of tokenism: A firm may minimize the cost of closing pay gaps if it maintains a workforce with a small number of minority women whom it pays well in order to compensate for underpaying larger numbers of majority women and minority men who resemble each other in terms of job attributes and personal qualifications. A firm can avoid these outcomes if it focuses on ensuring that employees from target groups are equitably rewarded for job attributes and personal qualifications rather than minimizing cost. But an equitable-rewards approach can be substantially more expensive than a cost-minimization approach, especially if pay gaps are larger in high-wage jobs or if there are many target groups. We conclude by offering testable empirical predictions and recommending a practical solution, namely to include terms for intersectional categories (e.g., minority women) in the regressions used to estimate pay gaps. Supplemental Material: The online appendix is available at https://doi.org/10.1287/orsc.2023.18306 .

We present a formal OpenFlow-based network programming language (OF) including various flow rules, which can not only describe the behaviors of an individual switch, but also support to model a network of switches connected in the point-to-point topology. Besides, a topology-oriented operational semantics of the proposed language is explored to specify how the packet is processed and delivered in the OpenFlow-based networks. Based on the formal framework, we also propose an approach to detect potential security threats caused by the conflict of dynamic flow rules imposed by dynamic OpenFlow applications.

Many research works have been done on the formal modeling and correctness analysis of interorganizational processes. But the coupling measurement of interorganizational processes is neglected. The coupling situation represents the adaptability and flexibility of interorganizational processes to the changing market environment. And it is one of the most important factors in the agility analysis of interorganizational processes. This paper discusses the coupling measurement technique of interorganizational business processes based on Petri nets. The formal definition of collaborative mesh is proposed. And the coupling intensity is presented to evaluate the coupling degree between process tasks and the process structure. It is calculated based on the relation between the related elements of the task and the whole process structure. Furthermore, the importance level of each business partner in the interorganizational process is analyzed

This paper is concerned with the formal modelling and simulative analysis of an energy-efficient MAC protocol for gossip-based wireless sensor networks. This protocol is a variant of classical slotted Aloha in which the number of active TDMA slots is dynamically changed depending on the number of neighbours of a node. We provide a formal model of this protocol, and analyse energy consumption under the signal-to-interference plus noise ratio (SINR) radio model. We propose an amendment of the distributed slotted Aloha protocol by a simple dynamic power assignment scheme, and show that this significantly reduces the energy consumption (30%) and speeds up the message transmission.

A tool for verification of distributed systems defined using standard SDL-96 is described. The SDL description is automatically translated into a high-level Petri net model which is analyzed using the Maria reachability analyzer. Compared to manual design of a formal model for the system this saves a lot of time and greatly reduces the human mistakes in creating the model. The design process is also considerably more efficient because it is possible to check that the system is correct at a very early stage. Methods to reduce the complexity of the analysis both at the modeling and at the analysis level are discussed.KeywordsSDLreachability analysishigh-level Petri netsstate space explosion problem

Formal security analysis of LoRaWAN

With the widespread adoption of web applications and cloud services, the OAuth 2.0-based OpenID Connect (OIDC) Single Sign-on (SSO) protocol has become the core of modern digital identity authentication. Although the OIDC protocol itself has strict security specifications, its implementation in real-world web frameworks can introduce critical vulnerabilities, particularly the improper omission of the state parameter, which leads to severe authentication forgery risks. Existing research often overlooks these implementation-level flaws, especially from a formal analysis perspective. This paper addresses this gap by formally analyzing the authentication forgery attack resulting from the missing state parameter. We construct a high-fidelity web framework model and, using the Tamarin formal analysis tool, systematically analyze the flawed OIDC implementation. Specifically, we demonstrate an attack path where cross-site request forgery is leveraged as a vector to deceive the relying party, ultimately achieving identity binding forgery—linking the attacker’s identity to the victim’s session. In response to this forgery vulnerability, this article proposes and formally verifies corresponding patches to successfully defend against such attacks. Finally, this paper provides concrete guidance for developers. This research, through formal methods, characterizes a replicable authentication forgery pattern within modern web architectures, providing a robust theoretical and practical foundation for hardening SSO systems against such advanced forgery threats.

We describe our experiences successfully applying lightweight formal methods to substantially improve and reformulate an important part of Standard Portable Intermediate Representation SPIRV, an industry-standard language for GPU computing. The formal model that we present has allowed us to (1) identify several ambiguities and needless complexities in the way that structured control flow was defined in the SPIRV specification; (2) interact with the authors of the SPIRV specification to rectify these problems; (3) validate the developer tools and conformance test suites that support the SPIRV language by cross-checking them against our formal model, improving the tools, test suites, and our models in the process; and (4) develop a novel method for fuzzing SPIRV compilers to detect miscompilation bugs that leverages our formal model. The latest release of the SPIRV specification incorporates the revised set of control-flow definitions that have arisen from our work. Furthermore, our novel compiler-fuzzing technique has led to the discovery of twenty distinct, previously unknown bugs in SPIRV compilers from Google, the Khronos Group, Intel, and Mozilla. Our work showcases the practical impact that formal modelling and analysis techniques can have on the design and implementation of industry-standard programming languages.

Model transformations, utilized for various tasks, such as formal model analysis or code generation are key elements of model-driven development processes. As the complexity of developed model transformations grows, ensuring the correctness of transformation programs becomes increasingly difficult. Nonetheless, error detection is critical as errors can propagate into the target application.

There is so much agreement between my views on this subject and those expressed by Charles Tilly that what I will say can hardly be construed as con stituting a controversy. Let me agree at outset: Formal analysis and quantitative methods it makes possible have become standard, indispensable adjuncts to research in labor history, as in social history as a whole. As Tilly puts it, the periphery constrains core. The central, most difficult ques tions in social history (most of which attempt to link political behavior with social background and identity) cannot be answered by quantitative methods alone, because they require one to make inferences about motives and percep tions that are not amenable to formal analysis. That historical actors them selves cannot observe each others' perceptions or motives is responsible for a great deal of violence and injustice that history has recorded. How actors manage to overcome this difficulty and to act in unison, confident of each oth ers' mutual accord, cannot be explained or even described by means of formal models. An almost preverbal negotiation constantly going forward in human social life conditions everything else. Certain kinds of actions and conditions can be counted but only because societies themselves standardize and classify these actions and conditions. That is, formal models themselves often play a role in solutions that his torical actors seize upon to coordinate life in communities. A wedding cere mony, a voting procedure, or a picket line are enactments of highly structured, formalized scenarios which, so to speak, prescribe motives for partici pants. Bride and groom by conventional expectation wish to cohabit, voters to choose representatives, pickets to restrict access to workplace. The formal scenario for action is often arranged to allow for policing of actors' motives to make sure that they indeed conform to prescribed ones. In other words, uncertainty about motives is allowed for in system. Bride and groom are separately asked if they wish to marry, and witnesses attest to their responses in writing. Voters are put in booths to ensure that they consult only their own preference in voting. Forces of order nervously observe pickets to ensure they do no more than picket, just as pickets observe entrance to workplace to ensure that all their fellow workers really continue to want to strike. Formalized public action is one of principal means by which human

This research explores the convergence of fractal information theory and fractal geometry within computational linguistics. It also examines the application of the NooJ tool for structural analysis. The study posits that fractal analysis in computational linguistics offers a framework understand language as an intricate, self-similar, and dynamic system. Patterns recur at multiple scales, such as phrases within sentences and sentences within paragraphs. Fractal analysis uses methodologies to identify non-normal distributions and long-range dependencies textual data. NooJ leverages finite-state technology to parse large corpora and construct linguistic resources, such as lexicons and grammars. Although NooJ primarily functions as a finite-state machine, its ability to manage recursive graph structures, particularly recursive transition networks, makes it suitable for analyzing fractal structures