Verification of Information Flow in Agent-Based Systems

Abstract

Analyzing information flow is beneficial for ensuring the satisfiability of security policies during the exchange of information between the agents of a system. In the literature, models such as Bell-LaPadula model and the Chinese Wall model are proposed to capture and govern the exchange of information among agents. Also, we find several verification techniques for analyzing information flow within programs or multi-agent systems. However, these models and techniques assume the atomicity of the exchanged information, which means that the information cannot be decomposed or combined with other pieces of information. Also, the policies of their models prohibit any transfer of information from a high level agent to a low level agent. In this paper, we propose a technique that relaxes these assumptions. Indeed, the proposed technique allows classifying information into frames and articulating finer granularity policies that involve information, its elements, or its frames. Also, it allows for information manipulation through several operations such as focusing and combining information. Relaxing the atomicity of information assumption permits an analysis that takes into account the ability of an agent to link elements of information in order to evolve its knowledge.

The technique uses global calculus to specify the communication between agents, information algebra to represent agent knowledge, and an amended version of Hoare logic to verify the satisfiability of policies.