Intelligent Model Checking. Real-world systems are typically so complex that software engineers require specialised CAD tools to debug and verify a design. Model checking is a formal method that is used extensively for this purpose, particularly for mission-critical systems. In this work, a new kind of verifying tool, based on model checking, is developed. This new model checker is intelligent because a heuristic search is integrated into the underlying formalism. It is not exhaustive, and is mo ....Intelligent Model Checking. Real-world systems are typically so complex that software engineers require specialised CAD tools to debug and verify a design. Model checking is a formal method that is used extensively for this purpose, particularly for mission-critical systems. In this work, a new kind of verifying tool, based on model checking, is developed. This new model checker is intelligent because a heuristic search is integrated into the underlying formalism. It is not exhaustive, and is more efficient than a traditional model checker during the design phase because it does only a minimum amount of work in its search for a fault.Read moreRead less
Model Checking Knowledge and Probability in Pursuit-Evasion Games. The research will produce software enabling modellers to better understand their models in applications including planning under uncertainty, information flow security and systems fault diagnosis. The application studied in this project is military search and rescue mission planning, resulting in greater confidence in mission success. The research is also relevant to emergency response and collision avoidance. The project will ....Model Checking Knowledge and Probability in Pursuit-Evasion Games. The research will produce software enabling modellers to better understand their models in applications including planning under uncertainty, information flow security and systems fault diagnosis. The application studied in this project is military search and rescue mission planning, resulting in greater confidence in mission success. The research is also relevant to emergency response and collision avoidance. The project will support retention of Australian intellectual property with potential for future commercialisation. It will foster linkages between Australian researchers and an international defence alliance partner. Outcomes will be available to Australian Defence through existing Defence research sharing arrangements.Read moreRead less
Towards automated and intelligent processing of web-based information. The successful outcome of this project will enhance Australia's research reputation in an important, practical area of ICT, will contribute to emerging Web standards, will produce frontier technology that will eventually be of benefit to Australian industry, and will train several postgraduate students.
Simulation and verification of system-level specifications of requirements and constraints using Rosetta. Modern computer-based systems comprise a mixture of electronic hardware and embedded computer software that interacts with mechanical and other non-electrical subsystems. Future design capability will depend on being able to model the requirements and constraints of heterogeneous systems, so that they can be simulated and formally verified before being manufactured and deployed. This project ....Simulation and verification of system-level specifications of requirements and constraints using Rosetta. Modern computer-based systems comprise a mixture of electronic hardware and embedded computer software that interacts with mechanical and other non-electrical subsystems. Future design capability will depend on being able to model the requirements and constraints of heterogeneous systems, so that they can be simulated and formally verified before being manufactured and deployed. This project will develop techniques and software tools for simulation and verification based on the new Rosetta system-level design language. These tools will make the design of complex computer-based systems faster, more reliable and less costly by minimizing design errors early in the design flow.Read moreRead less
Security for Web Services. Web services, an emerging distributed computing paradigm, poses challenging problems in security, due to their dynamic decentralised scalable nature, operating over an untrusted Internet, for which no adequate solutions exist today. This research addresses the model, architecture and design of secure authorisation for web services. It achieves conceptual advances in terms of a flexible authorisation model, proposes a new XML based policy language, develops a comprehens ....Security for Web Services. Web services, an emerging distributed computing paradigm, poses challenging problems in security, due to their dynamic decentralised scalable nature, operating over an untrusted Internet, for which no adequate solutions exist today. This research addresses the model, architecture and design of secure authorisation for web services. It achieves conceptual advances in terms of a flexible authorisation model, proposes a new XML based policy language, develops a comprehensive security policy management framework, designs a distributed authorisation service and demonstrates a practical secure web service system in .NET.It presents a new approach to formally reasoning about conflict resolution policies with dynamic delegation.Read moreRead less
Knowledge Based Model Updating for the Correctness of Security Protocols. This project will fundamentally provide a new paradigm of the security protocol verification and modification. As such, it will significantly enhance Australia's already leading role in the cutting edge research on information security. By applying the new methodology and technology, Australian IT industry will be able to develop more secure communication systems in real world domains. With a very strong research team acro ....Knowledge Based Model Updating for the Correctness of Security Protocols. This project will fundamentally provide a new paradigm of the security protocol verification and modification. As such, it will significantly enhance Australia's already leading role in the cutting edge research on information security. By applying the new methodology and technology, Australian IT industry will be able to develop more secure communication systems in real world domains. With a very strong research team across different areas such as knowledge reasoning, temporal logics and information security, and a collaborative research training environment, this project will further enhance Australia's international reputation as a leader in computing and IT research.Read moreRead less
Security for Mobile Agent Based Systems. Mobile agents are emerging to be a significant technology in networked computing and pose fundamental challenges in security, for which no suitable solutions exist today. This research project addresses the theory, architecture and design of secure mobile agent systems. It achieves key conceptual advances by proposing a comprehensive security mode and a novel computational trust model for mobile agents. It develops new schemes for dynamic privilege man ....Security for Mobile Agent Based Systems. Mobile agents are emerging to be a significant technology in networked computing and pose fundamental challenges in security, for which no suitable solutions exist today. This research project addresses the theory, architecture and design of secure mobile agent systems. It achieves key conceptual advances by proposing a comprehensive security mode and a novel computational trust model for mobile agents. It develops new schemes for dynamic privilege management and offers new insights into the open research problem of protection against malicious hosts. It considers a novel calculus to formally reason about security properties and demonstrates practical secure agent based Internet applications.Read moreRead less
Economical and practical design and analysis of probabilistic distributed systems. Complex computing systems composed of communicating processes are
distributed over networks, and interact with embedded hardware
components. They routinely operate in probabilistic environments:
hardware components fail randomly, but at known rates; and tactical
randomisation resolves competition for resources. Effective
specification, development and analysis methods for these systems
is crucial, and probab ....Economical and practical design and analysis of probabilistic distributed systems. Complex computing systems composed of communicating processes are
distributed over networks, and interact with embedded hardware
components. They routinely operate in probabilistic environments:
hardware components fail randomly, but at known rates; and tactical
randomisation resolves competition for resources. Effective
specification, development and analysis methods for these systems
is crucial, and probability makes that particularly difficult.
The focus of this project is to develop new formal methods that are
economical and practical in use. Exploiting our recent advances in
probabilistic program semantics, we will add probability in a new
way to proven techniques in concurrency theory, including
refinement and hierarchical design.Read moreRead less
Developing Sophisticated e-Business Automation. This project will provide theoretical foundations and a practical platform for developing advanced e-business automation technology. As such, it will significantly enhance Australia's leading role in the cutting edge research on e-business automation. By applying the new methodology and technology, Australian IT industries will be able to develop highly efficient e-market application systems, which will be financially beneficial to most organizatio ....Developing Sophisticated e-Business Automation. This project will provide theoretical foundations and a practical platform for developing advanced e-business automation technology. As such, it will significantly enhance Australia's leading role in the cutting edge research on e-business automation. By applying the new methodology and technology, Australian IT industries will be able to develop highly efficient e-market application systems, which will be financially beneficial to most organizations as Australia business and institutions are moving towards a more electronically oriented future. With a strong research team and collaborative research training environment, this project will further promote Australia's international reputation as a leader in Computing and IT research.Read moreRead less
Complexity in Algebra and Algebra in Complexity: the role of finite semigroups and general algebra. Algebra and logic form the mathematical framework for expressing and analysing algorithms and their difficulty. We can then scientifically analyse what makes some tasks more difficult than others. This project unifies parallel areas of algebra to focus on two key topics at this interface between algebra and computational complexity. As a flow on, our work can uncover new algorithms for solving ....Complexity in Algebra and Algebra in Complexity: the role of finite semigroups and general algebra. Algebra and logic form the mathematical framework for expressing and analysing algorithms and their difficulty. We can then scientifically analyse what makes some tasks more difficult than others. This project unifies parallel areas of algebra to focus on two key topics at this interface between algebra and computational complexity. As a flow on, our work can uncover new algorithms for solving constraint problems and for the study of formal languages.
With a team of top international researchers developing new interactions between mathematics and the study of algorithms, the project will foster a culture of innovation and bring Australia into the play in this internationally competitive area.Read moreRead less