The document discusses the concept of requirements-driven mediation for collaborative security in complex, software-intensive systems. It emphasizes the need for multiple components to work together to adapt to security challenges and changes in the environment, highlighting features such as mediator selection and verification of collaboration to ensure security requirements are met. The paper outlines a research agenda focused on selection, mediation, and verification of security capabilities in collaborative environments.

1. Requirements-Driven Mediation
for Collaborative Security
Amel Bennaceur*, Arosha Bandara*, Michael Jackson*,Wei Liu*,
Lionel Montrieux*,TheinThanTun* ,YijunYu*, Bashar Nuseibeh*
*The Open University, UK
+Lero, Ireland
SEAMS 2014
+

2. The Need for Collaborative Security
2

3. Security Challenges in Ubicomp
 The boundary of the systems is uncertain
 The components can change
 The components are designed and implemented independently
3
Environment
Component 1
Component 3
Component 5
Component 2
Component 4

4. Collaborative Security
 Making multiple, heterogeneous, software-intensive
components collaborate in order to meet security
requirements
 Coping with changes in
 Changes in the environment
 Changes in the assets under protection and their values
 Discovery of new threats and vulnerabilities
4

5. 5
Collaborative Security
Adaptive Security
 Reasoning about assets,
threats, attacks, and
vulnerabilities
 Identify the security controls
necessary to keep security
requirements satisfied
 How to enact these security
controls?
 Reasoning about dynamic
discovery and composition
 Making multiple components
collaborate
 How to reason about assets,
threats and security
controls?
Collaborative Adaptation
Adaptive Security meets CollaborativeAdaptation

6. Capabilities
Collaborative Security Framework
Component 1 Component 2
Component 3
Component 4
Secure Operational Environment
Component 5
Security Requirements
Security Controls Mediators
Determine Capture Represent Reason Synthesise Deploy

7. Collaborative Security Framework - Example
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Security Requirements
I can see, talk,
pick objects and walk
I can clean and move
I can phone
Asset
Protect my phone
against theft

8. Collaborative Security à la Michael Jackson
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Environment
Component 1
Component 3
Component 5
Component 2
Component 4

9. Collaborative Security à la Michael Jackson
9
Environment
Component 1
Component 3
Component 5
Component 2
Component 4

10. Collaborative Security à la Michael Jackson
10
Environment
Component 1
Component 3
Component 5
Component 2
Component 4
Component 1 Component 2
Component 4
Secure Operational Environment
Mediator
Selection Mediation Verification

11. Selection
 Which components should collaborate to satisfy security
requirements?
 Feature-oriented capability selection
 Use features to represent components’ capabilities
 Elicit the features associated with security controls
 Find a composition of features of the available capabilities
that:
 Subsumes the features of a selected security control
provided some domain properties
 Respects the constraints between features
 Optimises quality attributes (e.g., performance or usability)
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Selection Mediation Verification

12. Mediation
 How do we make components collaborate?
 Behavioural capability mediation
 Consider a behavioural description of capabilities
 Synthesise a mediator that acts as :
Translator: ensures meaningful exchange of data between
components
Controller: ensures the absence of errors (e.g., deadlock) in their
interaction
Middleware: ensures interoperability by enabling each component to
receive the data it expects at the right moment and in the right format
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Selection Mediation Verification

13. Verification
 How to prove that the collaboration satisfies security
requirements? How to verify properties such as
correctness, safety, and minimality?
 Additional constraints on feature composition to avoid
known vulnerabilities
 Use anti-goals for mediator synthesis
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Selection Mediation Verification

14. A Research Agenda
 Selection
 How does changing and underspecified domain properties
impact the selection of capabilities?
 How does trust assumptions influence the selection of the
capabilities?
 Mediation
 How can we synthesise mediators that prevent unknown
attacks?
 Verification
 Can we build upon the security satisfaction argument to drive
the selection and mediation of capabilities?
 Collaborative Security Video
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15. Thank you
www.amel.me
Adaptive Security and Privacy
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