Security Engineering in IIIf, Part II -- Refinement and Noninterference (2412.10949v1)

Abstract: In this paper, we add a second part to the process of Security Engineering to the Isabelle Insider and Infrastructure framework (IIIf) [31,16] by addressing an old difficult task of refining Information Flow Security (IFC). We address the classical notion of Noninterference representing absolute security in the sense of absence of information flows to lower levels. This notion is known to be not preserved by specification refinements in general, a phenomenon known as "refinement paradox" [33]. We use a solution for this problem that has been given by Morgan [33] for the refinement calculus for sequential program specifications and generalize it to general specifications of Infrastructures with actors, decentralization and policies in the IIIf. As a running example to illustrate the problem, the concepts and the solution, we use an example of a Flightradar system specification [20].