Advancing Formal Methods to Support the Creation of Novel, Homogeneous and Hybrid Resilient Distributed Systems and Technologies

• Applicant: Privatdozent Dr.-Ing. Swen Jacobs
• Subject Area: Theoretical Computer Science ; Security and Dependability, Operating-, Communication- and Distributed Systems
• Term: since 2023
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 513487900

Computer systems in banks, insurance companies, but also in autonomous vehicles or satellites remain worthwhile targets for cyberattacks and must be protected to withstand, tolerate and safely operate through such attacks. Unfortunately, due to the growing complexity of systems, adversaries have gained an advantage, which requires us, defending these systems, to anticipate that some attacks might be successful. Fortunately, resilience techniques, such as triplicating the actual computer system and protocols for seeking a majority of matching responses, exists that allow systems to continue to work correctly, even if cyberattacks have been partially successful. But for these techniques to be applicable, they have to match the system's structure, in particular how the individual components of such a system interact. The resilience techniques we have developed so far are limited in these interaction patterns and developing new techniques for more elaborate patterns remains a difficult and error prone task. In particular, tools that support us in developing such protocols by allowing us to check whether what we have constructed is correct, work only on the final protocols and they require a rare expertise to be used. In the FM-CReST project, researchers from CISPA, Germany, and from the SnT of University of Luxembourg have joined forces to research a new class of highly automated, easy-to-use tools to assist developers in constructing provably correct resilience protocols. We do so by co-designing protocols for systems with complicated interaction patterns, while observing this protocol construction and developing the tools needed to simplify such developments in the future.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants
• International Connection: Luxembourg
• Cooperation Partner: Professor Dr.-Ing. Marcus Völp