A Model of Secure Functioning of Computer Systems

Abstract

We propose an automata model of computer system security. A system is represented by a finite automaton with states partitioned into two subsets: "secure" and "insecure". System functioning is secure if the number of consecutive insecure states is not greater than some nonnegative integer k. This definition allows one to formally reflect responsiveness to security breaches. The number of all input sequences that preserve security for the given value of k is referred to as a k-secure language. We prove that if a language is k-secure for some natural and automaton V, then it is also k-secure for any 0 < k < k and some automaton V = V (k). Reduction of the value of k is performed at the cost of amplification of the number of states. On the other hand, for any non-negative integer k there exists a k-secure language that is not k"-secure for any natural k" > k. The problem of reconstruction of a k-secure language using a conditional experiment is split into two subcases. If the cardinality of an input alphabet is bound by some constant, then the order of Shannon function of experiment complexity is the same for al k; otherwise there emerges a lower bound of the order nk.