Efficient analysis of belief properties in process algebra

Abstract

Protocols are typically specified in an operational manner by specifying the communication patterns among the different involved principals. However, many properties are of epistemic nature, e.g., what each principal believes after having seen a run of the protocol. We elaborate on a unified algebraic framework suitable for epistemic reasoning about operational protocols. This reasoning framework is based on a logic of beliefs and allows for the operational specification of untruthful communications. The information recorded in the semantic models to support reasoning about the interaction between the operational and epistemic aspects intensifies the state-space explosion. We propose an efficient on-the-fly reduction for such a unifying framework by providing a set of operational rules. These operational rules automatically generate efficient reduced semantics for a class of epistemic properties, specified in a rich extension of modal μ-calculus with past and belief modality, and can potentially reduce an infinite state space into a finite one. We reformulate and prove criteria that guarantee belief consistency for credulous agents, i.e., agents that are ready to believe what is told unless it is logically inconsistent. We adjust our reduction so that the belief consistency of an original model is preserved. We prove the soundness and completeness result for the specified class of properties.