Finite state machine approach to digital event reconstruction

Abstract

This paper presents a rigorous method for reconstructing events in digital systems. It is based on the idea, that once the system is described as a finite state machine, its state space can be explored to determine all possible scenarios of the incident. To formalize evidence, the evidential statement notation is introduced. It represents the facts conveyed by the evidence as a series of witness stories that restrict possible computations of the finite state machine. To automate event reconstruction, a generic event reconstruction algorithm is proposed. It computes the set of all possible explanations for the given evidential statement with respect to the given finite state machine.