CRJul 24, 2020
Model Checkers Are Cool: How to Model Check Voting Protocols in UppaalWojciech Jamroga, Yan Kim, Damian Kurpiewski et al.
The design and implementation of an e-voting system is a challenging task. Formal analysis can be of great help here. In particular, it can lead to a better understanding of how the voting system works, and what requirements on the system are relevant. In this paper, we propose that the state-of-art model checker Uppaal provides a good environment for modelling and preliminary verification of voting protocols. To illustrate this, we present an Uppaal model of Prêt à Voter, together with some natural extensions. We also show how to verify a variant of receipt-freeness, despite the severe limitations of the property specification language in the model checker.
CRAug 14, 2019
Risk-Limiting TalliesWojciech Jamroga, Peter B. Roenne, Peter Y. A. Ryan et al.
Many voter-verifiable, coercion-resistant schemes have been proposed, but even the most carefully designed systems necessarily leak information via the announced result. In corner cases, this may be problematic. For example, if all the votes go to one candidate then all vote privacy evaporates. The mere possibility of candidates getting no or few votes could have implications for security in practice: if a coercer demands that a voter cast a vote for such an unpopular candidate, then the voter may feel obliged to obey, even if she is confident that the voting system satisfies the standard coercion resistance definitions. With complex ballots, there may also be a danger of "Italian" style (aka "signature") attacks: the coercer demands the voter cast a ballot with a specific, identifying pattern. Here we propose an approach to tallying end-to-end verifiable schemes that avoids revealing all the votes but still achieves whatever confidence level in the announced result is desired. Now a coerced voter can claim that the required vote must be amongst those that remained shrouded. Our approach is based on the well-established notion of Risk-Limiting Audits, but here applied to the tally rather than to the audit. We show that this approach counters coercion threats arising in extreme tallies and "Italian" attacks. We illustrate our approach by applying it to the Selene scheme, and we extend the approach to Risk-Limiting Verification, where not all vote trackers are revealed, thereby enhancing the coercion mitigation properties of Selene.
MADec 8, 2016
Fixpoint Approximation of Strategic Abilities under Imperfect InformationWojciech Jamroga, Michał Knapik, Damian Kurpiewski
Model checking of strategic ability under imperfect information is known to be hard. The complexity results range from NP-completeness to undecidability, depending on the precise setup of the problem. No less importantly, fixpoint equivalences do not generally hold for imperfect information strategies, which seriously hampers incremental synthesis of winning strategies. In this paper, we propose translations of ATLir formulae that provide lower and upper bounds for their truth values, and are cheaper to verify than the original specifications. That is, if the expression is verified as true then the corresponding formula of ATLir should also hold in the given model. We begin by showing where the straightforward approach does not work. Then, we propose how it can be modified to obtain guaranteed lower bounds. To this end, we alter the next-step operator in such a way that traversing one's indistinguishability relation is seen as atomic activity. Most interestingly, the lower approximation is provided by a fixpoint expression that uses a nonstandard variant of the next-step ability operator. We show the correctness of the translations, establish their computational complexity, and validate the approach by experiments with a scalable scenario of Bridge play.
CRAug 7, 2016
Information Security as Strategic (In)effectivityWojciech Jamroga, Masoud Tabatabaei
Security of information flow is commonly understood as preventing any information leakage, regardless of how grave or harmless consequences the leakage can have. In this work, we suggest that information security is not a goal in itself, but rather a means of preventing potential attackers from compromising the correct behavior of the system. To formalize this, we first show how two information flows can be compared by looking at the adversary's ability to harm the system. Then, we propose that the information flow in a system is effectively information-secure if it does not allow for more harm than its idealized variant based on the classical notion of noninterference.
AIApr 21, 2016
Iterative Judgment AggregationMarija Slavkovik, Wojciech Jamroga
Judgment aggregation problems form a class of collective decision-making problems represented in an abstract way, subsuming some well known problems such as voting. A collective decision can be reached in many ways, but a direct one-step aggregation of individual decisions is arguably most studied. Another way to reach collective decisions is by iterative consensus building -- allowing each decision-maker to change their individual decision in response to the choices of the other agents until a consensus is reached. Iterative consensus building has so far only been studied for voting problems. Here we propose an iterative judgment aggregation algorithm, based on movements in an undirected graph, and we study for which instances it terminates with a consensus. We also compare the computational complexity of our iterative procedure with that of related judgment aggregation operators.
CRApr 3, 2014
On Defendability of Security PropertiesWojciech Jamroga, Matthijs Melissen, Henning Schnoor
We study the security of interaction protocols when incentives of participants are taken into account. We begin by formally defining correctness of a protocol, given a notion of rationality and utilities of participating agents. Based on that, we propose how to assess security when the precise incentives are unknown. Then, the security level can be defined in terms of defender sets, i.e., sets of participants who can effectively "defend" the security property as long as they are in favor of the property. We present some theoretical characterizations of defendable protocols under Nash equilibrium, first for bijective games (a standard assumption in game theory), and then for games with non-injective outcomes that better correspond to interaction protocols. Finally, we apply our concepts to analyze fairness in the ASW contract-signing protocol.