A Uniform Approach for the Definition of Security Properties

TLDR: It is shown that the results of the theory can be easily applied to a number of existing security properties that can be rephrased in the authors' setting and permits to find some interesting relations among properties which have been proposed for different security issues.

Abstract: We present a uniform approach for the definition and the analysis of various security properties. It is based on the general idea that a security property should be satisfied even in the presence of an hostile environment. This principle determines a family of strong properties which are resistant to every external attack, but are quite impractical to check. For this reason, we find some general conditions that permit to check a property only against a "most powerful" intruder. We show that the results of our theory can be easily applied to a number of existing security properties that can be rephrased in our setting. This shows the generality of the approach and permits to find some interesting relations among properties which have been proposed for different security issues.