Abstract : Man-in-the-Middle (MM) is not only a ubiquitous attack pattern in security, but also an important paradigm of network computation and economics. Recognizing ongoing MM-attacks is an important security task; modeling MM-interactions is an interesting task for semantics of computation. Traced monoidal categories are a natural framework for MM-modelling, as the trace structure provides a tool to hide what happens in the middle. An effective analysis of what has been traced out seems to require an additional property of traces, called normality. We describe a modest model of network computation, based on partially ordered multisets (pomsets), where basic network interactions arise from the monoidal trace structure, and a normal trace structure arises from an iterative, i.e. coalgebraic structure over terms and messages used in computation and communication. The correspondence is established using a convenient monadic description of normally traced monoidal categories.
https://hal.inria.fr/hal-01539882 Contributor : Hal IfipConnect in order to contact the contributor Submitted on : Thursday, June 15, 2017 - 3:02:45 PM Last modification on : Thursday, June 15, 2017 - 3:25:48 PM Long-term archiving on: : Wednesday, December 13, 2017 - 12:53:21 PM
Dusko Pavlovic. Tracing the Man in the Middle in Monoidal Categories. 11th International Workshop on Coalgebraic Methods in Computer Science (CMCS), Mar 2012, Tallinn, Estonia. pp.191-217, ⟨10.1007/978-3-642-32784-1_11⟩. ⟨hal-01539882⟩