Game Logics for Open IT Environments

• Applicant: Professor Dr. Jürgen Dix
• Subject Area: Security and Dependability, Operating-, Communication- and Distributed Systems
• Term: from 2012 to 2015
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 226062030

Game theory provides basic conceptual tools to assess abilities of players in scenarios involving interaction. On the other hand, mathematical logic has proved useful when addressing qualitative properties of systems. A number of strategic logics (or game logics) have been studied intensively in the last 15 years, that allow to specify properties of games in an abstract way. Unfortunately, most of them are based on models of perfect information. Such an assumption is unrealistic when it comes for distributed IT environments. Moreover, it makes the study of information security impossible because the notions of information and knowledge are not properly defined. A multitude of semantic variants were proposed in the recent years to combine knowledge and strategies in a single logical framework, but many questions remain open. In this project, we address some of the questions. First, there are many different semantics for ability under uncertainty, but their exact relationship is still unclear. Secondly, there is no unifying framework. Thirdly, verification of abilities under uncertainty is known to be computationally hard, but little work has been done on tractable fragments of the logics. Fourthly, combining knowledge and strategies for stochastic models is almost untouched. We are going to investigate these basic threads by rigorous theoretical analysis. On a more practical level, we plan to provide a preliminary toolbox that allows for verification of information-related properties in open IT environments of relatively small scale. It is important to emphasize that the focus of this project is theoretical rather than applied. However, study of strategic logics should be driven by practical context. This purpose will be served by scenarios from "IT Ecosystems", a big project which is currently being finished in Clausthal, Braunschweig and Hannover.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants
• International Connection: Denmark, Luxembourg
• Participating Persons: Privatdozent Dr. Valentin Goranko; Professor Dr. Leon van der Torre