A State-based Approach to Noninterference

Abstract

We outline an approach to modeling noninterference-style security policies using a state-based model, as opposed to an event-based or i/o-based model. We believe that this approach provides a richer, more intuitive formalism for security modeling than the event-based approach and provides a link to other current research in specification and verification of concurrent and distributed systems. We describe the state-based approach for deterministic and nondeterministic systems with both transitive and intransitive security policies.