Metametaphysical Ontologies for Consensus

Cyrus Jian Bonyadi
R&D Cybersecurity, Sandia National Labs

12 pm – 1 pm
Friday, March 8, 2024
Remotely via WebEx: https://umbc.webex.com/meet/sherman

Recording of Talk

Abstract:

This talk presents the effort included in our HOPSCA (Hierarchically Ontological Proof Structure for Consensus Algorithms) paper, which provides a methodology for applying metametaphysics to develop a hierarchical ontological structure to pro- and retro-actively organize proofs for termination, validity, and agreement for authors and analysts going forward. Consensus algorithms have a decades-long, hype-cycle filled history with prominence in a diverse array of academic and professional fields, resulting in a wide variety of standards, styles, and organizational structures for proving their ability to perform as desired: building consistency across autonomous systems. The current standard in literature is for these algorithms to achieve safety and liveness in the security properties of termination, validity, and agreement, but even still, the way in which these properties are achieved may be incomparable between current and past works. As a result, it can be unclear both to authors and analysts which components of new algorithms present novel solutions, a phenomena often referred to as “stovepiping.” Many other fields have addressed this issue, and many of these solutions are based in the field of metametaphysics.

 

About the Speaker:

Cyrus Jian Bonyadi is a distributed cyber systems analyst who focuses on the adaptability and usability of abstract theory in practical cyber-digital and cyber-physical applications. Cyrus has been a PhD student at UMBC under Haibin Zhang, Sisi Duan, and Alan T. Sherman since 2018, during which Cyrus participated as a part of the SFS CyberCorps research studies and the UMBC CyberDawgs team. Email: work@cyrusbonyadi.io.

Host:

Alan T. Sherman, sherman@umbc.edu

Upcoming CDL Meetings:

  • (March 18-22, spring break)
  • March 29, Maksim Eren, Tensor Decomposition Methods for Cybersecurity
  • April 12, Anupam Joshi
  • April 26, Dan Ragsdale, National Cybersecurity Policy
  • (May 3, CSEE Research Day)
  • May 10, Enis Golaszewski, Automatically Binding Cryptographic Context to Messages Using Formal Methods

Support for this event was provided in part by the National Science Foundation under SFS grant DGE-1753681.

The UMBC Cyber Defense Lab meets biweekly Fridays 12-1 pm. All meetings are open to the public.