Norman Danner

Revitalizing computing education through free and open source software for humanity

The humanitarian focus of socially useful projects promises to motivate community-minded undergrads in and out of CS.

Denotational cost semantics for functional languages with inductive types

A central method for analyzing the asymptotic complexity of a functional program is to extract and then solve a recurrence that expresses evaluation cost in terms of input size. The relevant notion of input size is often specific to a datatype, with measures including the length of a list, the maximum element in a list, and the height of a tree. In this work, we give a formal account of the extraction of cost and size recurrences from higher-order functional programs over inductive datatypes. Our approach allows a wide range of programmer-specified notions of size, and ensures that the extracted recurrences correctly predict evaluation cost. To extract a recurrence from a program, we first make costs explicit by applying a monadic translation from the source language to a complexity language, and then abstract datatype values as sizes. Size abstraction can be done semantically, working in models of the complexity language, or syntactically, by adding rules to a preorder judgement. We give several different models of the complexity language, which support different notions of size. Additionally, we prove by a logical relations argument that recurrences extracted by this process are upper bounds for evaluation cost; the proof is entirely syntactic and therefore applies to all of the models we consider.

Detecting Denial of Service Attacks in Tor

Tor is currently one of the more popular systems for anonymizing near real-time communications on the Internet. Recently, Borisov et al. proposed a denial of service based attack on Tor (and related systems) that significantly increases the probability of compromising the anonymity provided. In this paper, we propose an algorithm for detecting such attacks and examine the effectiveness of the obvious approach to evading such detection. We implement a simplified version of the detection algorithm and study whether the attack may be in progress on the current Tor network. Our preliminary measurements indicate that the attack was probably not implemented during the period we observed the network.

Effectiveness and detection of denial-of-service attacks in tor

Tor is one of the more popular systems for anonymizing near-real-time communications on the Internet. Borisov et al. [2007] proposed a denial-of-service-based attack on Tor (and related systems) that significantly increases the probability of compromising the anonymity provided. In this article, we analyze the effectiveness of the attack using both an analytic model and simulation. We also describe two algorithms for detecting such attacks, one deterministic and proved correct, the other probabilistic and verified in simulation.

Adventures in time and space

This paper investigates what is essentially a call-by-value version of PCF under a complexity-theoretically motivated type system. The programming formalism, ATR1, has its first-order programs characterize the poly-time computable functions, and its second-order programs characterize the type-2 basic feasible functionals of Mehlhorn and of Cook and Urquhart. (The ATR1-types are confined to levels 0, 1, and 2.) The type system comes in two parts, one that primarily restricts the sizes of values of expressions and a second that primarily restricts the time required to evaluate expressions. The size-restricted part is motivated by Bellantoni and Cooks and Leivants implicit characterizations of poly-time. The time-restricting part is an affine version of Barber and Plotkins DILL. Two semantics are constructed for ATR1. The first is a pruning of the naïve denotational semantics for ATR1. This pruning removes certain functions that cause otherwise feasible forms of recursion to go wrong. The second semantics is a model for ATR1s time complexity relative to a certain abstract machine. This model provides a setting for complexity recurrences arising from ATR1 recursions, the solutions of which yield second-order polynomial time bounds. The time-complexity semantics is also shown to be sound relative to the costs of interpretation on the abstract machine.

Minimization and NP multifunctions

The implicit characterizations of the polynomial-time computable functions FP given by Bellantoni-Cook and Leivant suggest that this class is the complexity-theoretic analog of the primitive recursive functions. Hence, it is natural to add minimization operators to these characterizations and investigate the resulting class of partial functions as a candidate for the analog of the partial recursive functions. We do so in this paper for Cobhams definition of FP by bounded recursion and for Bellantoni-Cooks safe recursion and prove that the resulting classes capture exactly NPMV, the nondeterministic polynomial-time computable partial multifunctions. We also consider the relationship between our schemes and a notion of nondeterministic recursion defined by Leivant and show that the latter characterizes the total functions of NPMV. We view these results as giving evidence that NPMV is the appropriate analog of partial recursive. This view is reinforced by earlier results of Spreen and Stahl who show that for many of the relationships between partial recursive functions and r.e. sets, analogous relationships hold between NPMV and NP sets. Furthermore, since NPMV is obtained from FP in the same way as the recursive functions are obtained from the primitive recursive functions (when defined via function schemes), this also gives further evidence that FP is properly seen as playing the role of primitive recursion.

Ramified recurrence with dependent types

We present a version of Godels system T in which the types are ramified in the style of Leivant and a system of dependent typing is introduced. The dependent typing allows the definition of recursively defined types, where the recursion is controlled by ramification; these recursively defined types in turn allow the definition of functions by repeated iteration. We then analyze a subsystem of the full system and show that it defines exactly the primitive recursive functions. This result supports the view that when data use is regulated (for example, by ramification), standard function constructions are intimately connected with standard type-theoretic constructions.