Statistics Across Campuses: Annabelle McIver -- The Category of Correlations

The Category of Correlations 

Date: 31 July 2020, Friday 

Time: 3 pm 

Speaker: Prof Annabelle McIver (Macquarie University) 

Abstract: 

Designing programs that do not leak confidential information continues to be a
challenge.  Part of the difficulty arises when partial information leaks are inevitable,
implying that design interventions can only limit rather than eliminate their impact.
We show, by example, how to gain a better understanding of the consequences of
information leaks by modelling what adversaries might be able to do with any leaked
information.  The presentation is based on the theory of Quantitative Information Flow
and uses the well-known probability monad to provide an information-flow aware semantics
for a small programming language.  We will explore some properties of the language and
demonstrate that "correlations" rather than the more familiar "prior/posterior"
probabilities of Bayesian reasoning are fundamental to understanding how information
leaks in programs.  

Zoom link: https://macquarie.zoom.us/j/95020166333