Functional Dependence of Secrets in a Collaboration Network

TL;DR

This paper investigates how the structure of collaboration networks influences the interdependencies of secrets shared among parties, providing a logical framework to analyze these dependencies.

Contribution

It introduces a complete and decidable logical system for functional dependence of secrets in collaboration networks, extending Armstrong's axioms from databases.

Findings

Developed a logical system for functional dependence in networks

Proved the system is complete and decidable

Extended Armstrong's axioms to this context

Abstract

A collaboration network is a graph formed by communication channels between parties. Parties communicate over these channels to establish secrets, simultaneously enforcing interdependencies between the secrets. The paper studies properties of these interdependencies that are induced by the topology of the network. In previous work, the authors developed a complete logical system for one such property, independence, also known in the information flow literature as nondeducibility. This work describes a complete and decidable logical system for the functional dependence relation between sets of secrets over a collaboration network. The system extends Armstrong's system of axioms for functional dependency in databases.