A multi-agent system consists of a collection of agents that interact with each other to fulfil their tasks. Individual agents can have different motivations for engaging in interactions. Also, agents can possibly recognise the goals of the other participants in the interaction. To successfully interact, an agent should exhibit the ability to balance reactivity, pro-activeness (autonomy) and sociability. That is, individual agents should deliberate not only on what they themselves know about the working environment and their desires, but also on what they know about the beliefs and desires of the other agents in their group. Multi-agent systems have proven to be a useful tool for modelling and solving problems that exhibit complex and distributed structures. Examples include real-time traffic control and monitoring, work-flow management and information retrieval in computer networks. There are two broad challenges that the agent community is currently investigating. One is the development of the formalisms for representing the knowledge the agents have about their actions, goals, plans for achieving their goals and other agents. The second challenge is the development of the reasoning mechanisms agents use to achieve autonomy during the course of their interactions. Our research interests lie in a model for the interactions among the agents, whereby the behaviour of the individual agents can be specified in a declarative manner and these specifications can be made executable. Therefore, we investigate the methods that effectively represent the agents' knowledge about their working environment (which includes other agents), to derive unrealised information from the agents' knowledge by considering that the agents can obtain only a partial image of their working environment. The research also deals with the logical reasoning about the knowledge of the other agents to achieve a better interaction. Our approach is to apply the notions of modality and non-monotonic reasoning to formalise and to confront the problem of incomplete and conflicting information when modelling multi-agent systems. The approach maintains the richness in the description of the logical method while providing an efficient and easy-to-implement reasoning mechanism. In addition to the theoretical analysis, we investigate n-person argumentation as an application that benefits from the efficiency of our approach.

In this thesis we extend BDI logics, which are normal multimodal logics with an arbitrary set of normal modal operators, from three different perspectives. Firstly, based on some recent developments in modal logic, we examine BDI logics from a combining logic perspective and apply combination techniques like fibring/dovetailing for explaining them. The second perspective is to extend the underlying logics so as to include action constructs in an explicit way based on some recent action-related theories. The third perspective is to adopt a non-monotonic logic like defeasible logic to reason about intentions in BDI. As such, the research captured in this thesis is theoretical in nature and situated at the crossroads of various disciplines relevant to Artificial Intelligence (AI). More specifically this thesis makes the following contributions: 1. Combining BDI Logics through fibring/dovetailing: BDI systems modeling rational agents have a combined system of logics of belief, time and intention which in turn are basically combinations of well understood modal logics. The idea behind combining logics is to develop general techniques that allow to produce combinations of existing and well understood logics. To this end we adopt Gabbay's fibring/dovetailing technique to provide a general framework for the combinations of BDI logics. We show that the existing BDI framework is a dovetailed system. Further we give conditions on the fibring function to accommodate interaction axioms of the type G [superscript k,l,m,n] ([diamond][superscript k] [superscript l] [phi] [implies] [superscript m] [diamond][superscript n] [phi]) based on Catach's multimodal semantics. This is a major result when compared with other combining techniques like fusion which fails to accommodate axioms of the above type. 2. Extending the BDI framework to accommodate Composite Actions: Taking motivation from a recent work on BDI theory, we incorporate the notion of composite actions, [pi]-1; [pi]-2 (interpreted as [pi]-1 followed by [pi]-2), to the existing BDI framework. To this end we introduce two new constructs Result and Opportunity which helps in reasoning about the actual execution of such actions. We give a set of axioms that can accommodate the new constructs and analyse the set of commitment axioms as given in the original work in the background of the new framework. 3. Intention reasoning as Defeasible reasoning: We argue for a non-monotonic logic of intention in BDI as opposed to the usual normal modal logic one. Our argument is based on Bratman's policy-based intention. We show that policy-based intention has a defeasible/non-monotonic nature and hence the traditional normal modal logic approach to reason about such intentions fails. We give a formalisation of policy-based intention in the background of defeasible logic. The problem of logical omniscience which usually accompanies normal modal logics is avoided to a great extend through such an approach.

This thesis consists in six articles and a comprehensive summary. • The pourpose of the summary is to introduce the AGM theory of belief change and to exemplify the diversity and significance of the research that has been inspired by the AGM article in the last 25 years. The research areas associated with AGM was divided in three parts: criticisms, where we discussed some of the more common criticisms of AGM. Extensions where the most common extensions and variations of AGM are presented and applications where we provided an overview of applications and connections with other areas of research. • Article I elaborates on the connection between partial meet contractions [AGM85] and kernel contractions [Han94a] in belief change theory. Also both functions are equivalent in belief sets, there are notequivalent in belief bases. A way to define incision functions (used in kernel contractions) from selection functions (used in partial meet contractions) and vice versa is presented. It is explained under which conditions there are exact correspondences between selection and incision functions so that the same contraction operations can be obtained by using either of them. • Article II proposes an axiomatic characterization for ensconcement-based contraction functions, belief base functions proposed byWilliams and relates this function with other kinds of base contraction functions. • Article III adapts the Fermé and Hansson model of Shielded Contraction [FH01] as well as Hansson et all Credibility-Limited Revision [HFCF01] for belief bases, to join two of the many variations of the AGM model [AGM85], i.e. those in which knowledge is represented through belief bases instead of logic theories, and those in which the object of the epistemic change does not get the priority over the existing information as it is the case in the AGM model. • Article IV introduces revision by comparison a refined method for changing beliefs by specifying constraints on the relative plausibility of propositions. Like the earlier belief revision models, the method proposed is a qualitative one, in the sense that no numbers are needed in order to specify the posterior plausibility of the new information. The method uses reference beliefs in order to determine the degree of entrenchment of the newly accepted piece of information. Two kinds of semantics for this idea are proposed and a logical characterization of the new model is given. • Article V focuses on the extension of AGM that allows change for a belief base by a set of sentences instead of a single sentence. In [FH94], Fuhrmann and Hansson presented an axiomatic for Multiple Contraction and a construction based on the AGM Partial Meet Contraction. This essay proposes for their model another way to construct functions: Multiple Kernel Contraction, that is a modification of Kernel Contraction,proposed by Hansson [Han94a] to construct classical AGM contractions and belief base contractions. • Article VI relates AGM model with the DFT model proposed by Carlos Alchourrón [Alc93]. Alchourrón devoted his last years to the analysis of the notion of defeasible conditionalization. His definition of the defeasible conditional is given in terms of strict implication operator and a modal operator f which is interpreted as a revision function at the language level. This essay points out that this underlying revision function is more general than AGM revision. In addition, a complete characterization of that more general kind of revision that permits to unify models of revision given by other authors is given. / QC 20110211

abstract: Reasoning about the activities of cyber threat actors is critical to defend against cyber attacks. However, this task is difficult for a variety of reasons. In simple terms, it is difficult to determine who the attacker is, what the desired goals are of the attacker, and how they will carry out their attacks. These three questions essentially entail understanding the attacker’s use of deception, the capabilities available, and the intent of launching the attack. These three issues are highly inter-related. If an adversary can hide their intent, they can better deceive a defender. If an adversary’s capabilities are not well understood, then determining what their goals are becomes difficult as the defender is uncertain if they have the necessary tools to accomplish them. However, the understanding of these aspects are also mutually supportive. If we have a clear picture of capabilities, intent can better be deciphered. If we understand intent and capabilities, a defender may be able to see through deception schemes. In this dissertation, I present three pieces of work to tackle these questions to obtain a better understanding of cyber threats. First, we introduce a new reasoning framework to address deception. We evaluate the framework by building a dataset from DEFCON capture-the-flag exercise to identify the person or group responsible for a cyber attack. We demonstrate that the framework not only handles cases of deception but also provides transparent decision making in identifying the threat actor. The second task uses a cognitive learning model to determine the intent – goals of the threat actor on the target system. The third task looks at understanding the capabilities of threat actors to target systems by identifying at-risk systems from hacker discussions on darkweb websites. To achieve this task we gather discussions from more than 300 darkweb websites relating to malicious hacking. / Dissertation/Thesis / Doctoral Dissertation Computer Engineering 2018

La World Wide Web actual está compuesta principalmente por documentos escritos para su presentación visual para usuarios humanos. Sin embargo, para obtener todo el potencial de la web es necesario que los programas de computadoras o agentes sean capaces de comprender la información presente en la web. En este sentido, la Web Semántica es una visión futura de la web donde la información tiene significado exacto, permitiendo así que las computadoras entiendan y razonen en base a la información hallada en la web. La Web Semántica propone resolver el problema de la asignación de semántica a los recursos web por medio de metadatos cuyo significado es dado a través de definiciones de ontologías, que son formalizaciones del conocimiento de un dominio de aplicación. El estándar del World Wide Web Consortium propone que las ontologías sean definidas en el lenguaje OWL, el cual se halla basado en las Lógicas para la Descripción. A pesar de que las definiciones de ontologías expresadas en Lógicas para la Descripción pueden ser procesadas por razonadores estándar, tales razonadores son incapaces de lidiar con ontologías inconsistentes. Los sistemas argumentativos constituyen una formalización del razonamiento rebatible donde se pone especial enfasis en la noción de argumento. Así, la construcción de argumentos permite que un agente obtenga conclusiones en presencia de información incompleta y potencialmente contradictoria. En particular, la Programación en Lógica Rebatible es un formalismo basado en la argumentación rebatible y la Programación en Lógica. En esta Disertación, la importancia de la definición de ontologías para poder llevar a cabo la realización de la iniciativa de la Web Semántica junto con la presencia de ontologías incompletas y potencialmente contradictorias motivó el desarrollo de un marco de razonamiento con las llamadas -ontologías. Investigaciones previas de otros autores, determinaron que un subconjunto de las Lógicas para la Descripción pueden ser traducidas efectivamente a un conjunto de la Programación en Lógica. Nuestra propuesta involucra asignar semántica a ontologías expresadas en Lógicas para la Descripción por medio de Programas Lógicos Rebatibles para lidiar con definiciones de ontologías inconsistentes en la Web Semántica. Esto es, dada una ontología OWL expresada en el lenguaje OWLDL, es posible construir una ontología DL equivalente expresada en las Lógicas para la Descripción. En el caso en que DL satisfaga ciertas restricciones, esta puede ser expresada como un programa DeLP P. Por lo tanto, dada una consulta acerca de la pertenencia de una instancia a a un cierto concepto C expresada con respecto a OWL, se realiza un análisis dialectico con respecto a P para determinar todas las razones a favor y en contra de la plausibilidad de la afirmación C(a). Por otro lado, la integración de datos es el problema de combinar datos residiendo en diferentes fuentes y el de proveer al usuario con una vista unificada de dichos datos. El problema de diseñar sistemas de integración de datos es particularmente importante en el contexto de aplicaciones en la Web Semántica donde las ontologías son desarrolladas independientemente unas de otras, y por esta razón pueden ser mutuamente inconsistentes. Dada una ontología, nos interesa conocer en que condiciones un individuo es una instancia de un cierto concepto. Como cuando se tienen varias ontologías, los mismos conceptos pueden tener nombres distintos para un mismo significado o aún nombres iguales para significados diferentes, para relacionar los conceptos entre dos ontologías diferentes se utilizaron reglas puente o de articulación. De esta manera, un concepto se corresponde a una vista sobre otros conceptos de otra ontología. Mostramos también bajo que condiciones la propuesta del razonamiento con -ontologías puede ser adaptada a los dos tipos de integración de ontologías global-as-view y local-as-view considerados en la literatura especializada. Además, analizamos las propiedades formales que se desprenden de este acercamiento novedoso al tratamiento de ontologías inconsistentes en la Web Semántica. Los principales resultados obtenidos son que, como la interpretación de -ontologías como Programas Lógicos Rebatibles es realizada a través de una función de transformación que preserva la semántica de las ontologías involucradas, los resultados obtenidos al realizar consultas son sensatos. También, mostramos que el operador presentado es además consistente y significativo. El acercamiento al razonamiento en presencia de ontologías inconsistentes brinda la posibilidad de abordar de una manera ecaz ciertos problemas de aplicacion del ámbito del comercio electrónico, donde el modelo de reglas de negocio puede ser especificado en términos de ontologías. Entonces, la capacidad de razonar frente a ontologías inconsistentes permite abordajes alternativos conceptualmente más claros, ya que es posible automatizar ciertas decisiones de negocios tomadas a la luz de un conjunto de reglas de negocio posiblemente inconsistentes expresadas como una o varias ontologías y tener un sistema capaz de brindar una explicación del porque se arribo a una conclusión determinada. En consecuencia, presentamos entonces una aplicación del razonamiento sobre ontologías inconsistentes por medio de la argumentación rebatible al modelado de formularios en la World Wide Web. La noción de los formularios como una manera de organizar y presentar datos ha sido utilizada desde el comienzo de la World Wide Web. Los formularios Web han evolucionado junto con el desarrollo de nuevos lenguajes de marcado, en los cuales es posible proveer guiones de validación como parte del código del formulario para verificar que el signifiado pretendido del formulario es correcto. Sin embargo, para el diseñador del formulario, parte de este significado pretendido frecuentemente involucra otras características que no son restricciones por sí mismas, sino más bien atributos emergentes del formulario, los cuales brindan conclusiones plausibles en el contexto de información incompleta y potencialmente contradictoria. Como el valor de tales atributos puede cambiar en presencia de nuevo conocimiento, los llamamos atributos rebatibles. Propusimos entonces extender los formularios web para incorporar atributos rebatibles como parte del conocimiento que puede ser codifiado por el diseñador del formulario, por medio de los llamados -formularios; dicho conocimiento puede ser especificado mediante un programa DeLP, y posteriormente, como una ontología expresada en Lógicas para la Descripción.