790 research outputs found
information kocessing Letters An attack on the Needham-Schroeder public-key authentication protocol
Abstract In this paper we present an attack upon the Needham-Schroeder public-key authentication protocol. The attack allows an intruder to impersonate another agent
A Reduction for Automated Verification of Authentication Protocols
Authentication protocols (including protocols that provide key establishment) are designed to work correctly in the presence of an adversary that can (1) perform an unbounded number of encryptions and tuplings while fabricating messages, and (2) prompt honest principals to engage in an unbounded number of concurrent runs of the protocol. The amount of local state maintained by a single run of an authentication protocol is bounded. Intuitively, this suggests that there is a bound on the resources needed to attack the protocol. Such bounds clarify the nature of attacks on these protocols and provide a rigorous basis for automated verification of authentication protocols. However, few such bounds are known. This paper defines a domainspecific language for authentication protocols and establishes an upper bound on the resources needed to attack a large subset of the protocols expressible in that language, including versions of the Yahalom protocol and the Needham-Schroeder public-key proto..
Verifying security protocols by knowledge analysis
This paper describes a new interactive method to analyse knowledge of participants involved in security protocols and further to verify the correctness of the protocols. The method can detect attacks and flaws involving interleaving sessions besides normal attacks. The implementation of the method in a generic theorem proving environment, namely Isabelle, makes the verification of protocols mechanical and efficient; it can verify a medium-sized security protocol in less than ten seconds. As an example, the paper finds the flaw in the Needham-Schroeder public key authentication protocol and proves the secure properties and guarantees of the protocol with Lowe's fix to show the effectiveness of this method
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A framework for proving the correctness of cryptographic protocol properties by linear temporal logic
In this paper, a framework for cryptographic protocol analysis using linear temporal logic is proposed. The framework can be used to specify and analyse security protocols. It aims to investigate and analyse the security protocols properties that are secure or have any flaws. The framework extends the linear temporal logic by including the knowledge of participants in each status that may change over the time. It includes two main parts, the Language of Temporal Logic (LTL) and the domain knowledge. The ability of the framework is demonstrated by analysing the Needham-Schroeder public key protocol and the Andrew Secure RPC protocol as examples
Knowledge Flow Analysis for Security Protocols
Knowledge flow analysis offers a simple and flexible way to find flaws in
security protocols. A protocol is described by a collection of rules
constraining the propagation of knowledge amongst principals. Because this
characterization corresponds closely to informal descriptions of protocols, it
allows a succinct and natural formalization; because it abstracts away message
ordering, and handles communications between principals and applications of
cryptographic primitives uniformly, it is readily represented in a standard
logic. A generic framework in the Alloy modelling language is presented, and
instantiated for two standard protocols, and a new key management scheme.Comment: 20 page
Timed Analysis of Security Protocols
We propose a method for engineering security protocols that are aware of
timing aspects. We study a simplified version of the well-known Needham
Schroeder protocol and the complete Yahalom protocol, where timing information
allows the study of different attack scenarios. We model check the protocols
using UPPAAL. Further, a taxonomy is obtained by studying and categorising
protocols from the well known Clark Jacob library and the Security Protocol
Open Repository (SPORE) library. Finally, we present some new challenges and
threats that arise when considering time in the analysis, by providing a novel
protocol that uses time challenges and exposing a timing attack over an
implementation of an existing security protocol
Generating Network Security Protocol Implementations from Formal Specifications
We describe the Spi2Java code generation tool, which we have developed in an attempt to bridge the gap between formal security protocol specification and executable implementation. Implemented in Prolog, Spi2Java can input a formal security protocol specification in a variation of the Spi Calculus, and generate a Java code implementation of that protocol. We give a brief overview of the role of code generation in the wider context of security protocol development. We cover the design and implementation of Spi2Java which we relate to the high integrity code generation requirements identified by Whalen and Heimdahl. By defining a Security Protocol Implementation API that abstracts cryptographic and network communication functionality we show that protocol logic code can be separated from underlying cryptographic algorithm and network stack implementation concerns. The design of this API is discussed, particularly its support for pluggable implementation providers. Spi2Java's functionality is demonstrated by way of example: we specify the Needham-Schroeder Public Key Authentication Protocol, and Lowe's attack on it, in the Spi Calculus and examine a successful attack run using Spi2Java generated implementation of the protocol roles
Soft Constraint Programming to Analysing Security Protocols
Security protocols stipulate how the remote principals of a computer network
should interact in order to obtain specific security goals. The crucial goals
of confidentiality and authentication may be achieved in various forms, each of
different strength. Using soft (rather than crisp) constraints, we develop a
uniform formal notion for the two goals. They are no longer formalised as mere
yes/no properties as in the existing literature, but gain an extra parameter,
the security level. For example, different messages can enjoy different levels
of confidentiality, or a principal can achieve different levels of
authentication with different principals.
The goals are formalised within a general framework for protocol analysis
that is amenable to mechanisation by model checking. Following the application
of the framework to analysing the asymmetric Needham-Schroeder protocol, we
have recently discovered a new attack on that protocol as a form of retaliation
by principals who have been attacked previously. Having commented on that
attack, we then demonstrate the framework on a bigger, largely deployed
protocol consisting of three phases, Kerberos.Comment: 29 pages, To appear in Theory and Practice of Logic Programming
(TPLP) Paper for Special Issue (Verification and Computational Logic
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