Embedding Session Types in HML

Recent work on the enhancement of multiparty session types with logical annotations enable the effective verification of properties on (1) the structure of the conversations, (2) the sorts of the messages, and (3) the actual values exchanged. In [3] we extend this work to enable the specification and verification of mutual effects of multiple cross-session interactions. Here we give a sound and complete embedding into the Hennessy-Milner logic to justify the expressiveness of the approach in [3] and to provide it with a logical background that will enable us to compare it with similar approaches

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

Proof Theory, Transformations, and Logic Programming for Debugging Security Protocols

We define a sequent calculus to formally specify, simulate, debug and verify security protocols. In our sequents we distinguish between the current knowledge of principals and the current global state of the session. Hereby, we can describe the operational semantics of principals and of an intruder in a simple and modular way. Furthermore, using proof theoretic tools like the analysis of permutability of rules, we are able to find efficient proof strategies that we prove complete for special classes of security protocols including Needham-Schroeder. Based on the results of this preliminary analysis, we have implemented a Prolog meta-interpreter which allows for rapid prototyping and for checking safety properties of security protocols, and we have applied it for finding error traces and proving correctness of practical examples

Holistic analysis of mix protocols

Security protocols are often analysed in isolation as academic challenges. However, the real world can require various combinations of them, such as a certified email protocol executed over a resilient channel, or the key registration protocol to precede the purchase protocols of Secure Electronic Transactions (SET). We develop what appears to be the first scalable approach to specifying and analysing mix protocols. It expands on the Inductive Method by exploiting the simplicity with which inductive definitions can refer to each other. This lets the human analyst study each protocol separately first, and then derive holistic properties about the mix. The approach, which is demonstrated on the sequential composition of a certification protocol with an authentication one, is not limited by the features of the protocols, which can, for example, share message components such as cryptographic keys and nonces. It bears potential for the analysis of complex protocols constructed by general composition of others

Logical Concurrency Control from Sequential Proofs

We are interested in identifying and enforcing the isolation requirements of a concurrent program, i.e., concurrency control that ensures that the program meets its specification. The thesis of this paper is that this can be done systematically starting from a sequential proof, i.e., a proof of correctness of the program in the absence of concurrent interleavings. We illustrate our thesis by presenting a solution to the problem of making a sequential library thread-safe for concurrent clients. We consider a sequential library annotated with assertions along with a proof that these assertions hold in a sequential execution. We show how we can use the proof to derive concurrency control that ensures that any execution of the library methods, when invoked by concurrent clients, satisfies the same assertions. We also present an extension to guarantee that the library methods are linearizable or atomic

Introduction to the ISO specification language LOTOS

LOTOS is a specification language that has been specifically developed for the formal description of the OSI (Open Systems Interconnection) architecture, although it is applicable to distributed, concurrent systems in general. In LOTOS a system is seen as a set of processes which interact and exchange data with each other and with their environment. LOTOS is expected to become an ISO international standard by 1988

Resource Access with Variably Typed Return

Peer reviewedPreprin

PAS: Predicate-Based Authentication Services Against Powerful Passive Adversaries

Securely authenticating a human user without assistance from any auxiliary device in the presence of powerful passive adversaries is an important and challenging problem. Passive adversaries are those that can passively monitor, intercept, and analyze every part of the authentication procedure, except for an initial secret shared between the user and the server. In this paper, we propose a new secure authentication scheme called predicate-based authentication service (PAS). In this scheme, for the first time, the concept of a predicate is introduced for authentication. We conduct analysis on the proposed scheme and implement its prototype system. Our analytical data and experimental data illustrate that the PAS scheme can simultaneously achieve a desired level of security and user friendliness

A Logic for Constraint-based Security Protocol Analysis

We propose PS-LTL, a pure-past security linear temporal logic that allows the specification of a variety of authentication, secrecy and data freshness properties. Furthermore, we present a sound and complete decision procedure to establish the validity of security properties for symbolic execution traces, and show the integration with constraint-based analysis techniques