1,783 research outputs found
A Spatial-Epistemic Logic for Reasoning about Security Protocols
Reasoning about security properties involves reasoning about where the
information of a system is located, and how it evolves over time. While most
security analysis techniques need to cope with some notions of information
locality and knowledge propagation, usually they do not provide a general
language for expressing arbitrary properties involving local knowledge and
knowledge transfer. Building on this observation, we introduce a framework for
security protocol analysis based on dynamic spatial logic specifications. Our
computational model is a variant of existing pi-calculi, while specifications
are expressed in a dynamic spatial logic extended with an epistemic operator.
We present the syntax and semantics of the model and logic, and discuss the
expressiveness of the approach, showing it complete for passive attackers. We
also prove that generic Dolev-Yao attackers may be mechanically determined for
any deterministic finite protocol, and discuss how this result may be used to
reason about security properties of open systems. We also present a
model-checking algorithm for our logic, which has been implemented as an
extension to the SLMC system.Comment: In Proceedings SecCo 2010, arXiv:1102.516
Primitives for Contract-based Synchronization
We investigate how contracts can be used to regulate the interaction between
processes. To do that, we study a variant of the concurrent constraints
calculus presented in [1], featuring primitives for multi-party synchronization
via contracts. We proceed in two directions. First, we exploit our primitives
to model some contract-based interactions. Then, we discuss how several models
for concurrency can be expressed through our primitives. In particular, we
encode the pi-calculus and graph rewriting.Comment: In Proceedings ICE 2010, arXiv:1010.530
Contract agreements via logic
We relate two contract models: one based on event structures and game theory,
and the other one based on logic. In particular, we show that the notions of
agreement and winning strategies in the game-theoretic model are related to
that of provability in the logical model.Comment: In Proceedings ICE 2013, arXiv:1310.401
Actor-network procedures: Modeling multi-factor authentication, device pairing, social interactions
As computation spreads from computers to networks of computers, and migrates
into cyberspace, it ceases to be globally programmable, but it remains
programmable indirectly: network computations cannot be controlled, but they
can be steered by local constraints on network nodes. The tasks of
"programming" global behaviors through local constraints belong to the area of
security. The "program particles" that assure that a system of local
interactions leads towards some desired global goals are called security
protocols. As computation spreads beyond cyberspace, into physical and social
spaces, new security tasks and problems arise. As networks are extended by
physical sensors and controllers, including the humans, and interlaced with
social networks, the engineering concepts and techniques of computer security
blend with the social processes of security. These new connectors for
computational and social software require a new "discipline of programming" of
global behaviors through local constraints. Since the new discipline seems to
be emerging from a combination of established models of security protocols with
older methods of procedural programming, we use the name procedures for these
new connectors, that generalize protocols. In the present paper we propose
actor-networks as a formal model of computation in heterogenous networks of
computers, humans and their devices; and we introduce Procedure Derivation
Logic (PDL) as a framework for reasoning about security in actor-networks. On
the way, we survey the guiding ideas of Protocol Derivation Logic (also PDL)
that evolved through our work in security in last 10 years. Both formalisms are
geared towards graphic reasoning and tool support. We illustrate their workings
by analysing a popular form of two-factor authentication, and a multi-channel
device pairing procedure, devised for this occasion.Comment: 32 pages, 12 figures, 3 tables; journal submission; extended
references, added discussio
Quantifying pervasive authentication: the case of the Hancke-Kuhn protocol
As mobile devices pervade physical space, the familiar authentication
patterns are becoming insufficient: besides entity authentication, many
applications require, e.g., location authentication. Many interesting protocols
have been proposed and implemented to provide such strengthened forms of
authentication, but there are very few proofs that such protocols satisfy the
required security properties. The logical formalisms, devised for reasoning
about security protocols on standard computer networks, turn out to be
difficult to adapt for reasoning about hybrid protocols, used in pervasive and
heterogenous networks.
We refine the Dolev-Yao-style algebraic method for protocol analysis by a
probabilistic model of guessing, needed to analyze protocols that mix weak
cryptography with physical properties of nonstandard communication channels.
Applying this model, we provide a precise security proof for a proximity
authentication protocol, due to Hancke and Kuhn, that uses a subtle form of
probabilistic reasoning to achieve its goals.Comment: 31 pages, 2 figures; short version of this paper appeared in the
Proceedings of MFPS 201
A framework for compositional verification of security protocols
Automatic security protocol analysis is currently feasible only for small protocols. Since larger protocols quite often are composed of many small protocols, compositional analysis is an attractive, but non-trivial approach.
We have developed a framework for compositional analysis of a large class of security protocols. The framework is intended to facilitate automatic as well as manual verification of large structured security protocols. Our approach is to verify properties of component protocols in a multi-protocol environment, then deduce properties about the composed protocol. To reduce the complexity of multi-protocol verification, we introduce a notion of protocol independence and prove a number of theorems that enable analysis of independent component protocols in isolation.
To illustrate the applicability of our framework to real-world protocols, we study a key establishment sequence in WiMAX consisting of three subprotocols. Except for a small amount of trivial reasoning, the analysis is done using automatic tools
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