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

A Bi-Hamiltonian Formulation for Triangular Systems by Perturbations

A bi-Hamiltonian formulation is proposed for triangular systems resulted by perturbations around solutions, from which infinitely many symmetries and conserved functionals of triangular systems can be explicitly constructed, provided that one operator of the Hamiltonian pair is invertible. Through our formulation, four examples of triangular systems are exhibited, which also show that bi-Hamiltonian systems in both lower dimensions and higher dimensions are many and varied. Two of four examples give local 2+1 dimensional bi-Hamiltonian systems and illustrate that multi-scale perturbations can lead to higher-dimensional bi-Hamiltonian systems.Comment: 16 pages, to appear in J. Math. Phy

Resisting tracker attacks by query terms analysis

Tracker attacks pose a serious threat to databases, especially those used in manufactory and management in industry. These attacks can be used to infer sensitive information in databases and they are difficult to detect. This paper proposes a new approach to dealing with such attacks by analysing each disjunctive term in every query statement. Potential tracker attacks will be detected and then suppressed to avoid any further real attacks. A sample database table and a sample attack are given and analysed to show the effectiveness of the new approach

Analysing the EAP-TLS handshake and the 4-way handshake of the 802.11i standard

The IEEE 802.11i standard has been designed to enhance security in wireless networks. The EAP-TLS handshake aims to provide mutual authentication between supplicant and authentication server, and then derive the Pairwise Master Key (PMK). In the 4 -way handshake the supplicant and the authenticator use PMK to derive a fresh pairwise transient key (PTK). The PMK is not used directly for security while assuming the supplicant and authenticator have the same PMK before running 4- way handshake. In this paper, the EAP-TLS handshake and the 4-way handshake phases have been analysed with a proposed framework using Isabelle tool. In the analysis, we have found a new Denial-of-Service (DoS) attack in the 4-way handshake. The attack prevents the authenticator from receiving message 4 after the supplicant sends it out. This attack forces the authenticator to re-send the message 3 until time out and subsequently to de-authenticate supplicant. This paper has proposed improvements to the 4-way handshake to avoid the Denial-of-Service attack

Suitability of A_4 as a Family Symmetry in Grand Unification

In the recent successful applications of the non-Abelian discrete symmetry A_4 to the tribimaximal mixing of neutrinos, lepton doublets and singlets do not transform in the same way. It appears thus to be unsuitable as a family symmetry in grand unification. A simple resolution of this dilemma is proposed.Comment: 6 pages, no figur

A refined invariant subspace method and applications to evolution equations

The invariant subspace method is refined to present more unity and more diversity of exact solutions to evolution equations. The key idea is to take subspaces of solutions to linear ordinary differential equations as invariant subspaces that evolution equations admit. A two-component nonlinear system of dissipative equations was analyzed to shed light on the resulting theory, and two concrete examples are given to find invariant subspaces associated with 2nd-order and 3rd-order linear ordinary differential equations and their corresponding exact solutions with generalized separated variables.Comment: 16 page

Effect of distribution of stickers along backbone on temperature-dependent structural properties in associative polymer solutions

Effect of distribution of stickers along the backbone on structural properties in associating polymer solutions is studied using self-consistent field lattice model. Only two inhomogeneous morphologies, i.e., microfluctuation homogenous (MFH) and micelle morphologies, are observed. If the system is cooled, the solvent content within the aggregates decreases. When the spacing of stickers along the backbone is increased the temperature-dependent range of aggregation in MFH morphology and half-width of specific heat peak for homogenous solutions-MFH transition increase, and the symmetry of the peak decreases. However, with increasing spacing of stickers, the above three corresponding quantities related to micelles behave differently. It is demonstrated that the broad nature of the observed transitions can be ascribed to the structural changes which accompany the replacement of solvents in aggregates by polymer, which is consistent with the experimental conclusion. It is found that different effect of spacing of stickers on the two transitions can be interpreted in terms of intrachain and interchain associations.Comment: 10 pages, 4 figures. arXiv admin note: text overlap with arXiv:1202.459