Formalizing and Analyzing the Needham-Schroeder Symmetric-Key Protocol by Rewriting

  • Authors:
  • Monica Nesi;Giuseppina Rucci

  • Affiliations:
  • Dipartimento di Informatica, Università degli Studi di L'Aquila, via Vetoio, 67010 L'Aquila, Italy;Dipartimento di Informatica, Università degli Studi di L'Aquila, via Vetoio, 67010 L'Aquila, Italy

  • Venue:
  • Electronic Notes in Theoretical Computer Science (ENTCS)
  • Year:
  • 2005

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Abstract

This paper reports on work in progress on using rewriting techniques for the specification and the verification of communication protocols. As in Genet and Klay's approach to formalizing protocols, a rewrite system R describes the steps of the protocol and an intruder's ability of decomposing and decrypting messages, and a tree automaton A encodes the initial set of communication requests and an intruder's initial knowledge. In a previous work we have defined a rewriting strategy that, given a term t that represents a property of the protocol to be proved, suitably expands and reduces t using the rules in R and the transitions in A to derive whether or not t is recognized by an intruder. In this paper we present a formalization of the Needham-Schroeder symmetric-key protocol and use the rewriting strategy for deriving two well-known authentication attacks.