Secure pseudonymous channels

  • Authors:
  • Sebastian Mödersheim;Luca Viganò

  • Affiliations:
  • IBM Zurich Research Laboratory, Switzerland;Dep. of Computer Science, University of Verona, Italy

  • Venue:
  • ESORICS'09 Proceedings of the 14th European conference on Research in computer security
  • Year:
  • 2009

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Abstract

Channels are an abstraction of the many concrete techniques to enforce particular properties of message transmissions such as encryption. We consider here three basic kinds of channels--authentic, confidential, and secure--where agents may be identified by pseudonyms rather than by their real names. We define the meaning of channels as assumptions, i.e. when a protocol relies on channels with particular properties for the transmission of some of its messages. We also define the meaning of channels as goals, i.e. when a protocol aims at establishing a particular kind of channel. This gives rise to an interesting question: given that we have verified that a protocol P2 provides its goals under the assumption of a particular kind of channel, can we then replace the assumed channel with an arbitrary protocol P1 that provides such a channel? In general, the answer is negative, while we prove that under certain restrictions such a compositionality result is possible.