Justifying a dolev-yao model under active attacks

  • Authors:
  • Michael Backes;Birgit Pfitzmann;Michael Waidner

  • Affiliations:
  • IBM Zurich Research Lab;IBM Zurich Research Lab;IBM Zurich Research Lab

  • Venue:
  • Foundations of Security Analysis and Design III
  • Year:
  • 2005

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Abstract

We present the first idealized cryptographic library that can be used like the Dolev-Yao model for automated proofs of cryptographic protocols that use nested cryptographic operations, while coming with a cryptographic implementation that is provably secure under active attacks. To illustrate the usefulness of the cryptographic library, we present a cryptographically sound security proof of the well-known Needham-Schroeder-Lowe public-key protocol for entity authentication. This protocol was previously only proved over unfounded abstractions from cryptography. We show that the protocol is secure against arbitrary active attacks if it is implemented using standard provably secure cryptographic primitives. Conducting the proof by means of the idealized cryptographic library does not require us to deal with the probabilistic aspects of cryptography, hence the proof is in the scope of current automated proof tools. Besides establishing the cryptographic security of the Needham-Schroeder-Lowe protocol, this exemplifies the potential of this cryptographic library and paves the way for the cryptographically sound verification of security protocols by automated proof tools.