On the complexity of equational horn clauses

  • Authors:
  • Kumar Neeraj Verma;Helmut Seidl;Thomas Schwentick

  • Affiliations:
  • Institut für Informatik, Technische Universität München, Germany;Institut für Informatik, Technische Universität München, Germany;Fachbereich Mathematik und Informatik, Philipps-Universität Marburg, Germany

  • Venue:
  • CADE' 20 Proceedings of the 20th international conference on Automated Deduction
  • Year:
  • 2005

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Abstract

Security protocols employing cryptographic primitives with algebraic properties are conveniently modeled using Horn clauses modulo equational theories. We consider clauses corresponding to the class $\mathcal{H}3$ of Nielson, Nielson and Seidl. We show that modulo the theory ACU of an associative-commutative symbol with unit, as well as its variants like the theory XOR and the theory AG of Abelian groups, unsatisfiability is NP-complete. Also membership and intersection-non-emptiness problems for the closely related class of one-way as well as two-way tree automata modulo these equational theories are NP-complete. A key technical tool is a linear time construction of an existential Presburger formula corresponding to the Parikh image of a context-free language. Our algorithms require deterministic polynomial time using an oracle for existential Presburger formulas, suggesting efficient implementations are possible.