Towards a completeness result for model checking of security protocols

  • Authors:
  • Gavin Lowe

  • Affiliations:
  • -

  • Venue:
  • Journal of Computer Security
  • Year:
  • 1999

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Abstract

Model checking approaches to the analysis of security protocolshave proved remarkably successful. The basic approach is to producea model of a small system running the protocol, together with amodel of the most general intruder who can interact with theprotocol, and then to use a state exploration tool to search forattacks. This has led to a number of new attacks upon protocolsbeing discovered.However, if no attack is found, this only tells us that there isno attack upon the small system we modelled; there may bean attack upon some larger system. This is the question we considerin this paper: we prove that under certain conditions onthe protocol and the environment in which it operates, if there isno attack upon a particular small system (with one honest agent foreach role of the protocol) leading to a breach of secrecy, thenthere is no attack on any larger system leading to a breach ofsecrecy.