TAPS: A First-Order Verifier for Cryptographic Protocols

  • Authors:
  • Ernie Cohen

  • Affiliations:
  • -

  • Venue:
  • CSFW '00 Proceedings of the 13th IEEE workshop on Computer Security Foundations
  • Year:
  • 2000

Quantified Score

Hi-index 0.00

Visualization

Abstract

We describe a proof method for cryptographic protocols, based on a strong secrecy invariant that catalogues conditions under which messages can be published. For typical protocols, a suitable first-order invariant can be generated automatically from the program text, independent of the properties being verified, allowing safety properties to be proved by ordinary first-order reasoning.We have implemented the method in an automatic verifier, TAPS, that proves safety properties roughly equivalent to those in published Isabelle verifications, but does so much faster (usually within a few seconds) and with little or no guidance from the user. We have used TAPS to analyze about 60 protocols, including all but three protocols from the Clark & Jacob survey; on average, these verifications each require less than 4 seconds of CPU time and less than 4 bytes of hints from the user.