Towards Automatic Verification of Authentication Protocols on an Unbounded Network

  • Authors:
  • James Heather;Steve Schneider

  • Affiliations:
  • -;-

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

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Abstract

Schneider's work on rank functions provides a formal approach to verification of certain properties of a security protocol. However, he illustrates the approach only with a protocol running on a small network; and no help is given with the somewhat hit-and-miss process of finding the rank function, which underpins the central theorem.In this paper, we develop the theory to allow for an arbitrarily large network, and give a either clearly defined decision procedure by which one may construct a rank function, proving correctness of the protocol, or show that no rank function exists. We discuss the implications of the absence of a rank function, and the open question of completeness of the rank function theorem.