Abstraction and Refinement in Protocol Derivation

  • Authors:
  • Anupam Datta;Ante Derek;John C. Mitchell;Dusko Pavlovic

  • Affiliations:
  • Stanford University, CA;Stanford University, CA;Stanford University, CA;Kestrel Institute, Palo Alto, CA

  • Venue:
  • CSFW '04 Proceedings of the 17th IEEE workshop on Computer Security Foundations
  • Year:
  • 2004

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Abstract

Protocols may be derived from initial components bycomposition, refinement, and transformation. Addingfunction variables to a previous protocol logic, we developan abstraction-instantiation method for reasoning abouta class of protocol refinements. The main idea is to viewchanges in a protocol as a combination of finding a meaningful "protocol template" that contains function variables in messages, and producing the refined protocol asan instance of the template. Using higher-order protocol logic, we can develop a single proof for all instances of a template. A template can also be instantiated to another template, or a single protocol may be an instance of more than one template, allowing separate protocol properties to be proved modularly. These methods are illustrated using some challenge-response and key exchangeprotocol templates and an exploration of the design spacesurrounding JFK (Just Fast Keying) and related protocols from the IKE (Internet Key Exchange) family, which produces some interesting protocols not previously studied in the open literature.