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Advanced Features in Protocol Verification: Theory, Properties, and Efficiency in Maude-NPA

The area of formal analysis of cryptographic protocols has been an active
one since the mid 80’s. The idea is to verify communication protocols
that use encryption to guarantee secrecy and that use authentication of
data to ensure security. Formal methods are used in protocol analysis to
provide formal proofs of security, and to uncover bugs and security flaws
that in some cases had remained unknown long after the original protocol
publication, such as the case of the well known Needham-Schroeder
Public Key (NSPK) protocol. In this thesis we tackle problems regarding
the three main pillars of protocol verification: modelling capabilities,
verifiable properties, and efficiency.
This thesis is devoted to investigate advanced features in the analysis
of cryptographic protocols tailored to the Maude-NPA tool. This tool
is a model-checker for cryptographic protocol analysis that allows for
the incorporation of different equational theories and operates in the
unbounded session model without the use of data or control abstraction.
An important contribution of this thesis is relative to theoretical aspects
of protocol verification in Maude-NPA. First, we define a forwards
operational semantics, using rewriting logic as the theoretical framework
and the Maude programming language as tool support. This is the first
time that a forwards rewriting-based semantics is given for Maude-NPA.
Second, we also study the problem that arises in cryptographic protocol
analysis when it is necessary to guarantee that certain terms generated
during a state exploration are in normal form with respect to the protocol
equational theory.
We also study techniques to extend Maude-NPA capabilities to support
the verification of a wider class of protocols and security properties.
First, we present a framework to specify and verify sequential protocol
compositions in which one or more child protocols make use of information obtained from running a parent protocol. Second, we present a
theoretical framework to specify and verify protocol indistinguishability
in Maude-NPA. This kind of properties aim to verify that an attacker
cannot distinguish between two versions of a protocol: for example, one
using one secret and one using another, as it happens in electronic voting
protocols.
Finally, this thesis contributes to improve the efficiency of protocol
verification in Maude-NPA. We define several techniques which drastically
reduce the state space, and can often yield a finite state space,
so that whether the desired security property holds or not can in fact
be decided automatically, in spite of the general undecidability of such
problems. / Santiago Pinazo, S. (2015). Advanced Features in Protocol Verification: Theory, Properties, and Efficiency in Maude-NPA [Tesis doctoral]. Universitat Politècnica de València. https://doi.org/10.4995/Thesis/10251/48527

Identiferoai:union.ndltd.org:upv.es/oai:riunet.upv.es:10251/48527
Date31 March 2015
CreatorsSantiago Pinazo, Sonia
ContributorsEscobar Román, Santiago, Universitat Politècnica de València. Departamento de Sistemas Informáticos y Computación - Departament de Sistemes Informàtics i Computació
PublisherUniversitat Politècnica de València
Source SetsUniversitat Politècnica de València
LanguageEnglish
Detected LanguageEnglish
Typeinfo:eu-repo/semantics/doctoralThesis, info:eu-repo/semantics/acceptedVersion
Rightshttp://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/, info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess

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