Modeling and analysis of security protocols using role based specifications and Petri nets

Roland Bouroulet (1) , Raymond Devillers (2) , Hanna Klaudel (3) , Elisabeth Pelz (1) , Franck Pommereau (1)

1 LACL - Laboratoire d'Algorithmique Complexité et Logique
2 SSD - Systèmes Distribués
3 IBISC - Informatique, Biologie Intégrative et Systèmes Complexes

In this paper, we introduce a framework composed of a syntax and its compositional Petri net semantics, for the specification and verification of properties (like authentication) of security protocols. The protocol agents (e.g., an initiator, a responder, a server, a trusted third party, ...) are formalized as roles, each of them having a predefined behavior depending on their global and also local knowledge (including for instance public, private and shared keys), and may interact in a potentially hostile environment. The main characteristics of our framework, is that it makes explicit, structured and formal, the usually implicit information necessary to analyse the protocol, for instance the public and private context of execution. The roles and the environment are expressed using SPL processes and compositionally translated into high-level Petri nets, while the context specifying the global and local knowledge of the participants in the protocol is used to generate the corresponding initial marking (with respect to the studied property). Finally, this representation is used to analyse the protocol properties, applying techniques of simulation and model-checking on Petri nets. The complete approach is illustrated on the case study of the Kao-Chow authentication protocol.

Mots clés: security protocols; formal specification; process algebras; Petri nets

Domaines: Informatique ubiquitaire; Logique en informatique [cs.LO]; Informatique et langage [cs.CL]; Modélisation et simulation

Roland Bouroulet, Raymond Devillers, Hanna Klaudel, Elisabeth Pelz, Franck Pommereau. Modeling and analysis of security protocols using role based specifications and Petri nets. International Conference on Application and Theory of Petri Nets (ICATPN'08), Jun 2008, Xi'an, China. pp.72--91, ⟨10.1007/978-3-540-68746-7_9⟩. ⟨hal-00340476⟩