Bisimulation-based Non-deterministic Admissible Interference and its Application to the Analysis of Cryptographic Protocols

Abstract

In this paper, we first define bisimulation-based non-deterministic admissible interference(BNAI), derive its process-theoretic characterization and present a compositional verification method with respect to the main operators over communicating processes, generalizing in this way the similar trace-based results obtained in [19] into the finer notion of observation-based bisimulation [6]. Like its trace-based version, BNAI admits information flow between secrecy levels only through a downgrader (e.g. a cryptosystem), but is phrased into a generalization of observational equivalence [18]. We then describe an admissible interference-based method for the analysis of cryptographic protocols, extending, in a non-trivial way, the non interference-based approach presented in [11]. Confidentiality and authentication for cryptoprotocols are defined in terms of BNAI and their respective bisimulation-based proof methods are derived. Finally, as a significant illustration of the method, we consider simple case studies: the paradigmatic examples of the Wide Mouthed Frog protocol [1] and the Woo and Lam one-way authentication protocol [25]. The original idea of this methodology is to prove that the intruder may interfere with the protocol only through selected channels considered as admissible when leading to harmless interference.