Take the 2-minute tour ×

I read many papers on authenticated key exchange protocols, and most security proofs are done by the authors. In this method, you can imagine that the efficiency is low. Moreover, even if you have proven an AKE protocol's security under a certain model (say eCK), you still cannot ensure the security under all other models, including real life.

This lead me to ask: Can verify protocol's with some automated tool, for example Tamarin? This would be very efficient after all. My initial worry would be whether this will be accepted by people and as convincing as the traditional way?

share|improve this question
Related, possibly duplicate: Is there an automated security protocol verification tool? –  Ilmari Karonen Oct 8 '13 at 20:36
no ,it's not that –  Alex Oct 8 '13 at 23:50
This is not a duplicate but off-topic nevertheless. It's a good question but it belongs on Security.SE with the title "how much trust can we place in protocol verifiers" or similar. Cheers –  rath Oct 9 '13 at 4:50
@rath i agree with you! but the answer i want is in Cryptography –  Alex Oct 9 '13 at 10:23
Do you think that there is an objective answer to this question or will the answer be necessarily opinion based? –  mikeazo Oct 9 '13 at 16:44
show 1 more comment

closed as primarily opinion-based by e-sushi, rath, Maeher, B-Con, Ricky Demer Oct 18 '13 at 6:09


2 Answers

We know that traditional mathematical proofs can contain mistakes, and that these mistakes can remain undiscovered for years. Sometimes, the scheme is secure even if the proof is incorrect, e.g. RSA-OAEP. Sometimes, the scheme is mildly flawed, the flaws undiscovered because of mistakes in the proof, e.g. HMQV. And sometimes a scheme is simply insecure.

We know that formal systems can fail to describe the real world and therefore prove incorrect results, e.g. BAN logic, but nowadays formal systems seem much more complete.

Formal systems typically work with idealized cryptography. It is sometimes possible to prove that some idealization is sound, but in general this is difficult. Which means that in principle, it might be possible to design schemes that are secure in the formal system, but insecure regardless of what cryptography is used to instantiate the formal object. Similar results exist for the random oracle model and the generic group model, but still the random oracle model is considered a good heuristic for security in the real world (the generic group model less so).

Many systems restrict attention to various forms of encryption and digital signatures. This is in some sense good, because it is likely that the idealization is sound. On the other hand, you often cannot even express Diffie-Hellman in the formal system, which means that it is less useful. Where Diffie-Hellman can be expressed, the group model is often very limited, which means that the formal system might be unable to express various attacks involving subtle properties of groups, and as such it is much less clear how sound the idealization is.

The end result is that formal systems with tool support that are sound and capable of modeling the schemes you are interested in are useful and often very easy to work with. Traditional mathematical proofs are useful, but they are difficult to work with.

share|improve this answer
add comment

Answers surely will be somewhat opinion-based, as no one can really say if manual checks are more or less convincing than automated checks. After all, both can be convincing if communicated/sold successfully to third parties.

From my personal point of view, the best approach would be to manually verify the results of automatic verifications. So, first automatic verifications and then manually checking/verifying the positive and negative results produced by the automatic verification tool(s). That's more thorough and you'll get the best out of both worlds.

Besides that, please remember there is no such thing like "100% security".
We can come close, but we'll most probably never be able to reach perfect security.

share|improve this answer
That's more thorough and you'll get the best out of both worlds. so what if there's a test case the tool doesn't cover? I'm sorry if I'm making a mistake, I've never used such a tool before so I don't really know how they work –  rath Oct 9 '13 at 20:35
@rath Well, if you can't find a tool to test and/or verify a specific case or implementation, logic implies you have no other option than to rely on manual verification alone. If you're a bit of a coder, it would make sense to create a software solution that's able to handle that specific case (if possible and if it makes sense). When done, you could either sell that software or provide it as a free download, depending on how capitalistic your endeavors are. ;) So: use software + independently verify manually, compare results of overlapping verifications, finally combine it all into 1 report. –  e-sushi Oct 10 '13 at 14:33
@rath Simple think "double-verification" (manual + software) for cases and areas where you have software-tools available, as that has the ability to double the human trust-factor in your report. Only when it's widely accepted that a specific software tool is able to perfectly check a specific case, I would be considering relying on software verification alone. But fact is, I have yet to meet a case where people didn't ask: "Have you cross-checked those software verification results?" So, in the end I personally always ended up with an additional manual verification to make reports trustworthy. –  e-sushi Oct 10 '13 at 14:41
add comment
