Verifying cryptographic protocols with subterms constraints

Abstract

Many analysis techniques and decidability results have been obtained for cryptographic protocols. However all of them consider protocols with limited procedures for the processing of messages by agents or intruders: Information expected in a protocol message has to be located at a fixed position. However this is too restrictive for instance to model web-service protocols where messages are XML semi-structured documents and where significant information (name, signature, ... ) has to be extracted from some nodes occurring at flexible positions. Therefore we extend the standard Dolev Yao intruder model by a subterm predicate that allows one to express a larger class of protocols that employs data extraction by subterm matching. This also allows one to detect socalled rewriting attacks that are specific to web-services. In particular we show that protocol insecurity is decidable with complexity NP for finite sessions in this new model. The proof is not a consequence of the standard finite sessions case; on the contrary, it provides also a new short proof for this case. © Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2007.