Automated analysis of security protocols with global state

Security APIs, key servers and protocols that need to keep the status of transactions, require to maintain a global, non-monotonic state, e.g., in the form of a database or register. However, most existing automated verification tools do not support the analysis of such stateful security protocols - sometimes because of fundamental reasons, such as the encoding of the protocol as Horn clauses, which are inherently monotonic. A notable exception is the recent tamarin prover which allows specifying protocols as multiset rewrite (msr) rules, a formalism expressive enough to encode state. As multiset rewriting is a "low-level" specification language with no direct support for concurrent message passing, encoding protocols correctly is a difficult and error-prone process. We propose a process calculus which is a variant of the applied pi calculus with constructs for manipulation of a global state by processes running in parallel. We show that this language can be translated to msr rules whilst preserving all security properties expressible in a dedicated first-order logic for security properties. The translation has been implemented in a prototype tool which uses the tamarin prover as a backend. We apply the tool to several case studies among which a simplified fragment of PKCS#11, the Yubikey security token, and an optimistic contract signing protocol.

Data and Resources

Additional Info

Field Value
Source https://inria.hal.science/hal-00955869
Author Kremer, Steve, Künnemann, Robert
Maintainer CCSD
Last Updated May 5, 2026, 11:55 (UTC)
Created May 5, 2026, 11:55 (UTC)
Identifier hal-00955869
Language en
Rights https://about.hal.science/hal-authorisation-v1/
contributor Combination of approaches to the security of infinite states systems (CASSIS) ; Franche-Comté Électronique Mécanique, Thermique et Optique - Sciences et Technologies (UMR 6174) (FEMTO-ST) ; Université de Technologie de Belfort-Montbeliard (UTBM)-Ecole Nationale Supérieure de Mécanique et des Microtechniques (ENSMM)-Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS)-Université de Franche-Comté (UFC) ; Université Bourgogne Franche-Comté [COMUE] (UBFC)-Université Bourgogne Franche-Comté [COMUE] (UBFC)-Université de Technologie de Belfort-Montbeliard (UTBM)-Ecole Nationale Supérieure de Mécanique et des Microtechniques (ENSMM)-Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS)-Université de Franche-Comté (UFC) ; Université Bourgogne Franche-Comté [COMUE] (UBFC)-Université Bourgogne Franche-Comté [COMUE] (UBFC)-Centre Inria de l'Université de Lorraine ; Institut National de Recherche en Informatique et en Automatique (Inria)-Institut National de Recherche en Informatique et en Automatique (Inria)-Department of Formal Methods (LORIA - FM) ; Laboratoire Lorrain de Recherche en Informatique et ses Applications (LORIA) ; Institut National de Recherche en Informatique et en Automatique (Inria)-CentraleSupélec-Université de Lorraine (UL)-Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS)-Institut National de Recherche en Informatique et en Automatique (Inria)-CentraleSupélec-Université de Lorraine (UL)-Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS)-Laboratoire Lorrain de Recherche en Informatique et ses Applications (LORIA) ; Institut National de Recherche en Informatique et en Automatique (Inria)-CentraleSupélec-Université de Lorraine (UL)-Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS)-CentraleSupélec-Université de Lorraine (UL)-Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS)
creator Kremer, Steve
date 2014-03-05T00:00:00
harvest_object_id 5364cc51-b441-4989-8b28-5477e9db2f20
harvest_source_id 3374d638-d20b-4672-ba96-a23232d55657
harvest_source_title test moissonnage SELUNE
metadata_modified 2025-11-21T00:00:00
relation info:eu-repo/semantics/altIdentifier/arxiv/1403.1142
set_spec type:REPORT