In the area of network security, the fundamental security principles and security practice skills are both required for students ' understanding. Instructors

Cryptography and Network Security is a difficult subject to understand, mainly because of the complexity of security protocols and the mathematical rigour required to understand encryption algorithms. Realizing the need for an interactive visualization tool to facilitate the understanding of cryptographic concepts and protocols, several tools had been developed. However, these tools cannot be easily adapted to animate different protocols. The aim of this paper is to propose an interactive visualization tool, called the Cryptographic Protocol Animator (CPAnim). The tool enables a student to specify a protocol and gain knowledge about the impact of its behavior. The protocol is specified by using a scenario-based approach and it is demonstrated as a number of scenes displaying a complete scenario. The effectiveness of this tool was tested using an empirical evaluation method. The results show that this tool was effective in meeting its learning objectives.

Visual form description benefits from the ability of visualization to provide precise and clear description of object behavior especially if the visual form is extracted from the real world. It provides clear definition of object and the behavior of that object. Although the current descriptions of cryptographic protocol components and operations use a different visual representation, the cryptographic protocols behaviors are not actually reflected. This characteristic is required and included within our proposed visual model. The model uses visual form and scenario-based approach for describing cryptographic protocol behavior and thus increasing the ability to describe more complicated protocol in a simple and easy way.