A BSP Algorithm for the State Space Construction of Security Protocols

Abstract

This paper presents a Bulk-Synchronous Parallel (BSP) algorithm to compute the discrete state space of structured models of security protocols. The BSP model of parallelism avoids concurrency related problems (mainly deadlocks and non-determinism) and allows us to design an efficient algorithm that is at the same time simple to express. A prototype implementation has been developed, allowing to run benchmarks showing the benefits of our algorithm.

A BSP Algorithm for On-the-fly Checking LTL Formulas on Security Protocols

“…State space of security Protocols [10] In this paper, we consider models of security protocols, involving a set of agents, given as a labelled transition system (LTS). We also consider a Dolev-Yao attacker that resides on the network [11].…”

“…BSP Computing of the state space [10] Based on the following properties, we have designed in [10] a BSP algorithm (in a SPMD fashion) for computing the state space of security protocols as shown in Fig. 3.…”

“…This algorithm gives better performances (less cross transitions) than a naive distributed one [10] and is able to dump all the known states at the beginning of each super-step allows to use less memory. Partial-order reductions [14] can also be introduced without really changing the algorithm.…”

“…Now, in the manner of [10], we can design our BSP algorithm which is mainly an iteration over the independant slices, one slice per super-step and, on each processor, working on independant sub-parts of the slice by calling SeqChkLTL. This algorithm is given in Fig 5. The main function is ParChkLTL, it first calls an initialisation function in which only the one processor that owns the initial state saves it in its todo list.…”

A BSP Algorithm for On-the-Fly Checking CTL* Formulas on Security Protocols

“…State space of security protocols [7] We models security protocols as a labelled transition system (LTS) where agents send messages over a network which contains a Dolev-Yao attacker [8]. The intruder can overhear, intercept, and synthesise any message and is only limited by the constraints of the cryptographic methods used.…”