Ledger design language: designing and deploying formally verified public ledgers

Abstract

Cryptocurrencies have popularized public ledgers, known colloquially as "blockchains". While the Bitcoin blockchain is relatively simple to reason about as, effectively, a hash chain, more complex public ledgers are largely designed without any formalization of desired cryptographic properties such as authentication or integrity. These designs are then implemented without assurances against real-world bugs leading to little assurance with regards to practical, real-world security.Ledger Design Language (LDL) is a modeling language for describing public ledgers. The LDL compiler produces two outputs. The first output is a an applied-pi calculus symbolic model representing the public ledger as a protocol. Using ProVerif, the protocol can be played against an active attacker, whereupon we can query for block integrity, authenticity and other properties. The second output is a formally verified read/write API for interacting with the public ledger in the real world, written in the F ⋆ programming language. F ⋆ features such as dependent types allow us to validate a block on the public ledger, for example, by type-checking it so that its signing public key be a point on a curve. Using LDL's outputs, public ledger designers obtain automated assurances on the theoretical coherence and the real-world security of their designs with a single framework based on a single modeling language.

WARDOG: Awareness Detection Watchdog for Botnet Infection on the Host Device

“…Finally, the blockchaining enforces non-repudiation of the main performed actions. ProVerif validates the blocks' integrity, authenticity, and privacy, and consequently the security of the implemented chains [61]. The chaining approach offers the required authorship and accountability of each contributing participant, either for the attacked entity that informs about the ongoing incidents or the involved end-user machines that distribute their forensic data.…”