Symbolic protocol verification with dice: process equivalences in the presence of probabilities
Author
Abstract

Protocol Verification - Symbolic protocol verification generally abstracts probabilities away, considering computations that succeed only with negligible probability, such as guessing random numbers or breaking an encryption scheme, as impossible. This abstraction, sometimes referred to as the perfect cryptography assumption, has shown very useful as it simplifies automation of the analysis. However, probabilities may also appear in the control flow where they are generally not negligible. In this paper we consider a framework for symbolic protocol analysis with a probabilistic choice operator: the probabilistic applied pi calculus. We define and explore the relationships between several behavioral equivalences. In particular we show the need for randomized schedulers and exhibit a counterexample to a result in a previous work that relied on nonrandomized ones. As in other frameworks that mix both non-deterministic and probabilistic choices, schedulers may sometimes be unrealistically powerful. We therefore consider two subclasses of processes that avoid this problem. In particular, when considering purely non-deterministic protocols, as is done in classical symbolic verification, we show that a probabilistic adversary has—maybe surprisingly—a strictly superior distinguishing power for may testing, which, when the number of sessions is bounded, we show to coincide with purely possibilistic similarity.

Year of Publication
2022
Date Published
aug
Publisher
IEEE
Conference Location
Haifa, Israel
ISBN Number
978-1-66548-417-6
URL
https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/9919644/
DOI
10.1109/CSF54842.2022.9919644
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