Optimization of ProVerif programs for AKE-protocols

Abstract

Cryptographic protocols are used to establish a secure connection between “honest” agents who communicate strictly in accordance with the rules of the protocol. In order to make sure that the designed cryptographic protocol is cryptographically strong, various software tools are usually used. However, an adequate specification of a cryptographic protocol is usually presented as a set of requirements for the sequences of transmitted messages, including the format of such messages. The fulfillment of all these requirements leads to the fact that the formal specification for a real cryptographic protocol becomes cumbersome, as a result of which it is difficult to analyze it by formal methods. One of such rapidly developing tools for formal verification of cryptographic protocols is ProVerif. A distinctive feature of the ProVerif tool is that with large protocols, it often fails to analyze them, i.e. it can neither prove the security of the protocol nor refute it. In such cases, they resort either to the approximation of the problem, or to equivalent transformations of the program model in the ProVerif language, simplifying the ProVerif model. In this article, we propose a way to simplify the ProVerif specifications for AKE protocols using the El Gamal encryption scheme. Namely, we suggest equivalent transformations that allow us to construct a ProVerif specification that simplifies the analysis of the specification for the ProVerif tool. Experimental results for the Needham-Schroeder and Yahalom cryptoprotocols show that such an approach can be promising for automatic verification of real protocols.