Collaborative Research: High-Fidelity Methods for Security Protocols

PI: John Mitchell, Andre Scedrov, Vitaly Shmatikov, Daniele Micciancio

The design and security analysis of protocols that use cryptographic primitives is one of the most fundamental and challenging areas of computer security research. This project focuses on three topics: foundations of protocol analysis, automated tools, and application of tools and methods to selected protocols. Foundational work centers on relating and combining two previously separate approaches: logical methods based on symbolic execution of protocols, and computational methods involving probability and polynomial-time. The symbolic approach uses a highly idealized representation of cryptographic primitives and has been a successful basis for automated tools. Conversely, the computational approach yields more insight into the strength and vulnerabilities of protocols, but is difficult to apply and only accessible to a small number of true experts in the field. Building on past success using several automated tools, the project will devise tool-based methods that leverage new scientific foundations. Three likely application areas are secure group communication and key agreement protocols, schemes for privacy-preserving computations, and wireless networking and applications. In each of these areas, there is current demand for new secure protocols from user communities, there is ongoing activity in the research and standardization communities, and the value of combining symbolic and computational analysis concepts is evident.

Agency
National Science Foundation (NSF)
Institute
Division of Computer and Network Systems (CNS)
Application #
0430076
Program Officer
Carl Landwehr
Project Start
Project End
Budget Start
2004-10-01
Budget End
2005-01-31
Support Year
Fiscal Year
2004
Total Cost
$315,000
Indirect Cost
Name
Sri International
Department
Type
DUNS #
City
Menlo Park
State
CA
Country
United States
Zip Code
94025