Introduction to POS: A Protocol Operational Semantics

A short introduction to two approaches in formal verification of security protocols: model checking and theorem proving

In this paper, we shortly review two formal approaches in verification of security protocols; model checking and theorem proving. Model checking is based on studying the behavior of protocols via generating all different behaviors of a protocol and checking whether the desired goals are satisfied in all instances or not. We investigate Scyther operational semantics as n example of this...

Reverse Engineering of Network Software Binary Codes for Identification of Syntax and Semantics of Protocol Messages

Reverse engineering of network applications especially from the security point of view is of high importance and interest. Many network applications use proprietary protocols which specifications are not publicly available. Reverse engineering of such applications could provide us with vital information to understand their embedded unknown protocols. This could facilitate many tasks including d...

Operational Semantics Rules as a Computational Coordination Mechanism in Multi-Agent Systems

In the recent years, several methods have been proposed to formally describe the unfolding of a communication process within a multi-agent system. Among those methods, some are perceived as future standards, but all bear limitations. Our goal here, is to look for a simpler and more general method that could formally describe interaction mechanisms during communications. We shall begin this pape...

Semantics of programming languages - an elementary introduction using structural operational semantics

A Formal Semantics for Protocol Narrations

Protocol narrations are an informal means to describe, in an idealistic manner, the functioning of cryptographic protocols as a single intended sequence of cryptographic message exchanges among the protocol’s participants. Protocol narrations have also been informally “turned into” a number of formal protocol descriptions, e.g., using the spi-calculus. In this paper, we propose a direct formal ...