07421 Executive Summary – Formal Protocol Verification Applied

Security protocols are a core part of distributed computing systems, and are part of our everyday life since they are used in web servers, email, mobile phones, bank transactions, etc. However, security protocols are notoriously difficult to get right. There are many cases of protocols which are proposed and considered secure for many years, but later found to have security flaws. Formal methods offer a promising way for automated security analysis of protocols. While there have been considerable advances in this area, most techniques have only been applied to academic case studies and security properties such as secrecy and authentication. The seminar brought together researchers deploying security protocols in new application areas, cryptographers, and researchers from formal methods who analyse security protocols. The interaction between researchers from these different communities aims to open new research topics, e.g., identify new security properties that need verification and refine abstractions of the abstract models of crytpographic primitives.