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Documents authored by Erbatur, Serdar

Document
DOI: 10.4230/LIPIcs.FSCD.2025.18
Knowledge Problems vs Unification and Matching: Dichotomy Results

Authors: Serdar Erbatur, Andrew M. Marshall, Paliath Narendran, and Christophe Ringeissen

Published in: LIPIcs, Volume 337, 10th International Conference on Formal Structures for Computation and Deduction (FSCD 2025)

Abstract
The research area of cryptographic protocol analysis contains a number of innovative algorithms and procedures for checking various security properties of protocols. Most of these procedures focus on solving one of several "knowledge problems" that model intruder knowledge. Solving these problems can demonstrate the ability of the intruder to obtain some forbidden information of the protocol, such as secret keys. Two important examples of these problems are the deduction problem and the static equivalence problem. Deduction is concerned with the ability to derive a term from a set of terms (or knowledge) obtained from the observation of a protocol instance. Static equivalence, on the other hand, is concerned with distinguishing between two runs of a protocol based on two sets of knowledge. These two knowledge problems at first inspection appear to be very close to the older automated reasoning problems of matching and unification. However, this first impression is wrong, and there have been a few results that have shown theories where one problem, such as unification, is undecidable but another problem, such as deduction, is decidable. These existing dichotomy results were, however, incomplete, and not all cases had been examined, thus leaving the possibility of some connection between the problems for those unexamined cases. In this paper, we consider the missing dichotomy cases. For each of the remaining cases, we demonstrate a theory that separates the two problems. In addition, once the dichotomy results are completed, it leaves open the question of the existence of non-trivial classes of theories for which all four of the problems are decidable. One example for which this is true is the well-known class of subterm convergent term rewrite systems. In this paper, we develop another example, a class of restrictive permutative theories for which all problems are likewise decidable.
Cite as

Serdar Erbatur, Andrew M. Marshall, Paliath Narendran, and Christophe Ringeissen. Knowledge Problems vs Unification and Matching: Dichotomy Results. In 10th International Conference on Formal Structures for Computation and Deduction (FSCD 2025). Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs), Volume 337, pp. 18:1-18:17, Schloss Dagstuhl – Leibniz-Zentrum für Informatik (2025)

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@InProceedings{erbatur_et_al:LIPIcs.FSCD.2025.18,
  author =	{Erbatur, Serdar and Marshall, Andrew M. and Narendran, Paliath and Ringeissen, Christophe},
  title =	{{Knowledge Problems vs Unification and Matching: Dichotomy Results}},
  booktitle =	{10th International Conference on Formal Structures for Computation and Deduction (FSCD 2025)},
  pages =	{18:1--18:17},
  series =	{Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs)},
  ISBN =	{978-3-95977-374-4},
  ISSN =	{1868-8969},
  year =	{2025},
  volume =	{337},
  editor =	{Fern\'{a}ndez, Maribel},
  publisher =	{Schloss Dagstuhl -- Leibniz-Zentrum f{\"u}r Informatik},
  address =	{Dagstuhl, Germany},
  URL =		{https://drops.dagstuhl.de/entities/document/10.4230/LIPIcs.FSCD.2025.18},
  URN =		{urn:nbn:de:0030-drops-236331},
  doi =		{10.4230/LIPIcs.FSCD.2025.18},
  annote =	{Keywords: Knowledge Problems, Unification, Matching, Decidability}
}
Document
DOI: 10.4230/LIPIcs.FSCD.2023.30
Knowledge Problems in Security Protocols: Going Beyond Subterm Convergent Theories

Authors: Saraid Dwyer Satterfield, Serdar Erbatur, Andrew M. Marshall, and Christophe Ringeissen

Published in: LIPIcs, Volume 260, 8th International Conference on Formal Structures for Computation and Deduction (FSCD 2023)

Abstract
We introduce a new form of restricted term rewrite system, the graph-embedded term rewrite system. These systems, and thus the name, are inspired by the graph minor relation and are more flexible extensions of the well-known homeomorphic-embedded property of term rewrite systems. As a motivating application area, we consider the symbolic analysis of security protocols, and more precisely the two knowledge problems defined by the deduction problem and the static equivalence problem. In this field restricted term rewrite systems, such as subterm convergent ones, have proven useful since the knowledge problems are decidable for such systems. However, many of the same decision procedures still work for examples of systems which are "beyond subterm convergent". However, the applicability of the corresponding decision procedures to these examples must often be proven on an individual basis. This is due to the problem that they don't fit into an existing syntactic definition for which the procedures are known to work. Here we show that many of these systems belong to a particular subclass of graph-embedded convergent systems, called contracting convergent systems. On the one hand, we show that the knowledge problems are decidable for the subclass of contracting convergent systems. On the other hand, we show that the knowledge problems are undecidable for the class of graph-embedded systems.
Cite as

Saraid Dwyer Satterfield, Serdar Erbatur, Andrew M. Marshall, and Christophe Ringeissen. Knowledge Problems in Security Protocols: Going Beyond Subterm Convergent Theories. In 8th International Conference on Formal Structures for Computation and Deduction (FSCD 2023). Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs), Volume 260, pp. 30:1-30:19, Schloss Dagstuhl – Leibniz-Zentrum für Informatik (2023)

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@InProceedings{dwyersatterfield_et_al:LIPIcs.FSCD.2023.30,
  author =	{Dwyer Satterfield, Saraid and Erbatur, Serdar and Marshall, Andrew M. and Ringeissen, Christophe},
  title =	{{Knowledge Problems in Security Protocols: Going Beyond Subterm Convergent Theories}},
  booktitle =	{8th International Conference on Formal Structures for Computation and Deduction (FSCD 2023)},
  pages =	{30:1--30:19},
  series =	{Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs)},
  ISBN =	{978-3-95977-277-8},
  ISSN =	{1868-8969},
  year =	{2023},
  volume =	{260},
  editor =	{Gaboardi, Marco and van Raamsdonk, Femke},
  publisher =	{Schloss Dagstuhl -- Leibniz-Zentrum f{\"u}r Informatik},
  address =	{Dagstuhl, Germany},
  URL =		{https://drops.dagstuhl.de/entities/document/10.4230/LIPIcs.FSCD.2023.30},
  URN =		{urn:nbn:de:0030-drops-180148},
  doi =		{10.4230/LIPIcs.FSCD.2023.30},
  annote =	{Keywords: Term rewriting, security protocols, verification}
}
Document
DOI: 10.4230/LIPIcs.FSCD.2022.6
Combined Hierarchical Matching: the Regular Case

Authors: Serdar Erbatur, Andrew M. Marshall, and Christophe Ringeissen

Published in: LIPIcs, Volume 228, 7th International Conference on Formal Structures for Computation and Deduction (FSCD 2022)

Abstract
Matching algorithms are often central sub-routines in many areas of automated reasoning. They are used in areas such as functional programming, rule-based programming, automated theorem proving, and the symbolic analysis of security protocols. Matching is related to unification but provides a somewhat simplified problem. Thus, in some cases, we can obtain a matching algorithm even if the unification problem is undecidable. In this paper we consider a hierarchical approach to constructing matching algorithms. The hierarchical method has been successful for developing unification algorithms for theories defined over a constructor sub-theory. We show how the approach can be extended to matching problems which allows for the development, in a modular way, of hierarchical matching algorithms. Here we focus on regular theories, where both sides of each equational axiom have the same set of variables. We show that the combination of two hierarchical matching algorithms leads to a hierarchical matching algorithm for the union of regular theories sharing only a common constructor sub-theory.
Cite as

Serdar Erbatur, Andrew M. Marshall, and Christophe Ringeissen. Combined Hierarchical Matching: the Regular Case. In 7th International Conference on Formal Structures for Computation and Deduction (FSCD 2022). Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs), Volume 228, pp. 6:1-6:22, Schloss Dagstuhl – Leibniz-Zentrum für Informatik (2022)

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@InProceedings{erbatur_et_al:LIPIcs.FSCD.2022.6,
  author =	{Erbatur, Serdar and Marshall, Andrew M. and Ringeissen, Christophe},
  title =	{{Combined Hierarchical Matching: the Regular Case}},
  booktitle =	{7th International Conference on Formal Structures for Computation and Deduction (FSCD 2022)},
  pages =	{6:1--6:22},
  series =	{Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs)},
  ISBN =	{978-3-95977-233-4},
  ISSN =	{1868-8969},
  year =	{2022},
  volume =	{228},
  editor =	{Felty, Amy P.},
  publisher =	{Schloss Dagstuhl -- Leibniz-Zentrum f{\"u}r Informatik},
  address =	{Dagstuhl, Germany},
  URL =		{https://drops.dagstuhl.de/entities/document/10.4230/LIPIcs.FSCD.2022.6},
  URN =		{urn:nbn:de:0030-drops-162879},
  doi =		{10.4230/LIPIcs.FSCD.2022.6},
  annote =	{Keywords: Matching, combination problem, equational theories}
}
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