Animation of Natural Language Specifications of Authentication Protocols

Abstract

Problem Statement: A few visualization tools have been created for protocol design and analysis. Although these tools provide an environment for designing security protocols, each one has its own protocol definition language (its also called informal specification language). The problem is that the user should understand the language which related to the used tool in order to define an exist protocol or design a new one. For specification, a language needs to be intuitive as well as easily usable and understandable by the security protocol engineer. It must be able to precisely and unambiguously specify the behavior of security protocol. Approach: In this study, we propose an approach for protocol specification based on the Natural language definitions of protocol semantics. By using programmatic semantics together with animations, representational flexibility of different protocol demonstration is retained for as long as it is needed. Result: This study provides an environment that can be used by protocols designers to develop and investigate different scenarios of security protocols especially authentication protocols. Natural Language Protocol Specifications (NLPS) approach is used to define the protocol. The environment accepts the natural language text of protocol specifications and converts it to animations of protocol behavior. Conclusions/Recommendations: NLPS environment can really help protocol designer to consider and investigate the behavior of security protocols. It can also be used for teaching-learning security protocol concepts. In further, we will consider the possibility of analyzing security protocols using our NLPS environment and animation techniques in order to improve the correctness; that is determining whether or not the intended security properties of a protocol do hold.