Summary: A Top�Down Look at a Secure Message
Mart��n Abadi 1 , C�edric Fournet 2 , and Georges Gonthier 3#
1 Bell Labs Research, Lucent Technologies
2 Microsoft Research
3 INRIA Rocquencourt
Abstract. In ongoing work, we are investigating the design of secure
distributed implementations of high�level process calculi (in particular,
of the join�calculus). We formulate implementations as translations to
lower�level languages with cryptographic primitives. Cryptographic pro�
tocols are essential components of those translations. In this paper we
discuss basic cryptographic protocols for transmitting a single datum
from one site to another. We explain some su#cient correctness condi�
tions for these protocols. As an example, we present a simple protocol
and a proof of its correctness.
1 Introduction
In the last few years, the scope of security protocols has grown, and so has their
complexity. In addition to basic functions such as authentication and key es�
tablishment, recent protocols sometimes support elaborate transactions. They
may comprise preliminary negotiations, where the parties discuss their prefer�
ences and expectations, and layers for application records and for error messages

Source: Abadi, Mart�n - Department of Computer Science, University of California at Santa Cruz

Collections: Computer Technologies and Information Sciences