Operational Semantics and Verification of Security Protocols

Security protocols are widely used to ensure secure communications over insecure networks, such as the internet or airwaves. These protocols use strong cryptography to prevent intruders from reading or modifying the messages. However, using cryptography is not enough to ensure their correctness. Combined with their typical small size, which suggests that one could easily assess their correctness, this often results in incorrectly designed protocols. The authors present a methodology for formally