Demonstrating the Necessity of Model Generation in Security Protocol Verification

Even if the verification of authentication protocols can be achieved through formal analysis, the modelling of such an activity is an error-prone task due to the lack of automated and integrated processes. This paper relies on Unified Modeling Language (UML) profiling and model-transformation techniques to enable automatic analysis of authentication protocols starting from high-level models. The original contribution of this paper is a concrete toolchain, based on a modular approach, to support the modelling and analysis of authentication protocols. In particular, we propose three nested Extended Backus-Naur Form (EBNF) grammars for the high-level specification of the protocol and a transformation from the high-level specification into a specific target language, that is Alice & Bob extended (AnBx). The generated AnBx model can be then formally checked with the Open-Source Fixed-Point Model Checker (OFMC) tool. The validity and necessity of the proposed toolchain is demonstrated with a case study taken from the literature.