Symbolic Verification of Privacy-Type Properties for Security Protocols with XOR

In symbolic verification of security protocols, process equivalences have recently been used extensively to model strong secrecy, anonymity and unlinkability properties. However, tool support for automated analysis of equivalence properties is limited compared to trace properties, e.g., modeling authentication and weak notions of secrecy. In this paper, we present a novel procedure for verifying equivalences on finite processes, i.e., without replication, for protocols that rely on various cryptographic primitives including exclusive or (xor). We have implemented our procedure in the tool AKISS, and successfully used it on several case studies that are outside the scope of existing tools, e.g., unlinkability on various RFID protocols, and resistance against guessing attacks on protocols that use xor.