Complexity of Security Protocols Verification Tools

Since the eighties of the XX century, many methods and several automatic tools for security protocols verification have been introduced and successfully used. These tools allowed protocols designers to discover many types of attacks upon security solutions in open computer networks. In this paper, we deal with the formal analysis of the complexity of structures used in such tools. In that sense, we are trying to compare two tools developed and successfully used over many years. Firstly, we examine the complexity of the structures used in the SATMC tool, one of the modules of the well-known AVISPA tool, probably the most famous and the most effective in this area. The second analyzed formalism is the cryptographic module of the VerICS tool, constructed for verification of various kinds of concurrent systems. In both cases, we show basic concepts of verification way, present structures used and discuss based on them the protocol verification process. Finally, we try to estimate and compare the complexity of the structures constructed by these tools during the security protocols’ automatic verification process.