Formal Security Proofs in a Post-Quantum World

Nov 22 14:00 ₂₀₂₂

Abstract: In the recent years, formals methods for security and their associated tools have been used successfully both to find novel and complex attacks on many protocols [A] and to help in their standardization process. They however face a new challenge with the increasing probability of quantum computers coming into the real-world: we need to be able to provide guarantees against quantum attackers.

In this talk, we will first present a broad overview of formal methods, outlining what is the general goal of the field. We will then focus on the post-quantum issue by presenting the corresponding concrete challenges, and thus multiple ways current computational proofs of security (proof for any Polynomial Time Turing Machine attacker) can fail against a quantum attacker. We will then present the first-order logic over which Squirrel is built, the BC logic, and show based on the first part where it fails at post-quantum soundness. In a third part, we will finally present our contribution: how we made the logic and thus the Squirrel prover post-quantum sound.