Analysing the Combined Kerberos Timed Authentication Protocol and Frequent Key Renewal Using CSP and Rank Functions

Authentication mechanisms coupled with strong encryption techniques are used for network security purposes; however, given sufficient time, well-equipped intruders are successful for compromising system security. The authentication protocols often fail when they are analysed critically. Formal approaches have emerged to analyse protocol failures. In this study, Communicating Sequential Processes (CSP) which is an abstract language designed especially for the description of communication patterns is employed. Rank functions are also used for verification and analysis which are helpful to establish that some critical information is not available to the intruder. In order to establish this, by assigning a value or rank to each critical information, it is shown that all the critical information that can be generated within the network have a particular characterizing property. This paper presents an application of rank functions approach to an authentication protocol that combines delaying the decryption process with timed authentication while keys are dynamically renewed under pseudo-secure situations. The analysis and verification of authentication properties and results are presented and discussed.