CDD researcher (M / F): Foundation and Development of a formal verification tool

In order to contribute to the foundation and development of the Squirrel tool, various activities may be carried out. This list is not exhaustive and can be discussed with the candidate.

- Graphic representation during the development of the proof. When performing a proof with the Squirrel tool, the goal and the available hypotheses are displayed in text mode. We would like to provide a graphical representation to help the user to complete his proof as is done for example in the Tamarin tool. For that, it will be necessary to understand the functioning of a Squirrel proof in order to be able to put forward in graphic form the essential elements.

- Executability of the specification. One difficulty in analyzing a protocol is to write a correct specification first. To verify that the specification produced is reasonable, one option is to simulate protocol executions. We would like to add this functionality to the Squirrel tool. We must begin by defining this notion of executability.

- Interfacing with SMT solvers. We would like to make the tool as automatic as possible especially for the proof of simple objectives. Some dedicated algorithms have already been implemented. However, to go further, we would like to propose an interface towards SMT solvers such as for example the Why3 solver. Again, a theoretical work will have to be done upstream to understand how an SMT solver can be used in this context.

The mission of the researcher will be to contribute to the implementation (theoretical foundations and development) of the Squirrel verification tool (https://github.com/squirrel-prover/squirrel-prover/), a tool dedicated to verification cryptographic protocols and whose foundations are based on logic.

The researcher will work at IRISA (Rennes).

Public research laboratory in computer science, automation, signal and image processing and robotics, located in Rennes, Lannion, Vannes and bringing together more than 800 people, IRISA manages around forty research teams, as well as several common services and technological platforms. Its resources are made up of staff, budgets, premises and equipment allocated individually by its 8 public institutions.

The researcher will join the SPICY team being created, whose activity targets research questions related to the security of cryptographic protocols.
The researcher will work with Stéphanie Delaune (IRISA, Rennes), Adrien Koutsos (Inria Paris, Prosecco), and David Baelde (ENS Paris-Saclay).