Attack Interference in Non-Collaborative Scenarios for Security Protocol Analysis [Extended Version]

Abstract

In security protocol analysis, the traditional choice to consider a single Dolev-Yao attacker is supported by the fact that models with multiple collaborating Dolev-Yao attackers have been shown to be reducible to models with one Dolev-Yao attacker. In this paper, we take a fundamentally different approach and investigate the case of multiple non-collaborating attackers. After formalizing the framework for multi-attacker scenarios, we show with a case study that concurrent competitive attacks can interfere with each other. We then present a new strategy to defend security protocols, based on active exploitation of attack interference. The paper can be seen as providing two proof-of-concept results: (i) it is possible to exploit interference to mitigate protocol vulnerabilities, thus providing a form of protection to protocols; (ii) the search for defense strategies requires scenarios with at least two attackers.