Bridging Theory and Practice: An Executable Taxonomy of Security Properties for ProVerif and Tamarin

2026-05-28

AI Summary

Protocol designers often face a high barrier to entry in using formal verification tools such as ProVerif and Tamarin due to the lack of systematic guidance on translating security properties into executable models. This work addresses this gap by conducting a systematic review of 53 studies published between 2022 and 2025, resulting in the first comprehensive taxonomy of security properties tailored to mainstream verification tools. The taxonomy integrates informal explanations, first-order logic definitions, and tool-specific modeling exemplars. By bridging the gap between theoretical formulations and practical modeling, this study significantly enhances the accuracy and efficiency of protocol modeling. An accompanying open-source repository of illustrative examples further lowers the practical barrier to adopting formal verification in real-world protocol design.

Abstract

Security is critical for everything relying on modern digital systems. Because almost all digital interactions are governed by the Internet and cryptographic protocols, these protocols must serve as reliable mechanisms that guarantee core security properties, such as confidentiality and integrity. Formal verification of these protocols is a critical step in securing interconnected systems. Tools such as ProVerif and Tamarin are widely employed to perform automated verification. However, their effective use demands specialized domain knowledge, creating a significant learning curve for security protocol designers who often have a security, rather than a formal verification background. We therefore need structured, accessible resources to help protocol designers to express their design and requirements in the language of the formal verification tools. To address this, we introduce a systematic and evidence-based taxonomy of security properties. This taxonomy is derived from a literature review of 53 recent studies (2022-2025) that used ProVerif and Tamarin, providing an up-to-date view of verified properties. We systematically categorize and define these properties, providing both informal definitions for intuitive comprehension and rigorous formal definitions expressed in first-order logic for clarity and consistency. We further detail modeling patterns and implement executable examples in both ProVerif and Tamarin, collected in an open repository. This work advances the state of the art by bridging the gap between theoretical security property definitions and their practical, executable verification models.

Problem

• security properties
• formal verification
• ProVerif
• Tamarin
• executable taxonomy

Innovation

• executable taxonomy
• security properties
• formal verification
• ProVerif
• Tamarin