Synthesis of winning attacks on communication protocols using supervisory control theory: two case studies

There is an increasing need to study the vulnerability of communication protocols in distributed systems to malicious attacks that attempt to violate properties such as safety or nonblockingness. In this paper, we propose a common methodology for formal synthesis of successful attacks against two well-known protocols, the Alternating Bit Protocol (ABP) and the Transmission Control Protocol (TCP), where the attacker can always eventually win, called For-all attacks. This extends previous work on the synthesis of There-exists attacks for TCP, where the attacker can sometimes win. We model the ABP and TCP protocols and system architecture by finite-state automata and employ the supervisory control theory of discrete event systems to pose and solve the synthesis of For-all attacks, where the attacker has partial observability and controllability of the system events. We consider several scenarios of person-in-the-middle attacks against ABP and TCP and present the results of attack synthesis using our methodology for each case.

Automated summary

This research focuses on the vulnerability of communication protocols in distributed systems and proposes a formal synthesis methodology for successful attacks against two well-known protocols. The approach considers the attacker's partial observability and controllability of system events and employs supervisory control theory for discrete event systems. The study presents several scenarios of person-in-the-middle attacks and showcases the results of attack synthesis using the proposed methodology.