Bachelor’s Thesis

Specifying WiMAX in TamarinSupervisor: Ralf Sasse and Sasa RadomirovicProfessor: Prof. D. BasinIssue Date: Date of issue, 2013Submission Date: Date of submission, 2013

1 Introduction and Motivation

Widely-deployed cryptographic protocols are typically defined in standards. Nevertheless, the secu-rity of such standardized protocols varies wildly. For this reason, we are interested in a completeverification of the security properties of such protocols with a verification tool. A recent, powerfulautomatic verification tool is the Tamarin prover [1]. It formalizes protocols as multiset rewritingsystems and security properties are specified as first-order formulas over traces.

For this bachelor thesis we propose to analyze and model the security sublayer of the WiMAXprotocol (IEEE 802.16), using the Tamarin prover for modeling. If necessary, fixes for incorrectlyworking sub-protocols should be proposed and tested.

For background reading, the WiMAX standard is available at http://standards.ieee.org/

getieee802/download/802.16-2012.pdf (2544 pages, of which Section 7 is the only relevantpart!). The Tamarin tool is documented at the website https://github.com/tamarin-prover/

tamarin-prover/blob/develop/data/doc/MANUAL.

2 Assignment

2.1 Objective

Model the security sublayer protocols of WiMAX in Tamarin. Specify and verify relevant securityproperties. Propose fixes for flaws discovered.

2.2 Tasks

The student’s core task is to model, analyze, and document the WiMAX security sublayer. We sug-gest the following initial breakdown of the task into subtasks, subject to refinement in the student’stime schedule.

1. Read section 7 of the WiMAX standard (2012 version).

2. Understand Tamarin protocol modeling.

3. Model WiMAX protocols.

1

4. Define and model appropriate security properties.

5. Analyze the protocols and propose fixes.

6. Write-up.

Optional Tasks

1. The standard allows for a variety of EAP authentication methods to be used. Model a numberof such methods.

2. Model and verify the WiMAX initial authentication protocol negotiation process.

2.3 Deliverables

1. At the end of the second week of the thesis a provisional time schedule for the bachelor thesismust be given, which is then discussed and refined together with the supervisor. Regularmeetings are expected to be held between the supervisor and the student.

2. At the end of the bachelor thesis, a presentation of 20 minutes, with additional time forquestions, must be given during an InfSec group seminar. It should give an overview as well ashighlight the most important details of the work. E-Mail Andreas Lochbihler one week beforewith an abstract.

3. The final report must be written in English and typeset in LATEX. It should include an intro-duction and motivation, an overview of the related work, and a detailed description of theobtained results. Three copies of the final report must be delivered to the supervisor.

4. All models developed during the thesis (including the LATEXcode for the final report) must bechecked into a version-controlled repository managed by the InfSec group. This code may beused by the InfSec group in any form for all purposes the group sees fit provided appropriatecredit to the student is given.

References

[1] Benedikt Schmidt, Simon Meier, Cas J. F. Cremers, and David A. Basin. Automated analysis ofdiffie-hellman protocols and advanced security properties. In Stephen Chong, editor, CSF, pages78–94. IEEE, 2012.

2