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Formal Analysis of Multiparty Contract Signing

Journal of Automated Reasoning volume 36, pages 39–83 (2006)Cite this article

Abstract

We analyze the multiparty contract-signing protocols of Garay and MacKenzie (GM) and of Baum and Waidner (BW). We use a finite-state tool, Mocha, which allows specification of protocol properties in a branching-time temporal logic with game semantics. While our analysis does not reveal any errors in the BW protocol, in the GM protocol we discover serious problems with fairness for four signers and an oversight regarding abuse-freeness for three signers. We propose a complete revision of the GM subprotocols in order to restore fairness.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. University of Sussex, Sussex, UK

    Rohit Chadha

  2. Laboratoire Spécification et Vérification, CNRS, UMR 8643, INRIA Futurs Projet SECSI & École Normale Supérieure de Cachan, 61, avenue du Président Wilson, 94235, Cachan Cedex, France

    Steve Kremer

  3. University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA, USA

    Andre Scedrov

Authors
  1. Rohit Chadha
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  2. Steve Kremer
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  3. Andre Scedrov
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Steve Kremer.

Additional information

*Partially supported by the ONR CIP/SW URI “Software Quality and Infrastructure Protection for Diffuse Computing” through ONR Grant N00014-01-1-0795 and by the NSF Grant CCR-0098096 and the EU Global Computing project “MIKADO”.

**This research was partially carried out while the author stayed at the University of Pennsylvania funded by the “Communauté Française de Belgique”. Partially supported by the ACI-SI Rossignol, the ACI JC 9005, and the RNTL project PROUVÉ 03V360.

†Partially supported by OSD/ONR CIP/SW URI “Software Quality and Infrastructure Protection for Diffuse Computing” through ONR Grant N00014-01-1-0795 and OSD/ONR CIP/SW URI “Trustworthy Infrastructure, Mechanisms, and Experimentation for Diffuse Computing” through ONR Grant N00014-04-1-0725. Additional support from NSF Grants CCR-0098096 and CNS-0429689.

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Chadha, R., Kremer, S. & Scedrov, A. Formal Analysis of Multiparty Contract Signing. J Autom Reasoning 36, 39–83 (2006). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10817-005-9019-5

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10817-005-9019-5

Key words

  • multiparty contract signing
  • GM protocol