A Rational Approach to Cryptographic Protocols

TL;DR

This paper applies game theory to analyze cryptographic protocols, enabling the modeling of honest and malicious behaviors to identify equilibrium strategies that enhance security.

Contribution

It introduces a novel game-theoretic framework for analyzing cryptographic protocols, incorporating adversarial behaviors to improve security solutions.

Findings

Protocols can be modeled as two-player games with strategic interactions.

Equilibrium conditions can be identified to protect honest parties.

The approach allows for stronger, more resilient cryptographic solutions.

Abstract

This work initiates an analysis of several cryptographic protocols from a rational point of view using a game-theoretical approach, which allows us to represent not only the protocols but also possible misbehaviours of parties. Concretely, several concepts of two-person games and of two-party cryptographic protocols are here combined in order to model the latters as the formers. One of the main advantages of analysing a cryptographic protocol in the game-theory setting is the possibility of describing improved and stronger cryptographic solutions because possible adversarial behaviours may be taken into account directly. With those tools, protocols can be studied in a malicious model in order to find equilibrium conditions that make possible to protect honest parties against all possible strategies of adversaries.