Towards a Hierarchy of Cryptographic Protocol Models

Recently there has been an increasing amount of research on the introduction of cryptographic ideas into discrete methods for cryptographic protocol analysis. This is often done by developing a discrete model and a cryptographic model such that the discrete model can be shown sound with respect to the cryptographic model. In this position paper, the author presents a brief outline of a strategy for rendering the analysis of cryptographic protocols by formal methods both sound and tractable. She also talks about some of the other issues in cryptographic protocol analysis that could be addressed with this approach, and proposes a hierarchy of models.