Master’s Thesis Presentation • Cryptography, Security, and Privacy (CrySP) • ProofFrog: A Tool For Verifying Game-Hopping Proofs

Please note: This master’s thesis presentation will take place in DC 2310.

Ross Evans, Master’s candidate
David R. Cheriton School of Computer Science

Supervisor: Professor Douglas Stebila

Cryptographic proofs allow researchers to provide theoretical guarantees on the security that their constructions provide. A proof of security can completely eliminate a class of attacks by potential adversaries. Human fallibility, however, means that even a proof reviewed by experts may still hide flaws or outright errors. Proof assistants are software tools built for the purpose of formally verifying each step in a proof, and as such have the potential to prevent erroneous proofs from being published and insecure constructions from being implemented. Unfortunately, existing tooling for verifying cryptographic proofs has found limited adoption in the cryptographic community, in part due to concerns with ease of use. 

This thesis presents ProofFrog: a new tool for verifying cryptographic game-hopping proofs. ProofFrog is designed with the average cryptographer in mind, using an imperative syntax for specifying games and a syntax for proofs that closely models pen-and-paper arguments. As opposed to other proof assistant tools which largely operate by manipulating logical formulae, ProofFrog manipulates abstract syntax trees (ASTs) into a canonical form to establish indistinguishable or equivalent behaviour for pairs of games in a user-provided sequence. We detail the domain-specific language developed for use with the ProofFrog proof engine as well as present a sequence of worked examples that demonstrate ProofFrog’s capacity for verifying proofs and the exact transformations it applies to canonicalize ASTs.

A tool like ProofFrog that prioritizes ease of use can lower the barrier of entry to using computer-verified proofs and aid in catching insecure constructions before they are made public.