Modeling and verification of Extensible Authentication Protocol for Transport layer Security in Wireless LAN environment

Today complex edge services are positioned on the Wireless LAN, different cryptographic protocols with complex as well as reactive communication models and event dependencies are increasingly being specified and adopted. To ensure that such protocols (and compositions thereof with existing protocols) do not result in unacceptable behaviors (e.g., deadlocks or live locks); a methodology is desirable for the automated checking of the “correctness” of these protocols. In this paper, we present ingredients of such a methodology. Specifically, we show how SPIN, a tool used for the formal systems verification purposes, can be used to verify as well as quickly identify problematic behaviors (if any) in core component of emergent Wireless LAN with non trivial communication authentication constructs - such as Extensible Authentication Protocol (EAP) for Transport layer Security (TLS). In our analysis, we identify essential elements, model and verify the EAP - TLS protocol using SPIN. It will evidently provide an insight into the scope and utility of formal methods based on state space exploration in testing larger and complex systems, for example, the complete Wireless LAN authentication suit.