Informal specification-based performance evaluation of security protocols

Abstract

We propose a performance evaluation method for security protocols. Based on the informal specification, we construct a canonical model which includes, alongside protocol messages, cryptographic operations performed by participants in the process of message construction. Each cryptographic operation is assigned a cost modeled as a function of the size of processed message components. We model not only the size of regular message components but also the size of ciphertext produced by various cryptographic operations. We illustrate the applicability of our method by comparatively analyzing the performance of the original CCITT X.509 protocol and a slightly modified version of the same protocol.