Complete Lax Logical Relations for Cryptographic Lambda-Calculi

Abstract. Security properties are profitably expressed using notions of contextual equivalence, and logical relations are a powerful proof technique to establish contextual equivalence in typed lambda calculi, see e.g. Sumii and Pierce’s logical relation for a cryptographic lambda-calculus. We clarify Sumii and Pierce’s approach, showing that the right tool is prelogical relations, or lax logical relations in general: relations should be lax at encryption types, notably. To explore the difficult aspect of fresh name creation, we use Moggi’s monadic lambdacalculus with constants for cryptographic primitives, and Stark’s name creation monad. We define logical relations which are lax at encryption and function types but strict (non-lax) at various other types, and show that they are sound and complete for contextual equivalence at all types.

• Type: Conference
• Year: 2004
• Where: CSL
• Authors: Jean Goubault-Larrecq, Slawomir Lasota, David Nowak, Yu Zhang
• Keywords: Contextual Equivalence, CSL 2004, Lax Logical Relations, Logical Relations