Joshua D. Guttman, Jonathan C. Herzog, and Javier Thayer won MITRE's 1999 Best
Paper Award with their description of a technique that makes a significant
contribution to cryptographic protocol analysis. The paper, "Strand
Spaces: Proving Security Protocols Correct," describes the
use of an abstract mathematical construct (the strand space) in verifying
cryptographic protocols. It was published in the November 1999 issue of
the Journal of Computer Security.
Guttman observed that the significance of the paper is that it "invents a method for looking at a protocol and verifying that the protocol does what it is supposed to do." He explained that about half of all security protocols published don't do what they claim to do.
Vice President and Chief Technology Officer Dave Lehman, who chaired the Best Paper committee, noted that, "The need to verify message security has become increasingly important to MITRE's clients and to MITRE itself. Because the strand spaces approach described in this paper is both very powerful and relatively easy to apply, it may come to dominate the field of protocol analysis."
The paper itself defines a strand as "a sequence of events that it represents with an execution by a legitimate party in a security protocol or else a sequence of actions by a penetrator. A strand space is a collection of strands, equipped with a graph structure generated by causal interaction. In this framework, protocol correctness claims may be expressed in terms of the connections between strands of different kinds."
This year's competition drew 36 entries from across MITRE. In addition to the winner, 30 papers met the competition's criteria for technical content and required level of peer review. Each received a $1,000 incentive award.
A full listing of the 1999 award winners, many of which include abstracts of the entries and links to the full papers, follows.
A Method for Converting a Class of Univariate Functions Into d.c. Functions
Bruce W. Lamar
A Simulation Study of Adaptation in Traffic Management Decision Making under Free Scheduling Flight Operations
Gary L. Klein, Philip S. Anton
A Strategic Investment Model for Phaed Implementation of Flexible Manufacturing Systems
Bruce W. Lamar, Albert Lee
A Wide Area Augmentation System (WAAS) Availability Model and Its Use in Evaluating WAAS Architecture Design Sensitivities
Walter Poor, Jay Chawla, Steven Greanias, Deihim Hashemi, Pauline Yen
Analysis of the Pegasus Breakup
James G. Miller
An Examination of the Effects of Requirements
Changes on Software Maintenance Releases
Alan Skillicorn, George Stark, Paul Oman, Capt. Ryan Ameele
Capacity Improvement, Penalties, and the Fixed Charge Transportation Problem
Bruce W. Lamar, Gavin J. Bell, Chris A. Wallace
Cost Analysis
Francis M. Dello Russo, Paul R. Garvey, Neal D. Hulkower
Embedded Training for Complex Information Systems
Brant A. Cheikes, Marty Geier, Rob Hyland, Frank N. Linton, Annette S. Riffe, Linda L. Rod, Hans-Peter Schaefer
First-Class Views: A Key to User-Centered Computing
Arnon Rosenthal, Edward Sciore
Improved Performance of Recursive Tracking Filters Using Batch Initialization and Process Noise Adaption
Michael E. Hough
Incorporating Support for Model Execution within the Condition Specification
Ernest H. Page, Richard E. Nance
Interference Suppression via Operating Frequency Selection
Richard M. Davis, Ronald L. Fante, Thomas P. Guella, Robert J. Balla
Performance Analysis of Alternative Methods for LAAS Multiple Reference Consistency Check
Curtis A. Shively
Predicting the Effect of TCAS II on SAF
Michael P. McLaughlin
Risk Management
Paul R. Garvey
SAR Imaging of Moving Targets
Richard P. Perry, Robert C. DiPietro, Ronald L. Fante
Selected Papers on Satellite Based Augmentation Systems (SBASs) Global Positioning System (GPS)
M. Bakry El-Arini, Todd Walter
Strand Spaces: Proving Security Protocols Correct
F. Javier Thayer Fabrega, Jonathan C. Herzog, Joshua D. Guttman
Surviving Information Warfare Attacks
Sushil Jajodia, Paul Ammann, Catherine D. McCollum
Teaching Mechanical Skills with 3-D VRML Practice Environments
Janet Faye Johns
The Tail-Recursive SECD Machine
John D. Ramsdell
Trust: Benefits, Models, and Mechanisms
Vipin Swarup, Javier Thayer Fabrega
Trusted Recovery
Sushil Jajodia, Paul Ammann, Catherine D. McCollum
Unpacking The Semantics of Source and Usage To Perform Semantic Reconciliation In Large-Scale Information Systems
Ken Smith, Leo Obrst
Web Based Practice Environments to Teach Mechanical Skills
Janet Faye Johns
When Systems are Simulations: T&E, VV&A, or Both?
Priscilla A. Glasow, Michael Borowski
Best Paper Archives
Papers for the previous year are posted during the second half of the current year.
