Symbolic bisimulation for the applied pi calculus ( extended abstract ) ⋆

Recently, we have proposed in [10] a symbolic semantics together with a sound symbolic labelled bisimulation relation for the finite applied pi calculus. By treating inputs symbolically, our semantics avoids potentially infinite branching of execution trees due to inputs from the environment. This work is an important step towards automation of observational equivalence for the finite applied pi calculus, e.g. for verification of anonymity or strong secrecy properties. We present some of the difficulties we have encountered in the design of the symbolic semantics.