The Epistemics of Encryption
Annette Bleeker, Jan van Eijck

Abstract:
Message passing by means of public key encryption is described in
terms of doxastic dynamic logic. A secret message from agent A to
agent B can have as effect that B learns something new from A, but it
can also cause a change in the real world, when the contents of the
message forces B to cease trusting A. As a tool for analysing secret
message passing (and much else besides) we develop a framework that
allows changes of states conditioned by beliefs about those states.


Keyword(s): Epistemic logic; dynamic logic; epistemic actions;
cryptographic communication.