Summary: We introduce a definition of bisimulation for cryptographic protocols. The definition includes a simple and precise model of the knowledge of the environment with which a protocol interacts. Bisimulation is the basis of an effective proof technique, which yields proofs of classical security properties of protocols and also justifies certain protocol optimizations. The setting for our work is the spi calculus, an extension of the pi calculus with cryptographic primitives. We prove the soundness of the bisimulation proof technique within the spi calculus.