Key establishment is the process whereby two or more parties derive a shared \nsecret, typically used for subsequent confidential communication. However, \nidentifying the exact security requirements for key establishment protocols is \na non-trivial task. This thesis compares, extends and merges existing security \ndefinitions and models for key establishment protocols. \n \nThe primary focus is on two-party key agreement schemes in the public-key \nsetting. On one hand new protocols are proposed and analyzed in the existing \nCanetti-Krawzcyk model. On the other hand the thesis develops a security model \nand novel definition that capture the essential security attributes of the \nstandardized Unified Model key agreement protocol. These analyses lead to the \ndevelopment of a new security model and related definitions that combine and \nextend the Canetti-Krawzcyk pre- and post- specified peer models in terms of \nprovided security assurances. \n \nThe thesis also provides a complete analysis of a one-pass key establishment \nscheme. There are security goals that no one-pass key establishment scheme can \nachieve, and hence the two-pass security models and definitions need to be \nadapted for one-pass protocols. The analysis provided here includes \nthe description of the required modification to the underlying security model. \nFinally, a complete security argument meeting these altered conditions is \npresented as evidence supporting the security of the one-pass scheme. \n \nLastly, validation and reusing short lived key pairs are related to \nefficiency, which is a major objective in practice. The thesis considers the \nformal implication of omitting validation steps and reusing short lived key \npairs. The conclusions reached support the generally accepted cryptographic \nconventions that incoming messages should not be blindly trusted and extra \ncare should be taken when key pairs are reused.
Key establishment is the process whereby two or more parties derive a shared \nsecret, typically used for subsequent confidential communication. However, \nidentifying the exact security requirements for key establishment protocols is \na non-trivial task. This thesis compares, extends and merges existing security \ndefinitions and models for key establishment protocols. \n \nThe primary focus is on two-party key agreement schemes in the public-key \nsetting. On one hand new protocols are proposed and analyzed in the existing \nCanetti-Krawzcyk model. On the other hand the thesis develops a security model \nand novel definition that capture the essential security attributes of the \nstandardized Unified Model key agreement protocol. These analyses lead to the \ndevelopment of a new security model and related definitions that combine and \nextend the Canetti-Krawzcyk pre- and post- specified peer models in terms of \nprovided security assurances. \n \nThe thesis also provides a complete analysis of a one-pass key establishment \nscheme. There are security goals that no one-pass key establishment scheme can \nachieve, and hence the two-pass security models and definitions need to be \nadapted for one-pass protocols. The analysis provided here includes \nthe description of the required modification to the underlying security model. \nFinally, a complete security argument meeting these altered conditions is \npresented as evidence supporting the security of the one-pass scheme. \n \nLastly, validation and reusing short lived key pairs are related to \nefficiency, which is a major objective in practice. The thesis considers the \nformal implication of omitting validation steps and reusing short lived key \npairs. The conclusions reached support the generally accepted cryptographic \nconventions that incoming messages should not be blindly trusted and extra \ncare should be taken when key pairs are reused.
The main goal of cryptography is to enable secure communication over a public channel; often a secret shared among the communicating parties is used to achieve this. The process by which these parties agree on such a shared secret is called key agreement. In this thesis, we focus on two-party key agreement protocols in the public-key setting and study the various methods used to establish and validate public keys. We pay particular attention to certificateless key agreement schemes and attempt to formalize a relevant notion of security. To that end, we give a possible extension of the existing extended Canetti-Krawzcyk security model applicable to the certificateless setting. We observe that none of the certificateless protocols we have seen in the literature are secure in this model; it is an open question whether such schemes exist. We analyze several published certificateless key agreement protocols, demonstrating the existence of key compromise impersonation attacks and even a man-in-the-middle attack in one case, contrary to the claims of the authors. We also briefly describe weaknesses exhibited by these protocols in the context of our suggested security model.
For a secure communication through the public network, cryptographic encryption must be applied. The key establishment issue is the most important part in cryptographic encryption. Only the legitimate principals who have the key can encrypt messages and decrypt cryptograms. A secure multi-party communication held through the public network can only take place after a multi-party key establishment protocol has been executed. The multi-party key establishment protocol is designed so that the principals can receive a common key and use it to securely exchange the messages.\nIn this thesis, the secure multi-party key establishment protocols are discussed. W e start from investigating properties of two-party key establishment protocols such as motivation of using session key, adversaries in the protocols, attacks of the protocol and security analysis of the protocol. Then we give the requirements of a multi-party key establishment protocol and summarize about what should be considered in designing a multi-party key establishment protocol. After that we review some of the previous proposed multi-party key establishment protocol. The existing multi-party key establishment protocols are either impractical ( not efficient enough) or missing some important security goals such as authentication of principals. Three new protocols are proposed in this thesis. The first protocol addresses how to hold a conference for members of two hierarchical groups in an efficient way. The message broadcasting is used to reduce the cost of secure message transport.\nThe second and the third protocols manage the authentication problem by using a secret sharing scheme. We replace the principal authentication with the group authentication so that the computational overhead and communication overhead will be reduced especially in reuse of the protocol for new communication. Again, message broadcasting is used for replacing the expansive secure communication channel.\nPart of this thesis appeared in ACSC'99(Australian Computer Science Conference) and ACISP'99(Australian Conference of Information Security and Privacy).
In the pre-specified peer model for key agreement, it is assumed that a party knows the identifier of its intended communicating peer when it commences a protocol run. On the other hand, a party in the post-specified peer model for key agreement does not know the identifier of its communicating peer at the outset, but learns the identifier during the protocol run. In this article, we compare the security assurances provided by the Canetti-Krawczyk security definitions for key agreement in the pre- and post-specified peer models. We give examples of protocols that are secure in one model, but insecure in the other. We also enhance the Canetti-Krawczyk security models and definitions to encompass a class of protocols that are executable and secure in both the pre- and post-specified peer models.
We study the problem of secure key establishment. We critically examine the security models of Bellare and Rogaway (1993) and Canetti and Krawczyk (2001) in the computational complexity approach, as these models are central in the understanding of the provable security paradigm. We show that the partnership definition used in the three-party key distribution (3PKD) protocol of Bellare and Rogaway (1995) is flawed, which invalidates the proof for the 3PKD protocol. We present an improved protocol with a new proof of security. We identify several variants of the key sharing requirement (i.e., two entities who have completed matching sessions, partners, are required to accept the same session key). We then present a brief discussion about the key sharing requirement. We identify several variants of the Bellare and Rogaway (1993) model. We present a comparative study of the relative strengths of security notions between the several variants of the Bellare-Rogaway model and the Canetti-Krawczyk model. In our comparative study, we reveal a drawback in the Bellare, Pointcheval, and Rogaway (2000) model with the protocol of Abdalla and Pointcheval (2005) as a case study.
We prove a revised protocol of Boyd (1996) secure in the Bellare-Rogaway model. We then extend the model in order to allow more realistic adversary capabilities by incorporating the notion of resetting the long-term compromised key of some entity. This allows us to detect a known weakness of the protocol that cannot be captured in the original model. We also present an alternative protocol that is efficient in both messages and rounds. We prove the protocol secure in the extended model. We point out previously unknown flaws in several published protocols and a message authenticator of Bellare, Canetti, and Krawczyk (1998) by refuting claimed proofs of security. We also point out corresponding flaws in their existing proofs. We propose fixes to these protocols and their proofs. In some cases, we present new protocols with full proofs of security. We examine the role of session key construction in key establishment protocols, and demonstrate that a small change to the way that session keys are constructed can have significant benefits. Protocols that were proven secure in a restricted Bellare-Rogaway model can then be proven secure in the full model. We present a brief discussion on ways to construct session keys in key establishment protocols and also prove the protocol of Chen and Kudla (2003) secure in a less restrictive Bellare-Rogaway model. To complement the computational complexity approach, we provide a formal specification and machine analysis of the Bellare-Pointcheval-Rogaway model using an automated model checker, Simple Homomorphism Verification Tool (SHVT). We demonstrate that structural flaws in protocols can be revealed using our framework. We reveal previously unknown flaws in the unpublished preproceedings version of the protocol due to Jakobsson and Pointcheval (2001) and several published protocols with only heuristic security arguments. We conclude this thesis with a listing of some open problems that were encountered in the study.
Key exchange protocols, first introduced by Diffie and Hellman in 1976, are one of the most widely-deployed cryptographic protocols. They allow two parties, that have never interacted before, to establish shared secrets. These shared cryptographic keys may subsequently be used to establish a secure communication channel. Use cases include the classic client-server setting that is for example at play when browsing the internet, but also chats via end-to-end-encrypted instant messaging applications. Security-wise, we generally demand of key exchange protocols to achieve key secrecy and authentication. While, informally, authentication ensures that the communicating parties have confidence in the identity of their peers, key secrecy ensures that any shared cryptographic key that is established via the key exchange protocol is only known to the participants in the protocol and can be used securely in cryptographic protocols, i.e., is sufficiently random. In 1993, Bellare and Rogaway gave a first formalization of key exchange protocol security that captures these properties with respect to powerful adversaries with full control over the network. Their model constitutes the basis of the many subsequent treatments of authenticated key exchange security, including the models presented in this thesis. The common methodological approach underlying all of these formalizations is the provable security paradigm, which has become a standard tool in assessing the security of cryptographic protocols and primitives. So-called security models specify the expected security guarantees of the scheme in question with regards to a well-defined class of adversaries. Proofs that validate these security claims do so by reducing the security of the overall scheme to the security of the underlying cryptographic primitives and hardness assumptions. However, advances in computational power and more sophisticated cryptanalytic capabilities often render exactly these components insecure. Especially the advent of quantum computers will have a devastating effect on much of today's public key cryptography. This is especially true for key exchange protocols since they rely crucially on public-key algorithms. In this thesis, our focus in future-proofing key exchange protocols is two-fold. First, we focus on extending security models for key exchange protocols to capture the (un)expected break of cryptographic primitives and hardness assumptions. The aim is to gain assurances with respect to future adversaries and to investigate the effects of primitive failures on key exchange protocols. More specifically, we explore how key exchange protocols can be safely transitioned to new, post-quantum secure algorithms with hybrid techniques. Hybrids combine classical and post-quantum algorithms such that the overall key agreement scheme remains secure as long as one of the two base schemes remains secure. For this, we introduce security notions for key encapsulation mechanisms that account for adversaries with varying levels of quantum capabilities and present three new constructions for hybrid key encapsulation mechanisms. Our hybrid designs are practice-inspired and for example capture draft proposals for hybrid modes in the Transport Layer Security (TLS) protocol, which is one of the most widely-deployed cryptographic protocols that enables key agreement. Furthermore, our notion of breakdown resilience for key exchange protocols allows to gauge the security of past session keys in the event of a failure of a cryptographic component in the key exchange. We exercise our model on variants of the post-quantum secure key exchange protocol NewHope by Alkim et al. Thereby, we confirm the intuition that, in order to guard against adversaries that only have access to quantum computing power in the (more distant) future, it is sufficient to use classically-secure authentication mechanisms alongside post-quantum key agreement to achieve authenticated key exchange. As with any mathematical statement, theorems in the provable security paradigm are only as valid as the underlying assumptions. A careful consideration of any newly made assumption is thus essential to ensure the meaningfulness of the statement itself and make the assumption a viable tool for future analyses. Thus, secondly, we systematically classify the PRF-ODH assumption, a complexity-theoretic hardness assumption that has been used in key exchange security analyses of such prominent protocols as TLS, Signal, and Wireguard. In particular, we give a unified, parametrized definition of the assumption encompassing different variants that are present in the literature. We relate the resulting parametrized notions in terms of their strength and show where these assumptions fit in the collection of well-understood related hardness assumptions. We finally sketch our result on the impossibility of instantiating this assumption in the standard model, thereby disposing of the uncertainty in the community whether PRF-ODH is in fact a standard model assumption, i.e., removes the usage of some idealized assumptions in key exchange protocol proofs.
This chapter considers key establishment protocols and related cryptographic techniques which provide shared secrets between two or more parties, typically for subsequent use as symmetric keys for a variety of cryptographic purposes including encryption, message authentication, and entity authentication. The main focus is two-party key establishment, with the aid of a trusted third party in some cases. While many concepts extend naturally to multi-party key establishment including conference keying protocols, such protocols rapidly become more complex, and are considered here only briefly, as is the related area of secret sharing. Broader aspects of key management, including distribution of public keys, certificates, and key life cycle issues, are deferred to Chapter 13 .