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A Proof of Revised Yahalom Protocol in the Bellare and Rogaway (1993) Model.

Kim‐Kwang Raymond Choo

Published Jan 1, 2007• 0 citations
OpenAlex

Abstract

Although the Yahalom protocol, proposed by Burrows, Abadi, and Needham in 1990, is one of the \nmost prominent key establishment protocols analysed by researchers from the computer security community (using automated proof tools), a simplified version of the protocol is only recently proven secure by Backes and Pfitzmann [(2006) On the Cryptographic Key Secrecy of the Strengthened Yahalom Protocol. Proc. IFIP SEC 2006] in their cryptographic library framework. We present a protocol for key establishment that is closely based on the Yahalom protocol. We then present a security proof in the Bellare, M. and Rogaway, P. [(1993a). Entity Authentication and Key Distribution. Proc. of CRYPTO 1993, Santa Barbara, CA, August 22–26, LNCS, Vol. 773, pp. 110–125. Springer-Verlag, Berlin] model and the random oracle model. We also observe that no partnering mechanism is specified within the Yahalom protocol. We then present a brief discussion on the role and the possible construct of session identifiers (SIDs) as a form of partnering mechanism, which allows the right session key to be identified in concurrent protocol executions. We then recommend that SIDs should be included within protocol specification rather than consider SIDs as artefacts in protocol proof.

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A Proof of Revised Yahalom Protocol in the Bellare and Rogaway (1993) Model

Kim‐Kwang Raymond Choo

Although the Yahalom protocol, proposed by Burrows, Abadi, and Needham in 1990, is one of the most prominent key establishment protocols analysed by researchers from the computer security community (using automated proof tools), a simplified version of the protocol is only recently proven secure by Backes and Pfitzmann [(2006) On the Cryptographic Key Secrecy of the Strengthened Yahalom Protocol. Proc. IFIP SEC 2006] in their cryptographic library framework. We present a protocol for key establishment that is closely based on the Yahalom protocol. We then present a security proof in the Bellare, M. and Rogaway, P. [(1993a). Entity Authentication and Key Distribution. Proc. of CRYPTO 1993, Santa Barbara, CA, August 22–26, LNCS, Vol. 773, pp. 110–125. Springer-Verlag, Berlin] model and the random oracle model. We also observe that no partnering mechanism is specified within the Yahalom protocol. We then present a brief discussion on the role and the possible construct of session identifiers (SIDs) as a form of partnering mechanism, which allows the right session key to be identified in concurrent protocol executions. We then recommend that SIDs should be included within protocol specification rather than consider SIDs as artefacts in protocol proof.

The Computer Journal•Jun 15, 2007•20 citations

Key establishment : proofs and refutations

Kim‐Kwang Raymond Choo

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.

•Jan 1, 2006•18 citations

On Session Identifiers in Provably Secure Protocols

Raymond Choo, Colin Boyd, Yvonne Hitchcock +1 more

We examine the role of session identifiers (SIDs) in security proofs for key establishment protocols. After reviewing the practical importance of SIDs we use as a case study the three-party server-based key distribution (3PKD) protocol of Bellare and Rogaway, proven secure in 1995. We show incidentally that the partnership function used in the existing security proof is flawed. There seems to be no way to define a SID for the 3PKD protocol that will preserve the proof of security. A small change to the protocol allows a natural definition for a SID and we prove that the new protocol is secure using this SID to define partnering.

•Jan 1, 2004•14 citations

On Session Key Construction in Provably-Secure Key Establishment Protocols: Revisiting Chen & Kudla (2003) and McCullagh & Barreto (2005) ID-Based Protocols.

Kim‐Kwang Raymond Choo, Colin Boyd, Yvonne Hitchcock

We examine the role of session key construction in provablysecure key establishment protocols. We revisit an ID-based key establishment protocol due to Chen & Kudla (2003) and an ID-based protocol 2P-IDAKA due to McCullagh & Barreto (2005). Both protocols carry proofs of security in a weaker variant of the Bellare & Rogaway (1993) model where the adversary is not allowed to make any Reveal query. We advocate the importance of such a (Reveal) query as it captures the known-key security requirement. We then demonstrate that a small change to the way that session keys are constructed in both protocols results in these protocols being secure without restricting the adversary from asking the Reveal queries in most situations. We point out some errors in the existing proof for protocol 2P-IDAKA, and provide proof sketches for the improved Chen & Kudla’s protocol. We conclude with a brief discussion on ways to construct session keys in key establishment protocols.

•Jan 1, 2005•5 citations

Future-Proofing Key Exchange Protocols

Jacqueline Brendel

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.

•Jan 1, 2019•0 citations

Revisit Of McCullagh-Barreto Two-Party ID-Based Authenticated Key Agreement Protocols.

Kim‐Kwang Raymond Choo

The recently proposed two-party ID-based authenticated key agreement protocols (with and without escrow) and its variant resistant to key-compromise impersonation by McCullagh & Barreto are revisited. The protocol carries a proof of security in the Bellare & Rogaway (1993) model. In this paper, it is demonstrated that the protocols and its variant are not secure if the adversary is allowed to send a Reveal query to reveal non-partner players who had accepted the same session key.

•Jan 1, 2004•3 citations
Although the Yahalom protocol, proposed by Burrows, Abadi, and Needham in 1990, is one of the \nmost prominent key establishment protocols analysed by researchers from the computer security community (using automated proof tools), a simplified version of the protocol is only recently proven secure by Backes and Pfitzmann [(2006) On the Cryptographic Key Secrecy of the Strengthened Yahalom Protocol. Proc. IFIP SEC 2006] in their cryptographic library framework. We present a protocol for key establishment that is closely based on the Yahalom protocol. We then present a security proof in the Bellare, M. and Rogaway, P. [(1993a). Entity Authentication and Key Distribution. Proc. of CRYPTO 1993, Santa Barbara, CA, August 22–26, LNCS, Vol. 773, pp. 110–125. Springer-Verlag, Berlin] model and the random oracle model. We also observe that no partnering mechanism is specified within the Yahalom protocol. We then present a brief discussion on the role and the possible construct of session identifiers (SIDs) as a form of partnering mechanism, which allows the right session key to be identified in concurrent protocol executions. We then recommend that SIDs should be included within protocol specification rather than consider SIDs as artefacts in protocol proof.
Although the Yahalom protocol, proposed by Burrows, Abadi, and Needham in 1990, is one of the most prominent key establishment protocols analysed by researchers from the computer security community (using automated proof tools), a simplified version of the protocol is only recently proven secure by Backes and Pfitzmann [(2006) On the Cryptographic Key Secrecy of the Strengthened Yahalom Protocol. Proc. IFIP SEC 2006] in their cryptographic library framework. We present a protocol for key establishment that is closely based on the Yahalom protocol. We then present a security proof in the Bellare, M. and Rogaway, P. [(1993a). Entity Authentication and Key Distribution. Proc. of CRYPTO 1993, Santa Barbara, CA, August 22–26, LNCS, Vol. 773, pp. 110–125. Springer-Verlag, Berlin] model and the random oracle model. We also observe that no partnering mechanism is specified within the Yahalom protocol. We then present a brief discussion on the role and the possible construct of session identifiers (SIDs) as a form of partnering mechanism, which allows the right session key to be identified in concurrent protocol executions. We then recommend that SIDs should be included within protocol specification rather than consider SIDs as artefacts in protocol proof.
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.
We examine the role of session identifiers (SIDs) in security proofs for key establishment protocols. After reviewing the practical importance of SIDs we use as a case study the three-party server-based key distribution (3PKD) protocol of Bellare and Rogaway, proven secure in 1995. We show incidentally that the partnership function used in the existing security proof is flawed. There seems to be no way to define a SID for the 3PKD protocol that will preserve the proof of security. A small change to the protocol allows a natural definition for a SID and we prove that the new protocol is secure using this SID to define partnering.
We examine the role of session key construction in provablysecure key establishment protocols. We revisit an ID-based key establishment protocol due to Chen & Kudla (2003) and an ID-based protocol 2P-IDAKA due to McCullagh & Barreto (2005). Both protocols carry proofs of security in a weaker variant of the Bellare & Rogaway (1993) model where the adversary is not allowed to make any Reveal query. We advocate the importance of such a (Reveal) query as it captures the known-key security requirement. We then demonstrate that a small change to the way that session keys are constructed in both protocols results in these protocols being secure without restricting the adversary from asking the Reveal queries in most situations. We point out some errors in the existing proof for protocol 2P-IDAKA, and provide proof sketches for the improved Chen & Kudla’s protocol. We conclude with a brief discussion on ways to construct session keys in key establishment protocols.
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.