Key establishment --- security models, protocols and usage

Key establishment is the process whereby two or more parties derive a shared secret, typically used for subsequent confidential communication. However, identifying the exact security requirements for key establishment protocols is a non-trivial task. This thesis compares, extends and merges existing security definitions and models for key establishment protocols. The primary focus is on two-party key agreement schemes in the public-key setting. On one hand new protocols are proposed and analyzed in the existing Canetti-Krawzcyk model. On the other hand the thesis develops a security model and novel definition that capture the essential security attributes of the standardized Unified Model key agreement protocol. These analyses lead to the development of a new security model and related definitions that combine and extend the Canetti-Krawzcyk pre- and post- specified peer models in terms of provided security assurances. The thesis also provides a complete analysis of a one-pass key establishment scheme. There are security goals that no one-pass key establishment scheme can achieve, and hence the two-pass security models and definitions need to be adapted for one-pass protocols. The analysis provided here includes the description of the required modification to the underlying security model. Finally, a complete security argument meeting these altered conditions is presented as evidence supporting the security of the one-pass scheme. Lastly, validation and reusing short lived key pairs are related to efficiency, which is a major objective in practice. The thesis considers the formal implication of omitting validation steps and reusing short lived key pairs. The conclusions reached support the generally accepted cryptographic conventions that incoming messages should not be blindly trusted and extra care should be taken when key pairs are reused

A New Security Model for Authenticated Key Agreement

The Canetti--Krawczyk (CK) and extended Canetti--Krawczyk (eCK) security models, are widely used to provide security arguments for key agreement protocols. We discuss security shades in the (e)CK models, and some practical attacks unconsidered in (e)CK--security arguments. We propose a strong security model which encompasses the eCK one. We also propose a new protocol, called Strengthened MQV (SMQV), which in addition to provide the same efficiency as the (H)MQV protocols, is particularly suited for distributed implementations wherein a tamper--proof device is used to store long--lived keys, while session keys are used on an untrusted host machine. The SMQV protocol meets our security definition under the Gap Diffie--Hellman assumption and the Random Oracle model

Sufficient condition for ephemeral key-leakage resilient tripartite key exchange

17th Australasian Conference on Information Security and Privacy, ACISP 2012; Wollongong, NSW; Australia; 9 July 2012 through 11 July 2012Tripartite (Diffie-Hellman) Key Exchange (3KE), introduced by Joux (ANTS-IV 2000), represents today the only known class of group key exchange protocols, in which computation of unauthenticated session keys requires one round and proceeds with minimal computation and communication overhead. The first one-round authenticated 3KE version that preserved the unique efficiency properties of the original protocol and strengthened its security towards resilience against leakage of ephemeral (session-dependent) secrets was proposed recently by Manulis, Suzuki, and Ustaoglu (ICISC 2009). In this work we explore sufficient conditions for building such protocols. We define a set of admissible polynomials and show how their construction generically implies 3KE protocols with the desired security and efficiency properties. Our result generalizes the previous 3KE protocol and gives rise to many new authenticated constructions, all of which enjoy forward secrecy and resilience to ephemeral key-leakage under the gap Bilinear Diffie-Hellman assumption in the random oracle model. © 2012 Springer-Verlag

Multi-User CDH Problems and the Concrete Security of NAXOS and HMQV

We introduce CorrGapCDH, the Gap Computational Diffie-Hellman problem in the multi-user setting with Corruptions. In the random oracle model, our assumption tightly implies the security of the authenticated key exchange protocols NAXOS in the eCK model and (a simplified version of) X3DH without ephemeral key reveal. We prove hardness of CorrGapCDH in the generic group model, with optimal bounds matching the one of the discrete logarithm problem. We also introduce CorrCRGapCDH, a stronger Challenge-Response variant of our assumption. Unlike standard GapCDH, CorrCRGapCDH implies the security of the popular AKE protocol HMQV in the eCK model, tightly and without rewinding. Again, we prove hardness of CorrCRGapCDH in the generic group model, with (almost) optimal bounds. Our new results allow implementations of NAXOS, X3DH, and HMQV without having to adapt the group sizes to account for the tightness loss of previous reductions. As a side result of independent interest, we also obtain modular and simple security proofs from standard GapCDH with tightness loss, improving previously known bounds

Comparing SessionStateReveal and EphemeralKeyReveal for Diffie-Hellman protocols (extended version)

This is an extended version that includes security arguments and more elaborate comparison.Both the ``eCK'' model, by LaMacchia, Lauter and Mityagin, and the ``CK01'' model, by Canetti and Krawczyk, address the effect of leaking session specific ephemeral data on the security of key establishment schemes. The CK01-adversary is given a \SessionStateReveal{} query to learn session specific private data defined by the protocol specification, whereas the eCK-adversary is equipped with an \RevealEphemeralKey{} query to access all ephemeral private input required to carry session computations. \SessionStateReveal{} \emph{cannot} be issued against the test session; by contrast \RevealEphemeralKey{} \emph{can} be used against the test session under certain conditions. On the other hand, it is not obvious how \RevealEphemeralKey{} compares to \SessionStateReveal{}. Thus it is natural to ask which model is more useful and practically relevant. While formally the models are not comparable, we show that recent analysis utilizing \SessionStateReveal{} and \RevealEphemeralKey{} have a similar approach to ephemeral data leakage. First we pinpoint the features that determine the approach. Then by examining common motives for ephemeral data leakage we conclude that the approach is meaningful, but does not take into account timing, which turns out to be critical for security. Lastly, for Diffie-Hellman protocols we argue that it is important to consider security when discrete logarithm values of the outgoing ephemeral public keys are leaked and offer a method to achieve security even if the values are exposed