Cryptanalysis of simple three-party key exchange protocol

Recently, Lu and Cao published a novel protocol for password-based authenticated key exchanges (PAKE) in a three-party setting in Journal of Computers and Security, where two clients, each shares a human-memorable password with a trusted server, can construct a secure session key. They argued that their simple three-party PAKE (3-PAKE) protocol can resist against various known attacks. In this paper, we show that this protocol is vulnerable to a kind of man-in-the-middle attack that exploits an authentication flaw in their protocol and is subject to the undetectable on-line dictionary attack. We also conduct a detailed analysis on the flaws in the protocol and provide an improved protocol.     

Security weakness in a three-party pairing-based protocol for password authenticated key exchange

Authentication and key exchange are fundamental for establishing secure communication channels over public insecure networks. Password-based protocols for authenticated key exchange are designed to work even when user authentication is done via the use of passwords drawn from a small known set of values. Recently, Wen et al. (H.-A. Wen, T.-F. Lee, T. Hwang, Provably secure three-party password-based authenticated key exchange protocol using Weil pairing, IEE Proceedings—Communications 152 (2) (2005) 138-143) proposed a new protocol for password-based authenticated key exchange in the three-party setting, where the clients trying to establish a common secret key do not share a password between themselves but only with a trusted server. Wen et al.’s protocol carries a claimed proof of security in a formal model of communication and adversarial capabilities. However, this work shows that the protocol for three-party key exchange is completely insecure and the claim of provable security is seriously incorrect. We conduct a detailed analysis of flaws in the protocol and its security proof, in the hope that no similar mistakes are made in the future.     

A round- and computation-efficient three-party authenticated key exchange protocol

In three-party authenticated key exchange protocols, each client shares a secret only with a trusted server with assists in generating a session key used for securely sending messages between two communication clients. Compared with two-party authenticated key exchange protocols where each pair of parties must share a secret with each other, a three-party protocol does not cause any key management problem for the parties. In the literature, mainly there exist three issues in three-party authenticated key exchange protocols are discussed that need to be further improved: (1) to reduce latency, communication steps in the protocol should be as parallel as possible; (2) as the existence of a security-sensitive table on the server side may cause the server to become compromised, the table should be removed; (3) resources required for computation should be as few as possible to avoid the protocol to become an efficiency bottleneck. In various applications over networks, a quick response is required especially by light-weight clients in the mobile e-commerce. In this paper, a round- and computation-efficient three-party authenticated key exchange protocol is proposed which fulfils all of the above mentioned requirements.     

Cryptanalysis of simple three-party key exchange protocol (S-3PAKE)

Password-authenticated key exchange (PAKE) protocols allow parties to share secret keys in an authentic manner based on an easily memorizable password. Recently, Lu and Cao proposed a three-party password-authenticated key exchange protocol, so called S-3PAKE, based on ideas of the Abdalla and Pointcheval two-party SPAKE extended to three parties. S-3PAKE can be seen to have a structure alternative to that of another three-party PAKE protocol (3PAKE) by Abdalla and Pointcheval. Furthermore, a simple improvement to S-3PAKE was proposed very recently by Chung and Ku to resist the kind of attacks that applied to earlier versions of 3PAKE. In this paper, we show that S-3PAKE falls to unknown key-share attacks by any other client, and undetectable online dictionary attacks by any adversary. The latter attack equally applies to the recently improved S-3PAKE. Indeed, the provable security approach should be taken when designing PAKEs; and furthermore our results highlight that extra cautions still be exercised when defining models and constructing proofs in this direction.     

Provably secure authenticated key exchange protocol under the CDH assumption

Constructing a secure key exchange protocol is one of the most challenging problems in information security. We propose a provably secure two-round two-party authenticated key exchange (2AKE) protocol based on the well-studied CDH assumption in eCK model to provide the strongest definition of security for key exchange protocol when using the matching session to define the partnership. The underlying hardness assumption (CDH assumption) of our protocol is weaker than these of four other provably secure 2AKE protocols in CK model or eCK model and the computational cost of our protocol is reasonable. We also present a three-round variant of our protocol to realize key conformation.     

Provably secure identity-based authenticated key agreement protocols with malicious private key generators

Identity-based authenticated key agreement is a useful cryptographic primitive and has received a lot of attention. The security of an identity-based system relies on a trusted private key generator (PKG) that generates private keys for users. Unfortunately, the assumption of a trusted PKG (or a curious-but-honest PKG) is considered to be too strong in some situations. Therefore, achieving security without such an assumption has been considered in many cryptographic protocols. As a PKG knows the private keys of its users, man-in-the-middle attacks (MIMAs) from a malicious PKG is considered as the strongest attack against a key agreement protocol. Although securing a key agreement process against such attacks is desirable, all existent identity-based key agreement protocols are not secure under such attacks. In this paper, we, for the first time, propose an identity-based authenticated key agreement protocol resisting MIMAs from malicious PKGs that form a tree, which is a commonly used PKG structure for distributing the power of PKGs. Users are registered at a PKG in the tree and each holds a private key generated with all master keys of associated PKGs. This structure is much more efficient, in comparison with other existing schemes such as threshold-based schemes where a user has to register with all PKGs. We present our idea in two protocols. The first protocol is not secure against MIMAs from some kinds of malicious PKGs but holds all other desirable security properties. The second protocol is fully secure against MIMAs. We provide a complete security proof to our protocols.     

Provably secure three-party password authenticated key exchange protocol in the standard model

Three-party password authenticated key exchange protocol is a very practical mechanism to establish secure session key through authenticating each other with the help of a trusted server. Most three-party password authenticated key exchange protocols only guarantee security in the random oracle model. However, a random oracle based cryptographic construction may be insecure when the oracle is replaced by real function. Moreover, some previous unknown attacks appear with the advance of the adversary capability. Therefore, a suitable standard model which can imitate a wider variety of attack scenarios for 3PAKE protocol is needed. Aim at resisting dictionary attack, unknown key-share attack and password-compromise impersonation attack, an expanded standard model for 3PAKE protocol is given. Meanwhile, through applying ElGamal encryption scheme and pseudorandom function, a specific three-party password authenticated key exchange protocol is proposed. The security of the proposed protocol is proven in the new standard model. The result shows that the present protocol has stronger security by comparing with other existing protocols, which covers the following security properties: (1) semantic security, (2) key privacy, (3) client-to-server authentication, (4) mutual authentication, (5) resistance to various known attacks, and (6) forward security.     

An efficient three-party authenticated key exchange protocol using elliptic curve cryptography for mobile-commerce environments

For secure communications in public network environments, various three-party authenticated key exchange (3PAKE) protocols are proposed to provide the transaction confidentiality and efficiency. In 2008, Chen et al. proposed a round-efficient 3PAKE protocol to provide the computation and communication efficiency for user authentication and session key exchange. However, we discover that the computation costs and communication loads of their protocol are still high so that it cannot be applied to mobile communications. Therefore, we propose an efficient three-party authenticated key exchange protocol based upon elliptic curve cryptography for mobile-commerce environments. Because the elliptic curve cryptography is used, the proposed 3PAKE protocol has low computation costs and light communication loads. Compared with Chen et al.’s protocol, the proposed protocol is more suitable and practical for mobile-commerce environments.     

A communication-efficient three-party password authenticated key exchange protocol

Three-party password authenticated key exchange (3PAKE) protocols allow two users (clients) to establish a session key through an authentication server over an insecure channel. Clients only share an easy-to-remember password with the trusted server. In the related literature, most schemes employ the server public keys to ensure the identities of both the servers and symmetric cryptosystems to encrypt the messages. This paper describes an efficient 3PAKE based on LHL-3PAKE proposed by Lee et al. Our 3PAKE requires neither the server public keys nor symmetric cryptosystems such as DES. The formal proof of security of our 3PAKE is based on the computational Diffie-Hellman assumption in the random oracle model along with a parallel version of the proposed 3PAKE. The comparisons have shown that our 3PAKE is more practical than other 3PAKEs.     

Improving the novel three-party encrypted key exchange protocol

In 2004, Chang and Chang proposed a three-party encrypted key exchange (ECC-3PEKE) protocol without using the server's public keys. They claimed that their proposed ECC-3PEKE protocol is secure, efficient, and practical. Unlike their claims, the ECC-3PEKE protocol, however, is still susceptible to undetectable on-line password guessing attacks. Accordingly, the current paper demonstrates the vulnerability of Chang–Chang's ECC-3PEKE protocol regarding undetectable on-line password guessing attacks and than presents an enhancement to resolve such security problems.     

Secure lightweight password authenticated key exchange for heterogeneous wireless sensor networks

Several three-party password authenticated key exchange (3-PAKE) protocols have recently been proposed for heterogeneous wireless sensor networks (HWSN). These are efficient and designed to address security concerns in ad-hoc sensor network applications for a global Internet of Things framework, where a user may request access to sensitive information collected by resource-constrained sensors in clusters managed by gateway nodes. In this paper we first analyze three recently proposed 3-PAKE protocols and discuss their vulnerabilities. Then, based on Radio Frequency Identification technologies we propose a novel 3-PAKE protocol for HWSN applications, with two extensions for additional security features, that is provably secure, efficient and flexible.     

Enhancement of two-factor authenticated key exchange protocols in public wireless LANs

In 2008, Juang and Wu proposed two authenticated key exchange protocols by improving Park and Park’s two-factor authenticated key exchange protocol in public wireless LANs. They pointed out that Park’s protocol was vulnerable to the dictionary attack on the identity protection. The improved protocols requires fewer exchanged messages and provided more secure protection for the client’s identity. In this paper, we propose two protocols require less exchanged messages than Juang’s protocols. In addition to this advantage, we point out that the identity protection of Juang’s protocol is computationally inefficient for the server and efficient identity protection is proposed in the second proposed protocol.     

Simulatable certificateless two-party authenticated key agreement protocol

Key agreement (KA) allows two or more users to negotiate a secret session key among them over an open network. Authenticated key agreement (AKA) is a KA protocol enhanced to prevent active attacks. AKA can be achieved using a public-key infrastructure (PKI) or identity-based cryptography. However, the former suffers from a heavy certificate management burden while the latter is subject to the so-called key escrow problem. Recently, certificateless cryptography was introduced to mitigate these limitations. In this paper, we first propose a security model for AKA protocols using certificateless cryptography. Following this model, we then propose a simulatable certificateless two-party AKA protocol. Security is proven under the standard computational Diffie-Hellman (CDH) and bilinear Diffie-Hellman (BDH) assumptions. Our protocol is efficient and practical, because it requires only one pairing operation and five multiplications by each party.     

Weakness in a RSA-based password authenticated key exchange protocol

Recently, an efficient password-authenticated key exchange protocol based on RSA has been proposed by Park et al. with formal security proof. In this letter, we analyze their protocol, and show that, unfortunately, it is insecure against an adversary who performs a dictionary attack.     

改进的三方口令认证密钥交换协议

基于三方的口令认证密钥交换（3PAKE）协议是客户通过与可信服务器共享一个口令验证元,在两客户进行通信时通过此可信服务器进行会话密钥的建立与共享,从而进行通信。首先对李文敏等人提出的协议进行安全性分析,发现该协议易受离线字典攻击和服务器泄露攻击。提出了一个改进协议,该协议能够提供双向认证、会话密钥机密性和前向安全性,能够有效抵抗多种攻击,包括离线字典攻击和服务器泄露攻击。     

一种新的双方认证密钥协商协议的安全性分析

2010年,Mohammad等人提出了一种新的双方认证密钥协商协议(MOHAMMAD Z, CHEN Y, HSU C, et al. Cryptanalysis and enhancement of two-pass authenticated key agreement with key confirmation protocols. IETE Technical Review, 2010,27(3):252-65)。新协议以较高的运算效率实现了参与者双方的身份认证和密钥协商。对该协议的单轮版本进行了安全性分析,通过模拟协议中某些信息丢失后协议双方的通信过程,发现如果协议中的一些秘密信息丢失,敌手可以发起信息泄露伪装攻击、密钥泄露伪装攻击和一般定义下的伪装攻击,也无法抵抗中间人攻击。这些攻击都可以使得敌手冒充合法参与者发起或回应会话。     

基于RLWE的双因子三方认证密钥交换协议

为了使格上Diffie-Hellman式密钥交换协议能够实现认证性并且适用于客户-服务器-客户模式的大规模通信,提出了一个基于环上误差学习RLWE的双因子三方认证密钥交换协议。该协议将口令和生物特征作为客户的长期密钥,实现服务器对客户的显式身份认证。首先利用环上误差学习的困难问题的优势（密钥及密文尺寸短、运行效率高）来构造密码体制;其次服务器通过口令和生物特征的哈希值传递环元素,并结合丁式错误协调机制使得通信方获得随机均匀的会话密钥。最后分析表明,该协议适用于大规模通信,提高了通信量,具有更高的安全属性,可以抵抗口令泄露用户假冒攻击。     

新型三方口令认证密钥协商协议的安全性分析与改进

口令认证密钥协商(PAKA)是认证密钥协商(AKA)中的重要分支之一。研究了一种新型三方口令认证密钥协商--3REKA的安全性,发现如果参与双方的验证值丢失,将导致严重的中间人攻击,这一攻击的结果是敌手可以与参与者各自建立独立的会话密钥。描述了这一攻击,并对原协议进行了改进,提出了I-3REKA协议。安全性和性能分析表明,所提出的协议以较低的计算量实现了参与双方的安全通信。     

两个三方口令密钥交换协议的安全性分析

首先对两个基于验证元的三方口令密钥交换协议进行了安全性分析,指出它们都是不安全的。其中,LZC协议不能抵抗服务器泄露攻击、未知密钥共享攻击、内部人攻击和不可发现字典攻击;LWZ协议不能抵抗未知密钥攻击、内部人攻击和重放攻击。对LWZ协议进行了改进,以弥补原LWZ协议的安全漏洞。最后,在DDH假设下,给出了改进协议（NLWZ协议）的安全性证明。与已有协议相比,NLWZ协议降低了计算和通信开销,其潜在的实用性更强。