TL;DR: The notion of universally composable (UC) security is extended in a way that re-establishes its original intuitive guarantee even for protocols that use globally available set-up, and guarantees deniability.
Abstract: Cryptographic protocols are often designed and analyzed under some trusted set-up assumptions, namely in settings where the participants have access to global information that is trusted to have some basic security properties. However, current modeling of security in the presence of such set-up falls short of providing the expected security guarantees. A quintessential example of this phenomenon is the deniability concern: there exist natural protocols that meet the strongest known composable security notions, and are still vulnerable to bad interactions with rogue protocols that use the same set-up.
We extend the notion of universally composable (UC) security in a way that re-establishes its original intuitive guarantee even for protocols that use globally available set-up. The new formulation prevents bad interactions even with adaptively chosen protocols that use the same set-up. In particular, it guarantees deniability. While for protocols that use no setup the proposed requirements are the same as in traditional UC security, for protocols that use global set-up the proposed requirements are significantly stronger. In fact, realizing Zero Knowledge or commitment becomes provably impossible, even in the Common Reference String model. Still, we propose reasonable alternative set-up assumptions and protocols that allow realizing practically any cryptographic task under standard hardness assumptions even against adaptive corruptions.
TL;DR: The research confirms that policies concerning the disclosure of electronic health records can be reliably and efficiently enforced and audited at the database level and shows that web services and commutative encryption can be used to share sensitive information selectively among autonomous entities without compromising security or privacy.
TL;DR: Security Evaluation of Scenarios Based on the TCG's TPM Specification and Towards Modeling Trust Based Decisions: A Game Theoretic Approach.
Abstract: Invited Lecture.- Trustworthy Services and the Biological Analogy.- Security Architecture and Secure Components I.- Security of Multithreaded Programs by Compilation.- Efficient Proving for Practical Distributed Access-Control Systems.- Maintaining High Performance Communication Under Least Privilege Using Dynamic Perimeter Control.- Access Control I.- Pragmatic XML Access Control Using Off-the-Shelf RDBMS.- Conditional Privacy-Aware Role Based Access Control.- Satisfiability and Resiliency in Workflow Systems.- Applied Cryptography I.- Completeness of the Authentication Tests.- SilentKnock: Practical, Provably Undetectable Authentication.- Generalized Key Delegation for Hierarchical Identity-Based Encryption.- Change-Impact Analysis of Firewall Policies.- Fragmentation and Encryption to Enforce Privacy in Data Storage.- Information Confinement, Privacy, and Security in RFID Systems.- Formal Methods in Security I.- A Logic for State-Modifying Authorization Policies.- Inductive Proofs of Computational Secrecy.- What, Indeed, Is Intransitive Noninterference?.- Traceability and Integrity of Execution in Distributed Workflow Management Systems.- Dynamic Information Flow Control Architecture for Web Applications.- Cloak: A Ten-Fold Way for Reliable Covert Communications.- Applied Cryptography II.- Efficient Password-Based Authenticated Key Exchange Without Public Information.- Improved Anonymous Timed-Release Encryption.- Encryption Techniques for Secure Database Outsourcing.- Access Control II.- Click Passwords Under Investigation.- Graphical Password Authentication Using Cued Click Points.- Obligations and Their Interaction with Programs.- Applied Cryptography III.- On the Privacy of Concealed Data Aggregation.- Synthesizing Secure Protocols.- A Cryptographic Model for Branching Time Security Properties - The Case of Contract Signing Protocols.- Security Architecture and Secure Components II.- Security Evaluation of Scenarios Based on the TCG's TPM Specification.- Analyzing Side Channel Leakage of Masked Implementations with Stochastic Methods.- Insider Attacks Enabling Data Broadcasting on Crypto-Enforced Unicast Links.- Towards Modeling Trust Based Decisions: A Game Theoretic Approach.- Extending the Common Services of eduGAIN with a Credential Conversion Service.- Incorporating Temporal Capabilities in Existing Key Management Schemes.- A Policy Language for Distributed Usage Control.- Countering Statistical Disclosure with Receiver-Bound Cover Traffic.- Renewable Traitor Tracing: A Trace-Revoke-Trace System For Anonymous Attack.- Formal Methods in Security III.- Modular Access Control Via Strategic Rewriting.- On the Automated Correction of Security Protocols Susceptible to a Replay Attack.- Adaptive Soundness of Static Equivalence.
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors formally analyze the security properties of the fast key establishment protocol JFK in the applied pi calculus (partly in terms of observational equivalences and partly with the assistance of an automatic protocol verifier).
Abstract: JFK is a recent, attractive protocol for fast key establishment as part of securing IP communication. In this paper, we formally analyze this protocol in the applied pi calculus (partly in terms of observational equivalences and partly with the assistance of an automatic protocol verifier). We treat JFK's core security properties and also other properties that are rarely articulated and rigorously studied, such as plausible deniability and resistance to denial-of-service attacks. In the course of this analysis, we found some ambiguities and minor problems, such as limitations in identity protection, but we mostly obtain positive results about JFK. For this purpose, we develop ideas and techniques that should be more generally useful in the specification and verification of security protocols.
TL;DR: This work presents quantum key distribution protocols (QKDPs) to safeguard security in large networks, ushering in new directions in classical cryptography and quantum cryptography and presents a new primitive called the unbiased-chosen basis (UCB) assumption.
Abstract: This work presents quantum key distribution protocols (QKDPs) to safeguard security in large networks, ushering in new directions in classical cryptography and quantum cryptography. Two three-party QKDPs, one with implicit user authentication and the other with explicit mutual authentication, are proposed to demonstrate the merits of the new combination, which include the following: 1) security against such attacks as man-in-the-middle, eavesdropping and replay; 2) efficiency is improved as the proposed protocols contain the fewest number of communication rounds among existing QKDPs; and 3) two parties can share and use a long-term secret (repeatedly). To prove the security of the proposed schemes, this work also presents a new primitive called the unbiased-chosen basis (UCB) assumption
TL;DR: The Portal Security Transaction Protocol (PSTP) is a new signature technology that adds signature semantics to one-time password technology that provides cryptographic after-the-fact evidence of a transaction event in a secured log.
TL;DR: Analysis of the standardized cryptographic algorithms SHA-256, SHA-1, MD5, AES-128, and ECC-192 in terms of implementation efficiency gives conclusive evidence that the use of AES in RFID systems is most appropriate today.
Abstract: The implementation of security protocols in RFID systems is challenging because of the fierce constraints concerning power consumption and low die size of RFID tags. The choice of the appropriate cryptographic primitive is difficult because there are many different algorithms available and the design options for each are manifold. In this paper, we analyze the standardized cryptographic algorithms SHA-256, SHA-1, MD5, AES-128, and ECC-192 in terms of implementation efficiency. The three parameters mean power consumption, chip area, and the number of clock cycles, are used to introduce a metric for a fair comparison of different hardware implementations. We describe the implementations of the five modules which were optimized for application in passive RFID tags and compare their results. We give conclusive evidence that the use of AES in RFID systems is most appropriate today
TL;DR: It is shown that e-cash can be a practical solution to the desire for accountability in peer-to-peer systems while maintaining their ability to self-scale, and that provably secure, anonymous, and scalable peer- to- peer systems are within reach.
Abstract: Peer-to-peer systems have been proposed for a wide variety of applications, including file-sharing, web caching, distributed computation, cooperative backup, and onion routing. An important motivation for such systems is self-scaling. That is, increased participation increases the capacity of the system. Unfortunately, this property is at risk from selfish participants. The decentralized nature of peer-to-peer systems makes accounting difficult. We show that e-cash can be a practical solution to the desire for accountability in peer-to-peer systems while maintaining their ability to self-scale. No less important, e-cash is a natural fit for peer-to-peer systems that attempt to provide (or preserve) privacy for their participants. We show that e-cash can be used to provide accountability without compromising the existing privacy goals of a peer-to-peer system. We show how e-cash can be practically applied to a file sharing application. Our approach includes a set of novel cryptographic protocols that mitigate the computational and communication costs of anonymous e-cash transactions, and system design choices that further reduce overhead and distribute load. We conclude that provably secure, anonymous, and scalable peer-to-peer systems are within reach.
TL;DR: In this article, the authors give a unified account of classical secret sharing goals from a modern cryptographic vantage, including perfect, statistical, and computational secret sharing; static and dynamic adversaries; schemes with or without robustness; schemes where a participant recovers the secret and those where an external party does so.
Abstract: We give a unified account of classical secret-sharing goals from a modern cryptographic vantage. Our treatment encompasses perfect, statistical, and computational secret sharing; static and dynamic adversaries; schemes with or without robustness; schemes where a participant recovers the secret and those where an external party does so. We then show that Krawczyk's 1993 protocol for robust computational secret sharing (RCSS) need not be secure, even in the random-oracle model and for threshold schemes, if the encryption primitive it uses satisfies only one-query indistinguishability (ind1), the only notion Krawczyk defines. Nonetheless, we show that the protocol is secure (in the random-oracle model, for threshold schemes) if the encryption scheme also satisfies one-query key-unrecoverability (key1). Since practical encryption schemes are ind1+key1 secure, our result effectively shows that Krawczyk's RCSS protocol is sound (in the random-oracle model, for threshold schemes). Finally, we prove the security for a variant of Krawczyk's protocol, in the standard model and for arbitrary access structures, assuming ind1 encryption and a statistically-hiding, weakly-binding commitment scheme.
TL;DR: In this paper, a cryptographic protocol for secure authentication, privacy, and anonymity is presented, in one embodiment, implemented in a small number of logic gates, executed quickly on simple devices, and provided military grade security.
Abstract: A method and apparatus to provide a cryptographic protocol for secure authentication, privacy, and anonymity. The protocol, in one embodiment, is designed to be implemented in a small number of logic gates, executed quickly on simple devices, and provide military grade security.
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors compare the energy cost of two different protocols for authenticated key establishment, a lightweight variant of the Kerberos key transport mechanism with 128-bit AES encryption and an authenticated version of the elliptic curve Diffie-Hellman key exchange, and use a 256-bit prime field GF(p) as underlying algebraic structure.
Abstract: Wireless sensor nodes generally face serious limitations in terms of computational power, energy supply, and network bandwidth. Therefore, the implementation of effective and secure techniques for setting up a shared secret key between sensor nodes is a challenging task. In this paper we analyze and compare the energy cost of two different protocols for authenticated key establishment. The first protocol employs a lightweight variant of the Kerberos key transport mechanism with 128-bit AES encryption. The second protocol is based on ECMQV, an authenticated version of the elliptic curve Diffie-Hellman key exchange, and uses a 256-bit prime field GF(p) as underlying algebraic structure. We evaluate the energy cost of both protocols on a Rockwell WINS node equipped with a 133 MHz Strong ARM processor and a 100 kbit/s radio module. The evaluation considers both the processor's energy consumption for calculating cryptographic primitives and the energy cost of radio communication for different transmit power levels. Our simulation results show that the ECMQV key exchange consumes up to twice as much energy as Kerberos-like key transport.
TL;DR: TinyRNG, a CPRNG for wireless sensor nodes that uses the received bit errors on a wireless sensor network as one of the sources of randomness, and shows that these errors are difficult to observe and manipulate by an attacker.
Abstract: Wireless sensors network (WSN) security is a major concern and many new protocols are being designed. Most of these protocols rely on cryptography, and therefore, require a cryptographic pseudo-random number generator (CPRNG). However, designing an efficient and secure CPRNG for wireless sensor networks is not trivial since most of the common source of randomness used by standard CPRNGs are not present on a wireless sensor node. We present TinyRNG, a CPRNG for wireless sensor nodes. Our generator uses the received bit errors as one of the sources of randomness. We show that transmission bit errors on a wireless sensor network are a very good source of randomness. We demonstrate that these errors are randomly distributed and uncorrelated from one sensor to another. Furthermore, we show that these errors are difficult to observe and manipulate by an attacker.
TL;DR: This paper proposes a general model for security protocols based on the set-rewriting formalism that allows for the specification of assumptions on principals and communication channels as well as complex security properties that are normally not handled by state-of-the-art protocol analysers.
Abstract: Most model checking techniques for security protocols make a number of simplifying assumptions on the protocol and/or on its execution environment that prevent their applicability in some important cases. For instance, most techniques assume that communication between honest principals is controlled by a Dolev -Yao intruder, i.e. a malicious agent capable to overhear, divert, and fake messages. Yet we might be interested in establishing the security of a protocol that relies on a less unsecure channel (e.g. a confidential channel provided by some other protocol sitting lower in the protocol stack). In this paper we propose a general model for security protocols based on the set-rewriting formalism that, coupled with the use of LTL, allows for the specification of assumptions on principals and communication channels as well as complex security properties that are normally not handled by state-of-the-art protocol analysers. By using our approach we have been able to formalise all the assumptions required by the ASW protocol for optimistic fair exchange as well as some of its security properties. Besides the previously reported attacks on the protocol, we report a new attack on a patched version of the protocol.
TL;DR: This paper defines multi-string non-interactive zero-knowledge proofs and proves that they exist under general cryptographic assumptions, and suggests a universally composable commitment scheme in the multistring model.
Abstract: The common random string model introduced by Blum, Feldman and Micali permits the construction of cryptographic protocols that are provably impossible to realize in the standard model. We can think of this model as a trusted party generating a random string and giving it to all parties in the protocol. However, the introduction of such a third party should set alarm bells going off: Who is this trusted party? Why should we trust that the string is random? Even if the string is uniformly random, how do we know it does not leak private information to the trusted party? The very point of doing cryptography in the first place is to prevent us from trusting the wrong people with our secrets.
In this paper, we propose the more realistic multi-string model. Instead of having one trusted authority, we have several authorities that generate random strings. We do not trust any single authority; we only assume a majority of them generate the random string honestly. This security model is reasonable, yet at the same time it is very easy to implement. We could for instance imagine random strings being provided on the Internet, and any set of parties that want to execute a protocol just need to agree on which authorities' strings they want to use.
We demonstrate the use of the multi-string model in several fundamental cryptographic tasks. We define multi-string non-interactive zero-knowledge proofs and prove that they exist under general cryptographic assumptions. Our multistring NIZK proofs have very strong security properties such as simulation-extractability and extraction zero-knowledge, which makes it possible to compose them with arbitrary other protocols and to reuse the random strings. We also build efficient simulation-sound multi-string NIZK proofs for circuit satisfiability based on groups with a bilinear map. The sizes of these proofs match the best constructions in the single common random string model.
We suggest a universally composable commitment scheme in the multistring model. It has been proven that UC commitment does not exist in the plain model without setup assumptions. Prior to this work, constructions were only known in the common reference string model and the registered public key model. One of the applications of the UC commitment scheme is a coin-flipping protocol in the multi-string model. Armed with the coin-flipping protocol, we can securely realize any multi-party computation protocol.
TL;DR: This paper presents the complexity-theoretic security analysis on some models of the Y00 protocol with nonlinear pseudo-random-number-generator and quantum noise diffusion mapping (QDM) and shows that the Y 00 protocol has a potential which cannot be realized by conventional cryptography and that it goes beyond mathematical encryption with physical encryption.
Abstract: There exists a great gap between one-time pad with perfect secrecy and conventional mathematical encryption. The Yuen 2000 (Y00) protocol or $\ensuremath{\alpha}\ensuremath{\eta}$ scheme may provide a protocol which covers from the conventional security to the ultimate one, depending on implementations. This paper presents the complexity-theoretic security analysis on some models of the Y00 protocol with nonlinear pseudo-random-number-generator and quantum noise diffusion mapping (QDM). Algebraic attacks and fast correlation attacks are applied with a model of the Y00 protocol with nonlinear filtering like the Toyocrypt stream cipher as the running key generator, and it is shown that these attacks in principle do not work on such models even when the mapping between running key and quantum state signal is fixed. In addition, a security property of the Y00 protocol with QDM is clarified. Consequently, we show that the Y00 protocol has a potential which cannot be realized by conventional cryptography and that it goes beyond mathematical encryption with physical encryption.
TL;DR: This work demonstrates that UC general secure computation is obtainable even when the reference string is taken from an arbitrary, adversarially chosen distribution, as long as this distribution has some minimal min-entropy and the sampling algorithm is known to the adversary.
Abstract: The common reference string (CRS) model equips all protocol participants with a common string that is sampled from a pre-specified distribution, say the uniform distribution. This model enables otherwise-impossible cryptographic goals such as removing interaction from protocols and guaranteeing composable security. However, knowing the precise distribution of the reference string seems crucial for all known protocols in this model, in the sense that current security analyses fail when the actual distribution of the reference string is allowed to differ from the specified one even by a small amount. This fact rules out many potential implementations of the CRS model, such as measurements of physical phenomena (like sunspots), or alternatively using random sources that might be adversarially influenced. We study the possibility of obtaining universally composable (UC) security in a relaxed variant of the CRS model, where the reference string it taken from an adversarially specified distribution that's unknown to the protocol. On the positive side, we demonstrate that UC general secure computation is obtainable even when the reference string is taken from an arbitrary, adversarially chosen distribution, as long as (a) this distribution has some minimal min-entropy, (b) it has not too long a description, (c) it is efficiently samplable, and (d) the sampling algorithm is known to the adversary (and simulator). On the negative side, we show that if any one of these four conditions is removed then genera! UC secure computation becomes essentially impossible.
TL;DR: This paper presents a fast and secure authenticated key agreement (EC-SAKA) protocol based on elliptic curve cryptography that can resist dictionary attacks mounted by either passive or active networks intruders, and offers perfect forward secrecy which protects past sessions and passwords against future compromise.
Abstract: The increasing progress in wireless mobile communication has attracted an important amount of attention on the security issue. To provide secure communication for mobile devices, authenticated key agreement protocol is an important primitive for establishing session key. So far, several protocols have been proposed to provide robust mutual authentication and key establishment for wireless local area network (WLAN). In this paper we present a fast and secure authenticated key agreement (EC-SAKA) protocol based on elliptic curve cryptography. Our proposed protocol provides secure mutual authentication, key establishment and key confirmation over an untrusted network. The new protocol achieves many of the required security and performance properties. It can resist dictionary attacks mounted by either passive or active networks intruders. It can resist Man-In-The Middle attack. It also offers perfect forward secrecy which protects past sessions and passwords against future compromise. In addition, it can resist known- key and resilience to server attack. Our proposed protocol uses ElGamal signature techniques (ECEGS). We show that our protocol meets the above security attributes under the assumption that the elliptic curve discrete logarithm problem is secure. Our proposed protocol offers significantly improved performance in computational and communication load over comparably many authenticated key agreement protocols such as B-SPEKE, SRP, AMP, PAK-RY, PAK-X, SKA, LR-AKE and EC-SRP.
TL;DR: In this article, the authors present a method and system for deploying a suite of cryptographic algorithms including: providing a legacy cryptographic interface associated with a legacy operating system and a legacy application, and supporting a suiteof legacy cryptographic algorithms; providing a suite-of-advanced cryptographic algorithms that includes one or more of an advanced asymmetric key algorithm, an advanced symmetric key, and/or an advanced hash function; providing an advanced cryptographic interface that is independent of the legacy operating systems and the legacy application.
Abstract: A method and system for deploying a suite of cryptographic algorithms including: providing a legacy cryptographic interface associated with a legacy operating system and a legacy application, and supports a suite of legacy cryptographic algorithms; providing a suite of advanced cryptographic algorithms that includes one or more of an advanced asymmetric key algorithm, an advanced symmetric key algorithm, and/or an advanced hash function; providing an advanced cryptographic interface that is independent of the legacy operating system and the legacy application, backwards compatible with the legacy cryptographic interface, and capable of supporting the suite of advanced cryptographic algorithms; and transparently and automatically substituting the suite of advanced cryptographic algorithms for the legacy cryptographic algorithms through the invocation of the advanced cryptographic interface at the time of an initial performance of encrypting, hashing, digitally signing the hash of, decrypting, re-hashing, and/or validating the digital signature of an item.
TL;DR: The Analysis of Security Protocols and Modelling Timestamping and Verifying a Classical Protocol shows the importance of knowing the agent knowledge of messages and the principle of Goal Availability in achieving goal availability.
Abstract: Computer network security is critical to fraud prevention and accountability. Network participants are required to observe predefined steps called security protocols, whose proof of correctness is evidence that each protocol step preserves some desired properties.
The author investigates proofs of correctness of realistic security protocols in a formal, intuitive setting. The protocols examined include Kerberos versions, smartcard protocols, non-repudiation protocols, and certified email protocols. The method of analysis, the Inductive Method in the theorem prover Isabelle, turns out to be both powerful and flexible. This research advances significant extensions to the method of analysis, while the findings on the protocols analysed are novel and illuminating.
This book will benefit researchers and graduate students in the fields of formal methods, information security, inductive methods, and networking.
TL;DR: The proposed MPC protocol is the first protocol with perfect security against an active, adaptive adversary corrupting t < n/4 players, which is optimal, and is as efficient as the most efficient perfectly secure protocol for the synchronous model and the mostefficient asynchronous protocol with cryptographic security.
Abstract: Secure multi-party computation (MPC) allows a set of n players to securely compute an agreed function of their inputs, even when up to t players are under the control of an adversary. Known asynchronous MPC protocols require communication of at least Ω(n3) (with cryptographic security), respectively Ω(n4) (with information-theoretic security, but with error probability and non-optimal resilience) field elements per multiplication.
We present an asynchronous MPC protocol communicating O(n3) field elements per multiplication. Our protocol provides perfect security against an active, adaptive adversary corrupting t < n/4 players, which is optimal. This communication complexity is to be compared with the most efficient previously known protocol for the same model, which requires Ω(n5) field elements of communication (i.e., Ω(n3) broadcasts). Our protocol is as efficient as the most efficient perfectly secure protocol for the synchronous model and the most efficient asynchronous protocol with cryptographic security.
Furthermore, we enhance our MPC protocol for a hybrid model. In the fully asynchronous model, up to t honest players might not be able to provide their input in the computation. In the hybrid model, all players are able to provide their input, given that the very first round of communication is synchronous. We provide an MPC protocol with communicating O(n3) field elements per multiplication, where all players can provide their input if the first communication round turns out to be synchronous, and all but at most t players can provide their input if the communication is fully asynchronous. The protocol does not need to know whether or not the first communication round is synchronous, thus combining the advantages of the synchronous world and the asynchronous world. The proposed MPC protocol is the first protocol with this property.
TL;DR: The GS-LEACH (grid-based secure LEACH) protocol uses pre deployment key distribution using prior knowledge of the deployment area to provide a secure solution to a commonly used clustering protocol, the LEACH protocol.
Abstract: Clustering protocols are often used in sensor networks. In many deployment scenarios, security is a key concern. In this paper we provide a secure solution to a commonly used clustering protocol, the LEACH protocol. We show that our protocol, the GS-LEACH protocol is more energy efficient than any of the secure flavors of LEACH. The GS-LEACH (grid-based secure LEACH) protocol uses pre deployment key distribution using prior knowledge of the deployment area. We also provide a detailed security analysis of our protocol and show that it is more secure than the secure versions of LEACH. Finally with the results of our simulation experiments we show that our protocol is very energy efficient and provides a longer network lifetime compared to the other flavors of LEACH.
TL;DR: In this article, a recursive security protocol for the protection of digital data is described, in which a bit stream is encrypted with a first encryption algorithm and then associated with a second decryption algorithm.
Abstract: Systems and methods are described which utilize a recursive security protocol for the protection of digital data. These may include encrypting a bit stream with a first encryption algorithm and associating a first decryption algorithm with the encrypted bit stream. The resulting bit stream may then be encrypted with a second encryption algorithm to yield a second bit stream. This second bit stream is then associated with a second decryption algorithm. This second bit stream can then be decrypted by an intended recipient using associated keys.
TL;DR: A security protocol is presented that exploit additional transmissions over lower-capacity channels, typically found in ubicomp environments, that offer a different combination of security properties.
Abstract: Multichannel security protocols transmit messages over multiple communication channels, taking into account each channel's security properties. Our first intentional use of these protocols goes back to a 1999 article that proposed physical contact for imprinting as opposed to the wireless channel used in subsequent operations. Only later did we understand three key points. First, explicit use of multiple channels in the same protocol can offer significant advantages for both security and usability. Second, explicitly stating the properties of the channel on which each protocol message is transmitted is useful for understanding one's own protocol in greater depth and therefore for addressing subtle vulnerabilities early on. Third, multichannel protocols existed long before we recognized them as such - think of the courier handcuffed to the briefcase carrying the code book that will later protect postal or telegraphic traffic. The paper presents a security protocol that exploit additional transmissions over lower-capacity channels, typically found in ubicomp environments, that offer a different combination of security properties.
TL;DR: This paper extends existing work to present a Communication-Computation Efficient Group Key Algorithm (CCEGK) designed to provide both efficient communication and computation, addressing performance, security and authentication issues of CCEGK.
TL;DR: This study conducts comparative performance evaluations for Pocket PC and wireless sensors to study the computational ability to process cryptographic functions, such as point multiplication, Pairings, AES, and hash functions.
Abstract: Elliptic curve cryptography (ECC) and Pairings get more research attentions for computational constraint devices such as Pocket PCs and wireless sensors. As a result, computational evaluations of various cryptographic algorithms are highly desired to guide researchers to design effective communication protocols. In order to achieve this goal, we conduct comparative performance evaluations for Pocket PC and wireless sensors to study the computational ability to process cryptographic functions, such as point multiplication, Pairings, AES, and hash functions. Our study shows that current Pocket PC level devices are capable to process computational intensive cryptographic functions, such as Parings. However, purely software cryptographic solutions require long time to process cryptographic algorithms and special optimization methods must be used to improve the computation performance.
TL;DR: An anonymous secure messaging method and system for securely exchanging information between a host computer system and a functionally connected cryptographic module is presented in this paper, where the initial session keys are generated by the host and securely exchanged using a PKI key pair associated with the cryptographic module.
Abstract: An anonymous secure messaging method and system for securely exchanging information between a host computer system and a functionally connected cryptographic module. The invention comprises a Host Security Manager application in processing communications with a security executive program installed inside the cryptographic module. An SSL-like communications pathway is established between the host computer system and the cryptographic module. The initial session keys are generated by the host and securely exchanged using a PKI key pair associated with the cryptographic module. The secure communications pathway allows presentation of critical security parameter (CSP) without clear text disclosure of the CSP and further allows use of the generated session keys as temporary substitutes of the CSP for the session in which the session keys were created.
TL;DR: In this article, the authors present AKDM as a KDM equivalent of authenticated symmetric encryption, i.e., it provides chosen-ciphertext security and integrity of ciphertexts even for key cycles.
Abstract: Key-dependent message security, short KDM security, was introduced by Black, Rogaway and Shrimpton to address the case where key cycles occur among encryptions, e.g., a key is encrypted with itself. It was mainly motivated by key cycles in Dolev-Yao models, i.e., symbolic abstractions of cryptography by term algebras, and a corresponding soundness result was later shown by Adao et al. However, both the KDM definition and this soundness result do not allow the general active attacks typical for Dolev-Yao models and for security protocols in general. We extend these definitions so that we can obtain a soundness result under active attacks.We first present a definition AKDM as a KDM equivalent of authenticated symmetric encryption, i.e., it provides chosen-ciphertext security and integrity of ciphertexts even for key cycles. However, this is not yet sufficient for the desired soundness, and thus we give a definition DKDM that additionally allows limited dynamic revelation of keys.We show that this is sufficient for soundness, even in the strong sense of blackbox reactive simulatability (BRSIM)/UC and including joint terms with other operators. We also present constructions of schemes secure under the new definitions, based on current KDM-secure schemes. Moreover, we explore the relations between the new definitions and existing ones for symmetric encryption in detail, in the sense of implications or separating examples for almost all cases.
TL;DR: This paper introduces the concept of, and construct several protocols for, batch pairing delegation, which offers significantly improved efficiency over multiple runs of state-of-the-art (non-batch) delegation protocols, and proposes a taxonomy that classifies pairings into seven types to assist in choosing the right delegation protocol.
Abstract: Pairing-based cryptography (PBC) has enabled the construction of many cryptographic protocols. However, there are scenarios when PBC is too heavyweight to use, such as when the computing devices are resource-constrained. Pairing delegation introduced in [19] provides a solution by offloading the computation to more powerful entities.
In this paper, we introduce the concept of, and construct several protocols for, batch pairing delegation, which offers significantly improved efficiency over multiple runs of state-of-the-art (non-batch) delegation protocols. We prove the security of our proposed protocols in the model we formalized for batch pairing delegation. Also, we have implemented our protocols in software for experimentation.
Moreover, we argue that the secure delegation of pairing computation, batched or not, requires different protocols depending on the semantic meaning of the pairings. We propose a taxonomy that classifies pairings into seven types to assist in choosing the right delegation protocol.
Finally, we propose a novel application of pairing delegation in trusted computing -- we show how pairing delegation can be leveraged to build a secure coprocessor for pairing computation more cost-effectively.
TL;DR: A new algorithm for analysing security protocols that use XOR, such as key-management APIs, is described, which leads to the first security proof of the fixed IBM 4758 CCA API with unbounded sessions.
Abstract: We describe a new algorithm for analysing security protocols that use XOR, such as key-management APIs. As a case study, we consider the IBM4758 CCA API, which is widely used in the ATM(cash machine) network. Earlier versions of the CCA API were shown to have serious flaws, and the fixes introduced by IBM in version 2.41 had not previously been formally analysed. We first investigate IBM's proposals using a model checker for security protocol analysis, uncovering some important issues about their implementation. Having identified configurations we believed to be safe, we describe the formal verification of their security. We first define a new class of protocols, containing in particular all the versions of the CCA API. We then show that secrecy after an unbounded number of sessions is decidable for this class. Implementing the decision procedure requires some improvements, since the procedure is exponential. We describe a change of representation that leads to an implementation able to verify a configuration of the API in a few seconds. As a consequence, we obtain the first security proof of the fixed IBM 4758 CCA API with unbounded sessions.
TL;DR: Maat, a security protocol designed to provide strong, scalable security to petascale, high-performance file systems, introduces three new techniques: Automatic Revocation, Secure Delegation, and Extended capabilities.
Abstract: Petascale, high-performance file systems often hold sensitive data and thus require security, but authentication and authorization can dramatically reduce performance. Existing security solutions perform poorly in these environments because they cannot scale with the number of nodes, highly distributed data, and demanding workloads. To address these issues, we developed Maat, a security protocol designed to provide strong, scalable security to these systems. Maat introduces three new techniques. Extended capabilities limit the number of capabilities needed by allowing a capability to authorize I/O for any number of client-file pairs. Automatic Revocation uses short capability lifetimes to allow capability expiration to act as global revocation, while supporting non-revoked capability renewal. Secure Delegation allows clients to securely act on behalf of a group to open files and distribute access, facilitating secure joint computations. Experiments on the Maat prototype in the Ceph petascale file system show an overhead as little as 6--7%.