Cryptology ePrint Archive: Report 2001/040

Analysis of Key-Exchange Protocols and Their Use for Building Secure Channels

Ran Canetti and Hugo Krawczyk

Abstract: We present a formalism for the analysis of key-exchange protocols that combines previous definitional approaches and results in a definition of security that enjoys some important analytical benefits: (i) any key-exchange protocol that satisfies the security definition can be composed with symmetric encryption and authentication functions to provide provably secure communication channels; and (ii) the definition allows for simple modular proofs of security: one can design and prove security of key-exchange protocols in an idealized model where the communication links are perfectly authenticated, and then translate them using general tools to obtain security in the realistic setting of adversary-controlled links. We exemplify the usability of our results by applying them to obtain the proof of two main classes of key-exchange protocols, Diffie-Hellman and key-transport, authenticated via symmetric or asymmetric techniques.

Further contributions of the paper include the formalization of ``secure channels'' in the context of key-exchange protocols, and establishing sufficient conditions on the symmetric encryption and authentication functions to realize these channels.

Category / Keywords: Key Exchange, Secure Channels, Cryptographic Protocols

Publication Info: An extended abstract of this work appears in the proceedings of Eurocrypt 2001, LNCS Vol. 2045.

Date: received 17 May 2001

Contact author: hugo at ee technion ac il

Available format(s): Postscript (PS) | Compressed Postscript (PS.GZ) | BibTeX Citation

Version: 20010517:181540 (All versions of this report)

Short URL: ia.cr/2001/040

Discussion forum: Show discussion | Start new discussion