Paper 2005/129

On The Indistinguishability-Based Security Model of Key Agreement Protocols-Simple Cases

Zhaohui Cheng, Manos Nistazakis, Richard Comley, and Luminita Vasiu

Abstract

Since Bellare and Rogway's work [15], the indistinguishability-based security models of authenticated key agreement protocols in simple cases have been evolving for ten years. In this report, we review and organize the models under a unified framework with some new extensions. By providing a new ability (the Coin query) to adversaries and redefining two key security notions, the framework fully exploits an adversary's capability and can be used to prove all the commonly required security attributes of key agreement protocols with key confirmation. At the same time, the Coin query is also used to define a model which can be used to heuristically evaluate the security of a large category of authenticated protocols without key confirmation. We use the models to analyze a few pairing-based authenticated key agreement protocols.

Note: The problem addressed in the work happened in other publications. Hence the paper is posted here for wider access. The update correct a few typos.