Paper 2006/056

Key Exchange Protocols: Security Definition, Proof Method and Applications

Anupam Datta and Ante Derek and John C. Mitchell and Bogdan Warinschi

Abstract

We develop a compositional method for proving cryptographically sound security properties of key exchange protocols, based on a symbolic logic that is interpreted over conventional runs of a protocol against a probabilistic polynomial-time attacker. Since key indistinguishability and other previous specifications of secure key exchange suffer from specific compositionality problems, we develop a suitable specification of acceptable key generation. This definition is based on a simple game played by an adversary against a key exchange protocol and a conventional challenger characterizing secure encryption (or other primitives of interest). The method is illustrated using a sample protocol.