Cryptology ePrint Archive: Report 2006/252

On the Resilience of Key Agreement Protocols to Key Compromise Impersonation

Maurizio A. Strangio

Abstract: Key agreement protocols are a fundamental building block for ensuring authenticated and private communications between two parties over an insecure network. This paper focuses on key agreement protocols in the asymmetric authentication model, wherein parties hold a public/private key pair. In particular, we consider a type of known key attack called key compromise impersonation that may occur once the adversary has obtained the private key of an honest party. This attack represents a subtle threat that is often underestimated and difficult to counter. Several protocols are shown vulnerable to this attack despite their authors claiming the opposite. We also consider in more detail how three formal (complexity-theoretic based) models of distributed computing found in the literature cover such attacks.

Category / Keywords: cryptographic protocols / key compromise impersonation, key agreement protocol

Publication Info: Proceedings of the 3rd European PKI Workshop, EuroPKI06

Date: received 23 Jul 2006

Contact author: strangio at disp uniroma2 it

Available format(s): PDF | BibTeX Citation

Version: 20060724:100110 (All versions of this report)

Short URL: ia.cr/2006/252

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