Cryptology ePrint Archive: Report 2009/150

Efficient group authentication protocols based on human interaction

Long Hoang Nguyen and A. W. Roscoe

Abstract: We re-examine the needs of computer security in pervasive computing from first principles, specifically the problem of bootstrapping secure networks. We consider the case of systems that may have no shared secret information, and where there is no structure such as a PKI available. We propose several protocols which achieve a high degree of security based on a combination of human-mediated communication and an ordinary Dolev-Yao communication medium. In particular they resist combinatorial attacks on the hash or digest values that have to be compared by human users, seemingly optimising the amount of security they can achieve for a given amount of human effort. We compare our protocols with recent pairwise protocols proposed by, for example, Hoepman and Vaudenay.

Category / Keywords: cryptographic protocols / Authentication protocol using human interactions

Publication Info: This paper has been accepted and published in the informal proceedings (page 9–31) of Workshop on Foundation of Computer Security and Automated Reasoning Protocol Security Analysis, August 2006

Date: received 1 Apr 2009, last revised 11 Dec 2011

Contact author: long nguyen at comlab ox ac uk

Available formats: PDF | BibTeX Citation

Note: A preliminary version of this paper appeared in the informal proceedingds of the workshop on Foundation of Computer Security and Automated Reasoning Protocol Security Analysis, pp. 9-31 (FCS-ARSPA 2006).

Version: 20111211:104748 (All versions of this report)

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