How Secure is TextSecure?

Tilman Frosch; Christian Mainka; Christoph Bader; Florian Bergsma; Joerg Schwenk; Thorsten Holz

Paper 2014/904

How Secure is TextSecure?

Tilman Frosch, Christian Mainka, Christoph Bader, Florian Bergsma, Joerg Schwenk, and Thorsten Holz

Abstract

Instant Messaging has gained popularity by users for both private and business communication as low-cost short message replacement on mobile devices. However, until recently, most mobile messaging apps did not protect confidentiality or integrity of the messages. Press releases about mass surveillance performed by intelligence services such as NSA and GCHQ motivated many people to use alternative messaging solutions to preserve the security and privacy of their communication on the Internet. Initially fueled by Facebook's acquisition of the hugely popular mobile messaging app WhatsApp, alternatives claiming to provide secure communication experienced a significant increase of new users. A messaging app that claims to provide secure instant messaging and has attracted a lot of attention is TextSecure. Besides numerous direct installations, its protocol is part of Android's most popular aftermarket firmware CyanogenMod. TextSecure's successor Signal continues to use the underlying protocol for text messaging. In this paper, we present the first complete description of TextSecure's complex cryptographic protocol, provide a security analysis of its three main components (key exchange, key derivation and authenticated encryption), and discuss the main security claims of TextSecure. Furthermore, we formally prove that - if key registration is assumed to be secure - TextSecure's push messaging can indeed achieve most of the claimed security goals.

Note: Extended, revised version including full protocol overview.

Metadata

Available format(s): PDF
Category: Cryptographic protocols
Publication info: Published elsewhere. Minor revision. 1st IEEE European Symposium on Security and Privacy
Keywords: protocol analysis public-key cryptography applications instant messaging confidentiality authenticity
Contact author(s): tilman frosch @ rub de
History: 2016-04-05: last of 2 revisions; 2014-11-01: received; See all versions
Short URL: https://ia.cr/2014/904
License: CC BY

BibTeX

@misc{cryptoeprint:2014/904,
      author = {Tilman Frosch and Christian Mainka and Christoph Bader and Florian Bergsma and Joerg Schwenk and Thorsten Holz},
      title = {How Secure is {TextSecure}?},
      howpublished = {Cryptology {ePrint} Archive, Paper 2014/904},
      year = {2014},
      url = {https://eprint.iacr.org/2014/904}
}