Paper 2015/652
Modelling ciphersuite and version negotiation in the TLS protocol
Benjamin Dowling and Douglas Stebila
Abstract
Real-world cryptographic protocols such as the widely used Transport Layer Security (TLS) protocol support many different combinations of cryptographic algorithms (called ciphersuites) and simultaneously support different versions. Recent advances in provable security have shown that most modern TLS ciphersuites are secure authenticated and confidential channel establishment (ACCE) protocols, but these analyses generally focus on single ciphersuites in isolation. In this paper we extend the ACCE model to cover protocols with many different sub-protocols, capturing both multiple ciphersuites and multiple versions, and define a security notion for secure negotiation of the optimal sub-protocol. We give a generic theorem that shows how secure negotiation follows, with some additional conditions, from the authentication property of secure ACCE protocols. Using this framework, we analyse the security of ciphersuite and three variants of version negotiation in TLS, including a recently proposed mechanism for detecting fallback attacks.
Note: A preliminary version of this paper appears in the proceedings of ACISP 2015. This is the full version.
Metadata
- Available format(s)
-
PDF
- Category
- Cryptographic protocols
- Publication info
- Published elsewhere. Major revision. 20th Australasian Conference on Information Security and Privacy (ACISP 2015)
- DOI
- 10.1007/978-3-319-19962-7_16
- Keywords
- Transport Layer Security (TLS)ciphersuite negotiationversion negotiationdowngrade attacks
- Contact author(s)
- b1 dowling @ qut edu au
- History
- 2015-07-01: received
- Short URL
- https://ia.cr/2015/652
- License
-
CC BY
BibTeX
@misc{cryptoeprint:2015/652,
author = {Benjamin Dowling and Douglas Stebila},
title = {Modelling ciphersuite and version negotiation in the {TLS} protocol},
howpublished = {Cryptology {ePrint} Archive, Paper 2015/652},
year = {2015},
doi = {10.1007/978-3-319-19962-7_16},
url = {https://eprint.iacr.org/2015/652}
}
