Abstract
Increasingly connectivity becomes integrated in products and devices that previously operated in a stand-alone setting. This observation holds for many consumer applications in the so-called "Internet of Things" (IoT) as well as for corresponding industry applications (IIoT), such as industrial process sensors. Often the only practicable means for authentication of human users is a password. The security of password-based authentication schemes frequently forms the weakest point of the security infrastructure. In this paper we first explain why a tailored protocol designed for the IIoT use case is considered necessary. The differences between IIoT and the conventional Internet use-cases result in largely modified threats and require special procedures for allowing both, convenient and secure use in the highly constrained industrial setting. Specifically the use of a verifier-based password-authenticated key-exchange (V-PAKE) protocol as a hedge against public-key-infrastructure (PKI) failures is considered important. Availability concerns for the case of failures of (part of) the communication infrastructure makes local storage of access credentials mandatory. The larger threat of physical attacks makes it important to use memory-hard password hashing. This paper presents a corresponding tailored protocol, AuCPace, together with a security proof within the Universal Composability (UC) framework considering fully adaptive adversaries. We also introduce a new security notion of partially augmented PAKE that provides specific performance advantages and makes them suitable for a larger set of IIoT applications. We also present an actual instantiation of our protocol, AuCPace25519, and present performance results on ARM Cortex-M0 and Cortex-M4 microcontrollers. Our implementation realizes new speed-records for PAKE and X25519 Diffie-Hellman for the ARM Cortex M4 architecture.
Highlights
Wireless and networking technology becomes integrated in products and devices that previously operated in a stand-alone setting, both in consumer applications in the so-called "Internet of Things" (IoT) as well as in the corresponding industry setting, the "Industrial IoT" (IIoT)
We hope that the new speed-records for constant-time implementation of both, password-based key exchange (PAKE) and the X25519 Diffie-Hellman Protocol on the ARM Cortex M4, that we report in this paper will make it possible to enlarge the set of targets that could afford integrating state-of-the-art security technology
We considered proven forward secrecy to be mandatory for future-proof concepts since in important settings the secure channel established by the verifier-based password-authenticated key-exchange (V-PAKE) protocol will be used for securely changing passwords
Summary
Wireless and networking technology becomes integrated in products and devices that previously operated in a stand-alone setting, both in consumer applications in the so-called "Internet of Things" (IoT) as well as in the corresponding industry setting, the "Industrial IoT" (IIoT). Often communication technology and security protocols are employed that were not originally tailored and designed for the resource-constrained setting and the specific threat model. In comparison to conventional un-connected devices, security becomes a crucial aspect to consider, in the IIoT. Users tend to use short and memorable passwords. For this reason emerging industry standards, such as from the IEC-62443. Licensed under Creative Commons License CC-BY 4.0. IACR Transactions on Cryptographic Hardware and Embedded Systems ISSN 2569-2925, Vol 2019, No 2, pp. IACR Transactions on Cryptographic Hardware and Embedded Systems ISSN 2569-2925, Vol 2019, No 2, pp. 1–48 DOI:10.13154/tches.v2019.i2.1-48
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