Confidentiality Levels and Deliberate/Indeliberate Protocol Attacks

Abstract

A formal definition of confidentiality is developed using soft (rather than crisp) constraints. The goal is no longer considered as a mere yes/no property as in the existing literature, but gains an extra parameter, the security level. The higher the security level, the stronger the goal. For example, different messages may enjoy different levels of confidentiality, and the same message may enjoy different levels of confidentiality for different principals. On this basis, the notion of indeliberate confidentiality attack can be captured, whereby a principal learns some message not meant for him because of someone else’s tampering. The analysis of Lowe’s attack on the Needham-Schroeder protocol reveals a new weakness.