TBVPAKE: An efficient and provably secure verifier-based PAKE protocol for IoT applications

Abstract

Password-authenticated key exchange (PAKE) is an important cryptographic primitive by which two parties are allowed to authenticate each other and establish a cryptographically strong key using a low-entropy password over an insecure channel. Therefore, it is suitable for access control and securing communications between low-cost Internet of Things (IoT) devices where sound security mechanism is difficult to be applied. This paper makes a contribution to securing IoT applications by presenting a secure, efficient and easy-to-implement verifier-based PAKE protocol, named as TBVPAKE (short for Two-Basis Verifier-based PAKE). It is secure against the off-line dictionary attack and server compromise attack, and supports the perfect forward secrecy. Under the widely accepted BPR security model, TBVPAKE is formally proved in this paper in the random oracle model by reducing its security to the Computational Diffie–Hellman (CDH) and Simultaneous Diffie–Hellman (SDH) security assumptions. In addition, we compare the new TBVPAKE with some other outstanding verifier-based PAKE protocols by instantiating them over a commonly used elliptic curve group, and the comparative analysis results definitely show that the new TBVPAKE offers better computational efficiency and ease of implementation. Therefore, the new TBVPAKE might be a better choice for securing IoT applications.