Threshold Anonymous Password-Authenticated Key Exchange Secure against Insider Attacks

Abstract

An anonymous password-authenticated key exchange (PAKE) protocol is designed to provide both password-only authentication and client anonymity against a semi-honest server, who honestly follows the protocol. In INDOCRYPT2008, Yang and Zhang [26] proposed a new anonymous PAKE (NAPAKE) protocol and its threshold (D-NAPAKE) which they claimed to be secure against insider attacks. In this paper, we first show that the D-NAPAKE protocol [26]is completely insecure against insider attacks unlike their claim. Specifically, only one legitimate client can freely impersonate any subgroup of clients (the threshold t>1) to the server. After giving a security model that captures insider attacks, we propose a threshold anonymous PAKE (called, TAP++) protocol which provides security against insider attacks. Moreover, we prove that the TAP++ protocol has semantic security of session keys against active attacks as well as insider attacks under the computational Diffie-Hellman problem, and provides client anonymity against a semi-honest server, who honestly follows the protocol. Finally, several discussions are followed: 1) We also show another threshold anonymous PAKE protocol by applying our RATIONALE to the non-threshold anonymous PAKE (VEAP) protocol [23]; and 2) We give the efficiency comparison, security consideration and implementation issue of the TAP++ protocol.