Distance Bounding Protocols Research Articles

Practical and provably secure distance-bounding

From contactless payments to remote car unlocking, many applications are vulnerable to relay attacks. Distance bounding protocols are the main practical countermeasure against these attacks. In this paper, we present a formal analysis of SKI, which recently emerged as the first family of lightweigh t and provably secure distance bounding protocols. More precisely, we explicate a general formalism for distance-bounding protocols, which lead to this practical and provably secure class of protocols (and it could lead to others). We prove that SKI and its variants are provably secure, even under the real-life setting of noisy communications, against the main types of relay attacks: distance-fraud and generalised versions of mafia- and terrorist-fraud. To attain resistance to terrorist-fraud, we reinforce the idea of using secret sharing, combined with the new notion of a leakage scheme. In view of resistance to generalised mafia-frauds (and terrorist-frauds), we present the notion of circular-keying for pseudorandom functions (PRFs); this notion models the employment of a PRF, with possible linear reuse of the key. We also identify the need of PRF masking to fix common mistakes in existing security proofs/claims. Finally, we enhance our design to guarantee resistance to terrorist-fraud in the presence of noise.

Analysis of false-reject probability in distance bounding protocols with mixed challenges over RFID noisy communication channel

To protect RFID systems against the relay attack, distance bounding protocols are proposed based upon the round trip time measurements of the executed messages. With such protocols, in addition to tags' authentication, the reader estimates an upper bound for the physical distance between the tag and itself. Recently, Kim and Avoine proposed two distance bounding protocols called KA1 and KA2 both utilize mixed random and predefined challenges. It is well-known that KA2 can provide a good performance in view of mafia fraud resistance and system memory requirements for the tags. Since RFID systems and distance bounding protocols are particularly susceptible to noise, in this paper, KA1 and KA2 are analyzed to compute the rejection probability of a valid tag due to channel errors. In this case, the analysis as well as simulation results shows that increasing the number of rounds (iterations) with predefined challenges causes the rejection probability of a valid tag to increase.

An efficient mutual distance bounding protocol over a binary symmetric noisy communication channel

Distance bounding protocols have been suggested to protect an RFID communication system against relay attack. In such protocols, a verifier establishes an upper bound for the physical distance between a user and itself as well as authenticating the user. Recently, mutual distance bounding protocols in which both communication parties play not only as a user but also as a verifier have been proposed to be deployed for secure positioning protocols. In this paper, the performance of the existing mutual distance bounding protocols is analysed over a noisy communication channel. The analytic results show that these protocols provide a much higher rejection probability of a valid user due to channel errors than distance bounding protocols. Furthermore, a novel method is proposed to convert every distance bounding protocol into a mutual distance bounding protocol. Within this method, for each one of the two communication parties, the produced mutual distance bounding protocol provides the performance and security level exactly equal to those of its own associated distance bounding protocol at the same noisy environment, without transmitting any extra messages at the end of the protocol.

Challenges in Distance Bounding

Smartcard-based protocols represent an increasingly large share of the wireless authentication market, from contactless payments to remote car unlocking. Unfortunately, relay attacks pose a significant threat to these wireless solutions. However, this risk can be mitigated through the use of distance-bounding protocols. The authors discuss the core challenges of distance bounding, in terms of both theoretical and practical considerations, focusing on their security and the difficulties encountered in their design and implementation. The authors present their vision of the future of these protocols and of the possible paths toward their secure deployment.

테러리스트 공격과 마피아 공격에 안전한 RFID 거리 제한 프로토콜

RFID system has been used in a variety of services. So, a lot of attacks like a free ride on the service, leakage of property or personal information are known. Therefore, the solutions that address these attacks have been proposed. Among the attacks, mafia fraud, a kind of relay attack, can not be addressed by common authentication protocol. So, Hancke and Kuhn used distance bounding protocol for RFID authentication. After that, Munilla and Peinado modified HK protocol by adding void challenge. So the mafia fraud success probability of adversary is lower than probability of HK protocol. Ahn et al. proposed a protocol that reduces number of a hash computation and traffic than MP protocol. Here, we show that MP protocol can not defend the terrorist fraud and is vulnerable to noise. And we show that also AYBN protocol is vulnerable to mafia fraud and key leakage. Moreover, we propose a new protocol and our experimental results show that our protocol is secure to terrorist and mafia fraud. 논문 14-39A-11-05 The Journal of Korean Institute of Communications and Information Sciences '14-11 Vol.39A No.11 http://dx.doi.org/10.7840/kics.2014.39A.11.660 660 ※이 논문은 2012학년도 경북대학교 학술연구비에 의하여 연구되었음. First Author : College of IT Engineering, Kyungpook National University, heyjk90@gmail.com, 학생회원 ° Corresponding Author : College of IT Engineering, Kyungpook National University, sjkim@ee.knu.ac.kr, 종신회원 논문번호:KICS2014-10-431, Received October 24, 2014; Revised November 11, 2014; Accepted November 11, 2014 논문 / 테러리스트 공격과 마피아 공격에 안전한 RFID 거리 제한 프로토콜

All-or-nothing approach to protect a distance bounding protocol against terrorist fraud attack for low-cost devices

Distance bounding protocols are proposed based upon the round trip time measurements of the executed messages to prevent sensor networks against wormhole attack and to safeguard RFID systems against relay attack. In such protocols, the verifier authenticates users as well as establishing an upper bound on its physical distance between the users and itself. These protocols are also vulnerable to mafia fraud, distance fraud and terrorist fraud attacks. This paper deploys all-or-nothing method to propose a new distance bounding protocol with higher security level that can prevent terrorist fraud attack performed over the existing distance bounding protocols. Actually, the proposed protocol is the first protocol which can overcome all the three fraud attacks simultaneously with the lowest success probability of the attacks compared with the well known distance bounding protocols. Besides, the proposed protocol can be implemented on a low-cost device due to low computational cost and minimum system memory requirements.

Achieving an appropriate security level for distance bounding protocols over a noisy channel

A relay attack is probably the most popular assault that is normally executed over RFID security protocols. To protect RFID systems against this attack, distance bounding protocols are commonly employed. Within such protocols, the reader estimates an upper bound for the physical distance between the tag and itself as well as authenticating the tag. In this paper, as a general case, the concept of a distance bounding protocol is introduced with five adjustable security parameters characterized by $$p_d$$pd, $$k$$k, $$n$$n, $$t_1$$t1 and $$t_2$$t2. Since RFID systems and distance bounding protocols are principally vulnerable to noise, the security analysis for the introduced distance bounding protocol is performed over a noisy channel. With such analysis, the attacker's success probability due to mafia fraud and distance fraud attacks are obtained in a closed form through the five security parameters and the probability of erroneous transmission. The analytic results show that, with the proper selection of the mentioned security parameters in a known noisy environment, a distance bounding protocol provides the optimal attackers' success probabilities with the desirable number of iterations and memory requirements.

Distance Bounding Facing Both Mafia and Distance Frauds

Contactless technologies such as RFID, NFC, and sensor networks are vulnerable to mafia and distance frauds. Both frauds aim at passing an authentication protocol by cheating on the actual distance between the prover and the verifier. To cope these security issues, distance-bounding protocols have been designed. However, none of the current proposals simultaneously resists to these two frauds without requiring additional memory and computation. The situation is even worse considering that just a few distance-bounding protocols are able to deal with the inherent background noise on the communication channels. This article introduces a noise-resilient distance-bounding protocol that resists to both mafia and distance frauds. The security of the protocol is analyzed with respect to these two frauds in both scenarios, namely noisy and noiseless channels. Analytical expressions for the adversary's success probabilities are provided, and are illustrated by experimental results. The analysis, performed in an already existing framework for fairness reasons, demonstrates the undeniable advantage of the introduced lightweight design over the previous proposals.

Location leakage in distance bounding: Why location privacy does not work

In many cases, we can only have access to a service by proving we are sufficiently close to a particular location (e.g. in automobile or building access control). In these cases, proximity can be guaranteed through signal attenuation. However, by using additional transmitters an attacker can relay signals between the prover and the verifier. Distance-bounding protocols are the main countermeasure against such attacks; however, such protocols may leak information regarding the location of the prover and/or the verifier who run the distance-bounding protocol.In this paper, we consider a formal model for location privacy in the context of distance-bounding. In particular, our contributions are threefold: we first define a security game for location privacy in distance bounding; secondly, we define an adversarial model for this game, with two adversary classes; finally, we assess the feasibility of attaining location privacy for distance-bounding protocols. Concretely, we prove that for protocols with a beginning or a termination, it is theoretically impossible to achieve location privacy for either of the two adversary classes, in the sense that there always exists a polynomially-bounded adversary winning the security game. However, for so-called limited adversaries, who cannot see the location of arbitrary provers, carefully chosen parameters do, in practice, enable computational location privacy.

On the Feasibility of Overshadow Enlargement Attack on IEEE 802.15.4a Distance Bounding

Distance-bounding protocols are able to measure a secure upper bound to the distance between two devices. They are designed to resist to reduction attacks, whose objective is reducing the measured distance. In this paper we focus on the opposite problem, the enlargement attack, which is aimed at enlarging the measured distance. We analyze the feasibility of enlargement attacks through overshadow strategies on 802.15.4a UWB distance-bounding protocols. We show that the overshadow strategies, generally considered feasible by the existing literature, are actually difficult to carry out. Depending on the delay introduced by the adversary, there are cases in which they have no effect or their effect is not controllable.

An ultra-lightweight RFID distance bounding protocol

An ultra-lightweight RFID distance bounding protocol

Mutual Distance Bounding Protocol with Its Implementability Over a Noisy Channel and Its Utilization for Key Agreement in Peer-to-Peer Wireless Networks

In order to protect a wireless sensor network and an RFID system against wormhole and relay attacks respectively, distance bounding protocols are suggested for the past decade. In these protocols, a verifier authenticates a user as well as estimating an upper bound for the physical distance between the user and itself. Recently, distance bounding protocols, each with a mutual authentication, are proposed to increase the security level for such systems. They are also suggested to be deployed for key agreement protocols in a short-range wireless communication system to prevent Man-in-the-Middle attack. In this paper, a new mutual distance bounding protocol called NMDB is proposed with two security parameters ( $$n$$ n and $$t$$ t ). The parameter $$n$$ n denotes the number of iterations in an execution of the protocol and the parameter $$t$$ t presents the number of errors acceptable by the verifier during $$n$$ n iterations. This novel protocol is implementable in a noisy wireless environment without requiring final confirmation message. Moreover, it is shown that, how this protocol can be employed for the key agreement procedures to resist against Man-in-the-Middle attack. NMDB is also analyzed in a noisy environment to compute the success probability of attackers and the rejection probability of a valid user due to channel errors. The analytically obtained results show that, with the proper selection of the security parameters ( $$n$$ n and $$t$$ t ) in a known noisy environment, NMDB provides an appropriate security level with a reliable performance.

Enhanced GeoProof: improved geographic assurance for data in the cloud

The geographic location of cloud data storage centres is an important issue for many organisations and individuals due to various regulations that require data and operations to reside in specific geographic locations. Thus, cloud users may want to be sure that their stored data have not been relocated into unknown geographic regions that may compromise the security of their stored data. Albeshri et al. (2012) combined proof of storage (POS) protocols with distance-bounding protocols to address this problem. However, their scheme involves unnecessary delay when utilising typical POS schemes due to computational overhead at the server side. The aim of this paper is to improve the basic GeoProof protocol by reducing the computation overhead at the server side. We show how this can maintain the same level of security while achieving more accurate geographic assurance.

Eliminating rouge femtocells based on distance bounding protocol and geographic information

Recently, femtocell solutions have been attracting increasing attention since coverage for broadband radios can effectively eliminate wireless notspots. To restrict malicious subscribers from accessing femtocells, 3G/WiMAX standards introduce an access control strategy, called Closed Subscriber Group (CSG). However, CSG only prevents malicious clients, but not rouge femtocells. In 2009, Han et al. proposed the first mutual authentication mechanism. This mechanism does not consider the case that an attacker can locate femtocells in an unregistered area even these femtocells are legitimate.In this paper, we first define two attacks, sinkhole and wormhole attacks, in femtocell-enabled mobile networks. Then, we design two approaches based on distance bounding protocols and geographic information to defend against these two attacks. In our design, a subscriber can confirm whether or not the femtocell he connected with is physically-present. Experiment results demonstrate that the distance bounding protocol can estimate an approximate distance between a subscriber’s device and the deployed femtocell. Moreover, femtocells that are deployed inside or outside can both be identified and distinguished without the bias of signal strength based on our design.

Robust RFID Distance-Bounding Protocol based on Mutual Authentication

최근 RFID 시스템의 인증 과정에서 발생하는 중계 공격(relay attack)을 방어하기 위해 다양한 RFID 경계결정 프로토콜이 개발되고 있다. RFID 경계 결정 프로토콜에서는 물리적 경계 상한 값을 결정하여 고속 비트교환 과정을 수행하여 위와 같은 공격자에 의한 중계 공격 성공 확률을 줄여준다. 기존 연구를 바탕으로 본 논문에서는 마피아 위조 공격과 경계 위조 공격의 성공 확률을 ((1/2)ⁿ, (1/2)ⁿ)에서 ((1/2)ⁿ, (1/2)ⁿ/2) 사이를 제공함으로써 상호 인증 기반의 안전성을 제공할 뿐만 아니라 리더와 태그 측의 연산량과 저장 공간을 줄여주는 효율적인 RFID 경계 결정 프로토콜을 제안한다. 결론적으로 제안한 프로토콜은 다음과 같은 장점들을 가진다. (1) 태그와 리더 간에 1번의 해쉬 연산 결과 값을 기반으로 상호인증을 제공하는 안전한 고속 비트 교환 단계를 수행할 수 있다. (2) 리더와 태그 간의 통신 라운드 수를 최적화하여 준다.

Mutual Distance Bounding Protocols

A distance bounding protocol enables one entity to determine an upper bound on the physical distance to the other entity as well as to authenticate the other entity. It has been actively researched during the recent years as distance-based attacks like Mafia fraud attacks become a threat in wireless environment, especially in RFID systems. Almost all distance bounding protocols deal with unilateral authentication as they consider authentication of a passive RFID tag to a reader. Recently, a distance bounding protocol providing mutual authentication has been proposed by Yum et al. asserting that it provides a lower false acceptance rate under Mafia fraud attack. However, we show in two ways that their security margins have been overestimated. First, we show that their analysis is not correct. Second, we introduce a new attack that achieves a higher false acceptance rate. Furthermore, we introduce a method that can modify existing distance bounding protocols with unilateral authentication to ones providing mutual authentication.

On Selecting the Nonce Length in Distance-Bounding Protocols

Distance-bounding protocols form a family of challenge–response authentication protocols that have been introduced to thwart relay attacks. They enable a verifier to authenticate and to establish an upper bound on the physical distance to an untrusted prover. We provide a detailed security analysis of a family of such protocols. More precisely, we show that the secret key shared between the verifier and the prover can be leaked after a number of nonce repetitions. The leakage probability, while exponentially decreasing with the nonce length, is only weakly dependent on the key length. Our main contribution is a high probability bound on the number of sessions required for the attacker to discover the secret, and an experimental analysis of the attack under noisy conditions. Both of these show that the attack's success probability mainly depends on the length of the used nonces rather than the length of the shared secret key. The theoretical bound could be used by practitioners to appropriately select their security parameters. While longer nonces can guard against this type of attack, we provide a possible countermeasure which successfully combats these attacks even when short nonces are used.

Distance Bounding: A Practical Security Solution for Real-Time Location Systems

The need for implementing adequate security services in industrial applications is increasing. Verifying the physical proximity or location of a device has become an important security service in ad-hoc wireless environments. Distance-bounding is a prominent secure neighbor detection method that cryptographically determines an upper bound for the physical distance between two communicating parties based on the round-trip time of cryptographic challenge-response pairs. This paper gives a brief overview of distance-bounding protocols and discusses the possibility of implementing such protocols within industrial RFID and real-time location applications, which requires an emphasis on aspects such as reliability and real-time communication. The practical resource requirements and performance tradeoffs involved are illustrated using a sample of distance-bounding proposals, and some remaining research challenges with regards to practical implementation are discussed.

Distance Bounding with Delayed Responses

Distance-bounding protocols enable the establishment of an upper bound on the distance between two communicating parties in such a way that their degree of proximity can be verified. Most of these protocols rely on multi-rounds of single-bit challenge and response. Therefore, in each round, the probability that an adversary will guess the correct response is 1/2. This letter proposes a new method to increase the number of response states of distance-bounding protocols by injecting intentional delays to each round. Our method can reduce the probability of a correct guess from 1/2 to 1/(2k) for each round, where k is the number of different delays, without significant modifications of underlying protocols. Moreover, it can be applied to passive RFID tags, because it requires no special hardware equipment.

Cryptanalysis of Pasargad, A Distance Bounding Protocol Based on RFID System

In this paper we analyze an authentication protocol so-called Pasargad which proposed by Arjemand et al. [1]. The Pasargad protocol is a distance bounding protocol which has been designed for RFID-based electronic voting systems. The designers have claimed that this protocol is more secure than Preneel and Single protocol [2], against relay attacks. However, in this paper, we present some efficient attacks against it. Our attacks include conditional impersonation attack and recovery key attack. Moreover, we show that this protocol has some structural flaw which may prevent to execution the protocol.