3PAKE Protocol Research Articles

Provably Secure Asymmetric PAKE Protocol for Protecting IoT Access

Provably Secure Asymmetric PAKE Protocol for Protecting IoT Access

VSPAKE: Provably secure verifier-based PAKE protocol for client/server model in TLS ciphersuite

Nowadays, password-authenticated key exchange (PAKE) protocols have actually been widely used in our daily life to provide security assurance, by which two parties can achieve mutual authentication and cryptographic session key establishment via a shared memorable password. In this paper, an efficient verifier-based PAKE protocol is presented in the form of TLS ciphersuite, which is essentially a variant of the symmetric SPAKE protocol and thus named as VSPAKE. Besides resistance to the tricky offline password guessing attack, the new VSPAKE protocol is secure against the server compromise attack. In the random oracle model, the new VSPAKE protocol is formally proved under the BPR security model by only using the basic CDH security assumption, making it gain certain security advantages in security aspect over the recently proposed TBVPAKE protocol, etc. What is more, compared with its very relevant KC-SPAKE2+ protocol, the new VSPAKE protocol has computational efficiency advantages over it in the client side and has comparable computational efficiency in the server side. Therefore, the new VSPAKE protocol is likely to be as a good choice for some applications in practice.

A Strengthened PAKE Protocol with Identity-Based Encryption

A Strengthened PAKE Protocol with Identity-Based Encryption

A Secure Three-Party Authenticated Key Exchange Protocol for Social Networks

The 3PAKE (Three-Party Authenticated Key Exchange) protocol is a valuable cryptographic method that offers safe communication and permits two diverse parties to consent to a new safe meeting code using the trusted server. There have been explored numerous 3PAKE protocols earlier to create a protected meeting code between users employing the trusted server. However, existing modified 3PAKE protocols have numerous drawbacks and are incapable to provide desired secrecy against diverse attacks such as man-in-the-middle, brute-force attacks, and many others in social networks. In this article, the authors proposed an improved as well as safe 3PAKE protocol based on the hash function and the symmetric encryption for the social networks. The authors utilized a well-acknowledged AVISPA tool to provide security verification of the proposed 3PAKE technique, and findings show that our proposed protocol is safer in opposition to active as well as passive attacks namely the brute-force, man-in-the-middle, parallel attack, and many more. Furthermore, compared to other similar schemes, the proposed protocol is built with a reduced computing cost as our proposed protocol consumes less time in execution and offers high secrecy in the social networks with improved accuracy. As a result, this verified scheme is more efficient as well as feasible for implementation in the social networks in comparison to previous security protocols. Although multifarious authors carried out extensive research on 3PAKE protocols to offer safe communication, still there are vital opportunities to explore and implement novel improved protocols for higher safety in the social networks and mobile commerce environment in the future in opposition to diverse active as well as passive attacks.

Improved Verifier-Based Three-Party Password-Authenticated Key Exchange Protocol from Ideal Lattices

With the advent of large-scale social networks, two communication users need to generate session keys with the help of a remote server to communicate securely. In the existing three-party authenticated key exchange (3PAKE) protocols, users’ passwords need to be stored on the server; it cannot resist the server disclosure attack. To solve this security problem, we propose a more efficient 3PAKE protocol based on the verification element by adopting a public-key cryptosystem and approximate smooth projection hash (ASPH) function on an ideal lattice. Using the structure of separating authentication from the server, the user can negotiate the session key only after two rounds of communication. The analysis results show that it can improve the efficiency of computation and communication and resist the server disclosure attack, quantum algorithm attack, and replay attack; moreover, it has session key privacy to the server. This protocol can meet the performance requirement of the current communication network.

A Verifier-Based Password-Authenticated Key Exchange Using Tamper-Proof Hardware

Abstract Password-based authenticated key exchange (PAKE) allows two parties to compute a common secret key. PAKE offers the advantage of allowing two parties to pre-share only a password. However, when it is executed in a client–server environment, server corruption can expose the clients’ passwords. To be resilient against server compromises, verifier-based authenticated key exchange (VPAKE) is proposed, as an augmented version of PAKE. Thus far, there are two known major VPAKE constructions formally proven secure. However, both involve strong assumptions, such as random oracles. In this paper, we propose a simple and efficient VPAKE using tamper-proof hardware without random oracles to support resilient infrastructures. In particular, we transform Katz–Vaikuntanathan one-round PAKE into two-round VPAKE so as to instill resilience to server compromises. We provide a formal definition of VPAKE using tamper-proof hardware and security proof without random oracles. Finally, we provide a performance analysis and comparisons to previous VPAKE and PAKE protocols. Our transformation supports an efficient VPAKE protocol with six group element communications when the underlying Katz–Vaikuntanathan PAKE is instantiated by Cramer–Shoup ciphertext following the proposal by Benhamouda et al.

Quantum-Safe Round-Optimal Password Authentication for Mobile Devices

Password authentication is the dominant form of access control for the Web and mobile devices, and its practicality and ubiquity is unlikely to be replaced by other authentication approaches in the foreseeable future. To guarantee the security of data communication and mitigate the problem of password-cracking, a <i>Password Authenticated Key Exchange</i> (<inline-formula><tex-math notation="LaTeX">$\mathsf {PAKE}$</tex-math><alternatives><mml:math><mml:mi mathvariant="sans-serif">PAKE</mml:mi></mml:math><inline-graphic xlink:href="wang-ieq1-3040776.gif"/></alternatives></inline-formula>) system can be deployed between two peer participants. The main drawback of traditional <inline-formula><tex-math notation="LaTeX">$\mathsf {PAKE}$</tex-math><alternatives><mml:math><mml:mi mathvariant="sans-serif">PAKE</mml:mi></mml:math><inline-graphic xlink:href="wang-ieq2-3040776.gif"/></alternatives></inline-formula> is that passwords are exposed in plaintext when the remote server is compromised. To overcome this limitation, it is recommended by industry standards (such as SRP family RFC 5054, RFC6628, RFC7914, OPAQUE, <i>etc</i>) to use <i>asymmetric</i>-<inline-formula><tex-math notation="LaTeX">$\mathsf {PAKE}$</tex-math><alternatives><mml:math><mml:mi mathvariant="sans-serif">PAKE</mml:mi></mml:math><inline-graphic xlink:href="wang-ieq3-3040776.gif"/></alternatives></inline-formula> protocols, which enable the server to store a hash of the user&#x0027;s password with a random salt, providing guarantees that the user&#x0027;s password is never transmitted in plain-text to the server when login. However, most of the existing <i>asymmetric</i>-<inline-formula><tex-math notation="LaTeX">$\mathsf {PAKE}$</tex-math><alternatives><mml:math><mml:mi mathvariant="sans-serif">PAKE</mml:mi></mml:math><inline-graphic xlink:href="wang-ieq4-3040776.gif"/></alternatives></inline-formula> protocols either are based on traditional hash functions under random oracles, or depend on non-quantum-secure hardness assumptions and become insecure in the quantum era. To bridge the gap between <i>asymmetric</i>-<inline-formula><tex-math notation="LaTeX">$\mathsf {PAKE}$</tex-math><alternatives><mml:math><mml:mi mathvariant="sans-serif">PAKE</mml:mi></mml:math><inline-graphic xlink:href="wang-ieq5-3040776.gif"/></alternatives></inline-formula> and quantum-security, in this article, we resort to <i>smooth projective hash functions</i> (<inline-formula><tex-math notation="LaTeX">$\mathsf {SPHF}$</tex-math><alternatives><mml:math><mml:mi mathvariant="sans-serif">SPHF</mml:mi></mml:math><inline-graphic xlink:href="wang-ieq6-3040776.gif"/></alternatives></inline-formula>) and <i>commitment</i>-based <i>password-hashing schemes</i> (<inline-formula><tex-math notation="LaTeX">$\mathsf {PHS}$</tex-math><alternatives><mml:math><mml:mi mathvariant="sans-serif">PHS</mml:mi></mml:math><inline-graphic xlink:href="wang-ieq7-3040776.gif"/></alternatives></inline-formula>) over lattice-based cryptography, and construct an asymmetric <inline-formula><tex-math notation="LaTeX">$\mathsf {PAKE}$</tex-math><alternatives><mml:math><mml:mi mathvariant="sans-serif">PAKE</mml:mi></mml:math><inline-graphic xlink:href="wang-ieq8-3040776.gif"/></alternatives></inline-formula> protocol secure against quantum attacks. Our construction eliminates the costly non-interactive zero-knowledge (NIZK) method, bypasses assumptions of the random oracle model, and achieves quantum resistance. We also show that our asymmetric-<inline-formula><tex-math notation="LaTeX">$\mathsf {PAKE}$</tex-math><alternatives><mml:math><mml:mi mathvariant="sans-serif">PAKE</mml:mi></mml:math><inline-graphic xlink:href="wang-ieq9-3040776.gif"/></alternatives></inline-formula> protocol can achieve security and efficiency under the Bellare-Pointcheval-Rogaway (BPR) model. Finally, we develop a prototype implementation of our instantiation and use it to evaluate its performance in realistic settings.

Revisit of Password-Authenticated Key Exchange Protocol for Healthcare Support Wireless Communication

Wireless communication is essential for the infrastructure of a healthcare system. This bidirectional communication is used for data collection and to control message delivery. Wireless communication is applied in industries as well as in our daily lives, e.g., smart cities; however, highly reliable communication may be more difficult in environments with low power consumption, many interferences, or IoT wireless network issues due to resource limitations. In order to solve these problems, we investigated the existing three-party password-authenticated key exchange (3PAKE) and developed an enhanced protocol. Currently, Lu et al. presented a 3PAKE protocol to improve the security flaws found in Farash and Attari’s protocol. This work revisits the protocol proposed by Lu et al. and demonstrates that, in addition to other security weaknesses, the protocol does not provide user anonymity which is an important issue for healthcare environment, and is not secure against insider attacks that may cause impersonation attacks. We propose a secure biometric-based efficient password-authenticated key exchange (SBAKE) protocol in order to remove the incidences of these threats, and present an analysis regarding the security and efficiency of the SBAKE protocol for practical deployment.

Secure lightweight password authenticated key exchange for heterogeneous wireless sensor networks

Several three-party password authenticated key exchange (3-PAKE) protocols have recently been proposed for heterogeneous wireless sensor networks (HWSN). These are efficient and designed to address security concerns in ad-hoc sensor network applications for a global Internet of Things framework, where a user may request access to sensitive information collected by resource-constrained sensors in clusters managed by gateway nodes. In this paper we first analyze three recently proposed 3-PAKE protocols and discuss their vulnerabilities. Then, based on Radio Frequency Identification technologies we propose a novel 3-PAKE protocol for HWSN applications, with two extensions for additional security features, that is provably secure, efficient and flexible.

Anonymity preserving and round effective three-party authentication key exchange protocol based on chaotic maps.

Three-party authentication key exchange (3PAKE) is a protocol that allows two users to set up a common session key with the help of a trusted remote server, which is effective for secret communication between clients in a large-scale network environment. Since chaotic maps have superior characteristics, researchers have recently presented some of the studies that apply it to authentication key exchange and cryptography. Providing user anonymity in the authentication key exchange is one of the important security requirements to protect users' personal secrets. We analyse Lu et al.'s scheme which attempts to provide user anonymity and we prove that his scheme has errors in the key exchange phase and password change phase. We propose a round-effective three-party authentication key exchange (3PAKE) protocol that provides user anonymity and we analyse its security properties based on BAN logic and AVISPA tool.

AuCPace: Efficient verifier-based PAKE protocol tailored for the IIoT

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.

Improvement on a Chaotic Map-based Mutual Anonymous Authentication Protocol

Designing a secure anonymous authentication protocol is never an easy task where anonymity and authenticity are sometime conflicting to each other. Zhou et al. addressed the privacy requirement in their proposed three-party password-based authenticated key exchange (3PAKE) protocols using chaotic maps. Unfortunately, in this paper, we show that their protocol is vulnerable to a man-in-the-middle attack, an off-line password guessing attack, and a replay attack. To enhance the security, we propose a secure chaotic map-based 3PAKE protocol with mutual anonymity. Moreover, the security of our protocol is proved in the random oracle model. Also, analysis shows that the proposed scheme is more secure with similar performance.

Three-party password-based authenticated key exchange protocol based on the computational Diffie-Hellman assumption

The three-party password-based authenticated key exchange protocol gives two clients the ability to negotiate a session key through a trusted server over a public channel. Most of the proposed 3PAKE protocols use public keys to guarantee identities; however, the sharing of public keys may lead to various types of attacks, such as a man-in-the-middle attack, which allows an attacker to simply intercept and insert traffic traversing a network. In this paper, we briefly describe an updated three-party password-based authenticated key exchange protocol and analyse its security. The proposed TPAKE protocol does not share plain-text data. Data shared between the parties are either hashed or encrypted. Using the random oracle model, the security of the proposed TPAKE protocol is formally proven under the computational Diffie-Hillman assumption. Furthermore, the analyses included in this paper show that our protocol can ensure perfect forward secrecy and can also resist many types of common attacks.

Provably leakage-resilient three-party password-based authenticated key exchange

Three-party password-based authenticated key exchange (3PAKE) protocol is an important practical cryptographic primitive in the client-client communication environments, where two clients could generate a shared secure session key using their human-memorable passwords with a server’s help. Many 3PAKE protocols were proposed, but these protocols were only secure in the traditional model where no leakage attacks exist. In Mobile Internet, Wireless Networks and Sensor Networks environments, 3PAKE systems are very vulnerable to side-channel attacks. Therefore, it is very necessary to design 3PAKE protocols that are secure in the leakage environments. However, there is no previous works for formalizing the security model for leakage-resilient (LR) 3PAKE and designing the LR 3PAKE protocols. In the paper, we first define a continuous after-the-fact LR eCK-security model for 3PAKE and propose a LR 3PAKE protocol, then present a formal security proof in the standard model.

Security Analysis of an ID-Based Two-Server Password-Authenticated Key Exchange

Two-server password-authenticated key exchange allows the client to split a low-entropy password into two pieces and store them in two servers, respectively, and the two servers collaboratively authenticate the client and establish session keys. Even though either server has been corrupted, it guarantees that the password still remains secure. In 2014, Yi et al. proposed a compiler that transforms any two-party PAKE protocol to a two-server PAKE protocol by dint of the ID-based public-key encryption system under the standard model. Moreover, it is claimed that the scheme is provably secure in a relevant formal model. In this letter, we point out an existing related-key attack to their scheme so that when one server is corrupted, the adversary can subtly derive the fresh key shared by the remaining two honest parties. In addition, we suggest a simple patch to avoid this concern.

A novel three-party password-based authenticated key exchange protocol with user anonymity based on chaotic maps

Three-party authenticated key exchange (3PAKE) protocol allows two communication users to authenticate each other and to establish a secure common session key with the help of a trusted remote server. Recently, Farash and Attari propose an efficient and secure 3PAKE protocol based on Chebyshev chaotic maps and their protocol is supported by the formal proof in the random oracle model. However, in this paper, we analyze the security of Farash–Attari’s protocol and show that it fails to resist password disclosure attack if the secret information stored in the server side is compromised. In addition, their protocol is insecure against user impersonation attack and the server is not aware of having caused problem. Moreover, the password change phase is insecure to identify the validity of request where insecurity in password change phase can cause offline password guessing attacks and is not easily reparable. To remove these security weaknesses, based on Chebyshev chaotic maps and quadratic residues, we further design an improved protocol for 3PAKE with user anonymity. In comparison with the existing chaotic map-based 3PAKE protocols, our proposed 3PAKE protocol is more secure with acceptable computation complexity and communication overhead.

An efficient and practical threshold gateway-oriented password-authenticated key exchange protocol in the standard model

With the assistance of an authentication server, a gateway-oriented password-authenticated key exchange (GPAKE) protocol can establish a common session key shared between a client and a gateway. Unfortunately, a GPAKE protocol becomes totally insecure if an adversary can compromise the authentication server and steal the passwords of the clients. In order to provide resilience against adversaries who can hack into the authentication server, we propose a threshold GPAKE protocol and then present its security proof in the standard model based on the hardness of the decisional Diffie-Hellman (DDH) problem. In our proposal, the password is shared among $n$ authentication servers and is secure unless the adversary corrupts more than $t+1$ servers. Our protocol requires $n>3t$ servers to work. Compared with existing threshold PAKE protocols, our protocol maintains both stronger security and greater efficiency.

A Three-Party Password-based Authenticated Key Exchange Protocol for Wireless Communications

A three-party password-based authenticated key exchange (3PAKE) protocol is an important cryptographic primitive which allows two entities to establish a session key with the help of a trusted server through an insecure channel. Recently, Farash and Attari (Information Technology and Control 43(2), 143-150, 2014) presented an improved 3PAKE protocol to erase the security flaws found in Tallapally’s 3PAKE protocol (Information Technology and Control 41(1), 15-22, 2012). They claimed that their improved protocol could withstand many security attacks. However, we identified that Farash and Attari’s protocol was still sensitive to the off-line password guessing attack which directly resulted in defencelessness to the impersonation attack. In order to cope with the loopholes of Farash and Attari’s protocol, we proposed a modified 3PAKE protocol without using smart cards for wireless communications. We demonstrate that the proposed protocol can mitigate all the problems of the protocol of Farash and Attari and possess more security properties. In addition, we make a comparison among the proposed protocol and the other related protocols regarding the performance and security properties.DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5755/j01.itc.44.4.9729

An improved three party authenticated key exchange protocol using hash function and elliptic curve cryptography for mobile-commerce environments

In the literature, many three-party authenticated key exchange (3PAKE) protocols are put forwarded to established a secure session key between two users with the help of trusted server. The computed session key will ensure secure message exchange between the users over any insecure communication networks. In this paper, we identified some deficiencies in Tan’s 3PAKE protocol and then devised an improved 3PAKE protocol without symmetric key en/decryption technique for mobile-commerce environments. The proposed protocol is based on the elliptic curve cryptography and one-way cryptographic hash function. In order to prove security validation of the proposed 3PAKE protocol we have used widely accepted AVISPA software whose results confirm that the proposed protocol is secure against active and passive attacks including replay and man-in-the-middle attacks. The proposed protocol is not only secure in the AVISPA software, but it also secure against relevant numerous security attacks such as man-in-the-middle attack, impersonation attack, parallel attack, key-compromise impersonation attack, etc. In addition, our protocol is designed with lower computation cost than other relevant protocols. Therefore, the proposed protocol is more efficient and suitable for practical use than other protocols in mobile-commerce environments.

A Provably Secure Three-Party Password Authenticated Key Exchange Protocol without Using Server's Public-Keys and Symmetric Cryptosystems

Three-party password authenticated key exchange (3PAKE) protocols allow two clients to establish a common secure session key via the help of an authentication server, in which each client only needs to share a single password with the server. Many researchers pay attention to 3PAKE protocols since they are well suited for large-scale communication in mobile environments. Recently, Farash et al. proposed an enhanced 3PAKE protocol without using server's public-keys and symmetric cryptosystems. They claimed that their protocol is secure against various attacks. However, we found that Farash et al.'s protocol is vulnerable to partition attacks and off-line dictionary attacks. Moreover, their protocol needs 5 rounds to work, so it is inefficient in terms of communication. To overcome these shortcomings, we improve their protocol and propose a provably secure 3PAKE protocol, which is more efficient and secure than other related protocols.DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5755/j01.itc.44.2.8197