How to prevent type-flaw and multi-protocol attacks on security protocols under Exclusive-OR

13 years 5 months ago

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Type-flaw attacks and multi-protocol attacks on security protocols have been frequently reported in the literature. Heather et al. and Guttman et al. proved that these could be prevented by tagging encrypted components with distinct constants, in a standard protocol model with free message algebra and perfect encryption [23, 21]. However, most "real-world" protocols such as SSL 3.0 are designed with the Exclusive-OR (XOR) operator that possesses algebraic properties, breaking the free algebra assumption. These algebraic properties induce equational theories that need to be considered when analyzing protocols that use the operator. This is the problem we consider in this paper: We prove that, under certain assumptions, tagging encrypted components still prevents type-flaw and multi-protocol attacks even in the presence of the XOR operator and its algebraic properties.

Sreekanth Malladi

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