Lecture 16: Key Establishment Flashcards
What does key establishment in TLS use to allow clients and servers to share a new communication key?
public keys
What is Kerberos?
A widely used system for secure communications which achieves key establishment without using public keys
What are the four phases of key management?
generation
distribution
protection
destruction
Comment on the key generation phase in key management
keys should be generated s.t. they are equally like to occur
Comment on the key distribution phase in key management
keys should be distributed in a secure fashion
Comment on the key protection phase in key management
keys should be accessible for use in relevant cryptographic algorithms, but not accessible to unauthorised parties
Comment on the key destruction phase in key management
once a key has performed its function, it should be destroyed s.t. it is of no value to an attacker
What are the two keys involved in the simple 2-level hierarchy?
Long-term keys
Short-term keys
What are long-term keys also called?
static keys
How long are long-term keys intended to be used for?
a long time
depending on the application, from few hours to few years
What are long-term keys used to protect
used to protect distribution of session keys
What are short-term keys also called?
session keys
How long are short-term keys intended to be used for?
a short period
depending upon the application, from a few seconds to a few hours
What are short-term/session keys used to protect?
protect communications in a session (e.g. with authenticated encryption)
In practice, what are session keys? Why?
symmetric keys used with ciphers (e.g. AES, MAC)
–> due to their greater efficiency over public key algorithms
What type of keys can long-term keys be?
Either symmetric or asymmetric keys, depending on how they are used
What is does key establishment involved figuring out?
how to establish secrete session keys among communication parties using the long-term keys
What are common approaches to do key establishment? (3)
1) key pre-distribution
2) using an online server with symmetric long-term keys
3) using asymmetric long-term keys
What are the two key distribution security goals?
1) authentication
2) confidentiality
Explain the authentication key distribution security goal
if Alice completes the protocol and believes that the key is shared with Bob, then it should not be the case that the key is actually shared with another party
Explain the confidentiality key distribution security goal
the adversary is unable to obtain the session key accepted by a particular party
In formal models, how has the key establishment protocol been seen as broken?
if the adversary can distinguish the session key from a random string
When does the key establishment protocol provide mutual authentication?
if both parties achieve the authentication goal
When does the key establishment protocol provide unilateral authentication
if only one party achieves the authentication goal
What are the four adversary capabilities of a strong adversary who knows the details of the cryptographic algorithms involved
1) eavesdrop on all messages sent in a protocol
2) alter all messages sent in a protocol using any info available to them
3) re-route any messages (including new ones) to any other party
4) obtain the value of the session key used in any previous run of the protocol
Who generates and distributes long-term keys to all users when they join the system?
a trusted authority (TA)
Explain the simple schemes for distribution of pre-shared keys
- Assigning a secrete key for each pair of uses
- The number of keys thus grows quadratically
• The TA only operates in the pre-distribution phase
–> does not need to be online afterwards
• poor scalability
Explain the probabilistic scheme for distribution of pre-shared keys
- reducing key material at each party
- but only guaranteeing a secure channel between any 2 users with some (high) probability
- suitable for sensor networks
Explain the key distribution process using symmetric keys
- key distribution with an online server
- TA shares a long-term shares a long-term shared key with each user
- An online TA generates and distributes session keys for users when requested –> secure fashion using long-term keys
What is a single point of attack in key distribution using symmetric keys?
the TA (highly trusted)
Comment on scalability for key distribution using symmetric keys
can be problematic
Explain key distribution for asymmetric cryptography
- no online TA required
- public keys used for authentication
- public keys managed by PKI (certificates and CAs)
• users are trusted to generate good session keys
–> a good pseudo-random number generator required at each party
What are the two types of key distribution using asymmetric cryptography?
1) key transport
2) key agreement
What happens when a long-term key is compromised?
- the attacker can now act as the owner of the long-term key
- previous session keys kay also be compromised
- -> this can be the case with key transport
- -> prevent with key agreement
What is required for a protocol to provide (perfect) key secrecy
if compromise of long-term secrete keys does NOT reveal session keys previously agreed using those long-term keys
What is key transport?
user chooses key material and sends it encrypted to another party
–> sometimes message is also signed by sender
Does TLS include the option for key transport?
yes
Does key transport provide forward secrecy
NO