Mu­tu­al Preim­age Au­then­ti­ca­ti­on for fast Han­do­ver in En­t­er­pri­se Net­works

An­dre­as Noack, Mark Borr­mann

The 5th In­ter­na­tio­nal Sym­po­si­um on In­for­ma­ti­on Se­cu­ri­ty (IS'10), Greece, 2010


Ab­stract

Wire­less en­t­er­pri­se net­works with a cen­tral au­then­ti­ca­ti­on ser­ver are very com­mon in com­pa­nies due to their sim­ple ser­vice­abi­li­ty. Roa­ming bet­ween wire­less cells of these en­t­er­pri­se net­works usual­ly re­sults in con­nec­tion in­ter­rupts be­cau­se of long au­then­ti­ca­ti­on times, which are very ne­ga­ti­ve for near real­ti­me com­mu­ni­ca­ti­on like VoIP calls. Fast han­do­ver in en­t­er­pri­se net­works de­man­ds the­re­fo­re a fast au­then­ti­ca­ti­on and key ex­chan­ge pro­to­col.

We pro­po­se an ex­ten­si­ble au­then­ti­ca­ti­on pro­to­col (EAP) for this pur­po­se that is ex­pli­ci­te­ly op­ti­mi­zed to re­du­ce au­then­ti­ca­ti­on times, while still pro­vi­ding a high se­cu­ri­ty level. The "Mu­tu­al Preim­age Au­then­ti­ca­ti­on" (MPA) pro­to­col of­fers a se­cu­re au­then­ti­ca­ti­on of both sides and a se­cu­re key agree­ment with only two cryp­to­gra­phic mes­sa­ges and sym­me­tric cryp­to­gra­phy. Even more, the MPA pro­to­col pro­vi­des non-re­pu­dia­ti­on for the au­then­ti­ca­ti­on pro­cess.

Our cont­ri­bu­ti­on in­clu­des a for­mal se­cu­ri­ty proof under an en­han­ced Ca­net­ti-Kraw­czyk (eCK) based se­cu­ri­ty model and a prac­tical per­for­mance ana­ly­sis on the basis of a pro­of-of-con­cept im­ple­men­ta­ti­on, where we de­mons­tra­te the ef­fi­ci­en­cy of our pro­to­col in com­pa­ri­son with com­mon ef­fi­ci­ent EAP pro­to­cols.

Tags: En­t­er­pri­se, Ex­ten­si­ble Au­then­ti­ca­ti­on Pro­to­col, Han­do­ver, RA­DI­US, Roa­ming, Wire­less net­works