Paper 2003/121

A Cryptographically Sound Security Proof of the Needham-Schroeder-Lowe Public-Key Protocol

Michael Backes and Birgit Pfitzmann

Abstract

We present the first cryptographically sound security proof of the well-known Needham-Schroeder-Lowe public-key protocol. More precisely, we show that the protocol is secure against arbitrary active attacks if it is implemented using provably secure cryptographic primitives. Although we achieve security under cryptographic definitions, our proof does not have to deal with probabilistic aspects of cryptography and is hence in the scope of current proof tools. The reason is that we exploit a recently proposed ideal cryptographic library, which has a provably secure cryptographic implementation. Besides establishing the cryptographic security of the Needham-Schroeder-Lowe protocol, our result also exemplifies the potential of this cryptographic library and paves the way for cryptographically sound verification of security protocols by means of formal proof tools.

Metadata
Available format(s)
PS
Category
Foundations
Publication info
Published elsewhere. Unknown where it was published
Keywords
cryptographic protocolsformal methodsuniversal compositionNeedham-Schroeder
Contact author(s)
mbc @ zurich ibm com
History
2003-06-10: received
Short URL
https://ia.cr/2003/121
License
Creative Commons Attribution
CC BY

BibTeX

@misc{cryptoeprint:2003/121,
      author = {Michael Backes and Birgit Pfitzmann},
      title = {A Cryptographically Sound Security Proof of the Needham-Schroeder-Lowe Public-Key Protocol},
      howpublished = {Cryptology ePrint Archive, Paper 2003/121},
      year = {2003},
      note = {\url{https://eprint.iacr.org/2003/121}},
      url = {https://eprint.iacr.org/2003/121}
}
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