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Is CH6

The document discusses digital signatures and authentication protocols. It provides 3 key points: 1) A digital signature attaches a code to a message that acts as the sender's signature, typically formed by hashing the message and encrypting the hash with the sender's private key. This guarantees the message's source and integrity. 2) Authentication protocols like PAP, CHAP, and EAP are used to validate a client's identity before granting access to a server. PAP insecurely sends credentials in plain text, while CHAP and EAP involve hashing credentials with random values to authenticate clients. 3) Digital signature standards like DSS use hash functions and encryption with private keys to digitally sign

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72 views9 pages

Is CH6

The document discusses digital signatures and authentication protocols. It provides 3 key points: 1) A digital signature attaches a code to a message that acts as the sender's signature, typically formed by hashing the message and encrypting the hash with the sender's private key. This guarantees the message's source and integrity. 2) Authentication protocols like PAP, CHAP, and EAP are used to validate a client's identity before granting access to a server. PAP insecurely sends credentials in plain text, while CHAP and EAP involve hashing credentials with random values to authenticate clients. 3) Digital signature standards like DSS use hash functions and encryption with private keys to digitally sign

Uploaded by

Dhruv Sojitra
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© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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INFORMATION SECURITY1030106503

5TH SEM
INFORMATION SECURITY (1030106503)
THEORY NOTES

UNIT – VI Digital Signature & Authentication Protocols


A digital signature is an authentication mechanism that enables the creator of a message to
attach a code that acts as a signature.
Typically, the signature is formed by taking the hash of the message and encrypting the message
with the creator’s private key.
The signature guarantees the source and integrity of the message.
The digital signature standard (DSS) is an NIST standard that uses the secure hash algorithm
(SHA).

Generic Model of the Digital Signature

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 Figure above is a generic model of the process of making and using digital signatures.
 Bob can sign a message using a digital signature generation algorithm.
 The inputs to the algorithm are the message and Bob’s private key.
 Any other user, say Alice, can verify the signature using a verification algorithm, whose
inputs are the message, the signature, and Bob’s public key.
 In simplified terms, the essence of the digital signature mechanism is shown in Figure
below.

Needs of Digital Signature


 Message authentication protects two parties who exchange messages from any third
party.
 However, it does not protect the two parties against each other.
 Several forms of dispute between the two are possible.

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1. Mary may forge a different message and claim that it came from John. Mary would simply
have to create a message and append an authentication code using the key that John and Mary
share.
2. John can deny sending the message. Because it is possible for Mary to forge a message, there
is no way to prove that John did in fact send the message.
 Both scenarios are of legitimate concern.
 The sender pretends that the message was never sent.
 In situations where there is not complete trust between sender and receiver, something
more than
 authentication is needed.
 The most attractive solution to this problem is the digital signature.

Properties of Digital Signature


The digital signature must have the following properties:
1. It must verify the author and the date and time of the signature.
2. It must authenticate the contents at the time of the signature.
3. It must be verifiable by third parties, to resolve disputes.
Thus, the digital signature function includes the authentication function.

Security of Digital Signature


Following types of attacks can be possible on digital signature.
Here A denotes the user whose signature method is being attacked, and C denotes the attacker.
1. Key-only attack: C only knows A’s public key.
2. Known message attack: C is given access to a set of messages and their signatures.
3. Generic chosen message attack: C chooses a list of messages before attempting to breaks
A’s
signature scheme, independent of A’s public key. C then obtains from A valid signatures for
the chosen messages. The attack is generic, because it does not depend on A’s public key; the
same attack is used against everyone.
4. Directed chosen message attack: Similar to the generic attack, except that the list of
messages

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INFORMATION SECURITY1030106503

to be signed is chosen after C knows A’s public key but before any signatures are seen.
5. Adaptive chosen message attack: C is allowed to use A as an “oracle.” This means the A
may
request signatures of messages that depend on previously obtained message–signature pairs.

If anyone success at breaking a signature scheme can do any of the following with a non-
negligible probability:
1) Total break: C determines A’s private key.
2) Universal forgery: C finds an efficient signing algorithm that provides an equivalent way
of constructing signatures on arbitrary messages.
3) Selective forgery: C forges a signature for a particular message chosen by C.
4) Existential forgery: C forges a signature for at least one message. C has no control over
the message. Consequently, this forgery may only be a minor nuisance to A.

Digital Signature Requirements


On the basis of the properties and attacks just discussed, we can formulate the following
requirements for a digital signature.
1) The signature must be a bit pattern that depends on the message being signed.
2) The signature must use some information unique to the sender to prevent both forgery and
denial.
3) It must be relatively easy to produce the digital signature.
4) It must be relatively easy to recognize and verify the digital signature.
5) It must be computationally infeasible to forge a digital signature, either by constructing a
new
message for an existing digital signature or by constructing a fraudulent digital signature for a
given message.
6) It must be practical to retain a copy of the digital signature in storage.

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6.2 Authentication Protocols


An authentication protocol is a type of cryptographic protocol specifically designed for transfer
of authentication data between two entities.
It allows the receiving entity to authenticate the connecting entity (e.g. Client connecting to a
Server) as well as authenticate itself to the connecting entity (Server to a client) by declaring the
type of information needed for authentication.
The task of the authentication protocol is to specify the exact series of steps needed for execution
of the authentication.

It has to comply with the main protocol principles:


➢ A Protocol has to involve two or more parties and everyone involved in the protocol must
know the protocol in advance.
➢ All the included parties have to follow the protocol.
➢ A protocol has to be unambiguous - each step must be defined precisely.

A protocol must be complete - must include a specified action for every possible situation.
• Authentication Protocols are used mainly by Point-to-Point Protocol (PPP) servers to
validate the identity of remote clients before granting them access to server data.
• Most of them are using a password as the cornerstone of the authentication.
• The password has to be shared between the communicating entities in advance.

Some common types of authentication protocols are:

PAP- Password Authentication Protocol


• Password Authentication Protocol is one of the oldest authentication protocols.
Authentication is initialized by client/user by sending packet with credentials (username and
password) at the beginning of the connection.
• It is highly insecure because the credentials are being transmitted over the network in plain
ASCII text thus it is vulnerable even to the most simple attacks like Eavesdropping and
man-in-the middle based attacks.

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CHAP- Challenge-handshake authentication protocol


• The authentication process in this protocol is always initialized by the server/host and can
be performed anytime during the session, even repeatedly
• Server sends a random string (usually 128B long).
• Client uses his password and the string received as parameters for MD5 hash function and
then sends the result together with username in plain text.
• Server uses the username to apply the same function and compares the calculated and
received hash.
• An authentication is either successful or unsuccessful.

EAP - Extensible Authentication Protocol


• EAP was originally developed for PPP (Point-to-Point Protocol) but today is widely used
in IEEE 802.1x authentication framework.
• The advantage of EAP is that it is only a general authentication framework for client-server
authentication - the specific way of authentication is defined in its many versions called
EAP-methods.
• More than 40 EAP-methods exist, the most common is EAP-MD5.

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Digital Signature Standard


 The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) has published Federal
Information Processing Standard FIPS 186, known as the Digital Signature Standard
(DSS).
 The DSS makes use of the SHA and presents a new digital signature technique, the
Digital Signature Algorithm (DSA).
 Latest version also incorporates digital signature algorithms based on RSA and on elliptic
curve cryptography.

RSA approach
 In the RSA approach, the message to be signed is input to a hash function that produces a
secure hash code of fixed length.

 This hash code is then encrypted using the sender’s private key to form the signature.
 Both the message and the signature are then transmitted.
 The recipient takes the message and produces a hash code.
 The recipient also decrypts the signature using the sender’s public key.
 If the calculated hash code matches the decrypted signature, the signature is accepted as
valid.

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DSS approach
 The DSS approach also makes use of a hash function.

 The hash code is provided as input to a signature function along with a random number k,
generated for this particular signature.
 The signature function also depends on the sender’s private key (PRa), and a set of
parameters known to a group of communicating principals.
 We can consider this set to constitute a global public key (PUG).
 The result is a signature consisting of two components, labeled s and r.
 At the receiving end, the hash code of the incoming message is generated.
 This plus the signature is input to a verification function.
 The verification function also depends on the global public key as well as the sender’s
public key (PUa), which is paired with the sender’s private key.
 The output of the verification function is a value that is equal to the signature component
r, if the signature is valid.
 The signature function is such that only the sender, with knowledge of the private key,
could have produced the valid signature.

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