Skip to main content
SpringerLink
Log in

PakeMail: Authentication and Key Management in Decentralized Secure Email and Messaging via PAKE

  • Conference paper
  • First Online:
E-Business and Telecommunications (ICETE 2020)

Part of the book series: Communications in Computer and Information Science ((CCIS,volume 1484))

Included in the following conference series:

Abstract

We propose the use of password-authenticated key exchange (PAKE) for achieving and enhancing entity authentication (EA) and key management (KM) in the context of decentralized end-to-end encrypted email and secure messaging, i.e., without a public key infrastructure or a trusted third party. This not only simplifies the EA process by requiring users to share only a low-entropy secret such as a memorable word, but it also allows us to establish a high-entropy secret key. This approach enables a series of cryptographic enhancements and security properties, which are hard to achieve using out-of-band (OOB) authentication. We first study a few vulnerabilities in voice-based OOB authentication, in particular a combinatorial attack against lazy users, which we analyze in the context of a secure email solution. We then propose tackling public key authentication by solving the problem of secure equality test using PAKE and discuss various protocols and their properties. This method enables the automation of important KM tasks such as key renewal and future key pair authentications, reduces the impact of human errors and lends itself to the asynchronous nature of email and modern messaging. It also provides cryptographic enhancements including multi-device synchronization, and secure secret storage/retrieval, and paves the path for forward secrecy, deniability and post-quantum security. We also discuss the use of auditable PAKEs for mitigating a class of online guess and abort attacks in authentication protocols. We present an implementation of our proposal, called PakeMail, to demonstrate the feasibility of the core idea and discuss some of its cryptographic details, implemented features and efficiency aspects. We conclude with some design and security considerations, followed by future lines of work .

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this chapter

Log in via an institution

Subscribe and save

Springer+ Basic
$34.99 /Month
  • Get 10 units per month
  • Download Article/Chapter or eBook
  • 1 Unit = 1 Article or 1 Chapter
  • Cancel anytime
Subscribe now

Buy Now

Chapter
USD 29.95
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
eBook
USD 69.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as EPUB and PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
Softcover Book
USD 89.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Compact, lightweight edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info

Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout

Purchases are for personal use only

Institutional subscriptions

Similar content being viewed by others

Notes

  1. 1.

    For example, in order to access the authentication menu in Signal or WhatsApp, users need to (1) select a chat (2) click on the contact’s name (3) select “View safety number/Encryption”.

  2. 2.

    https://tools.ietf.org/id/draft-irtf-cfrg-spake2-08.html.

  3. 3.

    https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc8236.

  4. 4.

    https://mailarchive.ietf.org/arch/msg/cfrg/-9LEdnzVrE5RORux3Oo_oDDRksU/.

  5. 5.

    https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc5869.html.

  6. 6.

    https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc2104.html.

  7. 7.

    https://matrix.org/docs/spec/.

  8. 8.

    https://messaginglayersecurity.rocks/.

  9. 9.

    https://github.com/RustCrypto/PAKEs.

References

  1. Abdalla, M., Barbosa, M.: Perfect forward security of SPAKE2. Cryptology ePrint Archive, Report 2019/1194 (2019). https://eprint.iacr.org/2019/1194

  2. Abdalla, M., Pointcheval, D.: Simple password-based encrypted key exchange protocols. In: Menezes, A. (ed.) CT-RSA 2005. LNCS, vol. 3376, pp. 191–208. Springer, Heidelberg (2005). https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-540-30574-3_14

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  3. Alexander, C., Goldberg, I.: Improved user authentication in off-the-record messaging. In: Proceedings of the 2007 ACM Workshop on Privacy in Electronic Society. ACM (2007)

    Google Scholar 

  4. Atashpendar, A., Vazquez Sandoval, I.: PakeMail (2020). https://github.com/CryptographySandbox/PakeMail

  5. Avoine, G., Canard, S., Ferreira, L.: Symmetric-Key Authenticated Key Exchange (SAKE) with perfect forward secrecy. In: Jarecki, S. (ed.) CT-RSA 2020. LNCS, vol. 12006, pp. 199–224. Springer, Cham (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-40186-3_10

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  6. Bagherzandi, A., Jarecki, S., Saxena, N., Lu, Y.: Password-protected secret sharing. In: Proceedings of the 18th ACM Conference on Computer and Communications Security, pp. 433–444 (2011)

    Google Scholar 

  7. Becerra, J., Ostrev, D., Škrobot, M.: Forward secrecy of SPAKE2. In: Baek, J., Susilo, W., Kim, J. (eds.) ProvSec 2018. LNCS, vol. 11192, pp. 366–384. Springer, Cham (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-01446-9_21

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  8. Bellare, M., Pointcheval, D., Rogaway, P.: Authenticated key exchange secure against dictionary attacks. In: Preneel, B. (ed.) EUROCRYPT 2000. LNCS, vol. 1807, pp. 139–155. Springer, Heidelberg (2000). https://doi.org/10.1007/3-540-45539-6_11

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  9. Bellovin, S.M., Merritt, M.: Encrypted key exchange: password-based protocols secure against dictionary attacks. In: 1992 IEEE Computer Society Symposium on Research in Security and Privacy, pp. 72–84. IEEE Computer Society (1992)

    Google Scholar 

  10. Bernstein, D.J.: Curve25519: new Diffie-Hellman speed records. In: Yung, M., Dodis, Y., Kiayias, A., Malkin, T. (eds.) PKC 2006. LNCS, vol. 3958, pp. 207–228. Springer, Heidelberg (2006). https://doi.org/10.1007/11745853_14

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  11. Bhargavan, K., Fournet, C., Kohlweiss, M., Pironti, A., Strub, P.Y.: Implementing TLS with verified cryptographic security. In: 2013 IEEE Symposium on Security and Privacy, pp. 445–459. IEEE (2013)

    Google Scholar 

  12. Birk, V., Marques, H., Hoeneisen, B.: pEp Foundation: IANA registration of trustword lists (2019). https://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-birk-pep-trustwords-03

  13. Borisov, N., Goldberg, I., Brewer, E.: Off-the-record communication, or, why not to use PGP. In: Proceedings of the 2004 ACM Workshop on Privacy in the Electronic Society (2004)

    Google Scholar 

  14. Boudot, F., Schoenmakers, B., Traore, J.: A fair and efficient solution to the socialist millionaires’ problem. Discrete Appl. Math. 111, 23–36 (2001)

    Article  MathSciNet  Google Scholar 

  15. Clark, J., van Oorschot, P.C., Ruoti, S., Seamons, K., Zappala, D.: Securing email. arXiv preprint arXiv:1804.07706 (2018)

  16. Couteau, G., Roscoe, A.W., Ryan, P.Y.A.: Partially-fair computation from timed-release encryption and oblivious transfer. Cryptology ePrint Archive, Report 2019/1281 (2019). https://eprint.iacr.org/2019/1281

  17. Dechand, S., Schürmann, D., Busse, K., Acar, Y., Fahl, S., Smith, M.: An empirical study of textual key-fingerprint representations. In: 25th \(\{\)USENIX\(\}\) Security Symposium, pp. 193–208 (2016)

    Google Scholar 

  18. Delaune, S., Kremer, S., Robin, L.: Formal verification of protocols based on short authenticated strings. In: 2017 IEEE 30th Computer Security Foundations Symposium (CSF), pp. 130–143. IEEE (2017)

    Google Scholar 

  19. Di Raimondo, M., Gennaro, R., Krawczyk, H.: Deniable authentication and key exchange. In: Proceedings of the 13th ACM Conference on Computer and Communications Security, pp. 400–409 (2006)

    Google Scholar 

  20. Ding, J., Alsayigh, S., Lancrenon, J., RV, S., Snook, M.: Provably secure password authenticated key exchange based on RLWE for the post-quantum world. In: Handschuh, H. (ed.) CT-RSA 2017. LNCS, vol. 10159, pp. 183–204. Springer, Cham (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-52153-4_11

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  21. Dolev, D., Yao, A.C.: On the security of public key protocols. In: Proceedings of the 22Nd Annual Symposium on Foundations of Computer Science, SFCS 1981, pp. 350–357. IEEE Computer Society (1981)

    Google Scholar 

  22. Fischlin, M., Günther, F., Schmidt, B., Warinschi, B.: Key confirmation in key exchange: a formal treatment and implications for TLS 1.3. In: 2016 IEEE Symposium on Security and Privacy (SP). IEEE (2016)

    Google Scholar 

  23. Garay, J.A., MacKenzie, P.D., Yang, K.: Efficient and secure multi-party computation with faulty majority and complete fairness. IACR Cryptol. ePrint Arch. 2004, 9 (2004)

    Google Scholar 

  24. Hao, F., Ryan, P.: J-PAKE: authenticated key exchange without PKI. In: Gavrilova, M.L., Tan, C.J.K., Moreno, E.D. (eds.) Transactions on Computational Science XI. LNCS, vol. 6480, pp. 192–206. Springer, Heidelberg (2010). https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-17697-5_10

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  25. Jarecki, S., Krawczyk, H., Xu, J.: OPAQUE: an asymmetric PAKE protocol secure against pre-computation attacks. In: Nielsen, J.B., Rijmen, V. (eds.) EUROCRYPT 2018. LNCS, vol. 10822, pp. 456–486. Springer, Cham (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-78372-7_15

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  26. Kainda, R., Flechais, I., Roscoe, A.: Usability and security of out-of-band channels in secure device pairing protocols. In: Proceedings of the 5th Symposium on Usable Privacy and Security, p. 11. ACM (2009)

    Google Scholar 

  27. Kainda, R., Flechais, I., Roscoe, A.: Secure mobile ad-hoc interactions: reasoning about out-of-band (OOB) channels. IWSSI/SPMU 2010, 10–15 (2010)

    Google Scholar 

  28. Katz, J., Vaikuntanathan, V.: Round-optimal password-based authenticated key exchange. In: Ishai, Y. (ed.) TCC 2011. LNCS, vol. 6597, pp. 293–310. Springer, Heidelberg (2011). https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-19571-6_18

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  29. Krawczyk, H.: Cryptographic extraction and key derivation: the HKDF scheme. In: Rabin, T. (ed.) CRYPTO 2010. LNCS, vol. 6223, pp. 631–648. Springer, Heidelberg (2010). https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-14623-7_34

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  30. Kumar, A., Saxena, N., Tsudik, G., Uzun, E.: A comparative study of secure device pairing methods. Pervasive Mob. Comput. 5(6), 734–749 (2009)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  31. Naor, M., Rotem, L., Segev, G.: The security of lazy users in out-of-band authentication. In: Beimel, A., Dziembowski, S. (eds.) TCC 2018. LNCS, vol. 11240, pp. 575–599. Springer, Cham (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-03810-6_21

    Chapter  MATH  Google Scholar 

  32. Nguyen, L.H., Roscoe, A.W.: Authentication protocols based on low-bandwidth unspoofable channels: a comparative survey. J. Comput. Secur. 19(1), 139–201 (2011)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  33. OTRv4-development: Specification of OTR version 4, October 2019. https://github.com/otrv4/otrv4/blob/master/otrv4.md

  34. pEp Security: Pretty Easy Privacy (pEp). https://www.pep.security

  35. Microsoft Research, I.: F* (2020). https://fstar-lang.org/

  36. Rivest, R.L., Shamir, A.: How to expose an eavesdropper. Commun. ACM 27(4), 393–394 (1984)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  37. Roscoe, A.W.: Detecting failed attacks on human-interactive security protocols (transcript of discussion). In: Anderson, J., Matyáš, V., Christianson, B., Stajano, F. (eds.) Security Protocols 2016. LNCS, vol. 10368, pp. 198–205. Springer, Cham (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-62033-6_22

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  38. Roscoe, A.W., Ryan, P.Y.A.: Auditable PAKEs: approaching fair exchange without a TTP. In: Stajano, F., Anderson, J., Christianson, B., Matyáš, V. (eds.) Security Protocols 2017. LNCS, vol. 10476, pp. 278–297. Springer, Cham (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-71075-4_31

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  39. Ruoti, S., Andersen, J., Monson, T., Zappala, D., Seamons, K.: A comparative usability study of key management in secure email. In: Fourteenth Symposium on Usable Privacy and Security, pp. 375–394 (2018)

    Google Scholar 

  40. Sasson, E.B., et al.: Zerocash: decentralized anonymous payments from bitcoin. In: 2014 IEEE Symposium on Security and Privacy, pp. 459–474 (2014)

    Google Scholar 

  41. Shirvanian, M., Saxena, N.: Wiretapping via mimicry: short voice imitation man-in-the-middle attacks on crypto phones. In: Proceedings of the 2014 ACM SIGSAC Conference on Computer and Communications Security, CCS 2014, pp. 868–879 (2014)

    Google Scholar 

  42. Signal: Improving registration lock with secure value recovery, February 2020. https://signal.org/blog/improving-registration-lock

  43. Signal: Technology preview for secure value recovery (2020). https://signal.org/blog/secure-value-recovery

  44. Stedman, R., Yoshida, K., Goldberg, I.: A user study of off-the-record messaging. In: 4th Symposium on Usable Privacy and Security, pp. 95–104 (2008)

    Google Scholar 

  45. Tan, J., Bauer, L., Bonneau, J., Cranor, L.F., Thomas, J., Ur, B.: Can unicorns help users compare crypto key fingerprints? In: Proceedings of the 2017 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, pp. 3787–3798. ACM (2017)

    Google Scholar 

  46. Unger, N., et al.: SoK: secure messaging. In: 2015 IEEE Symposium on Security and Privacy, pp. 232–249. IEEE (2015)

    Google Scholar 

  47. Vaudenay, S.: Secure communications over insecure channels based on short authenticated strings. In: Shoup, V. (ed.) CRYPTO 2005. LNCS, vol. 3621, pp. 309–326. Springer, Heidelberg (2005). https://doi.org/10.1007/11535218_19

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  48. Vazquez Sandoval, I., Atashpendar, A., Lenzini, G.: Authentication and key management automation in decentralized secure email and messaging via low-entropy secrets. In: Proceedings of the 17th International Joint Conference on e-Business and Telecommunications, ICETE 2020 - Volume 2: SECRYPT, Lieusaint, Paris, France (2020)

    Google Scholar 

  49. Warner, B.: Pure-Python SPAKE2 (2010). https://github.com/warner/python-spake2

  50. Yao, A.C.: Protocols for secure computations. In: 23rd Annual Symposium on Foundations of Computer Science (SFCS 1982), pp. 160–164. IEEE (1982)

    Google Scholar 

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. SnT, University of Luxembourg, Esch-sur-Alzette, Luxembourg

    Itzel Vazquez Sandoval, Arash Atashpendar, Gabriele Lenzini & Peter Y. A. Ryan

  2. itrust consulting s.á r.l., Niederanven, Luxembourg

    Arash Atashpendar

Authors
  1. Itzel Vazquez Sandoval
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  2. Arash Atashpendar
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  3. Gabriele Lenzini
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  4. Peter Y. A. Ryan
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Itzel Vazquez Sandoval .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. University of Jordan, Amman, Jordan

    Mohammad S. Obaidat

  2. Paris 13 University, Villetaneuse, France

    Jalel Ben-Othman

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

Copyright information

© 2021 Springer Nature Switzerland AG

About this paper

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this paper

Vazquez Sandoval, I., Atashpendar, A., Lenzini, G., Ryan, P.Y.A. (2021). PakeMail: Authentication and Key Management in Decentralized Secure Email and Messaging via PAKE. In: Obaidat, M.S., Ben-Othman, J. (eds) E-Business and Telecommunications. ICETE 2020. Communications in Computer and Information Science, vol 1484. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-90428-9_5

Download citation

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-90428-9_5

  • Published:

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-030-90427-2

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-030-90428-9

  • eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)

Publish with us

Policies and ethics

Search

Navigation