4.3 Cryptanalysis of case C2
We consider the assumption C2. In this case, the
previous attacks can also be applied when C3 and
C4 are considered. However, a different attack is
now possible, independently of C3/C4 assumption,
if we focus on the information leaked by the length
of the responses.
The attacker impersonates the server sending
always the same challenge to the tag. In this way,
the tag generates always the same PN sequences and
will employ the run
i
of the same PN sequence at the
round i of the protocol.
Hence, if the attacker obtains the successive runs
of a sequence, he can reconstruct the sequence itself.
The process is as follows.
Step 1. The forge server sends the challenge a
(always the same challenge at each round) to the tag.
Step 2. The tag computes run
i
and sends the
response b of length (k-run
i
)
Step 3. The forge server compute run
i
= L|a| -
L|b|.
When all rounds finish, the attacker reconstructs
the PN sequence as follows. Since the attacker only
knows the run lengths, he has to consider two
possibilities on the first run: it is composed by zeros
or by ones.
An example: Suppose that the successive run
lengths are run
1
= 3, run
2
= 1, run
3
= 2, run
4
= 2, ...
Hence, the PN sequence is one of these two
sequences:
000-1-00-11-... or 111-0-11-00-...
Once the sequence is reconstructed, it is possible
to recover the initial state because the PN sequence
is generated by a LFSR (in the original paper (Yoon,
2009) the authors does not provide much
information about this step).
The initial state is a' = a ⊕ x. Hence, if the
attacker reconstructs a', the secret key x can be
obtained because a is known.
Some consideration must be taken into account.
If we consider that the LFSR feedback
polynomial is not known, the attacker needs to
reconstruct at least 2k bits of the sequence to obtain
the polynomial (k being the bit length of a and x). To
do this are not necessary 2k rounds. Instead, k
rounds may be sufficient because each round
produce more than one bit on average.
If the LFSR feedback polynomial is known, as it
occurs in most LFSR applications, then only k bits
must be reconstructed.
5 DESIGN OF PROTOCOLS
BASED ON ROTATIONS AND
LPN PROBLEM
As one can observe in the previous sections, the
main idea behind the HB-MP protocol resides on the
increasing of robustness by means of rotations, but
maintaining the advantages and simplicity of the
original HB protocol. Despite of the flaw in its
design, the simplicity of HB-MP has originated
several improvements which include others
operations that move away from the initial target. As
a consequence, the global complexity increases.
The analysis of the HB-MP protocol and its
derivatives (HB-MP+, HB-MP++ and CL-HB)
allows to establish clear design objectives to assure a
reasonable level of security and simplicity.
The identifying features of the HB-MP protocol
are:
a) Utilization of rotations to derive round keys
from a master secret key x.
b) Utilization of the LPN problem as the main
foundation to assure a good security level,
as the rest of HB-familiy members.
c) Utilization of only two messages between the
parties.
The improvements of HB protocol do not overcome
the limitations and weaknesses. The limitation of the
HB-MP+ protocol resides on the hash function. In
(Munilla and Peinado, 2007), the authors do not
provide enough details to analyze a real
implementation. The HB-MP++ has been designed
to avoid traceability, as it is claimed by the authors
in (Yoon, 2009). However, the modifications applied
allows an attacker to recover the key x.
As a consequence, we establish the following
guidelines to design new lightweight authentication
protocols combining rotations and LPN problem.
a) The number of messages interchanged
between the parties must be minimum. It is
recommended not greater than two,
following the model of HB and HB-MP
protocols.
b) Rotations must be the main operation to
derive all round keys from a master secret
key x.
c) The keys (the round keys) must be different
at each authentication session.
d) The round keys must be different. Each round
will use a different round key.
e) The round key generation algorithm must
allow the synchronization between reader
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