Towards a Cryptographic Model for Wireless Communication

Frederik Armknecht, Christian Müller

2024

Abstract

The Man-in-the-Middle Model (MitMM) is commonly used in cryptography for modeling an attacker in multi-party scenarios. It essentially assumes that the attacker fully controls the communication between all parties, i. e., can stop and modify messages at her discretion. We argue that this model is too strong for realistically capturing the case of wireless communication. In consequence, schemes that exploit properties of wireless communication such as friendly jamming or distance bounding, cannot be analyzed in a common framework. Moreover, the lack of an appropriate model hinders the development of new schemes. Given the ever-increasing importance of wireless communication, e. g., in the context of the Internet of Things, we propose a new formal model for wireless communication. Starting from the formal MitMM, we identify three key aspects — communication channels, signals, and locality — that are not represented, explain how to extend the model accordingly, and propose a tailored WCM. Based thereon, we explain how these limit the capabilities of an attacker in the form of a WAM. Moreover, we demonstrate for an existing security mechanism, namely friendly jamming, which is not covered by the MitMM how the new model allows for analyzing/formalizing the security.

Paper Citation

in Harvard Style

Armknecht F. and Müller C. (2024). Towards a Cryptographic Model for Wireless Communication. In Proceedings of the 21st International Conference on Security and Cryptography - Volume 1: SECRYPT; ISBN 978-989-758-709-2, SciTePress, pages 249-261. DOI: 10.5220/0012809300003767

in Bibtex Style

@conference{secrypt24,
author={Frederik Armknecht and Christian Müller},
title={Towards a Cryptographic Model for Wireless Communication},
booktitle={Proceedings of the 21st International Conference on Security and Cryptography - Volume 1: SECRYPT},
year={2024},
pages={249-261},
publisher={SciTePress},
organization={INSTICC},
doi={10.5220/0012809300003767},
isbn={978-989-758-709-2},
}

in EndNote Style

TY - CONF

JO - Proceedings of the 21st International Conference on Security and Cryptography - Volume 1: SECRYPT
TI - Towards a Cryptographic Model for Wireless Communication
SN - 978-989-758-709-2
AU - Armknecht F.
AU - Müller C.
PY - 2024
SP - 249
EP - 261
DO - 10.5220/0012809300003767
PB - SciTePress