A Complete Characterization of Secure Human-Server Communication

Establishing a secure communication channel between two parties is a nontrivial problem, especially when one or both are humans. Unlike computers, humans cannot perform strong cryptographic operations without supporting technology, yet this technology may itself be compromised. We introduce a general communication topology model to facilitate the analysis of security protocols in this setting. We use it to completely characterize all topologies that allow secure communication between a human and a remote server via a compromised computer. These topologies are relevant for a variety of applications, including online banking and Internet voting. Our characterization can serve to guide the design of novel solutions for applications and to quickly exclude proposals that cannot possibly offer secure communication.