What do we mean by entity authentication?

Author

Gollmann, Dieter

Author_Institution

Dept. of Comput. Sci., London Univ., Egham, UK

fYear

1996

fDate

6-8 May 1996

Firstpage

46

Lastpage

54

Abstract

The design of authentication protocols has proven to be surprisingly error-prone. We suggest that this is partly due to a language problem. The objectives of entity authentication are usually given in terms of human encounters while we actually implement message passing protocols. We propose various translations of the high-level objectives into a language appropriate for communication protocols. In addition, protocols are often specified at too low a level of abstraction. We argue that encryption should not be used as a general primitive as it does not capture the specific purpose for using a cryptographic function in a particular protocol

Keywords

cryptography; formal specification; message authentication; message passing; protocols; authentication protocol design; communication protocols; cryptographic function; encryption; entity authentication; high-level objectives; message passing protocols; protocol specification abstraction level; Authentication; Computer errors; Computer science; Cryptographic protocols; Guidelines; IEC standards; ISO standards; Logic; Message passing; Public key cryptography;

fLanguage

English

Publisher

ieee

Conference_Titel

Security and Privacy, 1996. Proceedings., 1996 IEEE Symposium on

Conference_Location

Oakland, CA

ISSN

1081-6011

Print_ISBN

0-8186-7417-2

Type

conf

DOI

10.1109/SECPRI.1996.502668

Filename

502668