DIFFIE-HELLMAN KEY EXCHANGE ALGORITHM
DATE
INTRODUCTION
Having an insecure communication pathway/channel, the network requirements are securing the network traffic. The network is secured against unauthorized modification and disclosure of messages being transmitted between two parties. Cryptographic primitive is the exchange protocol key that can be used in establishing a very secure communication channel. Diffie-Hellman was the first individual who introduced the first exchange protocol key. For a key to be used in the upcoming symmetric encryption of messages sent by individuals there have to be a secure exchange of session keys between two parties and to ensure this is possible a Diffie-Hellman key protocol is utilized. The existing challenge that arises is that the Diffie-Helman key does nor confirm the communicating units. This paper I will discuss Diffie-Hellman and the protocols involved. To prevent unauthorized access to information and data due to the use of an insecure communication channel us very essential that a key exchange protocol is used. Regardless whether information was leaked or accidentally given the issue of unauthorized access always emerges.
DIFFIE-HELLMAN ALGORITHIM
Transmission of information over an insecure network is always a matter of what is going to happen. Since most individuals share information on public networks there is a high need to secure the information from attackers who try to read the transmitted message. In this situation the message needs to be encrypted and hence the message being sent has to be sent with an encryption key that will be used by the other party to decrypt the encrypted message (Huang, Chang & Hwang, 2018). The problem that arises is how the encryption key will be sent through the same insecure channel. However, the problem has been solved by the protocols that can be used during transmission process. The key arrangement protocols identify and recognizes the two parties exchanging the information and then distributes the key securely. The protocols can be divided into two broad categories that is the key agreement category protocol and transport category protocols.
When the session key is created by an associate in the communication party it is referred to a transport category protocols. The session key created is then transmitted to the other party securely. Faz-Hernández, López, Ochoa-Jiménez, & Rodríguez-Henríquez (2017) Described the protocol to be dependent on other information from the two parties in order to produce a session key. The Diffie-Hellman key is among the first key exchange protocol and it appeared under Hellman and Diffie. The purpose of this exchange protocol is to enable a secure exchange of keys between parties and the keys can be used in symmetric message encryption. When it comes to the calculation of the session key the Diffie-Hellman protocol plays a major role in communicating they key entities that are public based parameters that could be shared during the early phase, this type of protocol is referred to as key agreement protocol. Calculation of discrete logarithms assures as the effectiveness of Diffie-Hellman exchange protocol.
The protocol is only used where two parties exchange secret information without need of authentication. The intermediary attack is the problem to the Diffie-Hellman exchange protocol and the only solution to this risk is by using a digital signature. There exist various Diffie-Hellman variants that have been proposed to overcome the vulnerabilities and risks associated with its introduction and implementation. Establishing protocols or the use of the key exchange they can be considered under two viewpoints that is the security and cost. There exist several attacks such as dictionary attack, key cooperation impression attack and the ephermal key cooperation attack in terms of security the protocols have to be immune to these attacks (Jalali, Azarderakhs, Kermani & Jao, 2017). On cost, one has to consider the communication and processing costs. Avoiding the use of the public key encryption means that the researcher will have a low processing cost.
DIFFIE-HELLMAN EXCHANGE PROTOCOLS
The Diffie-Helman key Exchange protocol is the first key agreement protocols to be developed by Hellman and Diffie in the year 1977. The use of this protocol is to enable two parties to exchange session keys securely and without any problem. the symmetric message encryption is also done using the Diffie-Hellman protocol. The communicating members of each party share two unique public numbers which are a root a primitive and a q integer.
To evaluate the effectiveness of Diffie-Hellman’s method it comes from the difficulty associated with the calculation of the logarithm. The risk associated with this method is the existence of an intermediary attack that would lead to system breakdown. A case scenario would be where Alex and John are communicating to each other and they need to share a key that will be used in symmetric message encryption. The other individual is Kelvin who is an enemy. The following will take place in the following way. Kelvin will take two private keys randomly let’s say TE1 and T E2 to calculate the public key will be UE1 and UE2. kelvin interrupts the transmission of the key UA from Alex to John and he automatically sends to another individual Dan. hence Kelvin will calculate the key as KE2=UATE2 in the mode of q hence Dan will receive UB calculated as KE1 in the mode of q. hence Dan will be able to read and change to his desire the message sent between John and Alex. This is because both the session keys of John and Alex have been given to Dan (Faz-Hernández, López, Ochoa-Jiménez, & Rodríguez-Henríquez, 2017).
The problem with the Diffie-Hellman protocol is that it does not provide an authentication platform between the parties communicating hence having the vulnerability of the intermediary who at this point is Dan. The use of public key certificates and digital signature can help in eliminating such an attack. When it comes to the Authenticated key establishment protocol. Experts in this field are working had to provide an authentication mechanism in the protocols especially when using the asymmetric technique. Diffie-Hellman with the help of Gunther and ELGamal helped in the development of this protocol in the year 1990. The vulnerability of this protocol is that it was not protected against forward secrecy (Mehibel & Hamadouche, 2017). There exist proposals on how to involve and identify zero-ideas knowledge during interactive verification protocols. Due to the redundancy brought about by the poor communications it has led to the developed protocols to be cost inefficient.
STATION-TO STATION PROTOCOL
Diffie then developed a station-to-Station protocol in the year 1992 where there was an authenticated key exchange between two parties. It works by using Diffie-Hellman method in calculating a secret key then developing an authentication between the two parties by the use of digital signature. This protocol is efficient in eliminating the vulnerability existing in the Diffie-Hellman protocol. The Station-to-Station protocol is very efficient when it comes to forward secrecy. the forward secrecy is identified as one of the desirable characteristics in the authenticated key exchange. This is easily identified because of the inclusion of Diffie-Hellman protocol as a short-term key for the upcoming session (Koziel, Jalali, Azarderakhsh, Jao & Mozaffari-Kermani, 2016). The private key included are designed to be employed as long-term key. Incase one of the keys is interrupted the sessions remain unaffected. When it comes to one Pass protocol it allows the two parties to send session keys immediately after getting a message from the communication between the parties. A static public key exists and hence it replaces the ephemeral public key.
CONCLUSION
Diffie-Hellman key exchange algorithm is one of the most used algorithms. The purpose of this algorithm is to ensure that two parties can communicate safely in public network. Although the algorithm contains some vulnerabilities such as middle man attack. The protocols propose the use of authentication and digital signatures to eliminate such problems. The paper discusses different protocols and their examples.
REFERRENCES
Faz-Hernández, A., López, J., Ochoa-Jiménez, E., & Rodríguez-Henríquez, F. (2017). A faster software implementation of the supersingular isogeny Diffie-Hellman key exchange protocol. IEEE Transactions on Computers, 67(11), 1622-1636.
Huang, L. C., Chang, T. Y., & Hwang, M. S. (2018). A Conference Key Scheme Based on the Diffie-Hellman Key Exchange. IJ Network Security, 20(6), 1221-1226.
Jalali, A., Azarderakhsh, R., Kermani, M. M., & Jao, D. (2017). Supersingular isogeny Diffie-Hellman key exchange on 64-bit ARM. IEEE Transactions on Dependable and Secure Computing.
Koziel, B., Jalali, A., Azarderakhsh, R., Jao, D., & Mozaffari-Kermani, M. (2016, November). NEON-SIDH: efficient implementation of supersingular isogeny Diffie-Hellman key exchange protocol on ARM. In International Conference on Cryptology and Network Security (pp. 88-103). Springer, Cham.
Mehibel, N., & Hamadouche, M. H. (2017, October). A new approach of elliptic curve Diffie-Hellman key exchange. In 2017 5th International Conference on Electrical Engineering-Boumerdes (ICEE-B) (pp. 1-6). IEEE.