Computationally secure two-round authenticated message exchange

Abstract

Abstract. We prove secure a concrete and practical two-round authenticated message exchange protocol which reflects the authentication mechanisms for web services discussed in various standardization documents. The protocol consists of a single client request and a subsequent server response and works under the realistic assumptions that the responding server is long-lived, has bounded memory, and may be reset occasionally. The protocol is generic in the sense that it can be used to implement securely any service based on authenticated message exchange, because request and response can carry arbitrary payloads. Our security analysis is a computational analysis in the Bellare-Rogaway style and thus provides strong guarantees; it is novel from a technical point of view since we extend the Bellare-Rogaway framework by timestamps and payloads with signed parts.