Network-Specific Attacks on Diffie-Hellman Key-Exchange in Commercial Protocols

Abstract

Abstract-An efficient and reliable key-establishment method is the most important building block of any secure cryptographic channels. Public-key cryptography was a revolution in cyber security key administration and enabled peers to dynamically create keys for each cryptographic session. The Diffie-Hellman (DH) algorithm is the first published public-key cryptosystem. DH and its variants are extensively investigated, standardized, and widely used in network security protocols. However, DH is vulnerable to some concerning mathematical, implementation-related and network-specific attacks. Defending against these attacks is important in secure implementation of DH in network protocols. This paper categorizes various attacks on DH scheme with focuses on attacks related to the DH integration in network protocols (referred as network-specific attacks). Furthermore, we comparatively review the approaches taken by commercial protocols to tackle network attacks and analyze the strength of these solutions.