1. Introduction
Owning to the growing popularity and the use of computers and network-based electronic devices, providing privacy and data integrity has become more crucial; effective mechanisms are necessary to prevent network-based attacks and unauthorised access. For the purposes of attack prevention, authentication and access control play a vital role [1]. In order to meet increasing demands in secure computer communications, various security protocols have been developed.
Kerberos is one of these commonly used mechanisms. It is based on Needham-Schroeder Authentication Protocol [12]. It utilises symmetric key cryptography to provide authentication for client-server applications. The Kerberos architecture is divided into two core elements, Key Distribution Centre (KDC) and Ticket Granting Service (TGS). The KDC stores authentication information while TGS holds digital tickets for identifying clients and servers of networks.
A new protocol description is designed [7] as the initial step of developing a specific authentication protocol that provides authentication following a previously proposed framework [5]. This protocol has properties of Kerberos and Key-Exchange protocols together with a powerful intruder model. Although the intruder has been given power to attack, the protocol is successful in preventing replay attacks. The designed protocol adopts the challenge-response paradigm. The interactions between the entities are represented using numbers 1-19 [4]. These numbers represent the interactions between the legitimate entities of a wireless LAN environment. Interactions take place between the client and the access point, between the access point and the authentication server, between authentication server and KDC, authentication server and TGS, and between KDC and TGS.
A new approach has been proposed to shut down access to the authentication server for a period of time to enable the distribution of randomly generated keys to users in a relatively secure way [7]. Renewing keys at various intervals while potential intruders are blocked out would inevitably work against intruders. Although intruders may have the power to attack, the protocol is successful in preventing replay attacks [8].
In this research, a new protocol description is designed as the initial step of developing a specific authentication protocol, following a previously proposed framework [4]. Kerberos has been used as the platform in the development of this protocol which is based on the Key-Exchange protocol enhanced with a powerful intruder model. It is proven that the developed protocol description is sufficient despite the extensive attacking capabilities of the intruder. The components of the developed protocol description are validated and verified by rank function theorem similar to the approaches used in [6], [14], and [15]. This research presents an approach of dynamically renewing keys under pseudo-secure situations thus significantly reducing the chances of potential intruders. The proposed approach involves secure key distributions at various intervals. During key distribution, temporary interruption to link/server access is ensured. The access restriction happens for short intervals.
Please note that Kerberos with timed-delay, and delayed decryption properties are presented in [5] for continuously evolved threats of penetration and other forms of attacks. However the resulting protocol is still vulnerable to new forms of intruders. On the other hand in [6] dynamically renewing keys under pseudo-secure situations is introduced which provides secure key distributions at various intervals (During key distribution, temporary interruption to link/server access is ensured.), but protocol in [6] does not use timed-delay. Without the timed-delay, the intruders may break into the system before the key renewal takes place. The access restriction happens for short intervals. In this study the two approaches are combined in order to provide improved security. Schneider's CSP processes and rank function theorem [14] are applied to expose any flaws in the design. Possible attacks have been successfully identified. It has also been reported that, the protocols often fail when they are analysed critically [10]. At this point, formal methods emerged for verification of security protocols. One of the most preferred methods is the use of general purpose verification tools. The Communicating Sequential Processes (CSP) is one of these tools. It is an abstract language designed especially for the description of communication patterns of concurrent system components that interact through message passing. Schneider introduces the notion of rank functions to analyse the protocols by using the process algebra CSP.
Although it is proven that CSP is successful in finding attacks upon a number of protocols, description of a system needs time and substantial experience in order to avoid mistakes. In order to address these concerns, CASPER has been developed [11]. CASPER is a program that automatically produces a CSP description from a more abstract description, thus simplifying the modelling and analysis process. A CASPER script could be divided into two parts: a general part that specifies a model of a system running the protocol in question and a specific part that defines given functions; the parameters of the protocol.
Supportive ideas are also developing, to prove that formal methods are vital for validating cryptographic protocols and their relative simplicity, which makes them amenable to, automated analysis. Various results are provided in [2] to illustrate this. Addition to Cortier et.al [2], in their study Datta et. al. [17] proved security properties, such as secrecy of passwords and the keys, and non-injective agreements of network protocols that use public and symmetric key cryptography. This study is designed around a process calculus with actions for possible protocol steps including generating new random numbers, sending and receiving messages, and performing decryption and digital signature verification actions. Their study supports compositional reasoning about complex security protocols and has been applied to a number of industry standards including SSL/TLS, IEEE 802.11i and Kerberos V5.
In this work, introduced new protocol based on the use of timestamps to delaying decryption [8]. For protocol verification, Schneider's CSP process algebra is used along with the central rank function theorem. The proposed model is based on secure key distributions at various intervals. During key distribution, access to the network of servers is not allowed. The access restrictions happen for short intervals. The proposed protocol presents the initial steps for implementing a previously proposed framework [4]. In order to prevent intrusion, the proposed protocol stops user access for short intervals to ensure secure key distribution. It is assumed that attackers can sniff the exchange of keys and try to break the authentication. Because of this reason, re-exchange of the keys takes place in a secure line. Once the key distribution is completed the access is re-granted to the users. This attempt restricts the time for a potential attacker to find flaw which is sniffing the exchange of the keys, and the password, within the protocol.
2. Related Work
In order to provide higher security, various specifications regarding security protocols have been developed and many security protocols have been built around these specifications. Most of these protocols agreed upon a cryptographic key or achieved authentication specifications [1, 8].These studies indicate that cryptographic protocols are prone to various types of attacks.
In [2], an existing decision procedure for solving constraint systems is refined to prove their result. It is mentioned that several decision procedures already exist for solving constraint systems and additionally, some of them are based on a set of simplification rules allowing a general constraint system to be reduced to some simpler one.
Also, [2] shows how to safely compose secure protocols by tagging encryption, focusing on secrecy properties. It clearly states that whenever a protocol preserves the secrecy of some data, it still preserves secrecy when other tagged protocols are executed in the same environment. This property of formal methods is valid for this study as well.
Currently, formal methods, mathematically-based techniques for the specific, development and verification of software and hardware systems [22], are spreading through into every phase of protocol development. These phases are classified as design, specification and verification [22, 24].
Kerberos Authentication Protocol designed as part of project Athena, provides secret key cryptography [20]. It uses key distribution. Clients and servers use digital tickets to identify themselves to the network and secret cryptographic keys for secure communications.
Kerberos' operation is system and application independent. Kerberos provides a mutual authentication between a client and a server. It assumes that initial transactions take place on an open network where clients and servers may not be physically secure and packets travelling on the network can be monitored and even possibly modified. Kerberos is independent of the security features defined in IEEE 802.11.
In wireless networks, although Kerberos relies on the provisions of IEEE 802.1 x standards, owing to the fact that, its operation is system and application independent, security features for authentication are independent as well. Kerberos protocol assumes that initial transactions take place on an open network where clients and servers may not be physically secure and packets travelling on the network can be monitored and even possibly be modelled [18]. Zrelli and Shinoda designed the integration of Kerberos protocol as an authentication method in existing EAP-based authentication frameworks. They defined the architectural elements and their interactions, and the encapsulation of Kerberos messages in EAP packets are specified [19].
The framework’s three entities (the supplicant, the authenticator, and the authentication server) mutually authenticate each other prior to data traffic [4, 6]. It was built on the assumption that none of the parties should be trusted in a wireless local area network communication environment.
Kerberos's mutual authentication uses a technique that involves a shared secret, which works like a password. Many authentication techniques send passwords with no encryption, allowing them to be compromised by an unauthorized party. However, Kerberos solves this problem via encryption. Instead of sending the password, an encrypted key derived from the password is communicated and thus the password is never sent as plain text. This technique can be used to authenticate a client, but can also be used for mutual authentication of a server. Once authentication takes place, all further traffic is to be encrypted, allowing even new encryption keys to be communicated securely.
Generally, authentication protocols are verified by the use of exact models representing the protocols. Usually, the representative models describe the principals including intruders or attackers. While it may be easier to describe an attacker with simple attributes, it is more difficult to describe attackers with complex attributes in situations where third parties can easily be realised. As Meadows stated in his study entitled, “Formal verification of cryptographic protocols: A survey. In Advances in Cryptology”, the current methods of verification adopt formal approaches for code generation and analysis of protocols [25].
In their work, “Local search in model checking”, Roscoe et.al [24] stated that, A popular mathematical algebra namely CSP developed by [26] has recorded the most remarkable progress in the perspective of describing concurrent systems. FDR is a model checking tool developed by Formal Systems, that establishes results about concurrent and reactive systems described in CSP. FDR functions check if implementation refines the specification of the system. In this research, systems considered are authentication protocols. Despite the unrivalled power of description inherent in the CSP language, the process of producing CSP scripts by hand remains difficult, error prone, and time-consuming. CASPER, a compiler, which translates high level description of protocols to CSP codes by Lowe [11], is progressing and is achieving the required results. Each section of the CASPER script has different tasks, such as declaration of the agents, which are taking part in the protocol, definition of the protocol itself, which runs the protocol [6].
In order to model protocols, the participants in the protocols are modelled as well [3, 14]. In a simple protocol, it is assumed that there are two communicating principals, A and B, and an adversary who is the attacker. The attacker is modelled as having capacity to intercept messages in all directions, modify messages, inject new messages and transmit messages [14].
As stated previously, to present the model of the attacker in CSP, initial steps involve determining the extent of information that could be available to an attacker with formerly mentioned potentials. In a simple protocol, there are two communicating principals, A and B, and an adversary, who is the attacker are represented as [14];
1. with unknown number of clients:
2. with only two participants (client/agent):
The attacker is modelled in a way to have the capacity of intercepting messages in all directions, modifying messages, injecting new messages and transmitting messages [14]:
This theorem is used here to explain that the sets of all the messages that pass through the rec channel are a function of the initial knowledge of the attacker and the sets of the messages input on the trans channel follow:
The proposed framework and protocol script [8] provide a design of security solution for wireless local area networks. Since Kerberos is a trusted third party authentication protocol, its paradigms and entities are finalised for the proposed framework [4]. This framework is a timed model security protocol; that uses timestamps to delay of messages by intruders decryption (i.e. attacker cannot break communication for certain amount of time). An approach has been proposed to stop access to authentication server for a period of time to enable the distribution of randomly generated keys to users [6]. Keys are renewed at various intervals while external access to the system is disabled. Another protocol has been developed with the combination of Kerberos Authentication Protocol and Encrypted Key Exchange Protocol [5] with the addition of “delay decryption” property of the Kerberos Authentication Protocol [8].
Apart from these, with the use of the inference rule to analyse a typical Kerberos protocol in the presence of the TGS reveals that the protocol is subject to a TGS masquerade attack. As discussed in the study of [3], authentication in Kerberos requires a client, C, to send a request to the authentication server, AS, requesting credentials for a given application server, V. The AS responds with the requested credentials consisting of a ticket and a session key encrypted with the client’s key. Kerberos exchanges may also be in the presence of a TGS. The CSP model of inference is as follows:
1. C → AS: Options ║ IDC ║ Realm ║ IDtgs ║ Times ║ Nonce1
2. AS → C: Realm ║ IDC ║ Tickettgs ║ Ekc[Kc, tgs ║ Times ║ Nonce1 ║ Realmtgs ║ IDtgs]
3. C → TGS: Options ║ IDv ║ Times ║ Nonce2 ║ Tickettgs ║
4. TGS → C: Realmc ║ IDc ║ Ticketv ║ Ekc, tgs [Kc,v ║ Times ║ Nonce2 ║ Realmv ║ IDv]
5. C → V: Options ║ Ticketv ║
6. V → C: Ekc,v [TGS2 ║ Subkey ║ Seq ♯]
Nevertheless, the same study shows that, in distributed systems where the intruder has reasonable communication and computational power belonging to the same administrative domain, Kerberos may be compromised. In other words, the chance of impersonating a principal by an intruder is higher where AS and TGS are on the same broadcast network. Additionally, Trace Semantics are used by [14] to specify security properties, such as secrecy of passwords and the keys, key agreements, for protocols as trace specifications. This is done with the following definitions:
where P is a process and S is a predicate. P satisfies S, if S(tr) holds for every trace, tr of P. In terms of occurrence of events in its traces, the following definition is used for some sets of events R and T:
where a process P satisfies the predicate R precedes T if any occurrences of an event from T is preceded by an occurrence of an event from R in every trace, tr of P.
As mentioned before, in the same study of [14] and [15], a set of rules is introduced and defined as well to verify the specifications. According to this study, set of rules defined as atom A, in this, another three sets are considered which are known as the set of participant identities on the network to be U, the set of nonces used by the participants in protocol run as N and the set of encryption keys used as K. Altogether, the atoms are defined as A = U ∪ N ∪ K. A message space M contains all the messages and signals that appear during the protocol’s run in a way that m ∈ A ⇒ m ∈ M. A rank function ρ is defined in order to map events and messages to integers, ρ: M → Z. This space is divided into two parts for characterising those messages that the intruder might get hold of [14]:
where MP− is defined as a non positive rank, for those messages that the enemy should never get hold of, where MP+ is assigned for positive rank of, without compromising the protocol.
A general rank function theorem is presented in order to ensure that a protocol will be verified to be correct with regard to its security properties, such as secrecy of passwords and the keys, if all the steps of the theorem are proven [14]. For the sets R and T, there is a rank function, ρ: M → Z:
1.∀ m ∈ IK • ρ(m)>0
2.∀ S ⊆ M. (ρ(S) > 0 ∧ S ⊢ m) ⇒ ρ(m) > 0
3. ρ(B) ≤ 0
4.∀ i. (USERi|[A]|Stop)sat ρ(tr ↾ rec) > 0 ⇒ ρ(tr) > 0
then (|||j ∈USER USERj ) | [trans, rec] | ATTACKER sat R precedes T. In condition 4, the notation tr ↾ rec denotes the projection of trace tr onto the channel rec: in other words, the subsequence of rec events occurring within tr. This requirement on USERi blocked on a is that if only positive rank messages are received, then no non-positive rank message should be produced. The application of theorem is as follows:
1. Every message in IK has positive rank.
2. If every message in a set S has positive rank, and S ⊢ m, then m has positive rank.
3. USERB does not have positive rank.
3. Work Done
Despite the multiplicity of authentication approaches for improving network security, different types of attacks continue to evolve.
3.1 The Proposed Protocol
The proposed framework [4] has been designed for providing a trusted third party authentication for wireless networks that require a high level of security. Furthermore, the proposed protocol script is based on Kerberos and uses Encrypted Key Exchange Protocol [5]. Since the proposed protocol is a timed model security protocol, it uses timestamps to delaying the decryption of messages by intruders. In a previous study [6], the proposed approach was shutting-down external access to a network for a period of time (e.g. 140 seconds), to enable the distribution of randomly generated keys to users in a relatively secure way. The protocol has been further improved with the introduction of the “delay decryption” property of the Kerberos Authentication Protocol [7]. During protocol verification and validation, it was shown that, due to the strong encryption assignments and authentication specifications there were no attacks found, even when new options “Guessable” and “Crackable” are added to “#Intruder Information” section [8].
3.1.1 The Framework of the Proposed Protocol
The protocol proposed in this paper is a version of the protocol reported in [9] within the designed framework of [8]. In the framework, both the program and data containing the credentials of the legitimate entities of a particular wireless LAN environment are installed on each of the entities as well as TGS and KDC. The credentials are the identities of the devices (such as MAC addresses) and they are stored with cryptographic protection. The protocol adopts the challenge-response paradigm. The interactions between the entities are represented using numbers 1-19 [4]. This is shown in the following Fig. 1.
Fig. 1.Proposed Framework
The proposed protocol that has improvements over Kerberos authentication is designed to improve security and minimise the threat of possible attacks. Firstly Kerberos Authentication protocol's capability is checked. New protocol model is designed to minimise possible attacks. Since it minimises possible attacks, new improvements will be introduced on the specifications and description of the protocol. This is done by the validation of delay decryption and timed authentication encryption of entities and then, encryption of the messages will be tried with different keys as well as passwords. It has been observed that when these changes on the protocol are checked with CASPER, time to find flaw within the protocol, has significantly increased compared to existing protocol taken as a reference. The results are presented in Table 1. It shows that the new designed protocol is superior to previously reported ones in terms of unit times for finding flaw within the protocol [8].
Table 1.Comparison of time to find flaw within the protocol
3.2 The CSP Model of the Proposed Protocol
In this section, the CSP representation of the proposed protocol is modelled as a network. CSP scripts are designed by depending on appropriate sections of the protocol script. While modelling the different processes of a protocol, advantage of the extensibility of CSP gives the opportunity to add additional elements to the processes. The following scripts are representations of three participants of the proposed protocol under #Processes section:
In the #Processes" section, the first parameter of each process (here A, B and S) should represent agent identities used in the #Protocol description" section. Names are given to the roles played by the different agents. In this protocol, INITIATOR, RESPONDER, and SERVER are chosen. The parenthesized parameters and the variables following the keyword “knows” define the knowledge that the agent is expected to have at the beginning of the protocol run.
In this proposed protocol, the initiator A and S are expected to know own identity A, S, the nonce na, nb and ns, the public key PK, own secret key SK(A), server key SKey(A) and common password passwd(A,B). Since, actual work of S is designed a SERVER, it is not necessary to define its keys in both INITIATOR and RESPONDER.
In the model above, keywords input and output are used to define receive and send application respectively, where trans and rec keywords are the general definition for this purpose in Schneider's CSP definitions. Also, instead of key words USERA, USERB, INITIATOR and RESPONDER are used. The CSP representations of each process (known as agents) show that the entities of the messages are encrypted with their own public keys.
As it is seen from the above script, the protocol is designed in a way that, the INITIATOR, A creates and sends a message, Msg 3, but the RESPONDER, B stores this message in variable v, without trying to interpret it. That is to say, RESPONDER, B decrypts this message and performs the appropriate checks only after receiving message in the future steps, which is defined Msg 5. Msg 3 was encrypted with the inverse of the key received in Msg 5. Since the inverse of the password received is itself, B expects the common password.
In the test of Msg 5, decryptable,decrypt and nth(_,n) functions are used for delaying decryption purposes. Due to the use of delay decryption, B cannot automatically extract any fields from Msg 3. The assignments are added by using the functions encapsulated between < >. The first assignment assigns the nonce, na as the third field of Message 3, but the message itself, is encrypted with the common passwd(A,B), which is distributed by the server, has to be decrypted using the inverse of this key which is itself. The second assignment assigns the session key, kab as the fourth component of Message 3 but the first field of the message is encrypted with B's public key.
The first assignment, RESPONDER', assigns the nonce, na, as the third field of Msg 3, but the message itself, is encrypted with the password of A and B, has to be decrypted using the inverse of this key which is itself. The second assignment,
RESPONDER'(B,S,nb,A,v,pka,na) = RESPONDER''(B,.) assigns the session key, kab as the fourth component of Msg 3 but the first field of the message is encrypted with B's public key and decryption has to be done by using the inverse of this key which is secret key of B.
The following CSP process implies that A was running the protocol with B within the last 2 time units and there is mutual agreement between them. This mutual agreement depends on the value of session key chosen:
In addition to the timestamps, nonces are also being used for authentication between the agents A and B. The intruder can try to make the first attempt to attack in Msg 3 when A sends nonce, na to B. Due to protocol time agreement specification, an agent’s chance to attempt to connect will be timed-out by the server because of unsuccessful connection attempts thus preventing the attack.
Additionally, in the #Intruder Information section, the intruder’s identity and the set of data values that he knows are initially stated. The IntruderKnowledge section holds the identifiers and functions of the protocol that he knows and he can apply any other value to those identifiers and functions:
Intruder has an initial knowledge of Guessable values and entities. Referring to the following script, the intruder closes up its initial knowledge under deductions and calculates the fact that cannot be learnt.
The CSP definition for the above script is:
The job of Intruder is defined in the above code together with its relevance to its initial knowledge. The initially known facts are added under the following section. The key words such as leak, hear, say, are used to signal that a possible secret has been learnt, to represent hearing and saying a message during the authentication and transfer of a message across a network.
The keyword leak is used to signal that a possible secret has been learnt. Elements such as f_ , IK1 are components of the intruder for currently unkown fact and initial knowledge respectively.
3.3 Constructing Rank Functions
In this section the rank functions of the NET on the message space are constructed [13, 14]. The following steps and table show the rules that are constructed while creating rank functions.
1. All user IDs in the set U are assigned to a positive rank: It is assumed that IDs are known to Intruder and can be impersonated.
2. All the nonces in N are assigned to a positive rank: It is also assumed that Nonces are known to Intruder Knowledge.
3. In the protocol there are three different keys SessionKey which is defined as kab, ServerKey as SKey and Password as passwd. kab, passwd are assigned to a non-positive rank, because they are supposed to be private to agents in the protocol.
However, SKey is assigned to a positive rank, with the same rule that is mentioned in previous two steps.
4. The running messages between input and output channels are assigned to a non-positive rank.
5. This step came along with the previous step, which is related with signal events Commit, Running where input and output channels respectively.
The summary of these assumptions is as follows:
The rank function theorem is defined in terms of general sets R, T. In this research, R and T are assigned to the step 5 of above table and it is extended as:
Since the rank functions are constructed as provided above (Table 2), the conditions of the rank function theorem should be checked in order to make sure that the functions provided above are satisfied.
Table 2.Rank function for the protocol
1. ∀ m ∈ IK • ρ(m) > 0
In protocol description IK is Intruder Knowledge and at the beginning it contains all users in the NET and nonce of itself, where all the contents are positive rank. Therefore, the set is positive rank. The condition is deemed satisfied.
2. ∀ S ⊆ M,m ∈ M • (∀ m′ ∈ S • ρ(m′) > 0) ∧ S ⊢ m)⇒ ρ(m) > 0
This condition checks if whether a message of a non-positive rank can be generated from a given set of messages of positive rank. Messages are non-positive rank(step 4 of table 2). Intruder generates any messages that are non-positive rank. These messages are messages of steps 3, 5 and 6 at protocol description, which are generated by passwd, kab. Both are non-positive rank. This prevents the Intruder from generating these keys. Therefore no way of getting messages. This condition is satisfied.
3. ∀ t ∈ T • ρ(t) ≤ 0
In this condition, all events in T are non-positive rank. Since Responder - input = ρ(B,A,nb, na) = ρ(Commit,B,A,nb, na) is non-positive rank. This condition is satisfied.
4. ∀ i ∈ U • USERi Stop maintains ρ
Every process in NET needs to maintain positive ρ. However, events are restricted in set R. Initiator - output = ρ(A,B,kab,na) = 1 = R. A, and B are restricted on Initiator - output. Therefore it will be checked if they maintain positive ρ.
☐b is choice operation and b indicates the other participants (B and S). Therefore it satisfies to maintain positive ρ.
The protocol is checked and proven to be successful in improving security against attacks despite of strong intruder connection attempts. This is demonstrated in steps given in this section.
4. Conclusion
This paper presents the CSP codes and the construction of rank functions of a new protocol proposed for improving security of the Kerberos Authentication Protocol. CSP Processes and rank functions constructed, give opportunities of better understanding of security protocols and focuses on relevant design aspects of these protocols. The new protocol is an enhanced version of a previously reported protocol [6, 7] designed to increase the time for an intruder to find flaw within the protocol and hence improve security.
Schneider's CSP Processes [14] and rank function theorem [13, 14] are applied to expose any flaws in the design and possible attacks have been successfully identified. Analysis shows that the proposed protocol has achieved the goal of increasing the time needed to find flaw within the protocol, and hence improve security. In addition to “delayed decryption”, this paper proposes further improvement to network security by restricting access to the Kerberos authentication server temporarily, i.e. during the process of key exchanges. While CSP shows protocol vulnerabilities, it has its limitations. The use of rank functions further improves protocol validation through tracing intruders’ capabilities, and knowledge. Through the use of rank functions, this paper gives a more accurate validation of the proposed protocol highlighting security improvements achieved.
Last but not the least, this research aims to develop authentication frameworks for the design and implementation of effective and efficient mechanisms for Kerberos authentication protocol used in wireless communication networks. The design of authentication protocols spans well over three decades with the foundation of authentication protocols by [12]. While Kerberos approach has been proposed as a standard for enhanced security in IEEE 802.11i Task Group on Security (TGi) [23], currently there are no valid proposals using a Kerberos-like mechanism to provide authentication in a wireless network, preventing from cryptographic attacks and handling fast and secure handovers. In this research, authentication protocols for the IEEE 802.11 networks, based on the IEEE 802.11i works are proposed and Kerberos protocol is used to provide a framework for these purposes.
This work describes original research on development of security strategies using Kerberos in wireless communication networks. Due to the critical nature of wireless communication networks, the existing methods are insufficient to address perspective and requirements in authentication design. Since Kerberos authentication protocol is considered as a solution, various existing methods and solution techniques for Kerberos, its basic operation in wireless communication networks are described, studied and analysed. The timed authentication protocols, with delaying decryption properties are proven to improve the time for a potential attacker to find a flaw within the protocol.
The proposed framework is to the best of our knowledge the first study which combines delayed decryption and temporary interruption to link/server access for improved security. Rank function theorem is usually applied to validate and expose compromises of the existing protocols in the literature, such as stated in Shaikh and Bush [15]. In this research paper although analysis of the proposed protocol is discussed and presented by CSP, and analysis tool CASPER, its verification is proved by the Rank function theorem as well. Timed delayed and temporary link interruption properties are successfully validated against strong intruder model. The rank function theorem employed is a well-accepted and detailed method that involves the search of all states reachable by the components of the proposed model. Since the proposed approach involves temporary interruption to link/server access, it has implications in terms of performance degradation. Work is in progress in using an analytical method to evaluate the cost in terms of the degradation of system performance. The model being developed will consider the system for exact performability evaluation.
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