A Family of Attacks upon Authentication Protocols
Gavin Lowe · 1997
In this paper we present four similar attacks upon well known authentication protocols, and suggest that similar attacks exist for other protocols. Each of these attacks causes an agent B to think that another agent A is attempting to set up two (or more) simultaneous sessions with B, when in fact A is trying to establish only a single session. We describe how such an attack may have serious consequences. 1 Introduction In a distributed computer system, it is necessary to have some mechanism whereby an agent can be assured of another's identity---the first agent should become sure that it really is talking to the other, rather than to an imposter impersonating the other agent. This is the role of an authentication protocol. In this paper we present attacks upon a number of authentication protocols. All the protocols we consider have a similar objective: in each protocol, an initiator A seeks to establish a session with a responder B, possibly with the help of a trusted server S. Wh...