Forward Secrecy of SPAKE2 Jos´eBecerra, Dimiter Ostrev, and Marjan Skrobotˇ University of Luxembourg Interdisciplinary Centre for Security, Reliability and Trust 6, Avenue de la Fonte, L-4364, Esch-sur-Alzette, Luxembourg fjose.becerra, dimiter.ostrev,
[email protected] Abstract. Currently, the Simple Password-Based Encrypted Key Ex- change (SPAKE2) protocol of Abdalla and Pointcheval (CT-RSA 2005) is being considered by the IETF for standardization and integration in TLS 1.3. Although it has been proven secure in the Find-then-Guess model of Bellare, Pointcheval and Rogaway (EUROCRYPT 2000), whether it satisfies some notion of forward secrecy remains an open question. In this work, we prove that the SPAKE2 protocol satisfies the so-called weak forward secrecy introduced by Krawczyk (CRYPTO 2005). Further- more, we demonstrate that the incorporation of key-confirmation codes in SPAKE2 results in a protocol that provably satisfies the stronger no- tion of perfect forward secrecy. As forward secrecy is an explicit require- ment for cipher suites supported in the TLS handshake, we believe this work could fill the gap in the literature and facilitate the adoption of SPAKE2 in the recently approved TLS 1.3. Keywords: Provable Security, Password Authenticated Key Exchange, For- ward Secrecy, Common Reference String. 1 Introduction 1.1 SPAKE2 Protocol Password Authenticated Key Exchange (PAKE) protocols allow two users, who only share a password, to agree on a high-entropy session key over a hostile network. The goal is to use the established session key to build a secure channel between the involved parties. The nature of passwords makes PAKEs vulnerable to on-line dictionary attacks, where an adversary tries to impersonate a user by guessing his password, engaging in a protocol execution and verifying if its guess was correct.