Key Exchange Protocol over Insecure Channel

Key management represents a major and the most sensitive part of cryptographic systems. It includes key generation, key distribution, key storage, and key deletion. It is also considered the hardest part of cryptography. Designing secure cryptographic algorithms is hard, and keeping the keys secret is much harder. Cryptanalysts usually attack both symmetric and public key cryptosystems through their key management. We introduce a protocol to exchange cipher keys over insecure communication channel. This protocol is based on public key cryptosystem, especially elliptic curve cryptosystem. Meanwhile, it tests the cipher keys and selects only the good keys and rejects the weak one.

Authors:

• Alaa Fahmy

Keywords:

• Key management and key distribution.

References:

[1] Bruce Schneier "Applied Cryptography", 2nd edition, John Wiley &
Sons, Inc, 1996.
[2] IEEE Standard Specifications for public key cryptography, IEEE std
1363-2000.
[3] Donglasr Stinson, "Cryptography Theory and Practice", 2nd edition,
Chapman & Hall/CRC, 2002.
[4] Neal Koblitz, "Introduction to elliptic curves and modular forms",
vol.97 of graduate texts in mathematics, Springer-Verlag, 1984.
[5] H.W. Lenstra, " Elliptic curve factorization" , Memorandum, 1985.
[6] Victor Miller, "Elliptic curves and cryptography", proceeding of
crypto85, 1985.
[7] Whitfield and Martin E. Hellman, " New directions in cryptography",
IEEE transactions in Information theory, IT-22(6), pp 644-654, Nov.,
1966.
[8] Meneze, A., Okamoto, T., and Vanstone, S. "Reducing Elliptic Curve
Logarithms to Logarithms in a Finite Field", IEEE Transactions on
Information Theory 39 (1993), pp. 1639-1646.
[9] T. ElGamal, "A public key cryptosystem and a signature scheme based
on discrete logarithms", IEEE Trans. On information theory,IT-31, no.4,
pp.469-472, 1985.
[10] Alaa Fahmy, "Weak Keys For ElGamal Cryptosystem", 4th
International Conference on Electrical Engineering ICEENG2004, 23-25
Nov. 2004.