Techniques to Enhance Security of an Authentication Protocol
Abstract
Secure cryptosystems and hash functions are fundamental to continued personal and economic success in the emerging Digital Information Age. Accelerating technological innovation continues to increase the challenge of assuring the integrity, authenticity, and confidentiality of user data and intellectual property. The SmartDongle™ is a flash drive produced by MicroWorks and is meant to secure data and assure authorized use of software. In this project, we investigate the security of certain cryptographic techniques used in the current implementation of the SmartDongle™’s authentication protocol. In particular, we analyze how the use of hash functions developed using a Merkle-Damgård construction in conjunction with a simplified version of the Advanced Encryption Standard (AES) and the Data Encryption Standard (DES) can affect the SmartDongle™'s security. Our study involves extensive computational experimentation and analyses that produced a range of conjectures about the security of the SmartDongle™.
Techniques to Enhance Security of an Authentication Protocol
Secure cryptosystems and hash functions are fundamental to continued personal and economic success in the emerging Digital Information Age. Accelerating technological innovation continues to increase the challenge of assuring the integrity, authenticity, and confidentiality of user data and intellectual property. The SmartDongle™ is a flash drive produced by MicroWorks and is meant to secure data and assure authorized use of software. In this project, we investigate the security of certain cryptographic techniques used in the current implementation of the SmartDongle™’s authentication protocol. In particular, we analyze how the use of hash functions developed using a Merkle-Damgård construction in conjunction with a simplified version of the Advanced Encryption Standard (AES) and the Data Encryption Standard (DES) can affect the SmartDongle™'s security. Our study involves extensive computational experimentation and analyses that produced a range of conjectures about the security of the SmartDongle™.