Abstract
Wi-Fi Protected Setup is an attempt to simplify configuration of security settings for Wi-Fi networks. It offers, among other methods, Push-Button Configuration (PBC) for devices with a limited user-interface. There are however some security issues in PBC. A solution to these issues was proposed in the form of Tamper-Evident Pairing (TEP).
TEP is based on the Tamper-Evident Announcement (TEA), in which a device engaging in the key agreement not only sends a payload containing its Diffie-Hellmann public key, but also sends a hash of this payload in a special, trustedly secure manner. The idea is that thanks to the special way in which the hash is sent, the receiver can tell whether or not the hash was altered by an adversary and if necessary reject it.
Several parameters needed for implementation of TEP have been left unspecified by its authors. Verification of TEA using the Spin model-checker has revealed that the value of these parameters is critical for the security of the protocol. The implementation decision can break the resistance of TEP against man-in-the-middle attacks. We give appropriate values for these parameters and show how model-checking was applied to retrieve these values.
This work is part of the IOP GenCom GoGreen project, sponsored by the Dutch Ministry of Economic Affairs, Agriculture and Innovation.
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Kersten, R., van Gastel, B., Drijvers, M., Smetsers, S., van Eekelen, M. (2013). Using Model-Checking to Reveal a Vulnerability of Tamper-Evident Pairing. In: Brat, G., Rungta, N., Venet, A. (eds) NASA Formal Methods. NFM 2013. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 7871. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-38088-4_5
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