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Formal Analysis of the PKMv3 Protocol

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Abstract

WiMax (Worldwide Interoperability for Microwave Access, IEEE 802.16) is a standard-based wireless technology, which uses Privacy Key Management (PKM) protocol to provide authentication and key management. Three versions of PKM protocol have been released and the third one (PKMv3) strengthens the security by enhancing the message management. In this paper, a formal analysis of PKMv3 protocol is presented. Both the Subscriber Station (SS) and the Base Station (BS) are modeled as processes in our framework. Besides, we introduce an intruder model where the intruder has capabilities of overhearing, intercepting and faking messages. Discrete time describes the lifetime of the Authorization Key (AK) and the Transmission Encryption Key (TEK). Moreover, the PKMv3 model is constructed through the discrete-time PROMELA (DT-PROMELA) language and the tool DT-Spin implements the PKMv3 model with lifetime. Finally, we simulate communications between SS and BS and verify some properties, such as liveness, succession and message consistency, which are extracted from the PKMv3 protocol and specified using Linear Temporal Logic (LTL) formulae and assertions. The simulation and verification results demonstrate that the attacks may exist in our model of the PKMv3 protocol.

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Acknowledgements

This work was supported by China HGJ Project (No. 2017ZX01038102-002), National Natural Science Foundation of China (61532019) and Shanghai Collaborative Innovation Center of Trustworthy Software for Internet of Things (No. ZF1213). The first author also gratefully acknowledges the financial support from China Scholarship Council (CSC, File No. 201606140137).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Soft/Hardware Co-design Engineering Research Center, East China Normal University, Shanghai, China

    Xiaoran Zhu & Jian Guo

  2. Shanghai Key Laboratory of Trustworthy Computing, East China Normal University, Shanghai, China

    Yuanmin Xu & Huibiao Zhu

  3. National Trusted Embedded Software Engineering Technology Research Center, East China Normal University, Shanghai, China

    Xin Li

  4. School of Computer Science and Software Engineering, Shenzhen University, Shenzhen, China

    Huibiao Zhu

  5. Nguyen Tat Thanh University, 300A Nguyen Tat Thanh Street, Ward13, District 4, Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam

    Phan Cong Vinh

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  1. Xiaoran Zhu
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  4. Jian Guo
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Correspondence to Jian Guo.

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Zhu, X., Xu, Y., Li, X. et al. Formal Analysis of the PKMv3 Protocol. Mobile Netw Appl 23, 44–56 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11036-017-0903-0

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