2017/08/11 by Thanh Bui, Bui, Thanh, Tuomas Aura +1 · 1 voice
Computer Science · #Advanced Authentication Protocols Security #Cloud Data Security Solutions #Cryptography and Security (cs.CR) #FOS: Computer and information sciences #User Authentication and Security Systems #cs.CR
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.1708.03468
openalex publication_date 2017/08/11 · arxiv published 2017/08/11 · arxiv updated 2017/08/11 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
Blockchains and other public ledger structures promise a new way to create globally consistent event logs and other records. We make use of this consistency property to detect and prevent man-in-the-middle attacks in a key exchange such as Diffie-Hellman or ECDH. Essentially, the MitM attack creates an inconsistency in the world views of the two honest parties, and they can detect it with the help of the ledger. Thus, there is no need for prior knowledge or trusted third parties apart from the distributed ledger. To prevent impersonation attacks, we require user interaction. It appears that, in some applications, the required user interaction is reduced in comparison to other user-assisted key-exchange protocols.