SilentKnock: practical, provably undetectable authentication

Author: Vasserman Eugene  

Publisher: Springer Publishing Company

ISSN: 1615-5262

Source: International Journal of Information Security (IJIS), Vol.8, Iss.2, 2009-04, pp. : 121-135

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Abstract

Port knocking is a technique to prevent attackers from discovering and exploiting vulnerable network services, while allowing access for authenticated users. Unfortunately, most work in this area suffers from a lack of a clear threat model or motivation. To remedy this, we introduce a formal security model for port knocking, show how previous schemes fail to meet our definition, and give a provably secure scheme. We also present SilentKnock, an implementation of this protocol that is provably secure under the assumption that AES and a modified version of MD4 are pseudorandom functions, and integrates seamlessly with existing applications.