Revision History for: Authentication of Identity or (classical) Message
- 2025-06-24 at 21:21 by JuliaM
Functionality Description
Authentication is a two-party cryptographic functionality that enables one party (the verifier) to confirm the identity of another party (the prover), or to verify the authenticity of a message claimed to originate from a particular party. It serves as the foundational layer for secure access control, communication, and trust establishment in both classical and quantum settings.
There are two primary branches of this functionality:
- Identification (Identity Authentication): Verifies who is communicating. That is, the prover proves their identity to the verifier, typically using secret credentials or cryptographic keys. This is often used for login, access control, and user verification.
- Message Authentication: Verifies that a specific message was sent by a particular sender and has not been altered. This is typically achieved using message authentication codes (MACs) or digital signatures.
These two variants are often used instead of each other, but conceptually and technically, they are distinct cryptographic functionalities.
Authentication can be achieved both in the symmetric-key settings, via challenge-response protocols, or in the asymmetric setting through public-key schemes.Classical Analogues
Authentication is a fundamental classical functionality, both message and entity authentication can be achieved in the classical setting:
Message Authentication has well-established classical implementations:
- MACs using shared symmetric keys (e.g., HMAC-SHA256).
- Digital Signatures using public-key infrastructure (e.g., RSA, ECDSA).
Identity Authentication:
- Password-based login protocols.
- Zero-knowledge identification protocols (e.g., Fiat-Shamir protocol).
- Public-key challenge-response authentication.
Real-world Use Cases
Authentication has a myriad of real-world use cases in almost any standard secure schemes used in the web, banking, login systems, emails and so on. Digital signatures are also used for legal and financial documents. It is also crucial in Blockchain and smart contracts, ensuring message provenance.
Properties
The main security property of authentication schemes is unforgeability.
Unforgeability: It ensures adversaries cannot produce valid messages or responses without the appropriate credentials, and hence cannot fake the identity of another party or a message.There are other properties such as:
- Integrity: Guarantees that a message has not been tampered with.
- Replay Protection: Protocols can include timestamps to prevent reuse of valid responses.
Quantum-Secure Authentication: In the quantum world, authentication schemes should also provide security against quantum adversaries.
- Quantum-secure signatures can be made based on assumptions like LWE, hash-based signatures (e.g., SPHINCS+), or code-based cryptography.
- Quantum-secure MACS: There exists a quantum-secure version of Wegman-Carter MAC.
- Quantum-secure authentication and identification protocols can also be constructed using hardware assumptions and quantum communication
Further Information
No content has been added to this section, yet!
References
- Bellare, Mihir, Ran Canetti, and Hugo Krawczyk. “Pseudorandom functions revisited: The cascade construction and its concrete security.” In Proceedings of 37th Conference on Foundations of Computer Science, pp. 514-523. IEEE, 1996.
- Wegman, Mark N., and J. Lawrence Carter. “New hash functions and their use in authentication and set equality.” Journal of computer and system sciences 22, no. 3 (1981): 265-279.
- Fiege, Uriel, Amos Fiat, and Adi Shamir. “Zero knowledge proofs of identity.” In Proceedings of the nineteenth annual ACM symposium on Theory of computing, pp. 210-217. 1987.
- Boneh, Dan, and Mark Zhandry. “Secure signatures and chosen ciphertext security in a quantum computing world.” In Advances in Cryptology–CRYPTO 2013: 33rd Annual Cryptology Conference, Santa Barbara, CA, USA, August 18-22, 2013. Proceedings, Part II, pp. 361-379. Springer Berlin Heidelberg, 2013.
- Boneh, Dan, and Mark Zhandry. “Quantum-secure message authentication codes.” In Advances in Cryptology–EUROCRYPT 2013: 32nd Annual International Conference on the Theory and Applications of Cryptographic Techniques, Athens, Greece, May 26-30, 2013. Proceedings 32, pp. 592-608. Springer Berlin Heidelberg, 2013.
- 2025-05-15 at 20:50 by Mina Doosti
Functionality Description
Authentication is a two-party cryptographic functionality that enables one party (the verifier) to confirm the identity of another party (the prover), or to verify the authenticity of a message claimed to originate from a particular party. It serves as the foundational layer for secure access control, communication, and trust establishment in both classical and quantum settings.
There are two primary branches of this functionality:
- Identification (Identity Authentication): Verifies who is communicating. That is, the prover proves their identity to the verifier, typically using secret credentials or cryptographic keys. This is often used for login, access control, and user verification.
- Message Authentication: Verifies that a specific message was sent by a particular sender and has not been altered. This is typically achieved using message authentication codes (MACs) or digital signatures.
These two variants are often used instead of each other, but conceptually and technically, they are distinct cryptographic functionalities.
Authentication can be achieved both in the symmetric-key settings, via challenge-response protocols, or in the asymmetric setting through public-key schemes.Protocols
No protocols implement this functionality yet.
Classical Analogues
Authentication is a fundamental classical functionality, both message and entity authentication can be achieved in the classical setting:
Message Authentication has well-established classical implementations:
- MACs using shared symmetric keys (e.g., HMAC-SHA256).
- Digital Signatures using public-key infrastructure (e.g., RSA, ECDSA).
Identity Authentication:
- Password-based login protocols.
- Zero-knowledge identification protocols (e.g., Fiat-Shamir protocol).
- Public-key challenge-response authentication.
Real-world Use Cases
Authentication has a myriad of real-world use cases in almost any standard secure schemes used in the web, banking, login systems, emails and so on. Digital signatures are also used for legal and financial documents. It is also crucial in Blockchain and smart contracts, ensuring message provenance.
Properties
The main security property of authentication schemes is unforgeability.
Unforgeability: It ensures adversaries cannot produce valid messages or responses without the appropriate credentials, and hence cannot fake the identity of another party or a message.There are other properties such as:
- Integrity: Guarantees that a message has not been tampered with.
- Replay Protection: Protocols can include timestamps to prevent reuse of valid responses.
Quantum-Secure Authentication: In the quantum world, authentication schemes should also provide security against quantum adversaries.
- Quantum-secure signatures can be made based on assumptions like LWE, hash-based signatures (e.g., SPHINCS+), or code-based cryptography.
- Quantum-secure MACS: There exists a quantum-secure version of Wegman-Carter MAC.
- Quantum-secure authentication and identification protocols can also be constructed using hardware assumptions and quantum communication
Further Information
No content has been added to this section, yet!
References
- Bellare, Mihir, Ran Canetti, and Hugo Krawczyk. “Pseudorandom functions revisited: The cascade construction and its concrete security.” In Proceedings of 37th Conference on Foundations of Computer Science, pp. 514-523. IEEE, 1996.
- Wegman, Mark N., and J. Lawrence Carter. “New hash functions and their use in authentication and set equality.” Journal of computer and system sciences 22, no. 3 (1981): 265-279.
- Fiege, Uriel, Amos Fiat, and Adi Shamir. “Zero knowledge proofs of identity.” In Proceedings of the nineteenth annual ACM symposium on Theory of computing, pp. 210-217. 1987.
- Boneh, Dan, and Mark Zhandry. “Secure signatures and chosen ciphertext security in a quantum computing world.” In Advances in Cryptology–CRYPTO 2013: 33rd Annual Cryptology Conference, Santa Barbara, CA, USA, August 18-22, 2013. Proceedings, Part II, pp. 361-379. Springer Berlin Heidelberg, 2013.
- Boneh, Dan, and Mark Zhandry. “Quantum-secure message authentication codes.” In Advances in Cryptology–EUROCRYPT 2013: 32nd Annual International Conference on the Theory and Applications of Cryptographic Techniques, Athens, Greece, May 26-30, 2013. Proceedings 32, pp. 592-608. Springer Berlin Heidelberg, 2013.