A Generic Security API for Symmetric Key Management on Cryptographic Devices

Véronique Cortier (1) , Graham Steel (2)

1 CASSIS - Combination of approaches to the security of infinite states systems
2 LSV - Laboratoire Spécification et Vérification [Cachan]

Security APIs are used to define the boundary between trusted and untrusted code. The security properties of existing APIs are not always clear. In this paper, we give a new generic API for managing symmetric keys on a trusted cryptographic device. We state and prove security properties for our API. In particular, our API offers a high level of security even when the host machine is controlled by an attacker. Our API is generic in the sense that it can implement a wide variety of (symmetric key) protocols. As a proof of concept, we give an algorithm for automatically instantiating the API commands for a given key management protocol. We demonstrate the algorithm on a set of key establishment protocols from the Clark-Jacob suite.

Domaines: Cryptographie et sécurité [cs.CR]

Véronique Cortier, Graham Steel. A Generic Security API for Symmetric Key Management on Cryptographic Devices. 14th European Symposium On Research In Computer Security - ESORICS'09, Sep 2009, St Malo, France. pp.605-620, ⟨10.1007/978-3-642-04444-1_37⟩. ⟨inria-00426621⟩