Password-authenticated key agreement

In cryptography, a password-authenticated key agreement method is an interactive method for two or more parties to establish cryptographic keys based on one or more party's knowledge of a password.

An important property is that an eavesdropper or man-in-the-middle cannot obtain enough information to be able to brute-force guess a password without further interactions with the parties for each (few) guesses. This means that strong security can be obtained using weak passwords.

In the most stringent password-only security models, there is no requirement for the user of the method to remember any secret or public data other than the password.

Password authenticated key exchange (PAKE) is where two or more parties, based only on their knowledge of a shared password,[1] establish a cryptographic key using an exchange of messages, such that an unauthorized party (one who controls the communication channel but does not possess the password) cannot participate in the method and is constrained as much as possible from brute-force guessing the password. (The optimal case yields exactly one guess per run exchange.) Two forms of PAKE are Balanced and Augmented methods.[1]

Balanced PAKE assumes the two parties in either a client-client or client-server situation use the same secret password to negotiate and authenticate a shared key.[1] Examples of these are:

Leave a Comment