A Formal Theory of Key Conjuring

Key conjuring is the process by which an attacker obtains an unknown, encrypted key by repeatedly calling a cryptographic API function with random values in place of keys. We propose a formalism for detecting computationally feasible key conjuring operations, incorporated into a Dolev-Yao style model of the security API. We show that security in the presence of key conjuring operations is decidable for a particular class of APIs, which includes the key management API of IBM’s Common Cryptographic Architecture (CCA).

• Type: Conference
• Year: 2007
• Where: CSFW
• Authors: Véronique Cortier, Stéphanie Delaune, Graham Steel
• Keywords: CSFW 2007, Feasible Key Conjuring, Key Conjuring, Key Conjuring Operations, Security Privacy