Provably-Secure One-Message Unilateral Entity Authentication Schemes

A
one-message unilateral entity authentication scheme
allows one party, called the
prover
, to authenticate himself, i.e., to prove his identity, to another party, called the
verifier
, by sending a single
authentication message
. We consider schemes where the prover and the verifier do not share any secret information, such as a password, in advance. We propose the
first theoretical characterization
for one-message unilateral entity authentication schemes, by formalizing the security requirements for such schemes with respect to different kinds of
passive
and
active
adversarial behaviours. In particular, we consider both
static
and
adaptive
adversaries for each kind of attack (passive/active). Afterwards, we explore the relationships between the security notions resulting from different adversarial behaviours for one-message unilateral entity authentication schemes. Finally, we propose three different constructions for one-message unilateral entity authentication schemes and we analyze their security with respect to the different definitions introduced in this paper.