Title: Secure key exchange scheme: a DNA computing-based approach to resist MITM in DHKE

Authors: C.S. Sreeja; Mohammed Misbahuddin

Addresses: Department of Computer Science, Christ University, Bengaluru, India ' Computer Networks and Internet Engineering Division, Centre for Development of Advanced Computing, Bengaluru, India

Abstract: Diffie-Hellman key exchange (DHKE) protocol was a pioneering work and considered as a new direction in the field of cryptography though it is not an encryption protocol. DHKE is a method to exchange the keys securely, based on the discrete logarithm problem. It has applications in internet security protocols including SSL, IP Sec and SSH. The major issue with DHKE is its vulnerability to man in the middle attack (MITM). Various techniques have been proposed to resist the MITM including digital signatures. This paper proposes DNA computing-based encryption techniques to resist MITM in DHKE. DNA cryptography builds on the concepts of biomolecular computations which are considered as one of the emerging directions in the cryptography. The proposed methodology also includes an encryption technique based on DNA-based codebook, secret sharing and DNA cryptography to exchange parameters securely. The security analysis of the proposed scheme is evaluated by theoretical analysis. Formal analysis of the proposed protocol is done using Scyther and all the modelled claims are validated and positive results are obtained.

Keywords: Diffie-Hellman key exchange; DHKE; DNA; DNA encryption; man in the middle attack; MITM; DNA-DHKE.

DOI: 10.1504/IJICS.2021.118955

International Journal of Information and Computer Security, 2021 Vol.16 No.3/4, pp.307 - 323

Received: 25 Aug 2018
Accepted: 30 Dec 2018
Published online: 15 Nov 2021 *

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