Abstract

Secure communication is the oldest and, due to the ubiquity of the Internet, still one of the most widespread applications of cryptographic techniques. The architecture of today’s Internet, however, was initially developed without security in mind, and currently used security protocols (such as TLS , SSH, or IPsec) were integrated retroactively into the existing infrastructure. Concerns about both security and performance of these protocols have recently lead to the emergence of several new protocols such as MinimaLT, QUIC , and most prominently TLS 1 .3, which currently is in draft state.

In this talk, we explore a novel approach towards designing secure-channel protocols for the Internet setting. We start by introducing the constructive cryptography paradigm pioneered by Maurer and Renner. Next, we apply it to design a new secure-channel protocol. We focus on simplicity, security, and performance at the cost of immediate compatibility with existing infrastructure, allowing ourselves to deviate strongly from the design of existing protocols.