Date of Award

Spring 2007

Project Type

Thesis

Program or Major

Computer Science

Degree Name

Master of Science

First Advisor

Radim Bartos

Abstract

There are many methods that support user authentication and access control, important roles in the establishment of secure communication. Particularly, we examine Simple Authentication and Security Layer (SASL) and Extensible Authentication Protocol (EAP) and propose EAP-Advanced Encryption Standard-Pre-Shared-Key (EAP-AES-PSK). SASL is an authentication framework in connection-oriented protocols. EAP is an authentication framework providing multiple authentication methods. SASL is vulnerable to the dictionary attack, replay attack, and Man-In-The-Middle attack as well as the re-keying issue. We propose to incorporate EAP into SASL to enhance the security of SASL and to provide a pathway for easy incorporation of future EAP enhancements into SASL. Standalone EAP still faces some common attacks. We propose EAP-AES-PSK, a new EAP method, to provide strong authentication and we implement this method on the Cyrus SASL implementation: one of the publicly available SASL implementations. This project is evaluated through the verification of functionality of a SASL application incorporating EAR Further, we argue how the common security risks associated with SASL are addressed, and we complete a performance evaluation of the new method incorporated into SASL.

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