Security Protocols in a Nutshell

Abstract: Security protocols are building blocks in secure communications. They deploy some security mechanisms to provide certain security services. Security protocols are considered abstract when analyzed, but they can have extra vulnerabilities when implemented. This manuscript provides a holistic study on security protocols. It reviews foundations of security protocols, taxonomy of attacks on security protocols and their implementations, and different methods and models for security analysis of protocols. Specifically, it clarifies differences between information-theoretic and computational security, and computational and symbolic models. Furthermore, a survey on computational security models for authenticated key exchange (AKE) and password-authenticated key exchange (PAKE) protocols, as the most important and well-studied type of security protocols, is provided.