Top

Published in:

2018 | OriginalPaper | Chapter

Breaking Message Integrity of an End-to-End Encryption Scheme of LINE

Authors : Takanori Isobe, Kazuhiko Minematsu

Published in: Computer Security

Publisher: Springer International Publishing

Activate our intelligent search to find suitable subject content or patents.

search-config

AI-assisted search

Off

Abstract

In this paper, we analyze the security of an end-to-end encryption scheme (E2EE) of LINE, a.k.a Letter Sealing. LINE is one of the most widely-deployed instant messaging applications, especially in East Asia. By a close inspection of their protocols, we give several attacks against the message integrity of Letter Sealing. Specifically, we propose forgery and impersonation attacks on the one-to-one message encryption and the group message encryption. All of our attacks are feasible with the help of an end-to-end adversary, who has access to the inside of the LINE server (e.g. service provider LINE themselves). We stress that the main purpose of E2EE is to provide a protection against the end-to-end adversary. In addition, we found some attacks that even do not need the help of E2E adversary, which shows a critical security flaw of the protocol. Our results reveal that the E2EE scheme of LINE do not sufficiently guarantee the integrity of messages compared to the state-of-the-art E2EE schemes such as Signal, which is used by WhatApp and Facebook Messenger.

Dont have a licence yet? Then find out more about our products and how to get one now:

Springer Professional "Wirtschaft+Technik"

Online-Abonnement

Mit Springer Professional "Wirtschaft+Technik" erhalten Sie Zugriff auf:

über 102.000 Bücher
über 537 Zeitschriften

aus folgenden Fachgebieten:

Automobil + Motoren
Bauwesen + Immobilien
Business IT + Informatik
Elektrotechnik + Elektronik
Energie + Nachhaltigkeit
Finance + Banking
Management + Führung
Marketing + Vertrieb
Maschinenbau + Werkstoffe
Versicherung + Risiko

Jetzt Wissensvorsprung sichern!

inform now

Springer Professional "Technik"

Online-Abonnement

Mit Springer Professional "Technik" erhalten Sie Zugriff auf:

über 67.000 Bücher
über 390 Zeitschriften

aus folgenden Fachgebieten:

Automobil + Motoren
Bauwesen + Immobilien
Business IT + Informatik
Elektrotechnik + Elektronik
Energie + Nachhaltigkeit
Maschinenbau + Werkstoffe

Jetzt Wissensvorsprung sichern!

inform now

Springer Professional "Wirtschaft"

Online-Abonnement

Mit Springer Professional "Wirtschaft" erhalten Sie Zugriff auf:

über 67.000 Bücher
über 340 Zeitschriften

aus folgenden Fachgebieten:

Bauwesen + Immobilien
Business IT + Informatik
Finance + Banking
Management + Führung
Marketing + Vertrieb
Versicherung + Risiko

Jetzt Wissensvorsprung sichern!

inform now

previous chapter Dynamic Searchable Symmetric Encryption Schemes Supporting Range Queries with Forward (and Backward) Security

next chapter Scalable Wildcarded Identity-Based Encryption

FIPS PUB 197: Advanced Encryption Standard (AES). U.S. Department of Commerce/National Institute of Standards and Technology (2001)

NIST SP 800–38A: Recommendation for Block Cipher Modes of Operation. U.S. Department of Commerce/National Institute of Standards and Technology (2001)

NIST SP 800–38C: Recommendation for Block Cipher Modes of Operation: the CCM Mode for Authentication and Confidentiality. U.S. Department of Commerce/National Institute of Standards and Technology (2007)

NIST SP 800–38D: Recommendation for Block Cipher Modes of Operation: Galois/Counter Mode (GCM) and GMAC. U.S. Department of Commerce/National Institute of Standards and Technology (2007)

FIPS PUB 180–4: Secure Hash Standard. U.S. Department of Commerce/National Institute of Standards and Technology (2015)

New generation of safe messaging: Letter Sealing. LINE Blog (2015). https://engineering.linecorp.com/en/blog/detail/65

LINE Enters Agreement with Japan’s CAO for Mynaportal Interconnectivity (2017). https://linecorp.com/en/pr/news/en/2017/1771

Line Will Top 50 Million Users in Japan This Year. eMarketer (2017). https://www.emarketer.com/Article/Line-Will-Top-50-Million-Users-Japan-This-Year/1016207

Al Fardan, N.J., Paterson, K.G.: Lucky thirteen: breaking the TLS and DTLS record protocols. In: 2013 IEEE Symposium on Security and Privacy, SP 2013, pp. 526–540. IEEE Computer Society (2013)

10.

Bellare, M., Namprempre, C.: Authenticated encryption: relations among notions and analysis of the generic composition paradigm. J. Cryptol. 21(4), 469–491 (2008)MathSciNetCrossRef

11.

Bellare, M., Rogaway, P., Wagner, D.: The EAX mode of operation. In: Roy, B., Meier, W. (eds.) FSE 2004. LNCS, vol. 3017, pp. 389–407. Springer, Heidelberg (2004). https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-540-25937-4_25CrossRef

12.

Bernstein, D.J.: Curve25519: new diffie-hellman speed records. In: Yung, M., Dodis, Y., Kiayias, A., Malkin, T. (eds.) PKC 2006. LNCS, vol. 3958, pp. 207–228. Springer, Heidelberg (2006). https://doi.org/10.1007/11745853_14CrossRef

13.

Blake-Wilson, S., Menezes, A.: Unknown key-share attacks on the station-to-station (STS) protocol. In: Imai, H., Zheng, Y. (eds.) PKC 1999. LNCS, vol. 1560, pp. 154–170. Springer, Heidelberg (1999). https://doi.org/10.1007/3-540-49162-7_12CrossRefMATH

14.

Möller, B., Duong, T., Kotowicz, K.: This POODLE Bites: Exploiting The SSL 3.0 Fallback (2016)

15.

Cohn-Gordon, K., Cremers, C., Garratt, L., Millican, J., Milner, K.: On Ends-to-Ends Encryption: Asynchronous Group Messaging with Strong Security Guarantees. Cryptology ePrint Archive, Report 2017/666 (2017). http://eprint.iacr.org/2017/666

16.

Cohn-Gordon, K., Cremers, C.J.F., Dowling, B., Garratt, L., Stebila, D.: A formal security analysis of the signal messaging protocol. In: 2017 IEEE European Symposium on Security and Privacy, EuroS&P 2017, pp. 451–466. IEEE (2017)

17.

Cohn-Gordon, K., Cremers, C.J.F., Garratt, L.: On post-compromise security. In: IEEE 29th Computer Security Foundations Symposium, CSF 2016, pp. 164–178. IEEE Computer Society (2016)

18.

Curtis, T.: Encryption out of LINE Reverse engineering end-to-end encrypted messaging. Ekoparty 2016 (2016)

19.

Espinoza, A.M., Tolley, W.J., Crandall, J.R., Crete-Nishihata, M., Hilts, A.: Alice and Bob, who the FOCI are they?: analysis of end-to-end encryption in the LINE messaging application. In: 7th USENIX Workshop on Free and Open Communications on the Internet (FOCI 17). USENIX Association (2017)

20.

Garman, C., Green, M., Kaptchuk, G., Miers, I., Rushanan, M.: Dancing on the lip of the volcano: chosen ciphertext attacks on apple imessage. In: 25th USENIX Security Symposium (USENIX Security 16), pp. 655–672. USENIX Association (2016)

21.

Gaži, P., Pietrzak, K., Rybár, M.: The exact PRF-security of NMAC and HMAC. In: Garay, J.A., Gennaro, R. (eds.) CRYPTO 2014. LNCS, vol. 8616, pp. 113–130. Springer, Heidelberg (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-662-44371-2_7CrossRef

22.

Krawczyk, H.: The order of encryption and authentication for protecting communications (or: how secure Is SSL?). In: Kilian, J. (ed.) CRYPTO 2001. LNCS, vol. 2139, pp. 310–331. Springer, Heidelberg (2001). https://doi.org/10.1007/3-540-44647-8_19CrossRef

23.

LINE Corporation: LINE Encryption Overview (2016)

24.

Namprempre, C., Rogaway, P., Shrimpton, T.: Reconsidering generic composition. In: Nguyen, P.Q., Oswald, E. (eds.) EUROCRYPT 2014. LNCS, vol. 8441, pp. 257–274. Springer, Heidelberg (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-55220-5_15CrossRef

25.

Open Whisper Systems: Signal Github Repository (2017). https://github.com/WhisperSystems/

26.

Rosler, P., Mainka, C., Schwenk, J.: More is less: how group chats weaken the security of instant messengers signal, WhatsApp, and Threema. In: 3rd IEEE European Symposium on Security and Privacy 2018 (2018)

27.

Vaudenay, S.: Security flaws induced by CBC padding — applications to SSL, IPSEC, WTLS. In: Knudsen, L.R. (ed.) EUROCRYPT 2002. LNCS, vol. 2332, pp. 534–545. Springer, Heidelberg (2002). https://doi.org/10.1007/3-540-46035-7_35CrossRef

Title: Breaking Message Integrity of an End-to-End Encryption Scheme of LINE
Authors: Takanori Isobe
Kazuhiko Minematsu
Publisher: Springer International Publishing
Book: Computer Security
Print ISBN: 978-3-319-98988-4

Electronic ISBN: 978-3-319-98989-1

Copyright Year: 2018
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-98989-1_13

Springer Professional

Abstract

Please log in to get access to your license.

Dont have a licence yet? Then find out more about our products and how to get one now:

Springer Professional "Wirtschaft+Technik"

Springer Professional "Technik"

Springer Professional "Wirtschaft"

Premium Partner