Security Analysis on Mutual Authentication against Man-in-the-Middle Attack

Authentication is the basic security service in an open and vulnerable communications network such as the Internet. Unilateral authentication is vulnerable to the Man-in-the-Middle (MitM) attack. The security of mutual authentication against MitM attack is also weak. As case studies, we discuss the security of the well-known mutual authentication protocol-Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) protocol, examine the MitM attack to it and investigate causes. In this paper, a unified mathematical model is established to analyze Man-in-the-Middle attacks to mutual authentication protocol. Then we use the formal methods and logical operations to analyze the mutual authentication security against MitM attack. Finally, we propose a modification to the model of MitM attack that prevents such attacks.