Formal Analysis of QUIC Handshake Protocol Using Symbolic Model Checking

Zhang, Jingjing; Yang, Lin; Gao, Xianming; Tang, Gaigai; Zhang, Jiyong; Wang, Qiang

doi:10.1109/access.2021.3052578

“…The authors in [33] provide a formal analysis of the security of the handshake protocol of QUIC, i.e., the TLS handshake, using symbolic model checking. The analysis was performed with the help of two stateof-the-art tools for symbolic model checking: ProVerif and Verifpal.…”

Section: Preliminariesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Revisiting QUIC attacks: A comprehensive review on QUIC security and a hands-on study

Chatzoglou

¹

,

Kouliaridis

²

,

Καρόπουλος

³

et al. 2022

Preprint

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Built on top of UDP, the recently standardized QUIC protocol primarily aims to gradually replace the TCP plus TLS plus HTTP/2 model. For instance, HTTP/3 is designed to exploit QUIC’s features, including reduced connection establishment time, multiplexing without head of line blocking, always-encrypted end-to-end security, and others. This work serves two key objectives. Initially, it offers the first to our knowledge full-fledged review on QUIC security as seen through the lens of the relevant literature so far. Second and more importantly, through extensive fuzz testing, we conduct a hands-on security evaluation against the six most popular QUIC-enabled production-grade servers. This assessment identified several effective and practical zero-day vulnerabilities, which, if exploited, can quickly overwhelm the server resources. This finding is a clear indication that the fragmented production-level implementations of this contemporary protocol are not yet mature enough. Overall, the work at hand provides the first wholemeal appraisal of QUIC security from both a literature review and empirical standpoint, and it is therefore foreseen to serve as a reference for future research in this timely area.

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“…The authors in [33] provide a formal analysis of the security of the handshake protocol of QUIC, i.e., the TLS handshake, using symbolic model checking. The analysis was performed with the help of two state-of-the-art tools for symbolic model checking: ProVerif and Verifpal.…”

Section: Past Studies On Quic Security Evaluationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Revisiting QUIC attacks: a comprehensive review on QUIC security and a hands-on study

Chatzoglou

¹

,

Kouliaridis

²

,

Καρόπουλος

³

et al. 2022

Int. J. Inf. Secur.

9

0

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Built on top of UDP, the recently standardized QUIC protocol primarily aims to gradually replace the TCP plus TLS plus HTTP/2 model. For instance, HTTP/3 is designed to exploit QUIC’s features, including reduced connection establishment time, multiplexing without head of line blocking, always-encrypted end-to-end security, and others. This work serves two key objectives. Initially, it offers the first to our knowledge full-fledged review on QUIC security as seen through the lens of the relevant literature so far. Second and more importantly, through extensive fuzz testing, we conduct a hands-on security evaluation against the six most popular QUIC-enabled production-grade servers. This assessment identified several effective and practical zero-day vulnerabilities, which, if exploited, can quickly overwhelm the server resources. This finding is a clear indication that the fragmented production-level implementations of this contemporary protocol are not yet mature enough. Overall, the work at hand provides the first wholemeal appraisal of QUIC security from both a literature review and empirical standpoint, and it is therefore foreseen to serve as a reference for future research in this timely area.

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“…In our previous work [25,26], we verified the security of the QUIC handshake protocols with the cryptographic protocol verifiers ProVerif and Verifpal. However, in addition to the authentication and confidentiality of the QUIC handshake protocol, researchers may pay more attention to whether a certain function of the protocol can be realized.…”

Section: Related Workmentioning

confidence: 99%

A Systematic Approach to Formal Analysis of QUIC Handshake Protocol Using Symbolic Model Checking

Zhang¹,

Gao²,

Yang³

et al. 2021

Security and Communication Networks

Self Cite

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As a newly proposed secure transport protocol, QUIC aims to improve the transport performance of HTTPS traffic and enable rapid deployment and evolution of transport mechanisms. QUIC is currently in the IETF standardization process and will potentially carry a significant portion of Internet traffic in the emerging future. An important safety goal of QUIC protocol is to provide effective data service for users. To aim this safety requirement, we propose a formal analysis method to analyze the safety of QUIC handshake protocol by using model checker SPIN and cryptographic protocol verifier ProVerif. Our analysis shows the counterexamples to safety properties, which reveal a design flaw in the current protocol specification. To this end, we also propose and verify a possible fix that is able to mitigate these flaws.

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Formal Analysis of QUIC Handshake Protocol Using Symbolic Model Checking

Cited by 18 publications

References 33 publications

Revisiting QUIC attacks: A comprehensive review on QUIC security and a hands-on study

Revisiting QUIC attacks: A comprehensive review on QUIC security and a hands-on study

Revisiting QUIC attacks: a comprehensive review on QUIC security and a hands-on study

A Systematic Approach to Formal Analysis of QUIC Handshake Protocol Using Symbolic Model Checking

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