Key Exchange Protocol for Cuubez|Rest Framework

Abstract

RESTful frameworks don t support document level security. As a solution Cuubez-Rest framework was developed. It was developed to get document level security implemented in to restful services. Rest services are becoming more and more popular among application developers due to its simplicity hence asking for more secure frameworks for Restful services. Developed Cuubez-Rest framework lacks key exchange protocol in its initial implementation. Without a proper key exchanging protocol, framework is unable to communicate with unknown parties hence its document level security is limited between known parties. Research carried out analysing similar key exchange mechanisms in other protocols for similar solutions. Different key exchange algorithms were examined and implemented in a module which was integrated in to Cuubez Framework. Performance analysis based on response times were carried out among different key exchange algorithms to determine most suitable algorithm to recommend for users to be used with Cuubez Key exchange module. It was found that ECMQV algorithm takes longer response time compares to ECDH algorithm in a complete round trip of Rest call. But when considering resilience to MIME attacks, ECMQV becomes preferred choice for key exchange algorithm. Introducing key-exchange module brings scalability in to Cuubez framework enabling secure communication between unknown parties. Capabilities on framework can be further enhanced by adding key management server as a separate module.