Replay attack

A replay attack (also known as playback attack) is a form of network attack in which valid data
transmission is maliciously or fraudulently repeated or delayed. This is carried out either by the
originator or by an adversary who intercepts the data and re-transmits it, possibly as part of a
spoofing attack by IP packet substitution. This is one of the lower-tier versions of a man-in-the-
middle attack. Replay attacks are usually passive in nature.

Another way of describing such an attack is: "an attack on a security protocol using a replay of
messages from a different context into the intended (or original and expected) context, thereby
fooling the honest participant(s) into thinking they have successfully completed the protocol run."[1]

Contents
How a replay attack works
Prevention and countermeasures
General countermeasure for all replay attacks
More on session identifiers
One-time passwords
Nonces and MAC
Timestamps
Countermeasures in specific scenarios
Kerberos protocol prevention
Secure routing in ad hoc networks
Challenge-Handshake Authentication Protocol
Real world examples of replay attack susceptibility
Remote keyless-entry system for vehicles
Text-dependent speaker verification
See also
References

How a replay attack works

Suppose Alice wants to prove her identity to Bob. Bob requests her password as proof of identity,
which Alice dutifully provides (possibly after some transformation like hashing (or even salting) the
password); meanwhile, Eve is eavesdropping on the conversation and keeps the password (or the
hash). After the interchange is over, Eve (acting as Alice) connects to Bob; when asked for proof of
identity, Eve sends Alice's password (or hash) read from the last session which Bob accepts, thus
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granting Eve access.[1]
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Prevention and
countermeasures

General countermeasure for all replay

attacks

Replay attacks can be prevented by tagging each

encrypted component with a session ID and a
component number.[1] This combination of solutions
does not use anything that is interdependent on one Illustration of a replay attack. Alice (A) sends her
another. Due to the fact that there is no hashed password to Bob (B). Eve (E) sniffs the
interdependency, there are fewer vulnerabilities. This hash and replays it.
works because a unique, random session ID is created
for each run of the program; thus, a previous run
becomes more difficult to replicate. In this case, an attacker would be unable to perform the replay
because on a new run the session ID would have changed.[1]

More on session identifiers

Session IDs, also known as session tokens, are one mechanism that can be used to help avoid replay
attacks. The way of generating a session ID works as follows.

1. Bob sends a one-time token to Alice, which Alice uses to transform the password and send the
result to Bob. For example, she would use the token to compute a hash function of the session
token and append it to the password to be used.
2. On his side Bob performs the same computation with the session token.
3. If and only if both Alice’s and Bob’s values match, the login is successful.
4. Now suppose an attacker Eve has captured this value and tries to use it on another session. Bob
would send a different session token, and when Eve replies with her captured value it will be
different from Bob's computation so he will know it is not Alice.

Session tokens should be chosen by a random process (usually, pseudorandom processes are used).
Otherwise, Eve may be able to pose as Bob, presenting some predicted future token, and convince
Alice to use that token in her transformation. Eve can then replay her reply at a later time (when the
previously predicted token is actually presented by Bob), and Bob will accept the authentication.

One-time passwords

One-time passwords are similar to session tokens in that the password expires after it has been used
or after a very short amount of time. They can be used to authenticate individual transactions in
addition to sessions. These can also be used during the authentication process to help establish trust
between the two parties that are communicating with each other.
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Nonces and WhatsApp

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Bob can also send nonces but should then include a message authentication code (MAC), which Alice
should check.

Timestamps

Timestamping is another way of preventing a replay attack.[2] Synchronization should be achieved

using a secure protocol. For example, Bob periodically broadcasts the time on his clock together with
a MAC. When Alice wants to send Bob a message, she includes her best estimate of the time on his
clock in her message, which is also authenticated. Bob only accepts messages for which the timestamp
is within a reasonable tolerance. Timestamps are also implemented during mutual authentication,
when both Bob and Alice authenticate each other with unique session IDs, in order to prevent the
replay attacks.[3] The advantages of this scheme are that Bob does not need to generate (pseudo-)
random numbers and that Alice doesn't need to ask Bob for a random number. In networks that are
unidirectional or near unidirectional, it can be an advantage. The trade-off being that replay attacks, if
they are performed quickly enough i.e. within that 'reasonable' limit, could succeed.

Countermeasures in specific scenarios

Kerberos protocol prevention

The Kerberos authentication protocol includes some countermeasures. In the classic case of a replay
attack, a message is captured by an adversary and then replayed at a later date in order to produce an
effect. For example, if a banking scheme were to be vulnerable to this attack, a message which results
in the transfer of funds could be replayed over and over to transfer more funds than originally
intended. However, the Kerberos protocol, as implemented in Microsoft Windows Active Directory,
includes the use of a scheme involving time stamps to severely limit the effectiveness of replay attacks.
Messages which are past the "time to live (TTL)" are considered old and are discarded.[4]

There have been improvements proposed, including the using a triple password scheme. These three
passwords are used with the authentication server, ticket-granting server, and TGS. These servers use
the passwords to encrypt messages with secret keys between the different servers. The encryption that
is provided by these three keys help aid in preventing replay attacks.[5]

Secure routing in ad hoc networks

Wireless ad hoc networks are also susceptible to replay attacks. In this case, the authentication system
can be improved and made stronger by extending the AODV protocol. This method of improving the
security of Ad Hoc networks increases the security of the network with a small amount of overhead.[6]
If there were to be extensive overhead then the network would run the risk of becoming slower and its
performance would decrease. By keeping a relatively low overhead, the network can maintain better
performance while still improving the security.

Challenge-Handshake Authentication Protocol

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Authentication and sign-on by clients using Point-to-Point Protocol (PPP) are susceptible to replay
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attacks when using Password Authentication Protocol (PAP) to validate their identity, as the
authenticating client sends its username and password in"normal text", and the authenticating server
then sends its acknowledgment in response to this; an intercepting client is therefore, free to read
transmitted data and impersonate each of the client and server to the other, as well as being able to
then store client credentials for later impersonation to the server. Challenge-Handshake
Authentication Protocol (CHAP) secures against this sort of replay attack during the authentication
phase by instead using a "challenge" message from the authenticator that the client responds with a
hash-computed value based on a shared secret (e.g. the client's password), which the authenticator
compares with its own calculation of the challenge and shared secret to authenticate the client. By
relying on a shared secret that has not itself been transmitted, as well as other features such as
authenticator-controlled repetition of challenges, and changing identifier and challenge values, CHAP
provides limited protection against replay attacks.[7]

Real world examples of replay attack susceptibility

There are several real-world examples of how replay attacks have been used and how the issues were
detected and fixed in order to prevent further attacks.

Remote keyless-entry system for vehicles

Many vehicles on the road use a remote keyless system, or key fob, for the convenience of the user.
Modern systems are hardened against simple replay attacks but are vulnerable to buffered replay
attacks. This attack is performed by placing a device that can receive and transmit radio waves within
range of the target vehicle. The transmitter will attempt to jam any RF vehicle unlock signal sent to it
while placing it in a buffer for later use. Upon further attempts to unlock the vehicle, the transmitter
will jam the new signal, cache it, and playback the old one, creating a rolling buffer that is one step
ahead of the vehicle. At a later time, the attacker may use this buffered code to unlock the vehicle.[8][9]

Text-dependent speaker verification

Various devices use speaker recognition to verify the identity of a speaker. In text-dependent systems,
an attacker can record the target individual’s speech that was correctly verified by the system, then
play the recording again to be verified by the system. A counter-measure was devised using spectral
bitmaps from the stored speech of verified users. Replayed speech has a different pattern in this
scenario and will then be rejected by the system.[10]

See also
Denial-of-service attack
Digest access authentication
Man-in-the-middle attack
Pre-play attack
Relay attack
Session replay Max height: 22 of 25
Telephone tapping
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References
1. Malladi, Sreekanth. "On Preventing Replay Attacks on Security Protocols" (https://apps.dtic.mil/dti
c/tr/fulltext/u2/a462295.pdf) (PDF). oai.dtic.mil.
2. Ferrara, Pietro; Mandal, Amit Kr; Cortesi, Agostino; Spoto, Fausto (2020-11-24). "Static analysis
for discovering IoT vulnerabilities" (http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s10009-020-00592-x).
International Journal on Software Tools for Technology Transfer. 23 (1): 71–88.
doi:10.1007/s10009-020-00592-x (https://doi.org/10.1007%2Fs10009-020-00592-x).
ISSN 1433-2779 (https://www.worldcat.org/issn/1433-2779).
3. Dewanta, Favian and Masahiro Mambo. 2019. “A Mutual Authentication Scheme for Secure Fog
Computing Service Handover in Vehicular Network Environment.” IEEE Access 7:103095–114.
4. Olsen, Geir (1 February 2012). "Kerberos Authentication 101: Understanding the Essentials of the
Kerberos Security Protocol" (https://redmondmag.com/articles/2012/02/01/understanding-the-ess
entials-of-the-kerberos-protocol.aspx). Redmond Magazine. Retrieved 2017-06-13.
5. Dua, Gagan (2013). "Replay Attack Prevention in Kerberos Authentication Protocol Using Triple
Password". International Journal of Computer Networks & Communications. 5 (2): 59–70.
arXiv:1304.3550 (https://arxiv.org/abs/1304.3550). doi:10.5121/ijcnc.2013.5205 (https://doi.org/10.
5121%2Fijcnc.2013.5205). S2CID 9715110 (https://api.semanticscholar.org/CorpusID:9715110).
6. Zhen, Jane (2003). "Preventing Replay Attacks for Secure Routing in Ad Hoc Networks". Ad-Hoc,
Mobile, and Wireless Networks. Lecture Notes in Computer Science. 2865. pp. 140–150.
doi:10.1007/978-3-540-39611-6_13 (https://doi.org/10.1007%2F978-3-540-39611-6_13).
ISBN 978-3-540-20260-8.
7. Simpson, William Allen. "RFC 1994 – PPP Challenge Handshake Authentication Protocol
(CHAP)" (https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc1994). tools.ietf.org. Retrieved 2018-09-12.
8. Beek, S. van de; Leferink, F. (1 August 2016). "Vulnerability of Remote Keyless-Entry Systems
Against Pulsed Electromagnetic Interference and Possible Improvements". IEEE Transactions on
Electromagnetic Compatibility. 58 (4): 1259–1265. doi:10.1109/TEMC.2016.2570303 (https://doi.o
rg/10.1109%2FTEMC.2016.2570303). S2CID 39429975 (https://api.semanticscholar.org/CorpusI
D:39429975).
9. Francillon, Aurelien. "Attacks on Passive Keyless Entry and Start Systems in Modern Cars" (http
s://eprint.iacr.org/2010/332.pdf) (PDF). eprint.iacr.org/. Retrieved 8 December 2016.
10. Wu, Z.; Gao, S.; Cling, E. S.; Li, H. (1 December 2014). Signal and Information Processing
Association Annual Summit and Conference (APSIPA), 2014 Asia-Pacific. pp. 1–5.
doi:10.1109/APSIPA.2014.7041636 (https://doi.org/10.1109%2FAPSIPA.2014.7041636).
ISBN 978-6-1636-1823-8. S2CID 10057260 (https://api.semanticscholar.org/CorpusID:10057260).

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