Ratcheted encryption and key exchange: The security of messaging

Abstract

We aim to understand, formalize and provably achieve the goals underlying the core key-ratcheting technique of Borisov, Goldberg and Brewer, extensions of which are now used in secure messaging systems. We give syntax and security definitions for ratcheted encryption and key-exchange. We give a proven-secure protocol for ratcheted key exchange. We then show how to generically obtain ratcheted encryption from ratcheted key-exchange and standard encryption.