Distance Bounding Protocol with Adjustable False Acceptance Rate

Abstract

At Eurocrypt 1993, Brands and Chaum introduced distance bounding protocols to defend against mafia fraud attack and distance fraud attack. A distance bounding protocol usually consists of n rounds of a single-bit challenge and a single-bit response, which determines the distance between communicating entities by measuring the round-trip time of signals. Let FAR(M) and FAR(D) be the false acceptance rate against the mafia fraud attack and the distance fraud attack, respectively. The state-of-the-art distance bounding protocols in terms of the false acceptance rate have either (FAR(M), FAR(D)) = ((1/2)(n), (1/2)(n)) or (FAR(M), FAR(D)) = (4 (3/8)(n), (7/8)(n)). We introduce a flexible distance bounding protocol whose false acceptance rate (FAR(M), FAR(D)) can be chosen from ((1/2)(n), (1/2)(n)) to ((1/4)(n), (3/4)(n)).