Offline dictionary attack on a universally composable three-party password-based key exchange protocol

Abstract Key exchange protocols are fundamental for establishing secure communication channels over public networks. Password-based key exchange protocols allow parties to share a secret key in an authentic manner based on an easily memorizable password. Recently, Deng et al. proposed a three-party password-based key exchange protocol in the universal composable framework in China Communications, where two users, each one of whom shares a human-memorable password with a trusted server, can authenticate each other and compute a secure session key. In this letter, we show that Deng et al.’s protocol is insecure against offline dictionary attack by any other client. Hence, the protocol doesn’t achieve their aim.