Cryptanalysis of the application secure alternative to SNMP (APSSNMP)

Raphael Chung-Wei Phan

Abstract: The APSSNMP network management protocol was proposed as a secure alternative to the Simple Network Management Protocol (SNMP) used in the TCP/IP suite. The designers claimed that it resists meet-in-the-middle (MITM) attacks. In this paper, we present an advanced MITM attack on the APSSNMP and hence show that it fails to achieve its design objective of providing better security against MITM attacks. Since the APSSNMP has been presented in several journals, and IEEE and IASTED conferences, our result is important to highlight to network implementers and users of distributed systems that the APSSNMP is not secure for practical deployment.