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Flexible Digital Authentication Techniques
Abstract This dissertation investigates authentication techniques in some emerging areas. Specifically, authentication schemes have been proposed that are well-suited for embedded systems, and privacy-respecting pay Web sites. With embedded systems, a person could own several devices which are capable of communication and interaction, but these devices use embedded processors whose computational capabilities are limited as compared to desktop computers. Examples of this scenario include entertainment devices or appliances owned by a consumer, multiple control and sensor systems in an automobile or airplane, and environmental controls in a building. An efficient public key cryptosystem has been devised, which provides a complete solution to an embedded system, including protocols for authentication, authenticated key exchange, encryption, and revocation. The new construction is especially suitable for the devices with constrained computing capabilities and resources. Compared with other available authentication schemes, such as X.509, identity-based encryption, etc, the new construction provides unique features such as simplicity, efficiency, forward secrecy, and an efficient re-keying mechanism. In the application scenario for a pay Web site, users may be sensitive about their privacy, and do not wish their behaviors to be tracked by Web sites. Thus, an anonymous authentication scheme is desirable in this case. That is, a user can prove his/her authenticity without revealing his/her identity. On the other hand, the Web site owner would like to prevent a bunch of users from sharing a single subscription while hiding behind user anonymity. The Web site should be able to detect these possible malicious behaviors, and exclude corrupted users from future service. This dissertation extensively discusses anonymous authentication techniques, such as group signature, direct anonymous attestation, and traceable signature. Three anonymous authentication schemes have been proposed, which include a group signature scheme with signature claiming and variable linkability, a scheme for direct anonymous attestation in trusted computing platforms with sign and verify protocols nearly seven times more efficient than the current solution, and a state-of-the-art traceable signature scheme with support for variable anonymity. These three schemes greatly advance research in the area of anonymous authentication. The authentication techniques presented in this dissertation are based on common mathematical and cryptographical foundations, sharing similar security assumptions. We call them flexible digital authentication schemes
Trust Evaluation for Embedded Systems Security research challenges identified from an incident network scenario
This paper is about trust establishment and trust
evaluations techniques. A short background about trust, trusted
computing and security in embedded systems is given. An analysis
has been done of an incident network scenario with roaming
users and a set of basic security needs has been identified.
These needs have been used to derive security requirements for devices and systems, supporting the considered scenario. Using the requirements, a list of major security challenges for future research regarding trust establishment in dynamic networks have been collected and elaboration on some different approaches for future research has been done.This work was supported by the Knowledge foundation and RISE within the ARIES project
A survey on cyber security for smart grid communications
A smart grid is a new form of electricity network with high fidelity power-flow control, self-healing, and energy reliability and energy security using digital communications and control technology. To upgrade an existing power grid into a smart grid, it requires significant dependence on intelligent and secure communication infrastructures. It requires security frameworks for distributed communications, pervasive computing and sensing technologies in smart grid. However, as many of the communication technologies currently recommended to use by a smart grid is vulnerable in cyber security, it could lead to unreliable system operations, causing unnecessary expenditure, even consequential disaster to both utilities and consumers. In this paper, we summarize the cyber security requirements and the possible vulnerabilities in smart grid communications and survey the current solutions on cyber security for smart grid communications. © 2012 IEEE
Security, privacy and trust in wireless mesh networks
With the advent of public key cryptography, digital signature schemes have been extensively studied in order to minimize the signature sizes and to accelerate their execution while providing necessary security properties. Due to the privacy concerns pertaining to the usage of digital signatures in authentication schemes, privacy-preserving signature schemes, which provide anonymity of the signer, have attracted substantial interest in research community. Group signature algorithms, where a group member is able to sign on behalf of the group anonymously, play an important role in many privacy-preserving authentication/ identification schemes. On the other hand, a safeguard is needed to hold users accountable for malicious behavior. To this end, a designated opening/revocation manager is introduced to open a given anonymous signature to reveal the identity of the user. If the identified user is indeed responsible for malicious activities, then s/he can also be revoked by the same entity. A related scheme named direct anonymous attestation is proposed for attesting the legitimacy of a trusted computing platform while maintaining its privacy. This dissertation studies the group signature and direct anonymous attestation schemes and their application to wireless mesh networks comprising resource-constrained embedded devices that are required to communicate securely and be authenticated anonymously, while malicious behavior needs to be traced to its origin. Privacy-aware devices that anonymously connect to wireless mesh networks also need to secure their communication via efficient symmetric key cryptography, as well. In this dissertation, we propose an efficient, anonymous and accountable mutual authentication and key agreement protocol applicable to wireless mesh networks. The proposed scheme can easily be adapted to other wireless networks. The proposed scheme is implemented and simulated using cryptographic libraries and simulators that are widely deployed in academic circles. The implementation and simulation results demonstrate that the proposed scheme is effective, efficient and feasible in the context of hybrid wireless mesh networks, where users can also act as relaying agents. The primary contribution of this thesis is a novel privacy-preserving anonymous authentication scheme consisting of a set of protocols designed to reconcile user privacy and accountability in an efficient and scalable manner in the same framework. The three-party join protocol, where a user can connect anonymously to the wireless mesh network with the help of two semi-trusted parties (comprising the network operator and a third party), is efficient and easily applicable in wireless networks settings. Furthermore, two other protocols, namely two-party identification and revocation protocols enable the network operator, with the help of the semi-trusted third party, to trace suspected malicious behavior back to its origins and revoke users when necessary. The last two protocols can only be executed when the two semi-trusted parties cooperate to provide accountability. Therefore, the scheme is protected against an omni-present authority (e.g. network operator) violating the privacy of network users at will. We also provide arguments and discussions for security and privacy of the proposed scheme
A survey of secure middleware for the Internet of Things
The rapid growth of small Internet connected devices, known as the Internet of Things (IoT), is creating a new set of challenges to create secure, private infrastructures. This paper reviews the current literature on the challenges and approaches to security and privacy in the Internet of Things, with a strong focus on how these aspects are handled in IoT middleware. We focus on IoT middleware because many systems are built from existing middleware and these inherit the underlying security properties of the middleware framework. The paper is composed of three main sections. Firstly, we propose a matrix of security and privacy threats for IoT. This matrix is used as the basis of a widespread literature review aimed at identifying requirements on IoT platforms and middleware. Secondly, we present a structured literature review of the available middleware and how security is handled in these middleware approaches. We utilise the requirements from the first phase to evaluate. Finally, we draw a set of conclusions and identify further work in this area
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