Security in serverless network environments

As portable computing devices grow in popularity, so does the need for secure communications. Lacking tethers, these devices are ideal for forming small proximal groups in an ad-hoc fashion in environments where no server or permanent services are available. Members of these groups communicate over a broadcast or multicast network interconnect, and rely upon each other to form a cohesive group. While generally small in size and short in lifetime, security is a critical aspect of these groups that has received much academic attention in recent years. Much of the research focuses upon generating a common, group-wide private key suitable for encryption. This group key agreement utilizes keying technology that is very costly for small, limited-lifetime devices. Furthermore, key agreement provides no constructs for message authentication or integrity. Traditional systems require two keypairs to address both aspects of the secure group and one for encryption, the other for message validation. This work investigates the appropriateness of using a shared keypair for both contributory group key agreement and message quality guarantees. A JCE-compliant key agreement and digital signature framework has been implemented and is presented, and discussed. Using elliptic curve-based keys, this is possible at no loss in security, and these keys are easily and quickly computable on smaller devices. Algorithms that are known for their cryptographic strength are leveraged in both encryption and digital signature applications. This technique provides a computationally-effient key agreement scheme and digital signature framework, and a network-effcient key and signature distribution system. Perfect forward and backward security is maintained, and all members retain a current view of the group from a cryptographic perspective. This thesis is the culmination of several quarters of research and work, all conducted at the Rochester Institute of Technology under the supervison of Dr. Hans-Peter Bischof between December 2002 and January 2004. This thesis is completed as partial fullfillment of the requirements for a Masters Degree in Computer Science from the Rochester Institute of Technology

On the security of the Blockchain Bix Protocol and Certificates

The BIX protocol is a blockchain-based protocol that allows distribution of certificates linking a subject with his public key, hence providing a service similar to that of a PKI but without the need of a CA. In this paper we analyze the security of the BIX protocol in a formal way, in four steps. First, we identify formal security assumptions which are well-suited to this protocol. Second, we present some attack scenarios against the BIX protocol. Third, we provide a formal security proof that some of these attacks are not feasible under our previously established assumptions. Finally, we show how another attack may be carried on.Comment: 16 pages, 1 figur

Secure Position-Based Routing for VANETs

Vehicular communication (VC) systems have the potential to improve road safety and driving comfort. Nevertheless, securing the operation is a prerequisite for deployment. So far, the security of VC applications has mostly drawn the attention of research efforts, while comprehensive solutions to protect the network operation have not been developed. In this paper, we address this problem: we provide a scheme that secures geographic position-based routing, which has been widely accepted as the appropriate one for VC. Moreover, we focus on the scheme currently chosen and evaluated in the Car2Car Communication Consortium (C2C-CC). We integrate security mechanisms to protect the position-based routing functionality and services (beaconing, multi-hop forwarding, and geo-location discovery), and enhance the network robustness. We propose defense mechanisms, relying both on cryptographic primitives, and plausibility checks mitigating false position injection. Our implementation and initial measurements show that the security overhead is low and the proposed scheme deployable

SIGNCRYPTION ANALYZE

The aim of this paper is to provide an overview for the research that has been done so far in signcryption area. The paper also presents the extensions for the signcryption scheme and discusses the security in signcryption. The main contribution to this paper represents the implementation of the signcryption algorithm with the examples provided.ElGamal, elliptic curves, encryption, identity-based, proxy-signcryption, public key, ring-signcryption, RSA, signcryption