Quantum Key Distribution (QKD) and Commodity Security Protocols: Introduction and Integration

We present an overview of quantum key distribution (QKD), a secure key exchange method based on the quantum laws of physics rather than computational complexity. We also provide an overview of the two most widely used commodity security protocols, IPsec and TLS. Pursuing a key exchange model, we propose how QKD could be integrated into these security applications. For such a QKD integration we propose a support layer that provides a set of common QKD services between the QKD protocol and the security applicationsComment: 12Page

Development of an Encrypted Wireless System for Body Sensor Network Applications

Wireless body area networks (WBAN), also called wireless body sensor networks (WBSN), consist of a collection of wireless sensor nodes used to monitor and assess various human physiological conditions, which can then be used by healthcare professionals to help them make important healthcare decisions. They can be used to prevent disease, help diagnosis a disease, or manage the symptoms of a disease. An extremely important aspect of WBAN is security to protect a patient\u27s healthcare information, as a hacker could potentially cause fatal harm. Current security measures are implemented in software at the MAC layer and higher, not in the physical layer. Previous research demonstrated a chaotic encryption cipher to add a layer of security in the physical layer. This cipher exploits different properties of the Lorenz chaotic system to encrypt and decrypt digital data. Decryption involved synchronizing two chaotic signals to recover original data by sharing a state between the transmitter and receiver. In this thesis, we further develop the encryption system by implementing wireless capabilities. We use two approaches: the first by using commercially available wireless microcontrollers that communicate using Bluetooth Low Energy, and the second by the design and fabrication of a dual-band low noise amplifier (LNA) that can be used in a receiver for WBANs collecting data from implantable and on-the-body sensors. For the first approach, a custom Bluetooth Low Energy profile was created for streaming the analog encrypted signal, and signal processing was done at the receiver side. For the second approach, the LNA operates at the Medical Implant Communication System (MICS) band and the 915 MHz Industrial, Scientific, and Medical (ISM) band simultaneously through dual-band input and output matching networks

Survey on Lightweight Primitives and Protocols for RFID in Wireless Sensor Networks

The use of radio frequency identification (RFID) technologies is becoming widespread in all kind of wireless network-based applications. As expected, applications based on sensor networks, ad-hoc or mobile ad hoc networks (MANETs) can be highly benefited from the adoption of RFID solutions. There is a strong need to employ lightweight cryptographic primitives for many security applications because of the tight cost and constrained resource requirement of sensor based networks. This paper mainly focuses on the security analysis of lightweight protocols and algorithms proposed for the security of RFID systems. A large number of research solutions have been proposed to implement lightweight cryptographic primitives and protocols in sensor and RFID integration based resource constraint networks. In this work, an overview of the currently discussed lightweight primitives and their attributes has been done. These primitives and protocols have been compared based on gate equivalents (GEs), power, technology, strengths, weaknesses and attacks. Further, an integration of primitives and protocols is compared with the possibilities of their applications in practical scenarios

Efficient key integrity verification for quantum cryptography using combinatorial group testing

Quantum Information and Computation VIII 77020F (April 23, 2010)In quantum cryptography, the key can be directly distributed to the communicating parties through the communication channel. The security is guaranteed by the quantum properties of the channel. However, the transmitted key may contain errors due to the noise of the channel. Key integrity verification is an indispensable step in quantum cryptography and becomes an important problem in higher speed systems. Computing only one hash value for the key string does not provide an effective solution as it may lead to dropping all the bits once the hash values on both sides do not agree. In this paper, we introduce a new idea of using the technique of combinatorial group testing, which seems to be an unrelated topic, to design a scheme to identify the error bits to avoid dropping all the bits. Our scheme can precisely locate the error bits if the number of error bits is within the maximum set by the scheme while the overhead is insignificant based on our experiments (additional bits: 0.1% of the key; time for computing the hash values: 16ms; verification time: 22 ms). Also, even if the number of error bits is higher than the maximum set by the scheme, only some correct bits may be misclassified as error bits but not the vice versa. The results show that we can still keep the majority of the correct bits (e.g. the bits discarded due to misclassification is only 5% of the whole string even if the number of error bits is 10 times of the maximum). © 2010 SPIE.published_or_final_versionThe 2010 SPIE Conference on Defense, Security, and Sensing, Orlando, FL., 5 April 2010. In Proceedings of SPIE - The International Society for Optical Engineering, v. 7702, p. 77020F-1 - 77020F-

Master of Science

thesisCurrent approaches to secret key extraction using Received Signal Strength Indicator (RSSI) measurements mainly use the WiFi interface. However, in the presence of jamming adversaries and other interfering devices, the efficiency of RSSI-based secret key extraction using WiFi degrades and sometimes the key extraction may even fail completely. A possible method to overcome this problem is to collect RSSI measurements using the Bluetooth interface. Bluetooth appears to be very promising for secret key extraction since the adaptive frequency hopping technique in Bluetooth automatically detects and avoids the use of bad or interfering channels. In order to collect Bluetooth RSSI values, we design a protocol where Alice and Bob use Google Nexus one phones to exchange L2CAP packets and then we measure the RSSI for each received packet. We use a prequantization interpolation step to reduce the probability of bit mismatches that are caused due to the inabililty to measure the time-duplex channel simultaneously by Alice and Bob. We then use the ASBG quantization scheme followed by information reconciliation and privacy amplification to extract the secret key bits. We conduct numerous experiments to evaluate the efficiency of Bluetooth for secret key extraction under two di↵erent mobile environments - hallways and outdoors. The secret bit rates obtained from these experiments highlight that outdoor settings are better suited for key extraction using Bluetooth when compared to hallway settings. Furthermore, we show that for very small distances such as 2 ft, the number of consecutive "0" RSSI values and bit mismatch is too high to extract any secret key bits under hallway settings. Finally, we also show that Bluetooth key extraction in outdoors achieves secret bit rates that are comparable toWiFi, even when using lower transmit power than WiFi

Belle II Technical Design Report

The Belle detector at the KEKB electron-positron collider has collected almost 1 billion Y(4S) events in its decade of operation. Super-KEKB, an upgrade of KEKB is under construction, to increase the luminosity by two orders of magnitude during a three-year shutdown, with an ultimate goal of 8E35 /cm^2 /s luminosity. To exploit the increased luminosity, an upgrade of the Belle detector has been proposed. A new international collaboration Belle-II, is being formed. The Technical Design Report presents physics motivation, basic methods of the accelerator upgrade, as well as key improvements of the detector.Comment: Edited by: Z. Dole\v{z}al and S. Un