A lightweight and secure multilayer authentication scheme for wireless body area networks in healthcare system

Wireless body area networks (WBANs) have lately been combined with different healthcare equipment to monitor patients' health status and communicate information with their healthcare practitioners. Since healthcare data often contain personal and sensitive information, it is important that healthcare systems have a secure way for users to log in and access resources and services. The lack of security and presence of anonymous communication in WBANs can cause their operational failure. There are other systems in this area, but they are vulnerable to offline identity guessing attacks, impersonation attacks in sensor nodes, and spoofing attacks in hub node. Therefore, this study provides a secure approach that overcomes these issues while maintaining comparable efficiency in wireless sensor nodes and mobile phones. To conduct the proof of security, the proposed scheme uses the Scyther tool for formal analysis and the Canetti–Krawczyk (CK) model for informal analysis. Furthermore, the suggested technique outperforms the existing symmetric and asymmetric encryption-based schemes

LiS: Lightweight Signature Schemes for continuous message authentication in cyber-physical systems

Agency for Science, Technology and Research (A*STAR) RIE 202

A Protected Single Sign-On Technique Using 2D Password in Distributed Computer Networks

Single Sign-On (SSO) is a new authentication mechanism that enables a legal user with a single credential to be authenticated by multiple service providers in a distributed computer network. Recently, a new SSO scheme providing well-organized security argument failed to meet credential privacy and soundness of authentication. The main goal of this project is to provide security using Single Sign-On scheme meeting at least three basic security requirements, i.e., unforgetability, credential privacy, and soundness. User identification is an important access control mechanism for client–server networking architectures. The concept of Single Sign-On can allow legal users to use the unitary token to access different service providers in distributed computer networks. To overcome few drawbacks like not preserving user anonymity when possible attacks occur and extensive overhead costs of time-synchronized mechanisms, we propose a secure Single Sign-On mechanism that is efficient, secure, and suitable for mobile devices in distributed computer networks. In a real-life application, the mobile user can use the mobile device, e.g., a cell phone, with the unitary token to access multiservice, such as downloading music; receive/reply electronic mails etc. Our scheme is based on one-way hash functions and random nonce to solve the weaknesses described above and to decrease the overhead of the system. The proposed scheme is more secure with two types of password scheme namely, Text password and Graphical Password referred as 2D password in distributed computer networks that yields a more efficient system that consumes lower energy. The proposed system has less communication overhead. It eliminates the need for time synchronization and there is no need of holding multiple passwords for different services

A Secure Publish/Subscribe Protocol for Internet of Things

The basic concept behind the emergence of Internet of Things (IoT) is to connect as many objects to the Internet as possible in an attempt to make our lives better in some way. However, connecting everyday objects like your car or house to the Internet can open up major security concerns. In this paper, we present a novel security framework for the Message Queue Transport Telemetry (MQTT) protocol based on publish/subscribe messages in order to enhance secure and privacy-friendly Internet of Things services. MQTT has burst onto the IoT scene in recent years due to its lightweight design and ease of use implementation necessary for IoT. Our proposed solution provides 3 security levels. The first security level suits for lightweight data exchanges of non-tampered messages. The second security level enhances the privacy protection of data sources and data receivers. The third security level offers robust long-term security with mutual authentication for all parties. The security framework is based on light cryptographic schemes in order to be suitable for constrained and small devices that are widely used in various IoT use cases. Moreover, our solution is tailored to MQTT without using additional security overhead

Efficient RFID authentication scheme for supply chain applications

Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) technology has been widely used in supply chains to track and manage shipments. By tagging shipments with RFID tags, which can be remotely accessed by RFID readers, shipments can be identified and tracked in a supply chain. Security issues in RFID have been major concerns, since passive RFID tags have very weak computational power to support authentication. Sound authentication between tag and reader remains a challenging problem. In this paper, we provide a novel authentication scheme to protect tags from being tracked and identified by unauthorized readers and protect authorized readers against bogus tags. Our scheme can be applied to supply chain security. It also exhibits an additional feature that a supply chain can be dynamically updated

Efficient signature verification and key revocation using identity based cryptography

Cryptography deals with the development and evaluation of procedures for securing digital information. It is essential whenever multiple entities want to communicate safely. One task of cryptography concerns digital signatures and the verification of a signer’s legitimacy requires trustworthy authentication and authorization. This is achieved by deploying cryptographic keys. When dynamic membership behavior and identity theft come into play, revocation of keys has to be addressed. Additionally, in use cases with limited networking, computational, or storage resources, efficiency is a key requirement for any solution. In this work we present a solution for signature verification and key revocation in constraned environments, e.g., in the Internet of Things (IoT). Where other mechanisms generate expensive overheads, we achieve revocation through a single multicast message without significant computational or storage overhead. Exploiting Identity Based Cryptography (IBC) complements the approach with efficient creation and verification of signatures. Our solution offers a framework for transforming a suitable signature scheme to a so-called Key Updatable Signature Scheme (KUSS) in three steps. Each step defines mathematical conditions for transformation and precise security notions. Thereby, the framework allows a novel combination of efficient Identity Based Signature (IBS) schemes with revocation mechanisms originally designed for confidentiality in group communications. Practical applicability of our framework is demonstrated by transforming four well-established IBS schemes based on Elliptic Curve Cryptography (ECC). The security of the resulting group Identity Based Signature (gIBS) schemes is carefully analyzed with techniques of Provable Security. We design and implement a testbed for evaluating these kind of cryptographic schemes on different computing- and networking hardware, typical for constrained environments. Measurements on this testbed provide evidence that the transformations are practicable and efficient. The revocation complexity in turn is significantly reduced compared to existing solutions. Some of our new schemes even outperform the signing process of the widely used Elliptic Curve Digital Signature Algorithm (ECDSA). The presented transformations allow future application on schemes beyond IBS or ECC. This includes use cases dealing with Post-Quantum Cryptography, where the revocation efficiency is similarly relevant. Our work provides the basis for such solutions currently under investigation.Die Kryptographie ist ein Instrument der Informationssicherheit und beschäftigt sich mit der Entwicklung und Evaluierung von Algorithmen zur Sicherung digitaler Werte. Sie ist für die sichere Kommunikation zwischen mehreren Entitäten unerlässlich. Ein Bestandteil sind digitale Signaturen, für deren Erstellung man kryptographische Schlüssel benötigt. Bei der Verifikation muss zusätzlich die Authentizität und die Autorisierung des Unterzeichners gewährleistet werden. Dafür müssen Schlüssel vertrauensvoll verteilt und verwaltet werden. Wenn sie in Kommunikationssystemen mit häufig wechselnden Teilnehmern zum Einsatz kommen, müssen die Schlüssel auch widerruflich sein. In Anwendungsfällen mit eingeschränkter Netz-, Rechen- und Speicherkapazität ist die Effizienz ein wichtiges Kriterium. Diese Arbeit liefert ein Rahmenwerk, mit dem Schlüssel effizient widerrufen und Signaturen effizient verifiziert werden können. Dabei fokussieren wir uns auf Szenarien aus dem Bereich des Internets der Dinge (IoT, Internet of Things). Im Gegensatz zu anderen Lösungen ermöglicht unser Ansatz den Widerruf von Schlüsseln mit einer einzelnen Nachricht innerhalb einer Kommunikationsgruppe. Dabei fällt nur geringer zusätzlicher Rechen- oder Speicheraufwand an. Ferner vervollständigt die Verwendung von Identitätsbasierter Kryptographie (IBC, Identity Based Cryptography) unsere Lösung mit effizienter Erstellung und Verifikation der Signaturen. Hierfür liefert die Arbeit eine dreistufige mathematische Transformation von geeigneten Signaturverfahren zu sogenannten Key Updatable Signature Schemes (KUSS). Neben einer präzisen Definition der Sicherheitsziele werden für jeden Schritt mathematische Vorbedingungen zur Transformation festgelegt. Dies ermöglicht die innovative Kombination von Identitätsbasierten Signaturen (IBS, Identity Based Signature) mit effizienten und sicheren Mechanismen zum Schlüsselaustausch, die ursprünglich für vertrauliche Gruppenkommunikation entwickelt wurden. Wir zeigen die erfolgreiche Anwendung der Transformationen auf vier etablierten IBSVerfahren. Die ausschließliche Verwendung von Verfahren auf Basis der Elliptic Curve Cryptography (ECC) erlaubt es, den geringen Kapazitäten der Zielgeräte gerecht zu werden. Eine Analyse aller vier sogenannten group Identity Based Signature (gIBS) Verfahren mit Techniken aus dem Forschungsgebiet der Beweisbaren Sicherheit zeigt, dass die zuvor definierten Sicherheitsziele erreicht werden. Zur praktischen Evaluierung unserer und ähnlicher kryptographischer Verfahren wird in dieser Arbeit eine Testumgebung entwickelt und mit IoT-typischen Rechen- und Netzmodulen bestückt. Hierdurch zeigt sich sowohl die praktische Anwendbarkeit der Transformationen als auch eine deutliche Reduktion der Komplexität gegenüber anderen Lösungsansätzen. Einige der von uns vorgeschlagenen Verfahren unterbieten gar die Laufzeiten des meistgenutzten Elliptic Curve Digital Signature Algorithm (ECDSA) bei der Erstellung der Signaturen. Die Systematik der Lösung erlaubt prinzipiell auch die Transformation von Verfahren jenseits von IBS und ECC. Dadurch können auch Anwendungsfälle aus dem Bereich der Post-Quanten-Kryptographie von unseren Ergebnissen profitieren. Die vorliegende Arbeit liefert die nötigen Grundlagen für solche Erweiterungen, die aktuell diskutiert und entwickelt werden