Secure pairing-free two-party certificateless authenticated key agreement protocol with minimal computational complexity

Key agreement protocols play a vital role in maintaining security in many critical applications due to the importance of the secret key. Bilinear pairing was commonly used in designing secure protocols for the last several years; however, high computational complexity of this operation has been the main obstacle towards its practicality. Therefore, implementation of Elliptic-curve based operations, instead of bilinear pairings, has become popular recently, and pairing-free key agreement protocols have been explored in many studies. A considerable amount of literatures has been published on pairing-free key agreement protocols in the context of Public Key Cryptography (PKC). Simpler key management and non-existence of key escrow problem make certificateless PKC more appealing in practice. However, achieving certificateless pairing-free two-party authenticated key agreement protocols (CL-AKA) that provide high level of security with low computational complexity, remains a challenge in the research area. This research presents a secure and lightweight pairingfree CL-AKA protocol named CL2AKA (CertificateLess 2-party Authenticated Key Agreement). The properties of CL2AKA protocol is that, it is computationally lightweight while communication overhead remains the same as existing protocols of related works. The results indicate that CL2AKA protocol is 21% computationally less complex than the most efficient pairing-free CL-AKA protocol (KKC-13) and 53% less in comparison with the pairing-free CL-AKA protocol with highest level of security guarantee (SWZ-13). Security of CL2AKA protocol is evaluated based on provable security evaluation method under the strong eCK model. It is also proven that the CL2AKA supports all of the security requirements which are necessary for authenticated key agreement protocols. Besides the CL2AKA as the main finding of this research work, there are six pairing-free CL-AKA protocols presented as CL2AKA basic version protocols, which were the outcomes of several attempts in designing the CL2AKA

Security Analysis of a Recent Pairing-based Certificateless Authenticated Key Agreement Protocol for Blockchain-based WBANs

In this paper, we proposed some vulnerabilities of a recent pairing-based certificateless authenticated key agreement protocol for blockchain-based wireless body area networks (WBAN). According to our analysis, this protocol is insecure against key offset attack (KOA), basic impersonation attack (BIA), and man-in-the-middle attack (MMA) of the malicious key generation center (KGC) administrators. We also found and pointed out some errors in the description of the protocol

Lightweight identity based online/offline signature scheme for wireless sensor networks

Data security is one of the issues during data exchange between two sensor nodes in wireless sensor networks (WSN). While information flows across naturally exposed communication channels, cybercriminals may access sensitive information. Multiple traditional reliable encryption methods like RSA encryption-decryption and Diffie–Hellman key exchange face a crisis of computational resources due to limited storage, low computational ability, and insufficient power in lightweight WSNs. The complexity of these security mechanisms reduces the network lifespan, and an online/offline strategy is one way to overcome this problem. This study proposed an improved identity-based online/offline signature scheme using Elliptic Curve Cryptography (ECC) encryption. The lightweight calculations were conducted during the online phase, and in the offline phase, the encryption, point multiplication, and other heavy measures were pre-processed using powerful devices. The proposed scheme uniquely combined the Inverse Collusion Attack Algorithm (CAA) with lightweight ECC to generate secure identitybased signatures. The suggested scheme was analyzed for security and success probability under Random Oracle Model (ROM). The analysis concluded that the generated signatures were immune to even the worst Chosen Message Attack. The most important, resource-effective, and extensively used on-demand function was the verification of the signatures. The low-cost verification algorithm of the scheme saved a significant number of valued resources and increased the overall network’s lifespan. The results for encryption/decryption time, computation difficulty, and key generation time for various data sizes showed the proposed solution was ideal for lightweight devices as it accelerated data transmission speed and consumed the least resources. The hybrid method obtained an average of 66.77% less time consumption and up to 12% lower computational cost than previous schemes like the dynamic IDB-ECC two-factor authentication key exchange protocol, lightweight IBE scheme (IDB-Lite), and Korean certification-based signature standard using the ECC. The proposed scheme had a smaller key size and signature size of 160 bits. Overall, the energy consumption was also reduced to 0.53 mJ for 1312 bits of offline storage. The hybrid framework of identity-based signatures, online/offline phases, ECC, CAA, and low-cost algorithms enhances overall performance by having less complexity, time, and memory consumption. Thus, the proposed hybrid scheme is ideally suited for a lightweight WSN

Provably-Secure (Chinese Government) SM2 and Simplified SM2 Key Exchange Protocols

We revisit the SM2 protocol, which is widely used in Chinese commercial applications and by Chinese government agencies. Although it is by now standard practice for protocol designers to provide security proofs in widely accepted security models in order to assure protocol implementers of their security properties, the SM2 protocol does not have a proof of security. In this paper, we prove the security of the SM2 protocol in the widely accepted indistinguishability-based Bellare-Rogaway model under the elliptic curve discrete logarithm problem (ECDLP) assumption. We also present a simplified and more efficient version of the SM2 protocol with an accompanying security proof

A secure and lightweight drones-access protocol for smart city surveillance

The rising popularity of ICT and the Internet has enabled Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) to offer advantageous assistance to Vehicular Ad-hoc Network (VANET), realizing a relay node's role among the disconnected segments in the road. In this scenario, the communication is done between Vehicles to UAVs (V2U), subsequently transforming into a UAV-assisted VANET. UAV-assisted VANET allows users to access real-time data, especially the monitoring data in smart cities using current mobile networks. Nevertheless, due to the open nature of communication infrastructure, the high mobility of vehicles along with the security and privacy constraints are the significant concerns of UAV-assisted VANET. In these scenarios, Deep Learning Algorithms (DLA) could play an effective role in the security, privacy, and routing issues of UAV-assisted VANET. Keeping this in mind, we have devised a DLA-based key-exchange protocol for UAV-assisted VANET. The proposed protocol extends the scalability and uses secure bitwise XOR operations, one-way hash functions, including user's biometric verification when users and drones are mutually authenticated. The proposed protocol can resist many well-known security attacks and provides formal and informal security under the Random Oracle Model (ROM). The security comparison shows that the proposed protocol outperforms the security performance in terms of running time cost and communication cost and has effective security features compared to other related protocols

Key management for beyond 5G mobile small cells: a survey

The highly anticipated 5G network is projected to be introduced in 2020. 5G stakeholders are unanimous that densification of mobile networks is the way forward. The densification will be realized by means of small cell technology, and it is capable of providing coverage with a high data capacity. The EU-funded H2020-MSCA project “SECRET” introduced covering the urban landscape with mobile small cells, since these take advantages of the dynamic network topology and optimizes network services in a cost-effective fashion. By taking advantage of the device-to-device communications technology, large amounts of data can be transmitted over multiple hops and, therefore, offload the general network. However, this introduction of mobile small cells presents various security and privacy challenges. Cryptographic security solutions are capable of solving these as long as they are supported by a key management scheme. It is assumed that the network infrastructure and mobile devices from network users are unable to act as a centralized trust anchor since these are vulnerable targets to malicious attacks. Security must, therefore, be guaranteed by means of a key management scheme that decentralizes trust. Therefore, this paper surveys the state-of-the-art key management schemes proposed for similar network architectures (e.g., mobile ad hoc networks and ad hoc device-to-device networks) that decentralize trust. Furthermore, these key management schemes are evaluated for adaptability in a network of mobile small cells

The Role of the Adversary Model in Applied Security Research

Adversary models have been integral to the design of provably-secure cryptographic schemes or protocols. However, their use in other computer science research disciplines is relatively limited, particularly in the case of applied security research (e.g., mobile app and vulnerability studies). In this study, we conduct a survey of prominent adversary models used in the seminal field of cryptography, and more recent mobile and Internet of Things (IoT) research. Motivated by the findings from the cryptography survey, we propose a classification scheme for common app-based adversaries used in mobile security research, and classify key papers using the proposed scheme. Finally, we discuss recent work involving adversary models in the contemporary research field of IoT. We contribute recommendations to aid researchers working in applied (IoT) security based upon our findings from the mobile and cryptography literature. The key recommendation is for authors to clearly define adversary goals, assumptions and capabilities

Cryptographic Schemes based on Elliptic Curve Pairings

This thesis introduces the concept of certificateless public key cryptography (CLPKC). Elliptic curve pairings are then used to make concrete CL-PKC schemes and are also used to make other efficient key agreement protocols. CL-PKC can be viewed as a model for the use of public key cryptography that is intermediate between traditional certificated PKC and ID-PKC. This is because, in contrast to traditional public key cryptographic systems, CL-PKC does not require the use of certificates to guarantee the authenticity of public keys. It does rely on the use of a trusted authority (TA) who is in possession of a master key. In this respect, CL-PKC is similar to identity-based public key cryptography (ID-PKC). On the other hand, CL-PKC does not suffer from the key escrow property that is inherent in ID-PKC. Applications for the new infrastructure are discussed. We exemplify how CL-PKC schemes can be constructed by constructing several certificateless public key encryption schemes and modifying other existing ID based schemes. The lack of certificates and the desire to prove the schemes secure in the presence of an adversary who has access to the master key or has the ability to replace public keys, requires the careful development of new security models. We prove that some of our schemes are secure, provided that the Bilinear Diffie-Hellman Problem is hard. We then examine Joux’s protocol, which is a one round, tripartite key agreement protocol that is more bandwidth-efficient than any previous three-party key agreement protocol, however, Joux’s protocol is insecure, suffering from a simple man-in-the-middle attack. We show how to make Joux’s protocol secure, presenting several tripartite, authenticated key agreement protocols that still require only one round of communication. The security properties of the new protocols are studied. Applications for the protocols are also discussed