An Efficient Two-Party Identity-Based Key Exchange Protocol based on ECDLP

This paper presents an efficient identity-based key exchange protocol based on the difficulty of computing a Elliptic Curve Discrete Lgarithm Problem. As compared with the previously proposed protocols, it has better performance in terms of the computational cost and the communication steps. Key exchange protocols allow two parties communicating over a public network to establish a common secret key called session key to encrypt the communication data. Due to their significance by in building a secure communication channel, a number of key exchange protocols have been suggested over the years for a variety of settings.The proposed key exchange protocol provides implicit key authentication as well as the desired security attributes of an authenticated key exchange protocol

Session Initiation Protocol Attacks and Challenges

In recent years, Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) has become widely used in current internet protocols. It is a text-based protocol much like Hyper Text Transport Protocol (HTTP) and Simple Mail Transport Protocol (SMTP). SIP is a strong enough signaling protocol on the internet for establishing, maintaining, and terminating session. In this paper the areas of security and attacks in SIP are discussed. We consider attacks from diverse related perspectives. The authentication schemes are compared, the representative existing solutions are highlighted, and several remaining research challenges are identified. Finally, the taxonomy of SIP threat will be presented

LiSA: A Lightweight and Secure Authentication Mechanism for Smart Metering Infrastructure

Smart metering infrastructure (SMI) is the core component of the smart grid (SG) which enables two-way communication between consumers and utility companies to control, monitor, and manage the energy consumption data. Despite their salient features, SMIs equipped with information and communication technology are associated with new threats due to their dependency on public communication networks. Therefore, the security of SMI communications raises the need for robust authentication and key agreement primitives that can satisfy the security requirements of the SG. Thus, in order to realize the aforementioned issues, this paper introduces a lightweight and secure authentication protocol, "LiSA", primarily to secure SMIs in SG setups. The protocol employs Elliptic Curve Cryptography at its core to provide various security features such as mutual authentication, anonymity, replay protection, session key security, and resistance against various attacks. Precisely, LiSA exploits the hardness of the Elliptic Curve Qu Vanstone (EVQV) certificate mechanism along with Elliptic Curve Diffie Hellman Problem (ECDHP) and Elliptic Curve Discrete Logarithm Problem (ECDLP). Additionally, LiSA is designed to provide the highest level of security relative to the existing schemes with least computational and communicational overheads. For instance, LiSA incurred barely 11.826 ms and 0.992 ms for executing different passes across the smart meter and the service providers. Further, it required a total of 544 bits for message transmission during each session.Comment: To appear in IEEE Globecom 201

On Security Analysis of Recent Password Authentication and Key Agreement Schemes Based on Elliptic Curve Cryptography

Secure and efficient mutual authentication and key agreement schemes form the basis for any robust network communication system. Elliptic Curve Cryptography (ECC) has emerged as one of the most successful Public Key Cryptosystem that efficiently meets all the security challenges. Comparison of ECC with other Public Key Cryptosystems (RSA, Rabin, ElGamal) shows that it provides equal level of security for a far smaller bit size, thereby substantially reducing the processing overhead. This makes it suitable for constrained environments like wireless networks and mobile devices as well as for security sensitive applications like electronic banking, financial transactions and smart grids. With the successful implementation of ECC in security applications (e-passports, e-IDs, embedded systems), it is getting widely commercialized. ECC is simple and faster and is therefore emerging as an attractive alternative for providing security in lightweight device, which contributes to its popularity in the present scenario. In this paper, we have analyzed some of the recent password based authentication and key agreement schemes using ECC for various environments. Furthermore, we have carried out security, functionality and performance comparisons of these schemes and found that they are unable to satisfy their claimed security goals

An identity-based key infrastructure suitable for messaging applications

Abstract—Identity-based encryption (IBE) systems are relatively recently proposed; yet they are highly popular for messaging applications since they offer new features such as certificateless infrastructure and anonymous communication. In this paper, we intended to propose an IBE infrastructure for messaging applications. The proposed infrastructure requires one registration authority and at least one public key generator and they secret share the master secret key. In addition, the PKG also shares the same master secret with each user in the system in a different way. Therefore, the PKG will never be able to learn the private keys of users under non-collusion assumption. We discuss different aspects of the proposed infrastructure such as security, key revocation, uniqueness of the identities that constitute the main drawbacks of other IBE schemes. We demonstrate that our infrastructure solves many of these drawbacks under certain assumptions

Oblivious Handshakes and Sharing of Secrets of Privacy-Preserving Matching and Authentication Protocols

The objective of this research is focused on two of the most important privacy-preserving techniques: privacy-preserving element matching protocols and privacy-preserving credential authentication protocols, where an element represents the information generated by users themselves and a credential represents a group membership assigned from an independent central authority (CA). The former is also known as private set intersection (PSI) protocol and the latter is also known as secret handshake (SH) protocol. In this dissertation, I present a general framework for design of efficient and secure PSI and SH protocols based on similar message exchange and computing procedures to confirm “commonality” of their exchanged information, while protecting the information from each other when the commonalty test fails. I propose to use the homomorphic randomization function (HRF) to meet the privacy-preserving requirements, i.e., common element/credential can be computed efficiently based on homomorphism of the function and uncommon element/credential are difficult to derive because of the randomization of the same function. Based on the general framework two new PSI protocols with linear computing and communication cost are proposed. The first protocol uses full homomorphic randomization function as the cryptographic basis and the second one uses partial homomorphic randomization function. Both of them achieve element confidentiality and private set intersection. A new SH protocol is also designed based on the framework, which achieves unlinkability with a reusable pair of credential and pseudonym and least number of bilinear mapping operations. I also propose to interlock the proposed PSI protocols and SH protocol to design new protocols with new security properties. When a PSI protocol is executed first and the matched elements are associated with the credentials in a following SH protocol, authenticity is guaranteed on matched elements. When a SH protocol is executed first and the verified credentials is used in a following PSI protocol, detection resistance and impersonation attack resistance are guaranteed on matching elements. The proposed PSI and SH protocols are implemented to provide privacy-preserving inquiry matching service (PPIM) for social networking applications and privacy-preserving correlation service (PAC) of network security alerts. PPIM allows online social consumers to find partners with matched inquiries and verified group memberships without exposing any information to unmatched parties. PAC allows independent network alert sources to find the common alerts without unveiling their local network information to each other

Generation, Verification, and Attacks on Elliptic Curves and their Applications in Signal Protocol

Elliptic curves (EC) are widely studied due to their mathematical and cryptographic properties. Cryptographers have used the properties of EC to construct elliptic curve cryptosystems (ECC). ECC are based on the assumption of hardness of special instances of the discrete logarithm problem in EC. One of the strong merits of ECC is providing the same cryptographic strength with smaller key size compared to other public key cryptosystems. A 256 bit ECC can provide similar cryptographic strength as a 3072 bit RSA cryptosystem. Due to smaller key sizes, elliptic curves are an attractive option in devices with limited storage capacity. It is therefore essential to understand how to generate these curves, verify their correctness and assure that they are resistant against attacks. The security of an EC cryptosystem is determined by the choice of the curve that is used in that cryptosystem. Over the years, a number of elliptic curves were introduced for cryptographic use. Elliptic curves such as FRP256V1, NIST P-256, Secp256k1 or SM2 curve are widely used in many applications like cryptocurrencies, transport layer protocol and Internet messaging applications. Another type of popular curves are Curve25519 introduced by Dan Bernstein and Curve448 introduced by Mike Hamburg, which are used in an end to end encryption protocol called Signal. This protocol is used in popular messaging applications like WhatsApp, Signal Messenger and Facebook Messenger. Recently, there has been a growing distrust among security researchers against the previously standardized curves. We have seen backdoors in the elliptic curve cryptosystems like the DUAL_EC_DRBG function that was standardized by NIST, and suspicious random seeds that were used in NIST P-curves. We can say that many of the previously standardized curves lack transparency in their generation and verification. We focus on transparent generation and verification of elliptic curves. We generate curves based on NIST standards and propose new standards to generate special types of elliptic curves. We test their resistance against the known attacks that target the ECC. Finally, we demonstrate ECDLP attacks on small curves with weak structure

SYMMETRIC BILINEAR CRYPTOGRAPHY ON ELLIPTIC CURVE AND LIE ALGEBRA

Elliptic Curve Cryptography (ECC) has gained widespread adoption in the field of cryptography due to its efficiency and security properties. Symmetric bilinear pairings on elliptic curves have emerged as a powerful tool in cryptographic protocols, enabling advanced constructions and functionalities. This paper explores the intersection of symmetric bilinear pairings, elliptic curves, and Lie algebras in the context of cryptography. We provide a comprehensive overview of the theoretical foundations, applications, and security considerations of this amalgamation

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