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

A Survey on Wireless Sensor Network Security

Wireless sensor networks (WSNs) have recently attracted a lot of interest in the research community due their wide range of applications. Due to distributed nature of these networks and their deployment in remote areas, these networks are vulnerable to numerous security threats that can adversely affect their proper functioning. This problem is more critical if the network is deployed for some mission-critical applications such as in a tactical battlefield. Random failure of nodes is also very likely in real-life deployment scenarios. Due to resource constraints in the sensor nodes, traditional security mechanisms with large overhead of computation and communication are infeasible in WSNs. Security in sensor networks is, therefore, a particularly challenging task. This paper discusses the current state of the art in security mechanisms for WSNs. Various types of attacks are discussed and their countermeasures presented. A brief discussion on the future direction of research in WSN security is also included.Comment: 24 pages, 4 figures, 2 table

SLEC: A Novel Serverless RFID Authentication Protocol Based on Elliptic Curve Cryptography

Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) is one of the leading technologies in the Internet of Things (IoT) to create an efficient and reliable system to securely identify objects in many environments such as business, health, and manufacturing areas. Since the RFID server, reader, and tag communicate via insecure channels, mutual authentication between the reader and the tag is necessary for secure communication. The central database server supports the authentication of the reader and the tag by storing and managing the network data. Recent lightweight RFID authentication protocols have been proposed to satisfy the security features of RFID communication. A serverless RFID system is a new promising solution to alternate the central database for mobile RFID models. In this model, the reader and the tag perform the mutual authentication without the support of the central database server. However, many security challenges arise from implementing the lightweight RFID authentication protocols in the serverless RFID network. We propose a new robust serverless RFID authentication protocol based on the Elliptic Curve Cryptography (ECC) to prevent the security attacks on the network and maintain the confidentiality and the privacy of the authentication messages and tag information and location. While most of the current protocols assume a secure channel in the setup phase to transmit the communication data, we consider in our protocol an insecure setup phase between the server, reader, and tag to ensure that the data can be renewed from any checkpoint server along with the route of the mobile RFID network. Thus, we implemented the elliptic curve cryptography in the setup phase (renewal phase) to transmit and store the data and the public key of the server to any reader or tag so that the latter can perform the mutual authentication successfully. The proposed model is compared under the classification of the serverless model in term of computation cost and security resistance

Strong Electronic Identification: Survey & Scenario Planning

The deployment of more high-risk services such as online banking and government services on the Internet has meant that the need and demand for strong electronic identity is bigger today more than ever. Different stakeholders have different reasons for moving their services to the Internet, including cost savings, being closer to the customer or citizen, increasing volume and value of services among others. This means that traditional online identification schemes based on self-asserted identities are no longer sufficient to cope with the required level of assurance demanded by these services. Therefore, strong electronic identification methods that utilize identifiers rooted in real world identities must be provided to be used by customers and citizens alike on the Internet. This thesis focuses on studying state-of-the-art methods for providing reliable and mass market strong electronic identity in the world today. It looks at concrete real-world examples that enable real world identities to be transferred and used in the virtual world of the Internet. The thesis identifies crucial factors that determine what constitutes a strong electronic identity solution and through these factors evaluates and compares the example solutions surveyed in the thesis. As the Internet become more pervasive in our lives; mobile devices are becoming the primary devices for communication and accessing Internet services. This has thus, raised the question of what sort of strong electronic identity solutions could be implemented and how such solutions could adapt to the future. To help to understand the possible alternate futures, a scenario planning and analysis method was used to develop a series of scenarios from underlying key economic, political, technological and social trends and uncertainties. The resulting three future scenarios indicate how the future of strong electronic identity will shape up with the aim of helping stakeholders contemplate the future and develop policies and strategies to better position themselves for the future