An Improved ID-based Authenticated Group Key Agreement Scheme

Authenticated group key agreement problem is important in many modern collaborative and distributed applications. There are two ID-based authenticated group key agreement schemes have been proposed by Choi et al. and us, which are based on bilinear pairings and BD scheme. Recently, Zhang and Chen propose an impersonation attack on the two schemes, which means the schemes are not fully authenticated. In this paper, we propose an improved ID-based authenticated group key agreement scheme which can resist this attack

On the Relations Between Diffie-Hellman and ID-Based Key Agreement from Pairings

This paper studies the relationships between the traditional Diffie-Hellman key agreement protocol and the identity-based (ID-based) key agreement protocol from pairings. For the Sakai-Ohgishi-Kasahara (SOK) ID-based key construction, we show that identical to the Diffie-Hellman protocol, the SOK key agreement protocol also has three variants, namely \emph{ephemeral}, \emph{semi-static} and \emph{static} versions. Upon this, we build solid relations between authenticated Diffie-Hellman (Auth-DH) protocols and ID-based authenticated key agreement (IB-AK) protocols, whereby we present two \emph{substitution rules} for this two types of protocols. The rules enable a conversion between the two types of protocols. In particular, we obtain the \emph{real} ID-based version of the well-known MQV (and HMQV) protocol. Similarly, for the Sakai-Kasahara (SK) key construction, we show that the key transport protocol underlining the SK ID-based encryption scheme (which we call the "SK protocol") has its non-ID counterpart, namely the Hughes protocol. Based on this observation, we establish relations between corresponding ID-based and non-ID-based protocols. In particular, we propose a highly enhanced version of the McCullagh-Barreto protocol

An Authentication Protocol for Future Sensor Networks

Authentication is one of the essential security services in Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) for ensuring secure data sessions. Sensor node authentication ensures the confidentiality and validity of data collected by the sensor node, whereas user authentication guarantees that only legitimate users can access the sensor data. In a mobile WSN, sensor and user nodes move across the network and exchange data with multiple nodes, thus experiencing the authentication process multiple times. The integration of WSNs with Internet of Things (IoT) brings forth a new kind of WSN architecture along with stricter security requirements; for instance, a sensor node or a user node may need to establish multiple concurrent secure data sessions. With concurrent data sessions, the frequency of the re-authentication process increases in proportion to the number of concurrent connections, which makes the security issue even more challenging. The currently available authentication protocols were designed for the autonomous WSN and do not account for the above requirements. In this paper, we present a novel, lightweight and efficient key exchange and authentication protocol suite called the Secure Mobile Sensor Network (SMSN) Authentication Protocol. In the SMSN a mobile node goes through an initial authentication procedure and receives a re-authentication ticket from the base station. Later a mobile node can use this re-authentication ticket when establishing multiple data exchange sessions and/or when moving across the network. This scheme reduces the communication and computational complexity of the authentication process. We proved the strength of our protocol with rigorous security analysis and simulated the SMSN and previously proposed schemes in an automated protocol verifier tool. Finally, we compared the computational complexity and communication cost against well-known authentication protocols.Comment: This article is accepted for the publication in "Sensors" journal. 29 pages, 15 figure

KALwEN: a new practical and interoperable key management scheme for body sensor networks

Key management is the pillar of a security architecture. Body sensor networks (BSNs) pose several challenges–some inherited from wireless sensor networks (WSNs), some unique to themselves–that require a new key management scheme to be tailor-made. The challenge is taken on, and the result is KALwEN, a new parameterized key management scheme that combines the best-suited cryptographic techniques in a seamless framework. KALwEN is user-friendly in the sense that it requires no expert knowledge of a user, and instead only requires a user to follow a simple set of instructions when bootstrapping or extending a network. One of KALwEN's key features is that it allows sensor devices from different manufacturers, which expectedly do not have any pre-shared secret, to establish secure communications with each other. KALwEN is decentralized, such that it does not rely on the availability of a local processing unit (LPU). KALwEN supports secure global broadcast, local broadcast, and local (neighbor-to-neighbor) unicast, while preserving past key secrecy and future key secrecy (FKS). The fact that the cryptographic protocols of KALwEN have been formally verified also makes a convincing case. With both formal verification and experimental evaluation, our results should appeal to theorists and practitioners alike

An Elliptic Curve-based Signcryption Scheme with Forward Secrecy

An elliptic curve-based signcryption scheme is introduced in this paper that effectively combines the functionalities of digital signature and encryption, and decreases the computational costs and communication overheads in comparison with the traditional signature-then-encryption schemes. It simultaneously provides the attributes of message confidentiality, authentication, integrity, unforgeability, non-repudiation, public verifiability, and forward secrecy of message confidentiality. Since it is based on elliptic curves and can use any fast and secure symmetric algorithm for encrypting messages, it has great advantages to be used for security establishments in store-and-forward applications and when dealing with resource-constrained devices.Comment: 13 Pages, 5 Figures, 2 Table