A Computationally Efficient Online/Offline Signature Scheme for Underwater Wireless Sensor Networks

Underwater wireless sensor networks (UWSNs) have emerged as the most widely used wireless network infrastructure in many applications. Sensing nodes are frequently deployed in hostile aquatic environments in order to collect data on resources that are severely limited in terms of transmission time and bandwidth. Since underwater information is very sensitive and unique, the authentication of users is very important to access the data and information. UWSNs have unique communication and computation needs that are not met by the existing digital signature techniques. As a result, a lightweight signature scheme is required to meet the communication and computa‑ tion requirements. In this research, we present a Certificateless Online/Offline Signature (COOS) mechanism for UWSNs. The proposed scheme is based on the concept of a hyperelliptic curves cryptosystem, which offers the same degree of security as RSA, bilinear pairing, and elliptic curve cryptosystems (ECC) but with a smaller key size. In addition, the proposed scheme was proven secure in the random oracle model under the hyperelliptic curve discrete logarithm problem. A se‑ curity analysis was also carried out, as well as comparisons with appropriate current online/offline signature schemes. The comparison demonstrated that the proposed scheme is superior to the exist‑ ing schemes in terms of both security and efficiency. Additionally, we also employed the fuzzy‑based Evaluation‑based Distance from Average Solutions (EDAS) technique to demonstrate the effective‑ ness of the proposed scheme.publishedVersio

A survey on wireless body area networks: architecture, security challenges and research opportunities.

In the era of communication technologies, wireless healthcare networks enable innovative applications to enhance the quality of patients’ lives, provide useful monitoring tools for caregivers, and allows timely intervention. However, due to the sensitive information within the Wireless Body Area Networks (WBANs), insecure data violates the patients’ privacy and may consequently lead to improper medical diagnosis and/or treatment. Achieving a high level of security and privacy in WBAN involves various challenges due to its resource limitations and critical applications. In this paper, a comprehensive survey of the WBAN technology is provided, with a particular focus on the security and privacy concerns along with their countermeasures, followed by proposed research directions and open issues

Novel lightweight signcryption-based key distribution mechanisms for MIKEY

Part 1: Authentication and Key ManagementInternational audienceMultimedia Internet KEYing (MIKEY) is a standard key management protocol, used to set up common secrets between any two parties for multiple scenarios of communications. As MIKEY becomes widely deployed, it becomes worthwhile to not confine its applications to real-time or other specific applications, but also to extend the standard to other scenarios as well. For instance, MIKEY can be used to secure key establishment in the Internet of Things. In this particular context, Elliptic Curve Cryptography-based (ECC) algorithms seem to be good candidate to be employed by MIKEY, since they can support equivalent security level when compared with other recommended cryptographic algorithms like RSA, and at the same time requiring smaller key sizes and offering better performance. In this work, we propose novel lightweight ECC-based key distribution extensions for MIKEY that are built upon a previously proposed certificateless signcryption scheme. To our knowledge, these extensions are the first ECC-based MIKEY extensions that employ signcryption schemes. Our proposed extensions benefit from the lightness of the signcryption scheme, while being discharged from the burden of the public key infrastructure (PKI) thanks to its certificateless feature. To demonstrate their performance, we implemented our proposed extensions in the Openmote sensor platform and conducted a thorough performance assessment by measuring the energy consumption and execution time of each operation in the key establishment procedure. The experimental results prove that our new MIKEY extensions are perfectly suited for resource-constrained device

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

Secure authentication for remote patient monitoring withwireless medical sensor networks

There is broad consensus that remote health monitoring will benefit all stakeholders in the healthcare system and that it has the potential to save billions of dollars. Among the major concerns that are preventing the patients from widely adopting this technology are data privacy and security. Wireless Medical Sensor Networks (MSNs) are the building blocks for remote health monitoring systems. This paper helps to identify the most challenging security issues in the existing authentication protocols for remote patient monitoring and presents a lightweight public-key-based authentication protocol for MSNs. In MSNs, the nodes are classified into sensors that report measurements about the human body and actuators that receive commands from the medical staff and perform actions. Authenticating these commands is a critical security issue, as any alteration may lead to serious consequences. The proposed protocol is based on the Rabin authentication algorithm, which is modified in this paper to improve its signature signing process, making it suitable for delay-sensitive MSN applications. To prove the efficiency of the Rabin algorithm, we implemented the algorithm with different hardware settings using Tmote Sky motes and also programmed the algorithm on an FPGA to evaluate its design and performance. Furthermore, the proposed protocol is implemented and tested using the MIRACL (Multiprecision Integer and Rational Arithmetic C/C++) library. The results show that secure, direct, instant and authenticated commands can be delivered from the medical staff to the MSN nodes. © 2016 by the authors; licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland

Secure Authentication for Remote Patient Monitoring with Wireless Medical Sensor Networks.

There is broad consensus that remote health monitoring will benefit all stakeholders in the healthcare system and that it has the potential to save billions of dollars. Among the major concerns that are preventing the patients from widely adopting this technology are data privacy and security. Wireless Medical Sensor Networks (MSNs) are the building blocks for remote health monitoring systems. This paper helps to identify the most challenging security issues in the existing authentication protocols for remote patient monitoring and presents a lightweight public-key-based authentication protocol for MSNs. In MSNs, the nodes are classified into sensors that report measurements about the human body and actuators that receive commands from the medical staff and perform actions. Authenticating these commands is a critical security issue, as any alteration may lead to serious consequences. The proposed protocol is based on the Rabin authentication algorithm, which is modified in this paper to improve its signature signing process, making it suitable for delay-sensitive MSN applications. To prove the efficiency of the Rabin algorithm, we implemented the algorithm with different hardware settings using Tmote Sky motes and also programmed the algorithm on an FPGA to evaluate its design and performance. Furthermore, the proposed protocol is implemented and tested using the MIRACL (Multiprecision Integer and Rational Arithmetic C/C++) library. The results show that secure, direct, instant and authenticated commands can be delivered from the medical staff to the MSN nodes

An Efficient Online/Offline Signcryption Scheme for Internet of Things in Smart Home

publishedVersio

An enhanced certificateless cryptosystem for mobile ad hoc networks

Due to the importance of security in many critical applications in MANETs and the limitation of the resources in mobile devices, it is important to have lightweight cryptosystems. Although some lightweight certificateless cryptosystems for MANETs have been proposed, it is possible to improve them in the term of reducing the complexity of the computations. In this paper, we have tried to propose a lightweight certificateless public key cryptographic scheme based on bilinear pairings. In addition, we compared our proposed scheme with other existing certificateless pairing based and result shows that the proposed scheme is more efficient based on computational cost and the rate of growth of computational expense viewpoints