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

Enhanced three-factor security protocol for consumer USB mass storage devices

The Universal Serial Bus (USB) is an extremely popular interface standard for computer peripheral connections and is widely used in consumer Mass Storage Devices (MSDs). While current consumer USB MSDs provide relatively high transmission speed and are convenient to carry, the use of USB MSDs has been prohibited in many commercial and everyday environments primarily due to security concerns. Security protocols have been previously proposed and a recent approach for the USB MSDs is to utilize multi-factor authentication. This paper proposes significant enhancements to the three-factor control protocol that now makes it secure under many types of attacks including the password guessing attack, the denial-of-service attack, and the replay attack. The proposed solution is presented with a rigorous security analysis and practical computational cost analysis to demonstrate the usefulness of this new security protocol for consumer USB MSDs

A software agent enabled biometric security algorithm for secure file access in consumer storage devices

In order to resist unauthorized access, consumer storage devices are typically protected using a low entropy password. However, storage devices are not fully protected against an adversary because the adversary can utilize an off-line dictionary attack to find the correct password and/or run an existing algorithm for resetting the existing password. In addition, a password protected device may also be stolen or misplaced allowing an adversary to easily retrieve all the stored confidential information from a removable storage device. In order to protect the consumer’s confidential information that has been stored, this paper proposes a mutual authentication and key negotiation protocol that can be used to protect the confidential information in the device. The functionality of the protocol enables the storage device to be secure against relevant security attacks. A formal security analysis using Burrows-Abadi-Needham (BAN) logic is presented to verify the presented algorithm. In addition, a performance analysis of the proposed protocol reveals a significantly reduced communication overhead compared to the relevant literature

Multifactor Authentication Key Management System based Security Model Using Effective Handover Tunnel with IPV6

In the current modern world, the way of life style is being completely changed due to the emerging technologies which are reflected in treating the patients too. As there is a tremendous growth in population, the existing e-Healthcare methods are not efficient enough to deal with numerous medical data. There is a delay in caring of patient health as communication networks are poor in quality and moreover smart medical resources are lacking and hence severe causes are experienced in the health of patient. However, authentication is considered as a major challenge ensuring that the illegal participants are not permitted to access the medical data present in cloud. To provide security, the authentication factors required are smart card, password and biometrics. Several approaches based on these are authentication factors are presented for e-Health clouds so far. But mostly serious security defects are experienced with these protocols and even the computation and communication overheads are high. Thus, keeping in mind all these challenges, a novel Multifactor Key management-based authentication by Tunnel IPv6 (MKMA- TIPv6) protocol is introduced for e-Health cloud which prevents main attacks like user anonymity, guessing offline password, impersonation, and stealing smart cards. From the analysis, it is proved that this protocol is effective than the existing ones such as Pair Hand (PH), Linear Combination Authentication Protocol (LCAP), Robust Elliptic Curve Cryptography-based Three factor Authentication (RECCTA) in terms storage cost, Encryption time, Decryption time, computation cost, energy consumption and speed. Hence, the proposed MKMA- TIPv6 achieves 35bits of storage cost, 60sec of encryption time, 50sec decryption time, 45sec computational cost, 50% of energy consumption and 80% speed

Authentication schemes for Smart Mobile Devices: Threat Models, Countermeasures, and Open Research Issues

The file attached to this record is the author's final peer reviewed version. The Publisher's final version can be found by following the DOI link.This paper presents a comprehensive investigation of authentication schemes for smart mobile devices. We start by providing an overview of existing survey articles published in the recent years that deal with security for mobile devices. Then, we give a classification of threat models in smart mobile devices in five categories, including, identity-based attacks, eavesdropping-based attacks, combined eavesdropping and identity-based attacks, manipulation-based attacks, and service-based attacks. This is followed by a description of multiple existing threat models. We also provide a classification of countermeasures into four types of categories, including, cryptographic functions, personal identification, classification algorithms, and channel characteristics. According to the characteristics of the countermeasure along with the authentication model iteself, we categorize the authentication schemes for smart mobile devices in four categories, namely, 1) biometric-based authentication schemes, 2) channel-based authentication schemes, 3) factors-based authentication schemes, and 4) ID-based authentication schemes. In addition, we provide a taxonomy and comparison of authentication schemes for smart mobile devices in form of tables. Finally, we identify open challenges and future research directions

Lightweight Three-Factor Authentication and Key Agreement Protocol for Internet-Integrated Wireless Sensor Networks

Wireless sensor networks (WSNs) will be integrated into the future Internet as one of the components of the Internet of Things, and will become globally addressable by any entity connected to the Internet. Despite the great potential of this integration, it also brings new threats, such as the exposure of sensor nodes to attacks originating from the Internet. In this context, lightweight authentication and key agreement protocols must be in place to enable end-to-end secure communication. Recently, Amin et al. proposed a three-factor mutual authentication protocol for WSNs. However, we identified several flaws in their protocol. We found that their protocol suffers from smart card loss attack where the user identity and password can be guessed using offline brute force techniques. Moreover, the protocol suffers from known session-specific temporary information attack, which leads to the disclosure of session keys in other sessions. Furthermore, the protocol is vulnerable to tracking attack and fails to fulfill user untraceability. To address these deficiencies, we present a lightweight and secure user authentication protocol based on the Rabin cryptosystem, which has the characteristic of computational asymmetry. We conduct a formal verification of our proposed protocol using ProVerif in order to demonstrate that our scheme fulfills the required security properties. We also present a comprehensive heuristic security analysis to show that our protocol is secure against all the possible attacks and provides the desired security features. The results we obtained show that our new protocol is a secure and lightweight solution for authentication and key agreement for Internet-integrated WSNs

A Fast and Scalable Authentication Scheme in IoT for Smart Living

Numerous resource-limited smart objects (SOs) such as sensors and actuators have been widely deployed in smart environments, opening new attack surfaces to intruders. The severe security flaw discourages the adoption of the Internet of things in smart living. In this paper, we leverage fog computing and microservice to push certificate authority (CA) functions to the proximity of data sources. Through which, we can minimize attack surfaces and authentication latency, and result in a fast and scalable scheme in authenticating a large volume of resource-limited devices. Then, we design lightweight protocols to implement the scheme, where both a high level of security and low computation workloads on SO (no bilinear pairing requirement on the client-side) is accomplished. Evaluations demonstrate the efficiency and effectiveness of our scheme in handling authentication and registration for a large number of nodes, meanwhile protecting them against various threats to smart living. Finally, we showcase the success of computing intelligence movement towards data sources in handling complicated services.Comment: 15 pages, 7 figures, 3 tables, to appear in FGC

Biometrics for internet‐of‐things security: A review

The large number of Internet‐of‐Things (IoT) devices that need interaction between smart devices and consumers makes security critical to an IoT environment. Biometrics offers an interesting window of opportunity to improve the usability and security of IoT and can play a significant role in securing a wide range of emerging IoT devices to address security challenges. The purpose of this review is to provide a comprehensive survey on the current biometrics research in IoT security, especially focusing on two important aspects, authentication and encryption. Regarding authentication, contemporary biometric‐based authentication systems for IoT are discussed and classified based on different biometric traits and the number of biometric traits employed in the system. As for encryption, biometric‐cryptographic systems, which integrate biometrics with cryptography and take advantage of both to provide enhanced security for IoT, are thoroughly reviewed and discussed. Moreover, challenges arising from applying biometrics to IoT and potential solutions are identified and analyzed. With an insight into the state‐of‐the‐art research in biometrics for IoT security, this review paper helps advance the study in the field and assists researchers in gaining a good understanding of forward‐looking issues and future research directions