A formally verified AKA protocol for vertical handover in heterogeneous environments using Casper/FDR

Next generation networks will comprise different wireless networks including cellular technologies, WLAN and indoor technologies. To support these heterogeneous environments, there is a need to consider a new design of the network infrastructure. Furthermore, this heterogeneous environment implies that future devices will need to roam between different networks using vertical handover techniques. When a mobile user moves into a new foreign network, data confidentiality and mutual authentication between the user and the network are vital issues in this heterogeneous environment. This article deals with these issues by first examining the implication of moving towards an open architecture, and then looking at how current approaches such as the 3GPP, HOKEY and mobile ethernet respond to the new environment while trying to address the security issue. The results indicate that a new authentication and key agreement protocol is required to secure handover in this environment. Casper/FDR, is used in the analysis and development of the protocol. The proposed protocol has been proven to be successful in this heterogeneous environment

Robust and Lightweight Mutual Authentication Scheme in Distributed Smart Environments

In the smart environments several smart devices are continuously working together to make individuals' lives more comfortable. Few of the examples are smart homes, smart buildings, smart airports, etc. These environments consist of many resource constrained heterogeneous entities which are interconnected, controlled, monitored and analyzed through the Internet. One of the most challenging tasks in a distributed smart environment is how to provide robust security to the resource constraint Internet-enabled devices. However, an authentication can play a major role ensuring that only authorized devices are being connected to the distributed smart environment applications. In this paper, we present a robust and lightweight mutual-authentication scheme (RLMA) for protecting distributed smart environments from unauthorized abuses. The proposed scheme uses implicit certificates and enables mutual authentication and key agreement between the smart devices in a smart environment. The RLMA not only resists to various attacks but it also achieves efficiency by reducing the computation and communication complexities. Moreover, both security analysis and performance evaluation prove the effectiveness of RLMA as compared to the state of the art schemes

Challenges of Multi-Factor Authentication for Securing Advanced IoT (A-IoT) Applications

The unprecedented proliferation of smart devices together with novel communication, computing, and control technologies have paved the way for the Advanced Internet of Things~(A-IoT). This development involves new categories of capable devices, such as high-end wearables, smart vehicles, and consumer drones aiming to enable efficient and collaborative utilization within the Smart City paradigm. While massive deployments of these objects may enrich people's lives, unauthorized access to the said equipment is potentially dangerous. Hence, highly-secure human authentication mechanisms have to be designed. At the same time, human beings desire comfortable interaction with their owned devices on a daily basis, thus demanding the authentication procedures to be seamless and user-friendly, mindful of the contemporary urban dynamics. In response to these unique challenges, this work advocates for the adoption of multi-factor authentication for A-IoT, such that multiple heterogeneous methods - both well-established and emerging - are combined intelligently to grant or deny access reliably. We thus discuss the pros and cons of various solutions as well as introduce tools to combine the authentication factors, with an emphasis on challenging Smart City environments. We finally outline the open questions to shape future research efforts in this emerging field.Comment: 7 pages, 4 figures, 2 tables. The work has been accepted for publication in IEEE Network, 2019. Copyright may be transferred without notice, after which this version may no longer be accessibl