Identity-Concealed Authenticated Encryption and Key Exchange

Identity concealment and zero-round trip time (0-RTT) connection are two of current research focuses in the design and analysis of secure transport protocols, like TLS1.3 and Google\u27s QUIC, in the client-server setting. In this work, we introduce a new primitive for identity-concealed authenticated encryption in the public-key setting, referred to as {higncryption, which can be viewed as a novel monolithic integration of public-key encryption, digital signature, and identity concealment. We present the security definitional framework for higncryption, and a conceptually simple (yet carefully designed) protocol construction. As a new primitive, higncryption can have many applications. In this work, we focus on its applications to 0-RTT authentication, showing higncryption is well suitable to and compatible with QUIC and OPTLS, and on its applications to identity-concealed authenticated key exchange (CAKE) and unilateral CAKE (UCAKE). In particular, we make a systematic study on applying and incorporating higncryption to TLS. Of independent interest is a new concise security definitional framework for CAKE and UCAKE proposed in this work, which unifies the traditional BR and (post-ID) frameworks, enjoys composability, and ensures very strong security guarantee. Along the way, we make a systematically comparative study with related protocols and mechanisms including Zheng\u27s signcryption, one-pass HMQV, QUIC, TLS1.3 and OPTLS, most of which are widely standardized or in use

Image encryption system based on a nonlinear joint transform correlator for the simultaneous authentication of two users

We propose a new encryption system based on a nonlinear joint transform correlator (JTC) using the information of two biometrics (one digital fingerprint for each user) as security keys of the encryption system. In order to perform the decryption and authentication in a proper way, it is necessary to have the two digital fingerprints from the respective users whose simultaneous authentication is pursued. The proposed security system is developed in the Fourier domain. The nonlinearity of the JTC along with the five security keys given by the three random phase masks and the two digital fingerprints of the two users allow an increase of the system security against brute force and plaintext attacks. The feasibility and validity of this proposal is demonstrated using digital fingerprints as biometrics in numerical experiments.Peer ReviewedPostprint (published version

Authenticated Hybrid Encryption for Multiple Recipients

Authenticated encryption schemes used in order to send one message to one recipient have received considerable attention in the last years. We investigate the case of schemes, we call authenticated $\mathtt{1{\to}n}$ schemes, that allow one to encrypt efficiently in a public-key setting a message for several, say $n$, recipients in an authenticated manner. We propose formal security definitions for such schemes that work also for $n=1$ and which are stronger and/or more general than those currently proposed. We then present a flexible mode of operation that transforms any $\mathtt{1{\to}1}$ authenticated encryption scheme working on small messages into a $\mathtt{1{\to}n}$ authenticated encryption scheme working on longer messages. We show that it allows the construction of efficient $\mathtt{1{\to}n}$ schemes that are proved secure for the strongest security notion

Threats from Botnets

At present, various cyberattacks based on Botnet are the most serious security threats to the Internet. As Botnet continue to evolve and behavioral research on Botnet is inadequate, the question of how to apply some behavioral problems to Botnet research and combine the psychology of the operator to analyze the future trend of Botnet is still a continuous and challenging issue. Botnet is a common computing platform that can be controlled remotely by attackers by invading several noncooperative user terminals in the network space. It is an attacking platform consisting of multiple Bots controlled by a hacker. The classification of Botnet and the working mechanism of Botnet are introduced in this chapter. The threats and the threat evaluation of Botnet are summarized

Detecting and Mitigating Denial-of-Service Attacks on Voice over IP Networks

Voice over IP (VoIP) is more susceptible to Denial of Service attacks than traditional data traffic, due to the former's low tolerance to delay and jitter. We describe the design of our VoIP Vulnerability Assessment Tool (VVAT) with which we demonstrate vulnerabilities to DoS attacks inherent in many of the popular VoIP applications available today. In our threat model we assume an adversary who is not a network administrator, nor has direct control of the channel and key VoIP elements. His aim is to degrade his victim's QoS without giving away his presence by making his attack look like a normal network degradation. Even black-boxed, applications like Skype that use proprietary protocols show poor performance under specially crafted DoS attacks to its media stream. Finally we show how securing Skype relays not only preserves many of its useful features such as seamless traversal of firewalls but also protects its users from DoS attacks such as recording of conversations and disruption of voice quality. We also present our experiences using virtualization to protect VoIP applications from 'insider attacks'. Our contribution is two fold we: 1) Outline a threat model for VoIP, incorporating our attack models in an open-source network simulator/emulator allowing VoIP vendors to check their software for vulnerabilities in a controlled environment before releasing it. 2) We present two promising approaches for protecting the confidentiality, availability and authentication of VoIP Services

Identity-Concealed Authenticated Encryption from Ring Learning With Errors (Full version)

Authenticated encryption (AE) is very suitable for a resources constrained environment for it needs less computational costs and AE has become one of the important technologies of modern communication security. Identity concealment is one of research focuses in design and analysis of current secure transport protocols (such as TLS1.3 and Google\u27s QUIC). In this paper, we present a provably secure identity-concealed authenticated encryption in the public-key setting over ideal lattices, referred to as RLWE-ICAE. Our scheme can be regarded as a parallel extension of higncryption scheme proposed by Zhao (CCS 2016), but in the lattice-based setting. RLWE-ICAE can be viewed as a monolithic integration of public-key encryption, key agreement over ideal lattices, identity concealment and digital signature. The security of RLWE-ICAE is directly relied on the Ring Learning with Errors (RLWE) assumption. Two concrete choices of parameters are provided in the end

SDAMQ: Secure Data Aggregation for Multiple Queries in Wireless Sensor Networks

Wireless Sensor Network consists of severely energy constrained sensor nodes and are susceptible to security attacks due to broadcast communication model. It is necessary to optimize the transmission of packets to reduce the energy consumption. In addition data has to be encrypted in order to overcome the attack from the compromising nodes. We propose Secure Data Aggregation for Multiple Queries (SDAMQ) in Wireless Sensor Networks where multiple aggregate queries from the sink are authenticated and distributed to the sensor nodes. The sensor nodes respond by aggregating data belonging to multiple coexisting queries into a single packet, there by reducing the transmission cost. The intermediary nodes aggregate the encrypted data using additively homomorphic encryption. Thus authenticated query propagation combined with homomorphic encryption provide secure data aggregation at low energy consumption. Simulation results shows that SDAMQ provides better performance

PriBioAuth: Privacy-preserving biometric-based remote user authentication

National Research Foundation (NRF) Singapor