43,459 research outputs found

    Underwater Hacker Missile Wars: A Cryptography and Engineering Contest

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    For a recent student conference, the authors developed a day-long design problem and competition suitable for engineering, mathematics and science undergraduates. The competition included a cryptography problem, for which a workshop was run during the conference. This paper describes the competition, focusing on the cryptography problem and the workshop. Notes from the workshop and code for the computer programs are made available via the Internet. The results of a personal self-evaluation (PSE) are described.Comment: 11 pages, 3 figures, uses amsrefs.sty v2.0 and cryptologiabib.sty (included); to appear in Cryptologi

    Fast, parallel and secure cryptography algorithm using Lorenz's attractor

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    A novel cryptography method based on the Lorenz's attractor chaotic system is presented. The proposed algorithm is secure and fast, making it practical for general use. We introduce the chaotic operation mode, which provides an interaction among the password, message and a chaotic system. It ensures that the algorithm yields a secure codification, even if the nature of the chaotic system is known. The algorithm has been implemented in two versions: one sequential and slow and the other, parallel and fast. Our algorithm assures the integrity of the ciphertext (we know if it has been altered, which is not assured by traditional algorithms) and consequently its authenticity. Numerical experiments are presented, discussed and show the behavior of the method in terms of security and performance. The fast version of the algorithm has a performance comparable to AES, a popular cryptography program used commercially nowadays, but it is more secure, which makes it immediately suitable for general purpose cryptography applications. An internet page has been set up, which enables the readers to test the algorithm and also to try to break into the cipher in

    I2PA, U-prove, and Idemix: An Evaluation of Memory Usage and Computing Time Efficiency in an IoT Context

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    The Internet of Things (IoT), in spite of its innumerable advantages, brings many challenges namely issues about users' privacy preservation and constraints about lightweight cryptography. Lightweight cryptography is of capital importance since IoT devices are qualified to be resource-constrained. To address these challenges, several Attribute-Based Credentials (ABC) schemes have been designed including I2PA, U-prove, and Idemix. Even though these schemes have very strong cryptographic bases, their performance in resource-constrained devices is a question that deserves special attention. This paper aims to conduct a performance evaluation of these schemes on issuance and verification protocols regarding memory usage and computing time. Recorded results show that both I2PA and U-prove present very interesting results regarding memory usage and computing time while Idemix presents very low performance with regard to computing time

    A More Effective Approach Securing Text Data Based On Private Key Cryptography

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    Internet & smart phone makes easy to access and share data from anywhere in the world. Every day terabytes of data are being generated and used. Several important real life applications like banking transactions, credit information, and confidential data is transferred using internet. All the users need to prevent their data from unauthorized access. Data security during communication using internet and smart phone is a difficult task. Cryptography plays an integral part in data security. Cryptography provides confidentiality and maintains integrity between genuine users. Cryptography used mathematical techniques for security aspects such as confidentiality, data integrity, entity authentication, and data authentication. A cryptographic algorithm works using combination of keys to encrypt the plaintext. The security of encrypted data is entirely dependent on the strength of the cryptographic algorithm and the secrecy of the key. In this paper an efficient approach based on private key to encrypt and decrypt text data is proposed

    Bootstrapping Cryptography on the Internet

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    This thesis focuses on bootstrapping cryptography, taking it from a theoretical algorithm to something we can use on the Internet. We summarize the requirement and define five pillars that build the foundation of successfully deployed cryptographic algorithms: computational performance, usability, transport, key management, and randomness. While there is a lot of research around the computational performance and usability of cryptographic algorithms, we focus on the other pillars. For transport, we explore two obstacles that interfere with the development of practical, real-world secure computation applications. We show the importance of the selection of suitable transport layers. Our evaluations show how Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) does not fully utilize the bandwidth for Two Party Computation (2PC) implementations. We evaluate three transport layers protocols for different applications and show that no protocol is suited for every scenario. In our evaluations, we use various protocols and network conditions in multiple regions to highlight the effects on the performance of 2PC applications. We propose an extendable framework that integrates the (initially) three transport layer protocols: User Datagram Protocol (UDP), TCP, and UDP-based Data Transfer Protocol (UDT). The framework's task is to identify the most suitable transport layer protocol depending on the current TCP application and the network conditions. For key management, we show how to manipulate a domain validation mechanism. We developed a BGP simulator to evaluate BGP paths on the Internet. Our simulator is high performant and respects relationships between CAs. In combination with our simulator, we analyze the resilience of the domains ecosystem to attacks against domain validation. Our measurements show that the domains ecosystem is not resilient to prefix hijacks and reveal that only a few ASes own most domains. We discuss possible mitigations and propose the distributed domain validation as a drop-in replacement for the standard domain validation. It allows strong resistance against MitM attackers. Additionally, we show that many IPs are anycast which is beneficial for distributed domain validation. We also analyze the validations agents' placement on the Internet and demonstrate a method to determine good ASes for agent placement. For randomness, we propose an alternative approach for generating pseudorandom strings, using the distributed nature of the Internet for collecting randomness from public services on the Internet. We develop our Distributed Pseudorandom Generator (DPRG) and demonstrate how it guarantees security against strong practical attackers and how it addresses the main shortcomings in existing PRGs. It uses AES encryption in CBC mode and an HDKF to extract randomness and inputs for handshakes. We analyze the distribution of different randomness sources like HTTP, SMTPS, SSH, and TOR and present an implementation of DPRG using the TOR network. We analyze the quality of randomness and performance of our DPRG and show that we can achieve highly secure randomness only from user space

    Pseudo Identities Based on Fingerprint Characteristics

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    This paper presents the integrated project TURBINE which is funded under the EU 7th research framework programme. This research is a multi-disciplinary effort on privacy enhancing technology, combining innovative developments in cryptography and fingerprint recognition. The objective of this project is to provide a breakthrough in electronic authentication for various applications in the physical world and on the Internet. On the one hand it will provide secure identity verification thanks to fingerprint recognition. On the other hand it will reliably protect the biometric data through advanced cryptography technology. In concrete terms, it will provide the assurance that (i) the data used for the authentication, generated from the fingerprint, cannot be used to restore the original fingerprint sample, (ii) the individual will be able to create different "pseudo-identities" for different applications with the same fingerprint, whilst ensuring that these different identities (and hence the related personal data) cannot be linked to each other, and (iii) the individual is enabled to revoke an biometric identifier (pseudo-identity) for a given application in case it should not be used anymore

    An overview of memristive cryptography

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    Smaller, smarter and faster edge devices in the Internet of things era demands secure data analysis and transmission under resource constraints of hardware architecture. Lightweight cryptography on edge hardware is an emerging topic that is essential to ensure data security in near-sensor computing systems such as mobiles, drones, smart cameras, and wearables. In this article, the current state of memristive cryptography is placed in the context of lightweight hardware cryptography. The paper provides a brief overview of the traditional hardware lightweight cryptography and cryptanalysis approaches. The contrast for memristive cryptography with respect to traditional approaches is evident through this article, and need to develop a more concrete approach to developing memristive cryptanalysis to test memristive cryptographic approaches is highlighted.Comment: European Physical Journal: Special Topics, Special Issue on "Memristor-based systems: Nonlinearity, dynamics and applicatio

    A Cryptographic Moving-Knife Cake-Cutting Protocol

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    This paper proposes a cake-cutting protocol using cryptography when the cake is a heterogeneous good that is represented by an interval on a real line. Although the Dubins-Spanier moving-knife protocol with one knife achieves simple fairness, all players must execute the protocol synchronously. Thus, the protocol cannot be executed on asynchronous networks such as the Internet. We show that the moving-knife protocol can be executed asynchronously by a discrete protocol using a secure auction protocol. The number of cuts is n-1 where n is the number of players, which is the minimum.Comment: In Proceedings IWIGP 2012, arXiv:1202.422
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