Reconfigurable Security: Edge Computing-based Framework for IoT

In various scenarios, achieving security between IoT devices is challenging since the devices may have different dedicated communication standards, resource constraints as well as various applications. In this article, we first provide requirements and existing solutions for IoT security. We then introduce a new reconfigurable security framework based on edge computing, which utilizes a near-user edge device, i.e., security agent, to simplify key management and offload the computational costs of security algorithms at IoT devices. This framework is designed to overcome the challenges including high computation costs, low flexibility in key management, and low compatibility in deploying new security algorithms in IoT, especially when adopting advanced cryptographic primitives. We also provide the design principles of the reconfigurable security framework, the exemplary security protocols for anonymous authentication and secure data access control, and the performance analysis in terms of feasibility and usability. The reconfigurable security framework paves a new way to strength IoT security by edge computing.Comment: under submission to possible journal publication

Toward an RSU-unavailable lightweight certificateless key agreement scheme for VANETs

Vehicle ad-hoc networks have developed rapidly these years, whose security and privacy issues are always concerned widely. In spite of a remarkable research on their security solutions, but in which there still lacks considerations on how to secure vehicle-to-vehicle communications, particularly when infrastructure is unavailable. In this paper, we propose a lightweight certificateless and one-round key agreement scheme without pairing, and further prove the security of the proposed scheme in the random oracle model. The proposed scheme is expected to not only resist known attacks with less computation cost, but also as an efficient way to relieve the workload of vehicle-to-vehicle authentication, especially in no available infrastructure circumstance. A comprehensive evaluation, including security analysis, efficiency analysis and simulation evaluation, is presented to confirm the security and feasibility of the proposed scheme

On the Security of the Automatic Dependent Surveillance-Broadcast Protocol

Automatic dependent surveillance-broadcast (ADS-B) is the communications protocol currently being rolled out as part of next generation air transportation systems. As the heart of modern air traffic control, it will play an essential role in the protection of two billion passengers per year, besides being crucial to many other interest groups in aviation. The inherent lack of security measures in the ADS-B protocol has long been a topic in both the aviation circles and in the academic community. Due to recently published proof-of-concept attacks, the topic is becoming ever more pressing, especially with the deadline for mandatory implementation in most airspaces fast approaching. This survey first summarizes the attacks and problems that have been reported in relation to ADS-B security. Thereafter, it surveys both the theoretical and practical efforts which have been previously conducted concerning these issues, including possible countermeasures. In addition, the survey seeks to go beyond the current state of the art and gives a detailed assessment of security measures which have been developed more generally for related wireless networks such as sensor networks and vehicular ad hoc networks, including a taxonomy of all considered approaches.Comment: Survey, 22 Pages, 21 Figure

An Authentication Protocol for Future Sensor Networks

Authentication is one of the essential security services in Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) for ensuring secure data sessions. Sensor node authentication ensures the confidentiality and validity of data collected by the sensor node, whereas user authentication guarantees that only legitimate users can access the sensor data. In a mobile WSN, sensor and user nodes move across the network and exchange data with multiple nodes, thus experiencing the authentication process multiple times. The integration of WSNs with Internet of Things (IoT) brings forth a new kind of WSN architecture along with stricter security requirements; for instance, a sensor node or a user node may need to establish multiple concurrent secure data sessions. With concurrent data sessions, the frequency of the re-authentication process increases in proportion to the number of concurrent connections, which makes the security issue even more challenging. The currently available authentication protocols were designed for the autonomous WSN and do not account for the above requirements. In this paper, we present a novel, lightweight and efficient key exchange and authentication protocol suite called the Secure Mobile Sensor Network (SMSN) Authentication Protocol. In the SMSN a mobile node goes through an initial authentication procedure and receives a re-authentication ticket from the base station. Later a mobile node can use this re-authentication ticket when establishing multiple data exchange sessions and/or when moving across the network. This scheme reduces the communication and computational complexity of the authentication process. We proved the strength of our protocol with rigorous security analysis and simulated the SMSN and previously proposed schemes in an automated protocol verifier tool. Finally, we compared the computational complexity and communication cost against well-known authentication protocols.Comment: This article is accepted for the publication in "Sensors" journal. 29 pages, 15 figure

Cyber DoS attack based security simulator for VANET

At the late years, researches focused on the cyber Denial of Service (DoS) attacks in the Vehicle Ad hoc Networks (VANETS). This is due to high importance of ensuring the save receiving of information in terms of Vehicle to Vehicle (V2V), Vehicle to Infrastructure (V2I) and Vehicle to Road Side Unit (V2R). In this paper, a cyber-security system is proposed to detect and block the DoS attacks in VANET. In addition, a simulator for VENAT based on lightweight authentication and key exchange is presented to simulate the network performance and attacks. The proposed system consists of three phases: registration, authentication as well as communications and DoS attack detection. These phases improve the system ability to detect the attacks in efficient way. Each phase working is based in a proposed related algorithm under the guidance of lightweight protocol. In order to test the proposed system, a prototype is considered includes six cars and we adopt police cars due to high importance of exchanged information. Different case studies have been considered to evaluate the proposed system and the obtained results show a high efficiency of performance in terms of information exchange and attack detection