Failure of the Point Blinding Countermeasure Against Fault Attack in Pairing-Based Cryptography

Article published in the proceedings of the C2SI conference, May 2015.Pairings are mathematical tools that have been proven to be very useful in the construction of many cryptographic protocols. Some of these protocols are suitable for implementation on power constrained devices such as smart cards or smartphone which are subject to side channel attacks. In this paper, we analyse the efficiency of the point blinding countermeasure in pairing based cryptography against side channel attacks. In particular,we show that this countermeasure does not protect Miller's algorithm for pairing computation against fault attack. We then give recommendation for a secure implementation of a pairing based protocol using the Miller algorithm

Controlling Electrical Appliances using Bluetooth & J2ME-enabled Mobile Phone

This project focuses on the development of a universal remote control system that utilizes the use of Bluetooth and Java technology on mobile phones in controlling electrical appliances. The remote control does not confine to the physical barriers that are normally found at home like the typical IrDA remote controls. The system suggests the usage of Bluetooth technology in order to solve and expand the capability of the IrDA remote control technology that is still being widely used. This is also due to the fact that almost all electrical devices and appliances come with their own proprietary remote control. By having a universal remote control, it is possible to eliminate the need for such many remote controls at home. From the client application point of view, the user interface is constructed using Java 2 Mobile Edition as it is being supported by many mobile phones instead of other of different architectures. From the mobile phone, users are able to connect to the Bluetooth server that then interacts with the circuit where the electronic components reside. Immediate direct manipulation of the circuit is crucial as remote control system is one of the real time systems and it needs to be updated as soon as the state of appliances is modified. As a result, this project was developed using Bluez in Linux, for the server part; and Nokia 6230 Series 40 cell phone for the client application. In a nutshell, the end product gives flexibility to the users by promoting the usage of their mobile phones as a universal remote control for their electrical appliances

Efficient Implementation of Bilinear Pairings on ARM Processors

Abstract. As hardware capabilities increase, low-power devices such as smartphones represent a natural environment for the efficient imple-mentation of cryptographic pairings. Few works in the literature have considered such platforms despite their growing importance in a post-PC world. In this paper, we investigate the efficient computation of the Optimal-Ate pairing over Barreto-Naehrig curves in software at differ-ent security levels on ARM processors. We exploit state-of-the-art tech-niques and propose new optimizations to speed up the computation in the tower field and curve arithmetic. In particular, we extend the concept of lazy reduction to inversion in extension fields, analyze an efficient al-ternative for the sparse multiplication used inside the Miller’s algorithm and reduce further the cost of point/line evaluation formulas in affine and projective homogeneous coordinates. In addition, we study the effi-ciency of using M-type sextic twists in the pairing computation and carry out a detailed comparison between affine and projective coordinate sys-tems. Our implementations on various mass-market smartphones and tablets significantly improve the state-of-the-art of pairing computation on ARM-powered devices, outperforming by at least a factor of 3.7 the best previous results in the literature

Bluetooth audio and video streaming on the J2ME platform

With the increase in bandwidth, more widespread distribution of media, and increased capability of mobile devices, multimedia streaming has not only become feasible, but more economical in terms of space occupied by the media file and the costs involved in attaining it. Although much attention has been paid to peer to peer media streaming over the Internet using HTTP and RTSP, little research has focussed on the use of the Bluetooth protocol for streaming audio and video between mobile devices. This project investigates the feasibility of Bluetooth as a protocol for audio and video streaming between mobile phones using the J2ME platform, through the analysis of Bluetooth protocols, media formats, optimum packet sizes, and the effects of distance on transfer speed. A comparison was made between RFCOMM and L2CAP to determine which protocol could support the fastest transfer speed between two mobile devices. The L2CAP protocol proved to be the most suitable, providing average transfer rates of 136.17 KBps. Using this protocol a second experiment was undertaken to determine the most suitable media format for streaming in terms of: file size, bandwidth usage, quality, and ease of implementation. Out of the eight media formats investigated, the MP3 format provided the smallest file size, smallest bandwidth usage, best quality and highest ease of implementation. Another experiment was conducted to determine the optimum packet size for transfer between devices. A tradeoff was found between packet size and the quality of the sound file, with highest transfer rates being recorded with the MTU size of 668 bytes (136.58 KBps). The class of Bluetooth transmitter typically used in mobile devices (class 2) is considered a weak signal and is adversely affected by distance. As such, the final investigation that was undertaken was aimed at determining the effects of distance on audio streaming and playback. As can be expected, when devices were situated close to each other, the transfer speeds obtained were higher than when devices were far apart. Readings were taken at varying distances (1-15 metres), with erratic transfer speeds observed from 7 metres onwards. This research showed that audio streaming on the J2ME platform is feasible, however using the currently available class of Bluetooth transmitter, video streaming is not feasible. Video files were only playable once the entire media file had been transferred

رؤية تحليلية لنظام الحكم في فكر تنظيم الدولة الإسلامية في العراق والشام "داعش"

The main objective of the study was to analyze the emergence and the development of the Islamic State organization, demonstrating the position of the Caliph in the organizational structure of Da'esh's organization, in addition to presenting an analytical vision for the Islamic state organization attitude towards the shape of the government, caliphate and the country. To prove the validity of the thesis and to answer the studies' questions, the study adopted the analytical descriptive approach and the organizational analytical approach. It is shown through the study that 'The Islamic State Organization' belongs to the 'Salafist Jihadist' movement, which often pursues the intellectual vision of Al-Qaeda, which is established on the necessity of ' the Jihadist negotiation'The main objective of the study was to analyze the emergence and the development of the Islamic State organization, demonstrating the position of the Caliph in the organizational structure of Da'esh's organization, in addition to presenting an analytical vision for the Islamic state organization attitude towards the shape of the government, caliphate and the country. To prove the validity of the thesis and to answer the studies' questions, the study adopted the analytical descriptive approach and the organizational analytical approach. It is shown through the study that 'The Islamic State Organization' belongs to the 'Salafist Jihadist' movement, which often pursues the intellectual vision of Al-Qaeda, which is established on the necessity of ' the Jihadist negotiation' with the ruling regimes in the Islamic worlds and their 'Western allies', a prelude to the establishment of the 'Islamic Caliphate State' to apply the provisions of Islam. Even though the Islamic State Organization doesn’t not include in its ranks many known scientists or theorists, it was able to back its opinions and works to a stock of other Jihadists Salafists Scientists' ideas and jurisprudences. The organization was always accused that its theory was an assembly of the ideas belonging to a number of extremist theorists some of which were sometimes against the organization itself. Some of those are, Abu Mohammad Al-Maqdisi, who despite this does not represent the first reference for the organizations, and especially in justifying his bloody agenda, indeed he depends on three other Salafist jihadists works, especially to justify what he does, the most famous work of those is, The Management of Savagery by "Abu Baker Al-Naji" a road map for how to establish an Islamic Caliphate. The second book is the Jurisprudence of Jihad, by "Abi Abdallah Al-Muhajer", which calls the Jihadist Salafists to do everything necessary in order to establish a pure unified Islamic country. The final book is The Basics of Preparing for Jihad for Sayeed Imam Al-Shareef, Abd Al-Qader Bin Abd AL-Aziz or "Dr. Fadel"

The Problems of Translation of Collocations From English to Arabic and Vice Versa of English Students at QOU

The study aims at exploring the difficulties that face the students of Al Quds Open University in collocations translation process from English to Arabic and vice versa. The researcher attempted to find suitable solutions for such difficulties and problems. The researcher followed an experimental descriptive method in the study.The study aims at exploring the difficulties that face the students of Al Quds Open University in collocations translation process from English to Arabic and vice versa. The researcher attempted to find suitable solutions for such difficulties and problems. The researcher followed an experimental descriptive method in the study. The researcher designed a test in order to explore the difficulties and problems that face such students. The test is composed of five questions ,the first one is Common collocations - nouns which naturally follow verbs (multiple choice) , the second one is "Choose the most suitable Arabic word combination to correct collocation" , the third one is " Choose most suitable English word combination to correct collocation" the fourth one is " Translate the following collocations from Arabic to English" ,the fifth one is "Translate the following collocations from English to Arabic". Such study was applied on English students of Al Quds Open University in Gaza Branch during the second course of the academic year 2013/2014. The researcher chose and selected a random sample of Al Quds Open University students in Gaza Branch. The researcher will follow a suitable statistical methods for such study. At the end of the study ,the researcher adopted a group of recommendations and suggestions

Machine-Level Software Optimization of Cryptographic Protocols

This work explores two methods for practical cryptography on mobile devices. The first method is a quantum-resistant key-exchange protocol proposed by Jao et al.. As the use of mobile devices increases, the deployment of practical cryptographic protocols designed for use on these devices is of increasing importance. Furthermore, we are faced with the possible development of a large-scale quantum computer in the near future and must take steps to prepare for this possibility. We describe the key-exchange protocol of Jao et al. and discuss their original implementation. We then describe our modifications to their scheme that make it suitable for use in mobile devices. Our code is between 18-26% faster (depending on the security level). The second is an highly optimized implementation of Miller's algorithm that efficiently computes the Optimal Ate pairing over Barreto-Naehrig curves proposed by Grewal et al.. We give an introduction to cryptographic pairings and describe the Tate pairing and its variants. We then proceed to describe Grewal et al.'s implementation of Miller's algorithm, along with their optimizations. We describe our use of hand-optimized assembly code to increase the performance of their implementation. For the Optimal Ate pairing over the BN-446 curve, our code is between 7-8% faster depending on whether the pairing uses affine or projective coordinates