771 research outputs found
A Survey on Wireless Sensor Network Security
Wireless sensor networks (WSNs) have recently attracted a lot of interest in
the research community due their wide range of applications. Due to distributed
nature of these networks and their deployment in remote areas, these networks
are vulnerable to numerous security threats that can adversely affect their
proper functioning. This problem is more critical if the network is deployed
for some mission-critical applications such as in a tactical battlefield.
Random failure of nodes is also very likely in real-life deployment scenarios.
Due to resource constraints in the sensor nodes, traditional security
mechanisms with large overhead of computation and communication are infeasible
in WSNs. Security in sensor networks is, therefore, a particularly challenging
task. This paper discusses the current state of the art in security mechanisms
for WSNs. Various types of attacks are discussed and their countermeasures
presented. A brief discussion on the future direction of research in WSN
security is also included.Comment: 24 pages, 4 figures, 2 table
A Survey of Access Control Models in Wireless Sensor Networks
Copyright 2014 by the authors; licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/)Wireless sensor networks (WSNs) have attracted considerable interest in the research community, because of their wide range of applications. However, due to the distributed nature of WSNs and their deployment in remote areas, these networks are vulnerable to numerous security threats that can adversely affect their proper functioning. Resource constraints in sensor nodes mean that security mechanisms with a large overhead of computation and communication are impractical to use in WSNs; security in sensor networks is, therefore, a challenge. Access control is a critical security service that offers the appropriate access privileges to legitimate users and prevents illegitimate users from unauthorized access. However, access control has not received much attention in the context of WSNs. This paper provides an overview of security threats and attacks, outlines the security requirements and presents a state-of-the-art survey on access control models, including a comparison and evaluation based on their characteristics in WSNs. Potential challenging issues for access control schemes in WSNs are also discussed.Peer reviewe
Post-quantum cryptography
Cryptography is essential for the security of online communication, cars and implanted medical devices. However, many commonly used cryptosystems will be completely broken once large quantum computers exist. Post-quantum cryptography is cryptography under the assumption that the attacker has a large quantum computer; post-quantum cryptosystems strive to remain secure even in this scenario. This relatively young research area has seen some successes in identifying mathematical operations for which quantum algorithms offer little advantage in speed, and then building cryptographic systems around those. The central challenge in post-quantum cryptography is to meet demands for cryptographic usability and flexibility without sacrificing confidence.</p
Survey for Performance & Security Problems of Passive Side-channel Attacks Countermeasures in ECC
The main objective of the Internet of Things is to interconnect everything around us to obtain information which was unavailable to us before, thus enabling us to make better decisions. This interconnection of things involves security issues for any Internet of Things key technology. Here we focus on elliptic curve cryptography (ECC) for embedded devices, which offers a high degree of security, compared to other encryption mechanisms. However, ECC also has security issues, such as Side-Channel Attacks (SCA), which are a growing threat in the implementation of cryptographic devices. This paper analyze the state-of-the-art of several proposals of algorithmic countermeasures to prevent passive SCA on ECC defined over prime fields. This work evaluates the trade-offs between security and the performance of side-channel attack countermeasures for scalar multiplication algorithms without pre-computation, i.e. for variable base point.
Although a number of results are required to study the state-of-the-art of side-channel attack in elliptic curve cryptosystems, the interest of this work is to present explicit solutions that may be used for the future implementation of security mechanisms suitable for embedded devices applied to Internet of Things. In addition security problems for the countermeasures are also analyzed
Implementação eficiente da Curve25519 para microcontroladores ARM
Orientador: Diego de Freitas AranhaDissertação (mestrado) - Universidade Estadual de Campinas, Instituto de ComputaçãoResumo: Com o advento da computação ubĂqua, o fenĂ´meno da Internet das Coisas (de Internet of Things) fará que com inĂşmeros dispositivos conectem-se um com os outros, enquanto trocam dados muitas vezes sensĂveis pela sua natureza. Danos irreparáveis podem ser causados caso o sigilo destes seja quebrado. Isso causa preocupações acerca da segurança da comunicação e dos prĂłprios dispositivos, que geralmente tĂŞm carĂŞncia de mecanismos de proteção contra interferĂŞncias fĂsicas e pouca ou nenhuma medida de segurança. Enquanto desenvolver criptografia segura e eficiente como um meio de prover segurança Ă informação nĂŁo Ă© inĂ©dito, esse novo ambiente, com uma grande superfĂcie de ataque, tem imposto novos desafios para a engenharia criptográfica. Uma abordagem segura para resolver este problema Ă© utilizar blocos bem conhecidos e profundamente analisados, tal como o protocolo Segurança da Camada de Transporte (de Transport Layer Security, TLS). Na Ăşltima versĂŁo desse padrĂŁo, as opções para Criptografia de Curvas ElĂpticas (de Elliptic Curve Cryptography - ECC) sĂŁo expandidas para alĂ©m de parâmetros estabelecidos por governos, tal como a proposta Curve25519 e protocolos criptográficos relacionados. Esse trabalho pesquisa implementações seguras e eficientes de Curve25519 para construir um esquema de troca de chaves em um microcontrolador ARM Cortex-M4, alĂ©m do esquema de assinatura digital Ed25519 e a proposta de esquema de assinaturas digitais qDSA. Como resultado, operações de desempenho crĂtico, tal como o multiplicador de 256 bits, foram otimizadas; em particular, aceleração de 50% foi alcançada, impactando o desempenho de protocolos em alto nĂvelAbstract: With the advent of ubiquitous computing, the Internet of Things will undertake numerous devices connected to each other, while exchanging data often sensitive by nature. Breaching the secrecy of this data may cause irreparable damage. This raises concerns about the security of their communication and the devices themselves, which usually lack tamper resistance mechanisms or physical protection and even low to no security mesures. While developing efficient and secure cryptography as a mean to provide information security services is not a new problem, this new environment, with a wide attack surface, imposes new challenges to cryptographic engineering. A safe approach to solve this problem is reusing well-known and thoroughly analyzed blocks, such as the Transport Layer Security (TLS) protocol. In the last version of this standard, Elliptic Curve Cryptography options were expanded beyond government-backed parameters, such as the Curve25519 proposal and related cryptographic protocols. This work investigates efficient and secure implementations of Curve25519 to build a key exchange protocol on an ARM Cortex-M4 microcontroller, along the related signature scheme Ed25519 and a digital signature scheme proposal called qDSA. As result, performance-critical operations, such as a 256-bit multiplier, are greatly optimized; in this particular case, a 50% speedup is achieved, impacting the performance of higher-level protocolsMestradoCiĂŞncia da ComputaçãoMestre em CiĂŞncia da ComputaçãoCAPESFuncam
IMPROVING SMART GRID SECURITY USING MERKLE TREES
Abstract—Presently nations worldwide are starting to convert their aging electrical power infrastructures into modern, dynamic power grids. Smart Grid offers much in the way of efficiencies and robustness to the electrical power grid, however its heavy reliance on communication networks will leave it more vulnerable to attack than present day grids. This paper looks at the threat to public key cryptography systems from a fully realized quantum computer and how this could impact the Smart Grid. We argue for the use of Merkle Trees in place of public key cryptography for authentication of devices in wireless mesh networks that are used in Smart Grid applications
Improving Vehicular Authentication in VANET Using
In the last several years, many types of research are focusing on Vehicular Ad-hoc Networks (VANETs) field due to the lifesaving factor. VANETs are defined as a set of vehicles in the road interact with other vehicles or with the Road Side Unit (RSU) through wireless Local Area Network (WLAN) technologies. The fundamental advantages of VANETs are enhancing the road and driver's safety and improving the vehicle security against adversaries’ attacks. Security is the most difficult issue belonging to VANETs since messages are exchanged through open wireless environments. Especially in the authentication process, the vehicles need to be authenticated before accessing or sending messages through the network. Any violation of the authentication process will open the whole network for the attack. In this paper, we applied security algorithms to improve authentication in VANETs with four stages of cryptography techniques: challenge-response authentication, digital signature, timestamping, and encryption/decryption respectively. Also, we also proposed an algorithm model and framework. Finally, we implemented the challenge-response authentication technique, and then measured and evaluated the result from the implementatio
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