Efficient and Secure ECDSA Algorithm and its Applications: A Survey

Public-key cryptography algorithms, especially elliptic curve cryptography (ECC)and elliptic curve digital signature algorithm (ECDSA) have been attracting attention frommany researchers in different institutions because these algorithms provide security andhigh performance when being used in many areas such as electronic-healthcare, electronicbanking,electronic-commerce, electronic-vehicular, and electronic-governance. These algorithmsheighten security against various attacks and the same time improve performanceto obtain efficiencies (time, memory, reduced computation complexity, and energy saving)in an environment of constrained source and large systems. This paper presents detailedand a comprehensive survey of an update of the ECDSA algorithm in terms of performance,security, and applications

Energy Efficient Security Framework for Wireless Local Area Networks

Wireless networks are susceptible to network attacks due to their inherentvulnerabilities. The radio signal used in wireless transmission canarbitrarily propagate through walls and windows; thus a wireless networkperimeter is not exactly known. This leads them to be more vulnerable toattacks such as eavesdropping, message interception and modifications comparedto wired-line networks. Security services have been used as countermeasures toprevent such attacks, but they are used at the expense of resources that arescarce especially, where wireless devices have a very limited power budget.Hence, there is a need to provide security services that are energy efficient.In this dissertation, we propose an energy efficient security framework. Theframework aims at providing security services that take into account energyconsumption. We suggest three approaches to reduce the energy consumption ofsecurity protocols: replacement of standard security protocol primitives thatconsume high energy while maintaining the same security level, modification ofstandard security protocols appropriately, and a totally new design ofsecurity protocol where energy efficiency is the main focus. From ourobservation and study, we hypothesize that a higher level of energy savings isachievable if security services are provided in an adjustable manner. Wepropose an example tunable security or TuneSec system, which allows areasonably fine-grained security tuning to provide security services at thewireless link level in an adjustable manner.We apply the framework to several standard security protocols in wirelesslocal area networks and also evaluate their energy consumption performance.The first and second methods show improvements of up to 70% and 57% inenergy consumption compared to plain standard security protocols,respectively. The standard protocols can only offer fixed-level securityservices, and the methods applied do not change the security level. The thirdmethod shows further improvement compared to fixed-level security by reducing(about 6% to 40%) the energy consumed. This amount of energy saving can bevaried depending on the configuration and security requirements

Secure and Lightweight Authentication Protocols for Devices in Internet of Things

The Internet of Things (IoT) has become an intriguing trend worldwide as it allows any smart device with an IP address to participate in a highly immersive and connected environment that integrates physical, digital and social aspects of the user’s lives. The perpetual growth of IoT devices is resulting in less attention on the security side allowing attackers to find easy ways to exploit the devices. Hence, security is one of the important and challenging research areas in IoT. Furthermore, the resource-constrained nature of these devices results in poor performance when the traditional security protocols are used. In this thesis, we propose secure and lightweight authentication protocols for devices in IoT. A centralized network model is considered where the devices in the perception layer are mutually authenticated with the gateway of the system. A mutual authentication mechanism which uses symmetric key negotiation using Elliptic Curve Diffie-Hellman(ECDH) in the registration part of the protocol to protect the credentials of the devices and at the same time it minimizes the computation cost on the devices. At the end of the authentication, key agreement based on the symmetric key cryptography is established between the sensor devices and the gateway. Further, Elliptic Curve Integrated Encryption Scheme (ECIES) method is used to avoid the possibility of man-in-the-middle attack(MITM) in the registration phase of the previous protocol. An informal security verification of the protocols is presented which proves that they are resilient against perception layer attacks. The performance evaluation based on the metrics such as execution time, communication cost, computation cost of the protocol has been performed after the protocol is simulated in the Cooja simulator under Contiki OS environment. Further, the comparison results with the existing protocols show that the proposed system is lightweight as it provides low computation cost and better execution time

Security technologies for wireless access to local area networks

In today’s world, computers and networks are connected to all life aspects and professions. The amount of information, personal and organizational, spread over the network is increasing exponentially. Simultaneously, malicious attacks are being developed at the same speed, which makes having a secure network system a crucial factor on every level and in any organization. Achieving a high protection level has been the goal of many organizations, such as the Wi-Fi Alliance R , and many standards and protocols have been developed over time. This work addresses the historical development of WLAN security technologies, starting from the oldest standard, WEP, and reaching the newly released standard WPA3, passing through the several versions in between,WPA, WPS, WPA2, and EAP. Along with WPA3, this work addresses two newer certificates, Enhanced OpenTM and Easy ConnectTM. Furthermore, a comparative analysis of the previous standards is also presented, detailing their security mechanisms, flaws, attacks, and the measures they have adopted to prevent these attacks. Focusing on the new released WPA3, this work presents a deep study on both WPA3 and EAP-pwd. The development of WPA3 had the objective of providing strong protection, even if the network’s password is considered weak. However, this objective was not fully accomplished and some recent research work discovered design flaws in this new standard. Along with the above studies, this master thesis’ work builds also a network for penetration testing using a set of new devices that support the new standard. A group of possible attacks onWi-Fi latest security standards was implemented on the network, testing the response against each of them, discussing the reason behind the success or the failure of the attack, and providing a set of countermeasures applicable against these attacks. Obtained results show that WPA3 has overcome many of WPA2’s issues, however, it is still unable to overcome some major Wi-Fi vulnerabilities.No mundo de hoje, os computadores e as redes estão conectados praticamente a todos os aspectos da nossa vida pessoal e profissional. A quantidade de informações, pessoais e organizacionais, espalhadas pela rede está a aumentar exponencialmente. Simultaneamente, também os ataques maliciosos estão a aumentar à mesma velocidade, o que faz com que um sistema de rede seguro seja um fator crucial a todos os níveis e em qualquer organização. Alcançar altos níveis de proteção tem sido o objetivo de trabalho de muitas organizações, como a Wi-Fi Alliance R , tendo muitos standards e protocolos sido desenvolvidos ao longo do tempo. Este trabalho aborda o desenvolvimento histórico das tecnologias de segurança para WLANs, começando pelo standard mais antigo, WEP, e acabando no recém-chegado WPA3, passando pelas várias versões intermedias, WPA, WPS, WPA2 e EAP. Juntamente com o WPA3, este trabalho aborda os dois certificados mais recentes, Enhanced OpenTM e Easy ConnectTM. Além disso, também é apresentada uma análise comparativa dos standards anteriores, detalhando os seus principais mecanismos de segurança, falhas, ataques a que são susceptíveis e medidas adotadas para evitar esses ataques. Quanto ao novo WPA3 e EAP-pwd, este trabalho apresenta um estudo aprofundado sobre os seus modos "Personal" e "Enterprise". O desenvolvimento do WPA3 teve por objetivo fornecer proteção forte, mesmo que a password de rede seja considerada fraca. No entanto, esse objetivo não foi totalmente alcançado e alguma investigação realizada recentemente detectou falhas de desenho nesse novo padrão. Juntamente com os estudo dos standards acima referidos, o trabalho realizado para esta tese de mestrado também constrói uma rede para testes de penetração usando um conjunto de novos dispositivos que já suportam o novo standard. São aplicados vários ataques aos mais recentes padrões de segurança Wi-Fi, é testada a sua resposta contra cada um deles, é discutindo o motivo que justifica o sucesso ou a falha do ataque, e são indicadas contramedidas aplicáveis a esses ataques. Os resultados obtidos mostram que o WPA3 superou muitos dos problemas do WPA2 mas que, no entanto, ainda é incapaz de superar algumas das vulnerabilidades presentes nas redes Wi-Fi.First, I would like to express my deepest appreciation to those who gave me the possibility to complete my study and get my Master degree, the Aga Khan Foundation, who has supported me financiall

Security in 5G-Enabled Internet of Things Communication: Issues: Challenges, and Future Research Roadmap

5G mobile communication systems promote the mobile network to not only interconnect people, but also interconnect and control the machine and other devices. 5G-enabled Internet of Things (IoT) communication environment supports a wide-variety of applications, such as remote surgery, self-driving car, virtual reality, flying IoT drones, security and surveillance and many more. These applications help and assist the routine works of the community. In such communication environment, all the devices and users communicate through the Internet. Therefore, this communication agonizes from different types of security and privacy issues. It is also vulnerable to different types of possible attacks (for example, replay, impersonation, password reckoning, physical device stealing, session key computation, privileged-insider, malware, man-in-the-middle, malicious routing, and so on). It is then very crucial to protect the infrastructure of 5G-enabled IoT communication environment against these attacks. This necessitates the researchers working in this domain to propose various types of security protocols under different types of categories, like key management, user authentication/device authentication, access control/user access control and intrusion detection. In this survey paper, the details of various system models (i.e., network model and threat model) required for 5G-enabled IoT communication environment are provided. The details of security requirements and attacks possible in this communication environment are further added. The different types of security protocols are also provided. The analysis and comparison of the existing security protocols in 5G-enabled IoT communication environment are conducted. Some of the future research challenges and directions in the security of 5G-enabled IoT environment are displayed. The motivation of this work is to bring the details of different types of security protocols in 5G-enabled IoT under one roof so that the future researchers will be benefited with the conducted work