52,275 research outputs found
Secure Mobile Social Networks using USIM in a Closed Environment
Online social networking and corresponding mobile based applications are gaining popularity and now considered
a well-integrated service within mobile devices. Basic security mechanisms normally based on passwords for the authentication of social-network users are widely deployed and poses a threat for the user security. In particular, for dedicated social groups with high confidentiality and privacy demands, stronger and user friendly principles for the authentication and identification of group members are needed. On the other hand, most of the mobile units already provide strong authentication procedures through the USIM/ISIM module. This paper explores how to build an architectural framework for secure enrollment and identification of group members in dedicated closed social groups using the USIM/SIM authentication and in particular, the 3GPP Generic Authentication Architecture (GAA), which is built upon the USIM/SIM capabilities. One part of the research is to identify the marketable use-cases with corresponding security challenges to fulfill the requirements that extend beyond the online connectivity. This paper proposes a secure identification design to satisfy the security dimensions for both online and offline peers. We have also implemented an initial proof of the concept prototype to simulate the secure identification procedure based on the proposed design. Our implementation has demonstrated the flexibility of the solution to be applied independently for applications requiring secure identification
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
Security and Privacy Issues in Wireless Mesh Networks: A Survey
This book chapter identifies various security threats in wireless mesh
network (WMN). Keeping in mind the critical requirement of security and user
privacy in WMNs, this chapter provides a comprehensive overview of various
possible attacks on different layers of the communication protocol stack for
WMNs and their corresponding defense mechanisms. First, it identifies the
security vulnerabilities in the physical, link, network, transport, application
layers. Furthermore, various possible attacks on the key management protocols,
user authentication and access control protocols, and user privacy preservation
protocols are presented. After enumerating various possible attacks, the
chapter provides a detailed discussion on various existing security mechanisms
and protocols to defend against and wherever possible prevent the possible
attacks. Comparative analyses are also presented on the security schemes with
regards to the cryptographic schemes used, key management strategies deployed,
use of any trusted third party, computation and communication overhead involved
etc. The chapter then presents a brief discussion on various trust management
approaches for WMNs since trust and reputation-based schemes are increasingly
becoming popular for enforcing security in wireless networks. A number of open
problems in security and privacy issues for WMNs are subsequently discussed
before the chapter is finally concluded.Comment: 62 pages, 12 figures, 6 tables. This chapter is an extension of the
author's previous submission in arXiv submission: arXiv:1102.1226. There are
some text overlaps with the previous submissio
KALwEN: a new practical and interoperable key management scheme for body sensor networks
Key management is the pillar of a security architecture. Body sensor networks (BSNs) pose several challenges–some inherited from wireless sensor networks (WSNs), some unique to themselves–that require a new key management scheme to be tailor-made. The challenge is taken on, and the result is KALwEN, a new parameterized key management scheme that combines the best-suited cryptographic techniques in a seamless framework. KALwEN is user-friendly in the sense that it requires no expert knowledge of a user, and instead only requires a user to follow a simple set of instructions when bootstrapping or extending a network. One of KALwEN's key features is that it allows sensor devices from different manufacturers, which expectedly do not have any pre-shared secret, to establish secure communications with each other. KALwEN is decentralized, such that it does not rely on the availability of a local processing unit (LPU). KALwEN supports secure global broadcast, local broadcast, and local (neighbor-to-neighbor) unicast, while preserving past key secrecy and future key secrecy (FKS). The fact that the cryptographic protocols of KALwEN have been formally verified also makes a convincing case. With both formal verification and experimental evaluation, our results should appeal to theorists and practitioners alike
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
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