901 research outputs found
Towards the use of Pairing-Based Cryptography for Resource-Constrained Home Area Networks
Abstract-In the prevailing smart grid, the Home Area Network (HAN) will become a critical infrastructure component at the consumer premises. The HAN provides the electricity infrastructure with a bi-directional communication infrastructure that allows monitoring and control of electrical appliances. HANs are typically equipped with wireless sensors and actuators, built from resource-constrained hardware devices, that communicate by using open standard protocols. This raises concerns on the security of these networked systems. Because of this, securing a HAN to a proper degree becomes an increasingly important task. In this paper, a security model, where an adversary may exploit the system both during HAN setup as well as during operations of the network, is considered. We propose a scheme for secure bootstrapping of wireless HAN devices based on IdentityBased Cryptography (IBC). The scheme minimizes the number of exchanged messages needed to establish a session key between HAN devices. The feasibility of the approach is demonstrated from a series of prototype experiments
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 security architecture for personal networks
Abstract Personal Network (PN) is a new concept utilizing pervasive computing to meet the needs of the user. As PNs edge closer towards reality, security becomes an important concern since any vulnerability in the system will limit its practical use. In this paper we introduce a security architecture designed for PNs. Our aim is to use secure but lightweight mechanisms suitable for resource constrained devices and wireless communication. We support pair-wise keys for secure cluster formation and use group keys for securing intra-cluster communication. In order to analyze the performance of our proposed mechanisms, we carry out simulations using ns-2. The results show that our mechanisms have a low overhead in terms of delay and energy consumption
A proof-of-proximity framework for device pairing in ubiquitous computing environments
Ad hoc interactions between devices over wireless networks in ubiquitous
computing environments present a security problem: the generation of shared secrets
to initialize secure communication over a medium that is inherently vulnerable to
various attacks. However, these ad hoc scenarios also offer the potential for physical
security of spaces and the use of protocols in which users must visibly demonstrate
their presence and/or involvement to generate an association. As a consequence,
recently secure device pairing has had significant attention from a wide community of
academic as well as industrial researchers and a plethora of schemes and protocols
have been proposed, which use various forms of out-of-band exchange to form an
association between two unassociated devices. These protocols and schemes have
different strengths and weaknesses â often in hardware requirements, strength against
various attacks or usability in particular scenarios. From ordinary userâs point of
view, the problem then becomes which to choose or which is the best possible scheme
in a particular scenario.
We advocate that in a world of modern heterogeneous devices and
requirements, there is a need for mechanisms that allow automated selection of the
best protocols without requiring the user to have an in-depth knowledge of the
minutiae of the underlying technologies. Towards this, the main argument forming the
basis of this dissertation is that the integration of a discovery mechanism and several
pairing schemes into a single system is more efficient from a usability point of view
as well as security point of view in terms of dynamic choice of pairing schemes. In
pursuit of this, we have proposed a generic system for secure device pairing by
demonstration of physical proximity. Our main contribution is the design and
prototype implementation of Proof-of-Proximity framework along with a novel Co-
Location protocol. Other contributions include a detailed analysis of existing device
pairing schemes, a simple device discovery mechanism, a protocol selection
mechanism that is used to find out the best possible scheme to demonstrate the
physical proximity of the devices according to the scenario, and a usability study of
eight pairing schemes and the proposed system
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 challengesâsome inherited from wireless sensor networks (WSNs), some unique to themselvesâthat 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
Survey and Systematization of Secure Device Pairing
Secure Device Pairing (SDP) schemes have been developed to facilitate secure
communications among smart devices, both personal mobile devices and Internet
of Things (IoT) devices. Comparison and assessment of SDP schemes is
troublesome, because each scheme makes different assumptions about out-of-band
channels and adversary models, and are driven by their particular use-cases. A
conceptual model that facilitates meaningful comparison among SDP schemes is
missing. We provide such a model. In this article, we survey and analyze a wide
range of SDP schemes that are described in the literature, including a number
that have been adopted as standards. A system model and consistent terminology
for SDP schemes are built on the foundation of this survey, which are then used
to classify existing SDP schemes into a taxonomy that, for the first time,
enables their meaningful comparison and analysis.The existing SDP schemes are
analyzed using this model, revealing common systemic security weaknesses among
the surveyed SDP schemes that should become priority areas for future SDP
research, such as improving the integration of privacy requirements into the
design of SDP schemes. Our results allow SDP scheme designers to create schemes
that are more easily comparable with one another, and to assist the prevention
of persisting the weaknesses common to the current generation of SDP schemes.Comment: 34 pages, 5 figures, 3 tables, accepted at IEEE Communications
Surveys & Tutorials 2017 (Volume: PP, Issue: 99
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