A Novel Protocol-Authentication Algorithm Ruling Out a Man-in-the-Middle Attack in Quantum Cryptography

In this work we review the security vulnerability of Quantum Cryptography with respect to "man-in-the-middle attacks" and the standard authentication methods applied to counteract these attacks. We further propose a modified authentication algorithm which features higher efficiency with respect to consumption of mutual secret bits.Comment: 4 pages, submitted to the International Journal of Quantum Information, Proceedings of the meeting "Foundations of Quantum Information", Camerino, April 200

The Philip D. Reed Lecture Series: Judicial Records Forum

This Panel Discussion of the Judicial Records Forum was held on June 4, 2014, at Fordham University School of Law. The Judicial Records Forum focuses on issues involving the creation and management of judicial records and access to judicial records in the digital age. The transcript of the Panel Discussion has been lightly edited and represents the panelists’ individual views only, and in no way reflects those of their affiliated firms, organizations, law schools, or the judiciary

Blacklistable Anonymous Credentials: Blocking Misbehaving Users without TTPs (Extended Version)

Several credential systems have been proposed in which users can authenticate to services anonymously. Since anonymity can give users the license to misbehave, some variants allow the selective deanonymization (or linking) of misbehaving users upon a complaint to a trusted third party (TTP). The ability of the TTP to revoke a user\u27s privacy at any time, however, is too strong a punishment for misbehavior. To limit the scope of deanonymization, systems such as ``e-cash\u27\u27 have been proposed in which users are deanonymized under only certain types of well-defined misbehavior such as ``double spending.\u27\u27 While useful in some applications, it is not possible to generalize such techniques to more subjective definitions of misbehavior. We present the first anonymous credential system in which services can ``blacklist\u27\u27 misbehaving users without contacting a TTP. Since blacklisted users remain anonymous, misbehaviors can be judged subjectively without users fearing arbitrary deanonymization by a TTP

Efficient and Low-Cost RFID Authentication Schemes

Security in passive resource-constrained Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) tags is of much interest nowadays. Resistance against illegal tracking, cloning, timing, and replay attacks are necessary for a secure RFID authentication scheme. Reader authentication is also necessary to thwart any illegal attempt to read the tags. With an objective to design a secure and low-cost RFID authentication protocol, Gene Tsudik proposed a timestamp-based protocol using symmetric keys, named YA-TRAP*. Although YA-TRAP* achieves its target security properties, it is susceptible to timing attacks, where the timestamp to be sent by the reader to the tag can be freely selected by an adversary. Moreover, in YA-TRAP*, reader authentication is not provided, and a tag can become inoperative after exceeding its pre-stored threshold timestamp value. In this paper, we propose two mutual RFID authentication protocols that aim to improve YA-TRAP* by preventing timing attack, and by providing reader authentication. Also, a tag is allowed to refresh its pre-stored threshold value in our protocols, so that it does not become inoperative after exceeding the threshold. Our protocols also achieve other security properties like forward security, resistance against cloning, replay, and tracking attacks. Moreover, the computation and communication costs are kept as low as possible for the tags. It is important to keep the communication cost as low as possible when many tags are authenticated in batch-mode. By introducing aggregate function for the reader-to-server communication, the communication cost is reduced. We also discuss different possible applications of our protocols. Our protocols thus capture more security properties and more efficiency than YA-TRAP*. Finally, we show that our protocols can be implemented using the current standard low-cost RFID infrastructures.Comment: 21 pages, Journal of Wireless Mobile Networks, Ubiquitous Computing, and Dependable Applications (JoWUA), Vol 2, No 3, pp. 4-25, 201

Evaluating On-demand Pseudonym Acquisition Policies in Vehicular Communication Systems

Standardization and harmonization efforts have reached a consensus towards using a special-purpose Vehicular Public-Key Infrastructure (VPKI) in upcoming Vehicular Communication (VC) systems. However, there are still several technical challenges with no conclusive answers; one such an important yet open challenge is the acquisition of shortterm credentials, pseudonym: how should each vehicle interact with the VPKI, e.g., how frequently and for how long? Should each vehicle itself determine the pseudonym lifetime? Answering these questions is far from trivial. Each choice can affect both the user privacy and the system performance and possibly, as a result, its security. In this paper, we make a novel systematic effort to address this multifaceted question. We craft three generally applicable policies and experimentally evaluate the VPKI system performance, leveraging two large-scale mobility datasets. We consider the most promising, in terms of efficiency, pseudonym acquisition policies; we find that within this class of policies, the most promising policy in terms of privacy protection can be supported with moderate overhead. Moreover, in all cases, this work is the first to provide tangible evidence that the state-of-the-art VPKI can serve sizable areas or domain with modest computing resources.Comment: 6 pages, 7 figures, IoV-VoI'1

Data Minimisation in Communication Protocols: A Formal Analysis Framework and Application to Identity Management

With the growing amount of personal information exchanged over the Internet, privacy is becoming more and more a concern for users. One of the key principles in protecting privacy is data minimisation. This principle requires that only the minimum amount of information necessary to accomplish a certain goal is collected and processed. "Privacy-enhancing" communication protocols have been proposed to guarantee data minimisation in a wide range of applications. However, currently there is no satisfactory way to assess and compare the privacy they offer in a precise way: existing analyses are either too informal and high-level, or specific for one particular system. In this work, we propose a general formal framework to analyse and compare communication protocols with respect to privacy by data minimisation. Privacy requirements are formalised independent of a particular protocol in terms of the knowledge of (coalitions of) actors in a three-layer model of personal information. These requirements are then verified automatically for particular protocols by computing this knowledge from a description of their communication. We validate our framework in an identity management (IdM) case study. As IdM systems are used more and more to satisfy the increasing need for reliable on-line identification and authentication, privacy is becoming an increasingly critical issue. We use our framework to analyse and compare four identity management systems. Finally, we discuss the completeness and (re)usability of the proposed framework

Transparent authentication methodology in electronic education

In the context of on-line assessment in e-learning, a problem arises when a student taking an exam may wish to cheat by handing over personal credentials to someone else to take their place in an exam, Another problem is that there is no method for signing digital content as it is being produced in a computerized environment. Our proposed solution is to digitally sign the participant’s work by embedding voice samples in the transcript paper at regular intervals. In this investigation, we have demonstrated that a transparent stenographic methodology will provide an innovative and practical solution for achieving continuous authentication in an online educational environment by successful insertion and extraction of audio digital signatures

The genealogy of the king of Scots as charter and panegyric

When we think of genealogies in medieval Scotland our minds might turn at once to Gaelic, the Celtic language that was spoken in the Middle Ages from the southern tip of Ireland to the northernmost coast of Scotland. This is not unnatural. Texts that trace the ancestry of a notable individual generation by generation survive in their hundreds from the medieval Gaelic world. They are found today almost exclusively in late-medieval Irish manuscripts. Some genealogies originated in collections made as early as the tenth century. Presumably there were once many Scottish manuscripts containing genealogies, too. A reason why they would not have survived is that, in the Scottish kingdom during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, the Gaelic learned orders who would have had a primary interest in writing and copying this material declined in significance and ceased to participate in Gaelic literate culture. This chapter will open with a brief survey of medieval genealogical texts relating to the Scottish kingdom, followed by a closer discussion of the limited number that are known to have existed between about 995 and 1250. Thanks to some recent insights about the physicality of texts, and the example of Bengali copper charters, a new approach to this material will be developed that offers a fresh perspective on the role of genealogy as a written expression of kingship and lordship