A secure and private RFID authentication protocol based on quadratic residue

Radio Frequency IDentification based systems are getting pervasively deployed in many real-life applications in various settings for identification and authentication of remote objects. However, the messages that are transmitted over a insecure channel, are vulnerable to security and privacy concerns such as data privacy, location privacy of tag owner and etc. Recently, Yeh et al.'s proposed a RFID authentication protocol based on quadratic residue which is claimed to provide location privacy and prevent possible attacks. In this paper, we formally analyzed the protocol and we proved that the protocol provides destructive privacy according to Vaudenay privacy model. Moreover, we proposed a unilateral authentication protocol and we prove that our protocol satisfies higher privacy level such as narrow strong privacy. Besides, we proposed an enhanced version of our proposed protocol, which has same privacy level as Yeh at al protocol, but has reader authentication against stronger adversaries. Furthermore, the enhanced version of our protocol uses smaller number of cryptographic operations when compared to Yeh at al protocol and it is also cost efficient at the server and tag side and requires O(1) complexity to identify a RFID tag

Early puberty paradox: an investigation of anxiety levels of mothers and children, children's quality of life, and psychiatric diagnoses

Early puberty signs lead to an increase in anxiety levels of parents and children. The aim of this study was to investigate the quality of life and anxiety levels of girls and their mothers who were admitted to a pediatric endocrinology clinic with concerns about early puberty. Girls and their mothers who were admitted to endocrinology outpatient clinic with concerns about early puberty were compared to healthy control group. Screen for Child Anxiety Related Emotional Disorders (SCARED) parent form, Quality of Life for Children Scale (PedsQL) parent form, and Beck Anxiety Inventory (BAI) were administered to the mothers. Children were evaluated with the Schedule for Afective Disorders and Schizophrenia for School-Age Children (Kiddie-SADS Lifetime Version) (K-SADS-PL). The study sample consisted of 92 girls and 62 of them were administered to clinic with concerns about early puberty. There were 30 girls in early puberty group (group 1), 32 girls were in the normal development group (group 2), and 30 were in the healthy control group (group 3). The anxiety level of group 1 and group 2 was signifcantly higher, and their quality of life was signifcantly lower when compared to group 3 (p<0.001). Mother’s anxiety level was found signifcantly higher in group 2 (p<0.001). It has shown that anxiety level and quality of life of children were associated with anxiety level of mothers and the current Tanner stage (r=0.302, p<0.005). Conclusion: Mothers and children who have concerns about early puberty are negatively afected when early puberty is a possibility. For this reason, educating parents will prevent negative impacts of this situation on children. At the same time, it will decrease health burden

THE EFFECT OF JIGSAW I INSTRUCTION TECHNIQUE ON VERBAL AND WRITING SKILLS OF STUDENTS

The objective of the present study is to investigate the effect of Jigsaw I instruction technique on verbal and writing skills of students. In the study, pretest posttest quasi-experimental design was used. Study groups of the study included 50 students attending the 7th grade in a state middle school in Van province İpekyolu Township in Turkey during 2015 – 2016 academic year. The test group was assigned with random selection and included 24 students, while 26 students were assigned to the control group. Empirical applications demonstrated that Jigsaw I technique was statistically more successful in improving Turkish verbal skills of the students when compared to the activities conducted based on Turkish Curriculum (p: .001 ˂ 0.05; t: 3.427). Similarly, Jigsaw I technique was statistically more successful in improving Turkish writing skills of the students when compared to the activities conducted based on Turkish Curriculum (p: .000 ˂ 0.05; t: 4.790).  Article visualizations

The effect of depression on reproductive health among women of reproductive age

While the majority of research on depression, which is classified as a mental health disorder, tends to focus on pregnancy, few studies have investigated the relationship and possible effects of depression on reproductive health. This study was conducted with the aim of determining the relationship between depression and reproductive health outcomes in non-pregnant women of reproductive age. This was a case control study that consisted of 301 women who attended gynecology outpatient clinic of a university training and research hospital of South of Turkey between May and November of 2015. This study used the Beck Depression Inventory to evaluate depression level. Data was analyzed using IBM SPSS for Windows, version 21.0. According to the outcomes of this study, 33.9% of the women evaluated were found to have depression. In addition, the findings demonstrated that there is a difference between women with and without depression in terms of reproductive health outcomes. Taking into account the current and past records of psychiatric disorders documented during the treatment of women who were attended to in to gynecological clinics, this study further showed that better gynecological wellness can be achieved using short screening scales that can refer women for early diagnosis and treatment. (Afr J Reprod Health 2021; 25[5]: 125-132)

An efficient and private RFID authentication protocol supporting ownership transfer

Radio Frequency IDentification (RFID) systems are getting pervasively deployed in many daily life applications. But this increased usage of RFID systems brings some serious problems together, security and privacy. In some applications, ownership transfer of RFID labels is sine qua non need. Specifically, the owner of RFID tag might be required to change several times during its lifetime. Besides, after ownership transfer, the authentication protocol should also prevent the old owner to trace the tags and disallow the new owner to trace old transactions of the tags. On the other hand, while achieving privacy and security concerns, the computation complexity should be considered. In order to resolve these issues, numerous authentication protocols have been proposed in the literature. Many of them failed and their computation load on the server side is very high. Motivated by this need, we propose an RFID mutual authentication protocol to provide ownership transfer. In our protocol, the server needs only a constant-time complexity for identification when the tag and server are synchronized. In case of ownership transfer, our protocol preserves both old and new owners’ privacy. Our protocol is backward untraceable against a strong adversary who compromise tag, and also forward untraceable under an assumption

Analysis of the Perceived Quality of Service at Kocaeli International Youth Center

This study aims to evaluate the quality of service as perceived by the young members, who get service from the Kocaeli International Youth Center, which operates under the aegis of the Ministry of Youth and Sports. In order to fulfill this objective, the three-dimensional “Scale of the Perceived Service Quality at Youth Centers,” developed by Aycan et. al.(2005) and intended for youth centers, has been applied to 247 youths, who are members of and get service from youth centers. Within the scope of the research, viewpoints of the youths, with regard to some of their demographic characteristics, concerning the elements of the service quality have been analyzed. Consisting of 103 males and 144 females, a total of 247 individuals have taken part in the research. Following the analyses done and in the context of the elements of the service quality at the youth centers as perceived by the youths, it is found that there are no gender-specific differences; according to age variable, there is a difference in all factors in favor of the age group 7-12; as for the variable of family income, there is a difference in output quality factor in favor of the youths with an income level lower than 1300 TLs; and as for the variable of school type, there are significant differences in favor of the primary school level

Optimal security limits of RFID distance bounding protocols

In this paper, we classify the RFID distance bounding protocols having bitwise fast phases and no final signature. We also give the theoretical security bounds for two specific classes, leaving the security bounds for the general case as an open problem. As for the classification, we introduce the notion of k-previous challenge dependent (k-PCD) protocols where each response bit depends on the current and k-previous challenges and there is no final signature. We treat the case k = 0, which means each response bit depends only on the current challenge, as a special case and define such protocols as current challenge dependent (CCD) protocols. In general, we construct a trade-off curve between the security levels of mafia and distance frauds by introducing two generic attack algorithms. This leads to the conclusion that CCD protocols cannot attain the ideal security against distance fraud, i.e. 1/2, for each challenge-response bit, without totally losing the security against mafia fraud. We extend the generic attacks to 1-PCD protocols and obtain a trade-off curve for 1-PCD protocols pointing out that 1-PCD protocols can provide better security than CCD protocols. Thereby, we propose a natural extension of a CCD protocol to a 1-PCD protocol in order to improve its security. As a study case, we give two natural extensions of Hancke and Kuhn protocol to show how to enhance the security against either mafia fraud or distance fraud without extra cost

An Analysis of the Effect of Educational Game Training on Some Physical Parameters and Social Skills of the Children with Autism Spectrum Disorders

Purpose of this research is to measure the effect of educational game training on some physical parameters and social skills of the children with Autism Spectrum Disorder. Five individuals (participants) diagnosed with Autism Spectrum Disorder participated in the research. During the research, the participants were made to play 8 different educational games for 8 weeks, and 3 days a week for 1 hour; and the sessions during the research were recorded with a video camera. Research data were obtained before and after the 8-week educational game program by using flamingo test, vertical jump test, plate tapping test, sit and reach test, and by performance determination form for individuals with pervasive developmental disability. SPSS 25 package program was used in the analysis of the data. The Wilcoxon test, a nonparametric test, was used to evaluate pre- and post-test results. As a result of the study, it was found that the educational games have positive effects on some physical parameters (balance, flexibility, strength, hand-eye coordination) and social skills (matching skills, imitation skills, following instructions skills, visual support use, receptive language skills, communicative language skills, game and music skills, self-care skills, daily life skills, motor skills, socialization skills, and mathematics)

A framework for analyzing RFID distance bounding protocols

Many distance bounding protocols appropriate for the RFID technology have been proposed recently. Unfortunately, they are commonly designed without any formal approach, which leads to inaccurate analyzes and unfair comparisons. Motivated by this need, we introduce a unied framework that aims to improve analysis and design of distance bounding protocols. Our framework includes a thorough terminology about the frauds, adversary, and prover, thus disambiguating many misleading terms. It also explores the adversary's capabilities and strategies, and addresses the impact of the prover's ability to tamper with his device. It thus introduces some new concepts in the distance bounding domain as the black-box and white-box models, and the relation between the frauds with respect to these models. The relevancy and impact of the framework is nally demonstrated on a study case: Munilla-Peinado distance bounding protocol

Security and privacy in RFID systems

RFID is a leading technology that has been rapidly deployed in several daily life applications such as payment, access control, ticketing, e-passport, supply-chain, etc. An RFID tag is an electronic label that can be attached to an object/individual in order to identify or track the object/individual through radio waves. Security and privacy are two major concerns in several applications as the tags are required to provide a proof of identity. The RFID tags are generally not tamper-resistant against strong adversarial attacks. They also have limited computational resources. Therefore, the design of a privacy preserving and cost-effective RFID authentication protocol is a very challenging task for industrial applications. Moreover, RFID systems are also vulnerable to relay attacks (i.e., mafia, terrorist and distance frauds) when they are used for authentication purposes. Distance bounding protocols are particularly designed as a countermeasure against these attacks. These protocols aim to ensure that the tags are in a bounded area by measuring the round-trip delays during a rapid challenge-response exchange of short authentication messages. Several RFID distance bounding protocols have been proposed recently in the literature. However, none of them provides the ideal security against the terrorist fraud. Besides, the requirements of low resources and inefficient data management trigger to make use of cloud computing technology in RFID authentication systems. However, as more and more information on individuals and companies is placed in the cloud, concerns about data safety and privacy raise. Therefore, while integrating cloud services into RFID authentication systems, the privacy of tag owner against the cloud must also be taken into account. Motivated by this need, this dissertation contributes to the design of algorithms and protocols aimed at dealing with the issues explained above. First of all, we introduce two privacy models for RFID authentication protocols based on Physically Unclonable Functions (PUF). We propose several authentication protocols in order to demonstrate these models. Moreover, we study distance bounding protocols having bit-wise fast phases and no final signature. We give analysis for the optimal security limits of the distance bounding protocols. Furthermore, we propose a novel RFID distance bounding protocol based on PUFs and it satisfies the highest security levels. Finally, we provide a new security and privacy model for integrating cloud computing into RFID systems. For the sake of demonstration of this model, we also propose two RFID authentication protocols that require various computational resources and provide different privacy levels