A Multivariate Based Provably Secure Certificateless Signature Scheme with Applications to the Internet of Medical Things

Over the last few years, Internet of Medical Things (IoMT) has completely transformed the healthcare industry. It is bringing out the most notable, and unprecedented impacts on human health, and has totally changed the way we look at the healthcare industry. The healthcare sector all around the globe are leapfrogging, and adopting the technology, helping in transforming drastically in a very short span of time. However, as more and more number of medical devices are being connected to IoMT, security issues like ensuring authenticity and integrity of the transmitted data are also on the rise. In view of the context, there is a need of an efficient cryptographic primitive that can address these issues in a viable manner. A signature scheme seems to be the natural choice to mitigate the security concerns. But, traditional signature schemes, both PKI-based and Identity-based have their own disadvantages which makes them unsuitable for IoMT networks. Thus, to address the security issues and problems like certificate management and key escrow, herein, we put forward the {\em first} multivariate based certificateless signature scheme, namely {\sf Mul-CLS}, which is built on top of the intractability of multivariate-quadratic (MQ) problem. The fact that multivariate public key cryptosystem (MPKC) provides fast, post-quantum safe, and efficient primitives, makes it a front runner candidate among the other post-quantum cryptography candidates. Our scheme {\sf Mul-CLS} provides existential unforgeability against chosen message and chosen identity Super Type I and Super Type II adversary if solving the MQ problem is NP-hard. In addition to that, our proposed {\sf Mul-CLS} presents itself as a robust and cost-friendly cryptographic building block for building IoMT networks

Fair mPSI and mPSI-CA: Efficient Constructions in Prime Order Groups with Security in the Standard Model against Malicious Adversary

In this paper, we propose a construction of fair and efficient mutual Private Set Intersection (mPSI) with linear communication and computation complexities, where the underlying group is of prime order. The main tools in our approach include: (i) ElGamal and Distributed ElGamal Cryptosystems as multiplicatively Homomorphic encryptions, (ii) Cramer-Shoup Cryptosystem as Verifiable encryption. Our mPSI is secure in standard model against malicious parties under Decisional Diffie-Hellman (DDH) assumption. Fairness is achieved using an off-line semi-trusted arbiter. Further, we extend our mPSI to mutual Private Set Intersection Cardinality (mPSI-CA) retaining all the security properties of mPSI. More interestingly, our mPSI-CA is the first fair mPSI-CA with linear complexity

Secure and Efficient Multiparty Private Set Intersection Cardinality

The article of record as published may be found at http://dx.doi.org/10.3934/amc.2020071In the field of privacy preserving protocols, Private Set Intersection (PSI) plays an important role. In most of the cases, PSI allows two parties to securely determine the intersection of their private input sets, and no other information. In this paper, employing a Bloom filter, we propose a Multiparty Private Set Intersection Cardinality (MPSI-CA), where the number of participants in PSI is not limited to two. The security of our scheme is achieved in the standard model under the Decisional Diffie-Hellman (DDH) assumption against semi-honest adversaries. Our scheme is flexible in the sense that set size of one participant is independent from that of the others. We consider the number of modular exponentiations in order to determine computational complexity. In our construction, communication and computation overheads of each participant is O(v max k) except that the complexity of the designated party is O(v1), where v max is the maximum set size, v1 denotes the set size of the designated party and k is a security parameter. Particularly, our MSPI-CA is the first that incurs linear complexity in terms of set size, namely O(nv max k), where n is the number of participants. Further, we extend our MPSI-CA to MPSI retaining all the security attributes and other properties. As far as we are aware of, there is no other MPSI so far where individual computational cost of each participant is independent of the number of participants. Unlike MPSI-CA, our MPSI does not require any kind of broadcast channel as it uses star network topology in the sense that a designated party communicates with everyone else

Secure and efficient multiparty private set intersection cardinality

17 USC 105 interim-entered record; under review.The article of record as published may be found at http://dx.doi.org/10.3934/amc.2020071In the field of privacy preserving protocols, Private Set Intersection (PSI) plays an important role. In most of the cases, PSI allows two parties to securely determine the intersection of their private input sets, and no other information. In this paper, employing a Bloom filter, we propose a Multiparty Private Set Intersection Cardinality (MPSI-CA), where the number of participants in PSI is not limited to two. The security of our scheme is achieved in the standard model under the Decisional Diffie-Hellman (DDH) assumption against semi-honest adversaries. Our scheme is flexible in the sense that set size of one participant is independent from that of the others. We consider the number of modular exponentiations in order to determine computational complexity. In our construction, communication and computation overheads of each participant is O(vmaxk) except that the complexity of the designated party is O(v1), where vmax is the maximum set size, v1 denotes the set size of the designated party and k is a security parameter. Particularly, our MSPI-CA is the first that incurs linear complexity in terms of set size, namely O(nvmaxk), where n is the number of participants. Further, we extend our MPSI-CA to MPSI retaining all the security attributes and other properties. As far as we are aware of, there is no other MPSI so far where individual computational cost of each participant is independent of the number of participants. Unlike MPSI-CA, our MPSI does not require any kind of broadcast channel as it uses star network topology in the sense that a designated party communicates with everyone else

An Overview of Hash Based Signatures

Digital signatures are one of the most basic cryptographic building blocks which are utilized to provide attractive security features like authenticity, unforgeability, and undeniability. The security of existing state of the art digital signatures is based on hardness of number theoretic hardness assumptions like discrete logarithm and integer factorization. However, these hard problems are insecure and face a threat in the quantum world. In particular, quantum algorithms like Shor’s algorithm can be used to solve the above mentioned hardness problem in polynomial time. As an alternative, a new direction of research called post-quantum cryptography (PQC) is supposed to provide a new generation of quantum-resistant digital signatures. Hash based signature is one such candidate to provide post quantum secure digital signatures. Hash based signature schemes are a type of digital signature scheme that use hash functions as their central building block. They are efficient, flexible, and can be used in a variety of applications. In this document, we provide an overview of the hash based signatures. Our presentation of the topic covers a wide range of aspects that are not only comprehensible for readers without expertise in the subject matter, but also serve as a valuable resource for experts seeking reference material

Mul-IBS: A Multivariate Identity-Based Signature Scheme Compatible with IoT-based NDN Architecture

It has been forty years since the TCP/IP protocol blueprint, which is the core of modern worldwide Internet, was published. Over this long period, technology has made rapid progress. These advancements are slowly putting pressure and placing new demands on the underlying network architecture design. Therefore, there was a need for innovations that can handle the increasing demands of new technologies like IoT while ensuring secrecy and privacy. It is how Named Data Networking (NDN) came into the picture. NDN enables robust data distribution with interest-based content retrieval and leave-copy-everywhere caching policy. Even though NDN has surfaced as a future envisioned and decisive machinery for data distribution in IoT, it suffers from new data security challenges like content poisoning attacks. In this attack, an attacker attempts to introduce poisoned content with an invalid signature into the network. Given the circumstances, there is a need for a cost-effective signature scheme, requiring inexpensive computing resources and fast when implemented. An identity-based signature scheme (IBS) seems to be the natural choice to address this problem. Herein, we present an IBS, namely Mul-IBS relying on multivariate public key cryptography (MPKC), which leads the race among the post-quantum cryptography contenders. A 5-pass identification scheme accompanying a safe and secure signature scheme based on MPKC works as key ingredients of our design. Our Mul-IBS attains optimal master public key size, master secret key size, and user’s secret key size in the context of multivariate identity-based signatures. The proposed scheme Mul-IBS is proven to be secure in the model “existential unforgeability under chosen-message and chosen identity attack (uf-cma)” contingent upon the fact that Multivariate Quadratic (MQ) problem is NP-hard. The proposed design Mul-IBS can be utilized as a crucial cryptographic building block to build a robust and resilient IoT-based NDN architecture

Quantum Secure Threshold Private Set Intersection Protocol for IoT-Enabled Privacy Preserving Ride-Sharing Application

The Internet of Things (IoT)-enabled ride sharing is one of the most transforming and innovative technologies in the transportation industry. It has myriads of advantages, but with increasing demands there are security concerns as well. Traditionally, cryptographic methods are used to address the security and privacy concerns in a ride sharing system. Unfortunately, due to the emergence of quantum algorithms, these cryptographic protocols may not remain secure. Hence, there is a necessity for privacy-preserving ride sharing protocols which can resist various attacks against quantum computers. In the domain of privacy preserving ride sharing, a threshold private set intersection (TPSI) can be adopted as a viable solution because it enables the users to determine the intersection of private data sets if the set intersection cardinality is greater than or equal to a threshold value. Although TPSI can help to alleviate privacy concerns, none of the existing TPSI is quantum secure. Furthermore, the existing TPSI faces the issue of long-term security. In contrast to classical and post quantum cryptography, quantum cryptography (QC) provides a more robust solution, where QC is based on the postulates of quantum physics (e.g., Heisenberg uncertainty principle, no cloning theorem, etc.) and it can handle the prevailing issues of quantum threat and long-term security. Herein, we propose the first QC based TPSI protocol which has a direct application in privacy preserving ride sharing. Due to the use of QC, our IoT-enabled ride sharing scheme remains quantum secure and achieves long-term security as well

Quantum Secure Privacy Preserving Technique to Obtain the Intersection of Two Datasets for Contact Tracing

Contact tracing has emerged as a powerful and effective measure to curb the spread of contagious diseases. It is a robust tool, but on the downside, it possesses a risk of privacy violations as contact tracing requires gathering a lot of personal information. So there is a need for a cryptographic primitive that obfuscate the personal data of the user. Taking everything into account, private set intersection seems to be the natural choice to address the problem. Nearly all of the existing PSI protocols are relying on the number theoretic assumption based hard problems. However, these problems are not secure in quantum domain. As a consequence, it becomes essential to designing PSI that can resist quantum attack and provide long-term security. One may apply quantum cryptography to develop such PSI protocol. This paper deals with the design of PSI using quantum cryptography (QC), where the security depends on the principles of basic quantum mechanics. Our scheme achieves long-term security and remains secure against quantum attacks due to the use of QC. As opposed to the existing quantum PSI protocols, the communication and computation costs of our scheme are independent of the size of universal set. In particular, the proposed protocol achieves optimal communication and computation costs in the domain of quantum PSI. Moreover, we require only single photon quantum resources and simple single-particle projective measurements, unlike most of the existing quantum PSI protocols

Highly Potent 1H-1,2,3-Triazole-Tethered Isatin-Metronidazole Conjugates Against Anaerobic Foodborne, Waterborne, and Sexually-Transmitted Protozoal Parasites

Parasitic infections like amebiasis, trichomoniasis, and giardiasis are major health threats in tropical and subtropical regions of the world. Metronidazole (MTZ) is the current drug of choice for amebiasis, giardiasis, and trichomoniasis but it has several adverse effects and potential resistance is a concern. In order to develop alternative antimicrobials, a library of 1H-1,2,3-triazole-tethered metronidazole-isatin conjugates was synthesized using Huisgen\u27s azide-alkyne cycloaddition reaction and evaluated for their amebicidal, anti-trichomonal, and anti-giardial potential. Most of the synthesized conjugates exhibited activities against Trichomonas vaginalis, Tritrichomonas foetus, Entamoeba histolytica, and Giardia lamblia. While activities against T. vaginalis and T. foetus were comparable to that of the standard drug MTZ, better activities were observed against E. histolytica and G. lamblia. Conjugates 9d and 10a were found to be 2–3-folds more potent than MTZ against E. histolytica and 8–16-folds more potent than MTZ against G. lamblia. Further analysis of these compounds on fungi and bacteria did not show inhibitory activity, demonstrating their specific anti-protozoal properties

Highly Potent 1H-1,2,3-Triazole-Tethered Isatin-Metronidazole Conjugates Against Anaerobic Foodborne, Waterborne, and Sexually-Transmitted Protozoal Parasites

Parasitic infections like amebiasis, trichomoniasis, and giardiasis are major health threats in tropical and subtropical regions of the world. Metronidazole (MTZ) is the current drug of choice for amebiasis, giardiasis, and trichomoniasis but it has several adverse effects and potential resistance is a concern. In order to develop alternative antimicrobials, a library of 1H-1,2,3-triazole-tethered metronidazole-isatin conjugates was synthesized using Huisgen's azide-alkyne cycloaddition reaction and evaluated for their amebicidal, anti-trichomonal, and anti-giardial potential. Most of the synthesized conjugates exhibited activities against Trichomonas vaginalis, Tritrichomonas foetus, Entamoeba histolytica, and Giardia lamblia. While activities against T. vaginalis and T. foetus were comparable to that of the standard drug MTZ, better activities were observed against E. histolytica and G. lamblia. Conjugates 9d and 10a were found to be 2–3-folds more potent than MTZ against E. histolytica and 8–16-folds more potent than MTZ against G. lamblia. Further analysis of these compounds on fungi and bacteria did not show inhibitory activity, demonstrating their specific anti-protozoal properties