A distributed key establishment scheme for wireless mesh networks using identity-based cryptography

In this paper, we propose a secure and efficient key establishment scheme designed with respect to the unique requirements of Wireless Mesh Networks. Our security model is based on Identity-based key establishment scheme without the utilization of a trusted authority for private key operations. Rather, this task is performed by a collaboration of users; a threshold number of users come together in a coalition so that they generate the private key. We performed simulative performance evaluation in order to show the effect of both the network size and the threshold value. Results show a tradeoff between resiliency and efficiency: increasing the threshold value or the number of mesh nodes also increases the resiliency but negatively effects the efficiency. For threshold values smaller than 8 and for number of mesh nodes in between 40 and 100, at least 90% of the mesh nodes can compute their private keys within at most 70 seconds. On the other hand, at threshold value 8, an increase in the number of mesh nodes from 40 to 100 results in 25% increase in the rate of successful private key generations

Secure key agreement using pure biometrics

In this paper, we propose a novel secure key agreement protocol that uses biometrics with unordered set of features. Our protocol enables the user and the server to agree on a symmetric key, which is generated by utilizing only the feature points of the user's biometrics. It means that our protocol does not generate the key randomly or it does not use any random data in the key itself. As a proof of concept, we instantiate our protocol model using fingerprints. In our protocol, we employ a threshold-based quantization mechanism, in order to group the minutiae in a predefined neighborhood. In this way, we increase the chance of user-server agreement on the same set of minutiae. Our protocol works in rounds. In each round, depending on the calculated similarity score on the common set of minutiae, the acceptance/rejection decision is made. Besides, we employ multi-criteria security analyses for our proposed protocol. These security analyses show that the generated keys possess acceptable randomness according to Shannon's entropy. In addition, the keys, which are generated after each protocol run, are indistinguishable from each other, as measured by the Hamming distance metric. Our protocol is also robust against brute-force, replay and impersonation attacks, proven by high attack complexity and low equal error rates

A survey on the development of security mechanisms for body area networks

Advances in lightweight, small-sized and low-power sensors led to the development of wearable biosensors, and thus, to the accurate monitoring of human periphery. On top of this, pervasive computing has been improved and technologies have been matured enough to build plug-and-play body area networks (BANs). In a BAN, the main functionality of a node is to effectively and efficiently collect data from vital body parts, share it with the neighbors and make decisions accordingly. Because of the fact that the captured phenomenon is highly sensitive to privacy breaches in addition to being transmitted using the wireless communication medium, BANs require a security infrastructure. However, due to the extreme energy scarcity, bandwidth and storage constraints of the nodes, conventional solutions are inapplicable. In this survey, we present an overview of BANs and provide a detailed investigation into the developed security infrastructures. We examined the literature and combined the corresponding proposals under two major classes: (i) pure-cryptographic security mechanisms and (ii) bio-cryptographic security mechanisms. Pure-cryptographic methods include constructions based on the well-known symmetric or asymmetric cryptography primitives and they are suitable for securing the communication between any two network entities. On the other hand, bio-cryptographic methods benefit from the network's context-awareness and to the best of our knowledge, they have been utilized only for the communication among the biosensors

A role and activity based access control for secure healthcare systems

We introduce a novel access control mechanism in order to safeguard privacy of medical data of patients in dynamic environments. Our access control model takes advantages from role-based access control (RBAC) and criticality aware access control (CAAC). In this way, our original approach allows the medical professionals with different roles to be granted access to medical records of patients automatically and without explicit request in case of a medical emergency. In this context, we design secure and privacy aware protocols from initial login to patients' medical data transmission and retrieval by the medical professionals. Moreover, we formally define access control policies for our system. Finally we show the feasibility of our approach by implementation and performance evaluation

Feature-level fusion of physiological parameters to be used as cryptographic keys

In this paper, we propose two novel feature-level fused physiological parameter generation techniques: (i) concat-fused physiological parameter generation, and (ii) xor-fused physiological parameter generation, output of which can be used to secure the communication among the biosensors in Body Area Network (BAN). In these physiological parameter generation techniques, we combine a time-domain physiological parameter with a frequency-domain physiological parameter, in order to achieve robust performance compared to their singular versions. We analyze both the performance and the quality of the outcomes. Our results show that we generate good candidates of physiological parameters that can be used as cryptographic keys to provide security for the intra-network communication in BANs

Deriving cryptographic keys from physiological signals

Biosensors aim at providing pervasive healthcare by collecting and communicating highly sensitive medical information. Due to their extreme limitations, lightweight and secure key management infrastructures are required. For this reason, biosensors use physiological parameters that are generated from different vital signals (i.e., electrocardiogram, photoplethysmogram, blood pressure) to protect the exchanged private health information. In this paper, we define two novel physiological parameter generation techniques and analyze both the performance and the quality of the outcomes. Our results show that we generate good candidates of physiological parameters that can be used as cryptographic keys to secure the communication among the biosensors

SKA-PS: secure key agreement protocol using physiological signals

In this paper, we propose SKA-PS, a novel Secure Key Agreement protocol using Physiological Signals, for Body Area Networks (BANs). Our protocol generates symmetric cryptographic keys using the physiological parameters derived from the physiological signals of the users, such as electrocardiogram, photoplethysmogram and blood pressure. In our construction, we reduce the problem of secure key agreement into the problem of set reconciliation by representing the physiological parameter sequences generated from the physiological signals of the BAN users with appropriate sets. When properly selected parameters are applied, biosensors of the same BAN user can agree on symmetric cryptographic keys with remarkably high true match and low false match rates (as much as 100% and 0.46% for pairwise execution, and 100% and 0.26% for group execution, respectively), and low communication, computational and storage costs. We implemented our model in an embedded system, thus the results show real implementation outcomes. Moreover, we comparatively analyze the performance of SKA-PS with two existing bio-cryptographic key agreement protocols and show that SKA-PS outperforms both in all performance metrics

SKA-CaNPT: secure key agreement using cancelable and noninvertible biometrics based on periodic transformation

Nowadays, many of the security-providing applications use biometrics-based authentication. However, since each person's biometrics is unique and non-replaceable, once it is compromised, it will be compromised forever. Therefore, it is hard for the users to trust biometrics. To overcome this problem, in this paper, we propose a novel secure key agreement protocol SKA-CaNPT. Here, we use a periodic transformation function to make biometrics cancelable and noninvertible. At the very end of our SKA-CaNPT protocol, the user and the server make an agreement on a symmetric shared key that is based on the feature points of the user's biometrics. Therefore, if the transformed data is compromised, then just by changing one of the inputs of the transformation function, we can renew the cryptographic key. As a proof of concept, we apply our SKA-CaNPT protocol on fingerprints. Besides, we apply different security analyses on our protocol. We use Shannon's entropy and Hamming distance metrics to analyze the randomness and the distinctiveness of the agreed keys. Moreover, according to the low IKGR (Incorrect Key Generation Rate), high CKGR (Correct Key Generation Rate) and high attack complexity possessed by our SKA-CaNPT protocol, we can conclude that our scheme is secure against brute-force, replay and impersonation attacks

Is the word "osteoporosis" a reason for kinesiophobia?

Osteoporosis is a systemic skeletal disease that causes weakening of the bones which increases the risk of fractures. Especially hip fractures lead to substantial physical, psychological, social and economic burden both for the patients and the governments. Exercises and physically active life style are essential preventive and therapeutic approaches for osteoporosis. Kinesiophobia is an irrational fear of movement due to the belief of susceptibility to injury. It is associated with lower levels of physical activity. Having a diagnosis of osteoporosis without an adequate education about the disease may lead to kinesiophobia in patients due to an illogical belief about increasing possibility of falls and related fractures during physical activity

The influence and impact of directors on conflict of interest in sport management

In this paper, we propose an efficient and secure key establishment protocol that is tailored for Wireless Mesh Networks. The protocol is based on identity-based key establishment, but without the utilization of a trusted authority for private key generation. Instead, this task is performed by the collaboration of mesh nodes; a number of users exceeding a certain threshold form a coalition to generate private keys for the network users. We performed simulative performance evaluation in order to show the effect of both the threshold value and the network size, i.e., total number of nodes, on the latency of key establishment and on the success percentage of user private key generation. Results reveal a trade-off between resiliency and efficiency; increasing the threshold value also increases the resiliency of the network, but negatively effects its latency and success percentage. For the threshold values that are smaller than 10 and for a minimum of 40 mesh nodes, at least 93% of the user private keys can be computed within at most 2 min. We also discuss the security of our protocol. We show that our protocol is secure against both outsider malicious and insider semi-honest adversaries