From the Publisher:
A valuable reference for the novice as well as for the expert who needs a wider scope of coverage within the area of cryptography, this book provides easy and rapid access of information and includes more than 200 algorithms and protocols; more than 200 tables and figures; more than 1,000 numbered definitions, facts, examples, notes, and remarks; and over 1,250 significant references, including brief comments on each paper.

Handbook of Applied Cryptography

Distributed Sensor Networks (DSNs) are ad-hoc mobile networks that include sensor nodes with limited computation and communication capabilities. DSNs are dynamic in the sense that they allow addition and deletion of sensor nodes after deployment to grow the network or replace failing and unreliable nodes. DSNs may be deployed in hostile areas where communication is monitored and nodes are subject to capture and surreptitious use by an adversary. Hence DSNs require cryptographic protection of communications, sensor-capture detection, key revocation and sensor disabling. In this paper, we present a key-management scheme designed to satisfy both operational and security requirements of DSNs. The scheme includes selective distribution and revocation of keys to sensor nodes as well as node re-keying without substantial computation and communication capabilities. It relies on probabilistic key sharing among the nodes of a random graph and uses simple protocols for shared-key discovery and path-key establishment, and for key revocation, re-keying, and incremental addition of nodes. The security and network connectivity characteristics supported by the key-management scheme are discussed and simulation experiments presented.

/pdf/a-key-management-scheme-for-distributed-sensor-networks-2arngir92b.pdf

A key-management scheme for distributed sensor networks

Usually, a proof of a theorem contains more knowledge than the mere fact that the theorem is true. For instance, to prove that a graph is Hamiltonian it suffices to exhibit a Hamiltonian tour in it; however, this seems to contain more knowledge than the single bit Hamiltonian/non-Hamiltonian.In this paper a computational complexity theory of the “knowledge” contained in a proof is developed. Zero-knowledge proofs are defined as those proofs that convey no additional knowledge other than the correctness of the proposition in question. Examples of zero-knowledge proof systems are given for the languages of quadratic residuosity and 'quadratic nonresiduosity. These are the first examples of zero-knowledge proofs for languages not known to be efficiently recognizable.

/pdf/the-knowledge-complexity-of-interactive-proof-systems-31apre0ecf.pdf

The knowledge complexity of interactive proof-systems

Security is important for many sensor network applications. A particularly harmful attack against sensor and ad hoc networks is known as the Sybil attack based on J.R. Douceur (2002), where a node illegitimately claims multiple identities. This paper systematically analyzes the threat posed by the Sybil attack to wireless sensor networks. We demonstrate that the attack can be exceedingly detrimental to many important functions of the sensor network such as routing, resource allocation, misbehavior detection, etc. We establish a classification of different types of the Sybil attack, which enables us to better understand the threats posed by each type, and better design countermeasures against each type. We then propose several novel techniques to defend against the Sybil attack, and analyze their effectiveness quantitatively.

/pdf/the-sybil-attack-in-sensor-networks-analysis-defenses-50jf578gym.pdf

The Sybil attack in sensor networks: analysis & defenses

Pairwise key establishment is a fundamental security service in sensor networks; it enables sensor nodes to communicate securely with each other using cryptographic techniques. However, due to the resource constraints on sensors, it is infeasible to use traditional key management techniques such as public key cryptography and key distribution center (KDC). To facilitate the study of novel pairwise key predistribution techniques, this paper presents a general framework for establishing pairwise keys between sensors on the basis of a polynomial-based key predistribution protocol [2]. This paper then presents two efficient instantiations of the general framework: a random subset assignment key predistribution scheme and a grid-based key predistribution scheme. The analysis in this paper indicates that these two schemes have a number of nice properties, including high probability (or guarantee) to establish pairwise keys, tolerance of node captures, and low communication overhead. Finally, this paper presents a technique to reduce the computation at sensors required by these schemes.

Establishing pairwise keys in distributed sensor networks

Bounds and constructions for unconditionally secure distributed key distribution schemes for general access structures

Metering schemes are cryptographic protocols to count the number of visits received by web sites. These measurement systems may be used to decide the amount of money to be paid to web sites hosting advertisements. Indeed, the amount of money paid by the publicity agencies to the web sites depends on the number of clients which visited the sites. In this paper we consider two generalizations of the metering scheme proposed by Naor and Pinkas (Vol. 1403 of LNCS, pp. 576–590). In their scheme a web site is paid if and only if the number of clients which visit the site is greater than a fixed threshold. We consider ramp metering schemes and metering schemes with pricing, that is, a scheme providing a tradeoff between the security and the complexity of information distribution and a scheme allowing to count the exact number of visits received by each server so that each server can be paid a proportional amount of money, respectively. We provide lower bounds on the size of the information distributed to clients and servers by these metering schemes and present schemes which achieve these lower bounds.

https://www.intlpress.com/site/pub/files/_fulltext/journals/cis/2002/0002/0001/CIS-2002-0002-0001-a001.pdf

Bounds and Constructions for Metering Schemes

In this paper we give a systematic analysis of the amount of randomness needed by Secret Sharing Schemes and Secure Key Distribution Schemes. We give both upper and lower bounds on the number of random bits needed by secret sharing schemes; such bounds match for several classes of secret sharing schemes. For secure key distribution schemes we provide a lower bound on the amount of randomness needed, thus showing the optimality of a recently proposed key distribution protocol.

Randomness in Distributed Protocols

Radio-Frequency Identification (RFID) is going to be the preferred technology for the realization of Machine Readable Travel Documents (MRTDs), and has been deployed in the last generation of e-passports. The proposed technical specifications for e-passport systems have been analyzed and criticized by security experts showing various functional, security and privacy deficiencies. The next generation of e-passports will implement more advanced cryptographic mechanisms, collectively known as Extended Access Control, and in particular a protocol referred to as Chip Authentication that protects an e-passport against cloning and transferability attacks. The Extended Access Control suite of protocols has found minor attention in the literature until now. In this paper we point out possible attacks against Chip Authentication as proposed in the current specifications for Extended Access Control. In particular, we show that the possibility of transferability and reset attacks weaken the claimed security of the underlying Chip Authentication protocol. We also discuss the shortcomings of the existing literature on the security definitions for resettable identification protocols and propose a new definition that is more suited for real world scenarios. Based on known cryptographic techniques we finally propose an efficient protocol that is instead secure against such attacks.

Resettable and Non-Transferable Chip Authentication for E-Passports

As the popularity of the Internet and the number of resources available on it have grown, potential customers are increasingly turning to it for information about products and services. Accordingly, online advertising is gaining a significant portion of the advertising market. The Internet has become a mainstream advertising channel, surpassing traditional media such as newspapers and radio in number of advertisements. Advertisers exploit the popularity of the best-known Web sites, typically search engines or portals, to advertise their products and reach the most potential customers. Traditional rating systems are of little value when applied to the Internet because of the enormous number of Web pages available to online advertisements. Counting accesses to a Web service is a difficult task and the data may be unreliable. Several metering techniques attempt to accurately measure the number of visits a site receives and hence the advertising exposure, but advertisers and auditing companies haven't adopted a standard technique. We propose a framework based on hash chains. Unlike similar approaches, our implementation minimizes the overhead associated with the additional communication required to implement the protocol while providing an efficient and flexible scheme. Furthermore, the resulting framework offers additional guarantees such as security and nonrepudiation of the produced proof of visits.

Carlo Blundo

Papers

Bounds and constructions for unconditionally secure distributed key distribution schemes for general access structures

Bounds and Constructions for Metering Schemes

Randomness in Distributed Protocols

Resettable and Non-Transferable Chip Authentication for E-Passports

A software infrastructure for authenticated Web metering