Certificateless cryptography involves a Key Generation Center (KGC) which issues a partial key to a user and the user also independently generates an additional public/secret key pair in such a way that the KGC who knows only the partial key but not the additional secret key is not able to do any cryptographic operation on behalf of the user; and a third party who replaces the public/secret key pair but does not know the partial key cannot do any cryptographic operation as the user either. We call this attack launched by the third party as the key replacement attack. In ACISP 2004, Yum and Lee proposed a generic construction of digital signature schemes under the framework of certificateless cryptography. In this paper, we show that their generic construction is insecure against key replacement attack. In particular, we show that the security requirements of their generic building blocks are insufficient to support some security claim stated in their paper. We then propose a modification of their scheme and show its security in a new and simplified security model. We show that our simplified definition and adversarial model not only capture all the distinct features of certificateless signature but are also more versatile when compared with all the comparable ones. We believe that the model itself is of independent interest.

Key replacement attack against a generic construction of certificateless signature

Recently, wireless sensor networks (WSNs) have been deployed for a wide variety of applications, including military sensing and tracking, patient status monitoring, traffic flow monitoring, where sensory devices often move between different locations Securing data and communications requires suitable encryption key protocols In this paper, we propose a certificateless-effective key management (CL-EKM) protocol for secure communication in dynamic WSNs characterized by node mobility The CL-EKM supports efficient key updates when a node leaves or joins a cluster and ensures forward and backward key secrecy The protocol also supports efficient key revocation for compromised nodes and minimizes the impact of a node compromise on the security of other communication links A security analysis of our scheme shows that our protocol is effective in defending against various attacks We implement CL-EKM in Contiki OS and simulate it using Cooja simulator to assess its time, energy, communication, and memory performance

Effective Key Management in Dynamic Wireless Sensor Networks

Dynamic wireless sensor networks (DWSNs) as an important means of industrial data collection are a key part of industrial Internet of Things (IIoT), where security and reliability are important characteristics of trustworthiness. However, due to dynamics, the security of key management is caused by a nontrusted base station (BS) that is easily targeted. For the distribution key management scheme, the avianized BS also causes additional and heavy overhead on sensors. To tackle these issues, in this article, we propose a blockchain-based secure key management scheme (BC-EKM). First, stake blockchain is constructed based on the hybrid sensor network. In addition, we design a secure cluster formation algorithm and a secure node movement algorithm to implement key management, where stake blockchain as a trust machine replaces the majority functions of the BS. Finally, we conduct the security analysis and ample simulations. The results indicate that that the BC-EKM scheme is effective and efficient, and better suited to improve the trustworthiness of DWSNs in the IIoT.

A Blockchain-Based Secure Key Management Scheme With Trustworthiness in DWSNs

Security and privacy in RFID systems is an important and active research area. A number of challenges arise due to the extremely limited computational, storage and communication abilities of a typical RFID tag. This paper describes a step-by-step construction of a family of simple protocols for inexpensive untraceable identification and authentication of RFID tags. This work is aimed primarily at RFID tags that are capable of performing a small number of inexpensive conventional (as opposed to public key) cryptographic operations. It also represents the first result geared for so-called batch mode of RFID scanning whereby the identification (and/or authentication) of tags is delayed. Proposed protocols involve minimal interaction between a tag and a reader and place very low computational burden on the tag. Notably, they also impose low computational load on back-end servers.

A Family of Dunces: Trivial RFID Identification and Authentication Protocols.

This article proposes a fast reaching finite time synchronization approach for chaotic systems along with its application to medical image encryption. First, an adaptive terminal sliding mode tracking approach with fast reaching condition is designed to synchronize the chaotic systems at the transmitter and receiver ends in finite time. Then, a chaotic cryptosystem, using synchronized chaotic systems as secret keys generator, is proposed to enhance the security of medical image transmission and/or storage. The applicability and efficiency of the proposed synchronization approach is assessed using a simulation as well as an analytical study. The analysis encompassed security tools such as histogram analysis, correlation test, and information entropy change the rate of the number of pixels and unified average changing intensity. The obtained results confirmed the robustness and fast convergence rate of the proposed synchronization approach. The security analysis also shows that the proposed cryptosystem displays acceptable levels of resistance to various attacks.

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Fast Reaching Finite Time synchronization Approach for Chaotic Systems With Application in Medical Image Encryption

Many applications that utilise wireless sensor networks (WSNs) require essentially secure communication. However, WSNs suffer from some inherent weaknesses because of restricted communication and hardware capabilities. Key management is the crucial important building block for all security goals in WSNs. Most existing researches tried to assign keys assuming homogeneous network architecture. Recently, a few key management models for heterogeneous WSNs have been proposed. In this study, the authors propose a dynamic key management framework based on elliptical curve cryptography and signcryption method for heterogeneous WSNs. The proposed scheme has network scalability and sensor node (SN) mobility especially in liquid environments. Moreover, both periodic authentication and a new registration mechanism are proposed through prevention of SN compromise. The authors analyse some of the more seminal hierarchical heterogeneous WSN key management schemes and compare them with the proposed scheme. On comparing the proposed scheme with the more seminal hierarchical heterogeneous WSN key management schemes, the proposed framework individually proves to be better in terms of communication, computation and key storage.

Dynamic and secure key management model for hierarchical heterogeneous sensor networks

This paper proposes a chaotic secure communication system between a base transmitter station and mobile equipment. To make the chaotic keys, the Chua chaotic systems are used in the mobile equipmen...

Design of a secure communication system between base transmitter station and mobile equipment based on finite-time chaos synchronisation

Yeh et al. have recently proposed a mutual authentication protocol based on EPC Class-1 Gen.-2 standard. They claim their protocol is secure against adversarial attacks and also provides forward secrecy. In this paper we show that the proposed protocol does not have cited security features properly. A powerful and practical attack is presented on this protocol whereby the whole security of the protocol is broken. Furthermore, Yeh et al.'s protocol does not assure the untraceabilitiy and backwarduntraceabilitiy attributes. We also will propose our revision to safeguard the Yeh et al.'s protocol against cited attacks.

/pdf/attacks-on-a-lightweight-mutual-authentication-protocol-uzn35gkqja.pdf

Attacks on a lightweight mutual authentication protocol under EPC C-1 G-2 standard

Ubiquitousness of Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) systems with inherent weaknesses has been a cause of concern about their privacy and security. Therefore, secure protocols are essentially necessary for the RFID tags to guarantee privacy and authentication among them and the reader. This paper inspects privacy in the RFID systems. First, we survey four new-found RFID authentication protocols, and then, their weaknesses in formal privacy model are analyzed. Although the authors of the schemes claimed that their protocols completely resist privacy attacks, we formally prove that all of them suffer from the family of traceability attacks. Furthermore, not only are the four improved protocols proposed to prevent the aforementioned attacks, but also we provide formal analysis to guarantee the security and privacy of the proposed enhancements. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Unified privacy analysis of new‐found RFID authentication protocols

Nowadays low-cost RFID systems have moved from obscurity into mainstream applications which cause growing security and privacy concerns. The lightweight cryptographic primitives and authentication protocols are indispensable requirements for these devices to grow pervasive. In recent years, there has been an increasing interest in intuitive analysis of RFID protocols. This concept has recently been challenged by formal privacy models. This paper investigates how to analyse and solve privacy problems in formal model. First, we highlight some vague drawbacks especially in forward and backward traceability analysis and extend it in the simulation-based privacy model family. Then, the privacy weaknesses of three new-found RFID authentication protocols are analysed in formal privacy models and three improved protocols are proposed to prevent the aforementioned attacks.

Mahdi R. Alagheband

Papers

Dynamic and secure key management model for hierarchical heterogeneous sensor networks

Design of a secure communication system between base transmitter station and mobile equipment based on finite-time chaos synchronisation

Attacks on a lightweight mutual authentication protocol under EPC C-1 G-2 standard

Unified privacy analysis of new‐found RFID authentication protocols

Simulation-Based Traceability Analysis of RFID Authentication Protocols