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Showing papers in "Security and Communication Networks in 2011"


Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: A game theoretic investigation of the effects of deception on the interactions between an attacker and a defender of a computer network using a signaling game, a non-cooperative two player dynamic game of incomplete information.
Abstract: We perform a game theoretic investigation of the effects of deception on the interactions between an attacker and a defender of a computer network. The defender can employ camouflage by either disguising a normal system as a honeypot or by disguising a honeypot as a normal system. We model the interactions between defender and attacker using a signaling game, a non-cooperative two player dynamic game of incomplete information. For this model, we determine which strategies admit perfect Bayesian equilibria. These equilibria are refined Nash equilibria in which neither the defender nor the attacker will unilaterally choose to deviate from their strategies. We discuss the benefits of employing deceptive equilibrium strategies in the defense of a computer network. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

150 citations


Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: This paper presents an efficient bio-cryptographic security protocol designed for client/server authentication in current mobile computing environment, with a reasonable assumption that server is secure.
Abstract: With fast evolution of mobile devices and mobile network, the need of protecting user sensitive information locally and performing secure user authentication remotely become evermore increasing. Bio-cryptography is emerging as a powerful solution which can combine the advantages of conventional cryptography and biometric security. In this paper, we present an efficient bio-cryptographic security protocol designed for client/server authentication in current mobile computing environment, with a reasonable assumption that server is secure. In this protocol, fingerprint biometric is used in user verification, protected by a computationally efficient Public Key Infrastructure (PKI) scheme, Elliptic Curve Cryptography (ECC). The genuine fingerprint information is hidden in the feature vault which is the mixture of genuine and chaff features. Fingerprint features are not only used for biometric verification but also for cryptographic key generation. Our security analysis shows that the proposed protocol can provide a secure and trustworthy authentication of remote mobile users over insecure network. Experimental results on public domain database show an acceptable verification performance. We also tested the computational costs and efficiency of our protocol on the CLDC emulator using Java ME (previous J2ME) programming technology. The simulation results prove that the proposed protocol suits current mobile environment. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

102 citations


Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: This paper discusses the vision for people-centric sensing in assistive healthcare environments and study the security challenges it brings, and discusses the latest advances in security and privacy protection strategies that hold promise in this new exciting paradigm.
Abstract: As the domains of pervasive computing and sensor networking are expanding, there is an ongoing trend towards assistive living and healthcare support environments that can effectively assimilate these technologies according to human needs. Most of the existing research in assistive healthcare follows a more passive approach and has focused on collecting and processing data using a static-topology and an application-aware infrastructure. However, with the technological advances in sensing, computation, storage, and communications, a new era is about to emerge changing the traditional view of sensor-based assistive environments where people are passive data consumers, with one where people carry mobile sensing elements involving large volumes of data related to everyday human activities. This evolution will be driven by people-centric sensing and will turn mobile phones into global mobile sensing devices enabling thousands new personal, social, and public sensing applications. In this paper, we discuss our vision for people-centric sensing in assistive healthcare environments and study the security challenges it brings. This highly dynamic and mobile setting presents new challenges for information security, data privacy and ethics, caused by the ubiquitous nature of data traces originating from sensors carried by people. We aim to instigate discussion on these critical issues because people-centric sensing will never succeed without adequate provisions on security and privacy. To that end, we discuss the latest advances in security and privacy protection strategies that hold promise in this new exciting paradigm. We hope this work will better highlight the need for privacy in people-centric sensing applications and spawn further research in this area. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

40 citations


Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: A comparison of the advantages and disadvantages of the proposed schemes identifying their suitability under various conditions and addressing some of the challenges that need to be tackled in the future in order to realize the deployment of VANETs.
Abstract: Vehicular ad hoc networks (VANETs) are planned to be deployed within the next decade to improve driver safety, prevent collisions, and provide traffic optimization. Recent years have witnessed an increasing interest in the security schemes for VANETs as this area was relatively less explored compared to other areas such as medium access and routing. In particular, efficient authentication of the messages in a VANET with other desirable security features have been heavily studied. However, there are still several issues to be addressed before such authentication mechanisms can be readily and widely used in real-life deployments. In this paper, we examine several proposed authentication solutions and categorize them based on certain criteria. We provide a comparison of the advantages and disadvantages of the proposed schemes identifying their suitability under various conditions. Finally, to foster further research in the area, we address some of the challenges that need to be tackled in the future in order to realize the deployment of VANETs. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

39 citations


Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: This paper introduces a new method to identify someone using his biometrics in an encrypted way that combines Bloom Filters with Storage and Locality-Sensitive Hashing and is the first non-trivial identification scheme dealing with fuzziness and encrypted data.
Abstract: Biometrics make human identification possible with a sample of a biometric trait and an associated database. Classical identification techniques lead to privacy concerns. This paper introduces a new method to identify someone using his biometrics in an encrypted way. Our construction combines Bloom Filters with Storage and Locality-Sensitive Hashing. We apply this error-tolerant scheme, in a Hamming space, to achieve biometric identification in an efficient way. This is the first non-trivial identification scheme dealing with fuzziness and encrypted data. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

39 citations


Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: End-to-end security can be applied to wireless tele-cardiology application, with minimal processing, and with multi-scroll chaos implementation, CVD patients remain completely unidentified, upholding patients’ privacy and preventing spoof attacks.
Abstract: Electrocardiography (ECG) signal is popularly used for diagnosing cardiovascular diseases (CVDs). However, in recent times ECG is being used for identifying person. As ECG signals contain sensitive private health information along with details for person identification, it needs to be encrypted before transmission through public media. Moreover, this encryption must be applied with minimal delay for authenticating CVD patients, as time is critical for saving CVD affected patient’s life. Within this paper, we propose the usage of multi-scroll chaos to encrypt ECG packets. ECG packets are being encrypted by the mobile phones using the chaos key by patients’ subscribed in tele-cardiology applications. On the other hand, doctors and hospital attendants receive the encrypted ECG packets, which can be decrypted using the same chaos key. Using the techniques described in this paper, end-to-end security can be applied to wireless tele-cardiology application, with minimal processing. Our experimentation with 12 ECG segments shows that with multi-scroll chaos implementation, CVD patients remain completely unidentified, upholding patients’ privacy and preventing spoof attacks. Most importantly, the proposed method is 18 times faster than permutation-based ECG encoding, 25 times faster than wavelet-based ECG annonymization techniques and 31 times faster than noise-based ECG obfuscation techniques, establishing the proposed technique as the fastest ECG encryption system according to the literature. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

37 citations


Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: A tool to prevent Overbeck's attack is presented by Gabidulin, which makes the cryptographer define a proper column scrambler matrix over the extension field without violating the standard mode of GPT cryptosystem.
Abstract: The public key cryptosystem (PKC) based on rank error correcting codes (the GPT cryptosystem) was proposed in 1991. Use of rank codes in cryptographic applications is advantageous since it is practically impossible to utilize combinatoric decoding. This enabled using public keys of a smaller size. Several attacks against this system were published, including Gibson's attacks and more recently Overbeck's attacks. A few modifications were proposed withstanding Gibson's attack but at least one of them was broken by the stronger attacks by Overbeck. A tool to prevent Overbeck's attack is presented by Gabidulin, which makes the cryptographer define a proper column scrambler matrix over the extension field without violating the standard mode of GPT cryptosystem. In this paper, we apply this tool to another variant of the GPT cryptosystem. Furthermore we increase the security of the proposed system against all known attacks and reduce the public key size to 4 Kbits instead of 10 Kbits.

35 citations


Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: This work investigates the feasibility of ECG-based identity management in mobile health monitoring applications and proposes a novel framework that addresses this inadequacy, by updating a gallery template when feature matching is compromised.
Abstract: This work investigates the feasibility of ECG-based identity management in mobile health monitoring applications. A body area network that operates in conjunction with ECG biometric recognition is explored for mobile monitoring of patients, rescuers, pilots, soldiers, or field agents in general. Among the major challenges of this technology is the stability of the signals over the monitoring duration. Time dependency is responsible for ECG destabilization, which becomes a significant issue for reliable monitoring. We propose a novel framework that addresses this inadequacy, by updating a gallery template when feature matching is compromised. In addition, strategies for tackling privacy issues in medical data management are proposed. A protocol level solution is discussed, to deal with the ethical issues of this technology. An automatic way of aggregating and managing personal information is presented, designated to operate on the basis of anonymity. The experimental performance measured over long-ECG recordings demonstrates promising results. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

35 citations


Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: A novel secure real-time with load distribution (SRTLD) routing protocol that provides securereal-time data transfer and efficient distributed energy usage in WSN and ensures high packet throughput and minimized packet overhead.
Abstract: Wireless sensor network (WSN) is a wireless ad hocnetwork that consists of a very large number of tiny sensor nodes communicating with each other with limited power and memory constrain. WSN demands real-time forwarding which means messages in the network are delivered according to their end-to-end deadlines (packet lifetime). Since many sensor networks will be deployed in critical applications, security is essential. Recently, many real-time routing protocols have been proposed, but none is designed with security. This paper proposes a novel secure real-time with load distribution (SRTLD) routing protocol that provides secure real-time data transfer and efficient distributed energy usage in WSN. The SRTLD routing protocol ensures high packet throughput and minimized packet overhead. It has been successfully studied and verified through simulation and real test bed implementation. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

32 citations


Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: This paper examines the requirements for providing effective mediation and access control for mobile phones, and argues for user devices that enable predictable behavior in a network—where their trusted computing bases can protect key applications and create predictable network impact.
Abstract: Mobile phones have evolved from simple voice terminals into highly-capable, general-purpose computing platforms. While people are becoming increasingly more dependent on such devices to perform sensitive operations, protect secret data, and be available for emergency use, it is clear that phone operating systems are not ready to become mission-critical systems. Through a pair of vulnerabilities and a simulated attack on a cellular network, we demonstrate that there are a myriad of unmanaged mechanisms on mobile phones, and that control of these mechanisms is vital to achieving reliable use. Through such vectors, mobile phones introduce a variety of new threats to their own applications and the telecommunications infrastructure itself. In this paper, we examine the requirements for providing effective mediation and access control for mobile phones. We then discuss the convergence of cellular networks with the Internet and its impact on effective resource management and quality of service. Based on these results, we argue for user devices that enable predictable behavior in a network—where their trusted computing bases can protect key applications and create predictable network impact. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

26 citations


Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: It is proved that Lin et al.'s scheme that tried to strengthen the Hill cipher against the known-plaintext attack has several security flaws and is vulnerable to the chosen-ciphertext attack, and a secure and efficient symmetric cryptosystem based on affine transformation is introduced.
Abstract: In this paper, it is proved that Lin et al.'s scheme that tried to strengthen the Hill cipher against the known-plaintext attack has several security flaws and is vulnerable to the chosen-ciphertext attack. This paper also introduces a secure and efficient symmetric cryptosystem based on affine transformation. The proposed cryptosystem includes an encryption algorithm that is an improved variant of the Affine Hill cipher, and two cryptographic protocols that are introduced for the proposed cryptosystem. 1. Introduction The Hill cipher was invented in 1929 by Lester S. Hill [1, 2]. It is a famous polygram and classical ciphering algorithm based on matrix transformation that its attributes, including its cryptanalysis are described in some cryptographic textbooks [3, 4]. Although susceptibility of the Hill cipher to cryptanalysis has rendered it unusable in practice, it still serves an important pedagogical role in both cryptology and linear algebra. The Hill cipher is a block cipher that has several advantages such as disguising letter frequencies of the plaintext, its simplicity because of using matrix multiplication and inversion for encryption and decryption, and its high speed and high throughput [5] but it is vulnerable to the known-plaintext attack [6]. Several researchers tried to improve the security of the Hill cipher. Yeh et al. [7] used two co-prime base numbers that are securely shared between the participants but their scheme is not efficient and requires many manipulations. Saeednia [8] tried to make the Hill cipher secure using some random permutations of columns and rows of the key matrix but it is proved that his cryptosystem is vulnerable to the known-plaintext attack [9], the same vulnerability of the original Hill cipher. Ismail et al. [5] tried to improve the Hill cipher's security by introduction of an initial vector that multiplies successively by some orders of the key matrix to produce the corresponding key of each block but it has several inherent security problems [10]. Lin et al. [9] claimed that taking some random numbers and using a one-way hash function thwarts the known-plaintext attack to the Hill cipher but their scheme is not so

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: This paper presents a probing technique to remotely discover the last-matching rules of a firewall and studies experimentally the effectiveness of this probing technique taking into account important factors such as the firewall's motherboard architecture and load conditions at network links and hosts.
Abstract: In this paper we identify a potential Denial of Service (DoS) attack that targets the last-matching rules of the security policy of a firewall. The last-matching rules are those rules that are located at the bottom of the ruleset of a firewall's security policy, and would require the most processing time by the firewall. If these rules are discovered, an attacker can potentially launch an effective low-rate DoS attack to trigger worst-case or near worst-case processing, thereby overwhelming the firewall and bringing it to its knees. In this paper, we present a probing technique to remotely discover the last-matching rules of a firewall. We study experimentally the effectiveness of this probing technique taking into account important factors such as the firewall's motherboard architecture and load conditions at network links and hosts. In addition we examine the impact of launching a low-rate DoS attack on a firewall's performance. The performance is studied in terms of the firewall's CPU utilization and throughput, packet loss, and latency. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: This paper proposes a novel approach (denoted SCCR) to simultaneously achieve CCA security and collusion-resistance in PRE, which faces daunting new challenges and addresses these challenges by using CCA-secure (2, 2) threshold cryptosystem to obtain public verifiability and the method of key management in identity-based encryption (IBE) to achieve collusion- Resistance.
Abstract: By allowing a proxy to blindly perform meaningful transformations from one ciphertext to another, proxy re-encryption (PRE) is an important cryptographic primitive in many applications, such as encrypted email forwarding and distributed file system. Due to its usefulness, various PRE schemes have been proposed; however, only one can simultaneously achieve chosen ciphertext security (CCA security) and collusion-resistance. When such schemes are deployed, lack of CCA security will cause secret leaking, and lack of collusion-resistance will cause non-repudiation damage. In this paper, we propose a novel approach (denoted SCCR) to simultaneously achieve CCA security and collusion-resistance in PRE, which faces daunting new challenges. We address these challenges by using CCA-secure (2, 2) threshold cryptosystem to obtain public verifiability, and the method of key management in identity-based encryption (IBE) to achieve collusion-resistance. These two novel techniques have not been yet used in any previous PRE schemes. A unique characteristic of SCCR is that it is a generic construction which has more advantages than a concrete PRE scheme does. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: A scheme for network specific false alarm reduction in IDS is proposed, a threat profile of the network is created and IDS generated alarms are correlated using neural network.
Abstract: Intrusion Detection Systems (IDSs) are used to find the security violations in computer networks. Usually IDSs produce a vast number of alarms that include a large percentage of false alarms. One of the main reason for such false alarm generation is that, in most cases IDSs are run with default set of signatures. In this paper, a scheme for network specific false alarm reduction in IDS is proposed. A threat profile of the network is created and IDS generated alarms are correlated using neural network. Experiments conducted in a test bed have successfully filtered out most of the false alarms for a range of attacks yet maintaining the Detection Rate. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: KALwEN as discussed by the authors is a parameterized key management scheme that combines the best-suited cryptographic techniques in a seamless framework and is user-friendly in the sense that it requires no expert knowledge of a user and instead only requires a user to follow a simple set of instructions when bootstrapping or extending a network.
Abstract: Key management is the pillar of a security architecture. Body sensor networks (BSNs) pose several challenges–some inherited from wireless sensor networks (WSNs), some unique to themselves–that require a new key management scheme to be tailor-made. The challenge is taken on, and the result is KALwEN, a new parameterized key management scheme that combines the best-suited cryptographic techniques in a seamless framework. KALwEN is user-friendly in the sense that it requires no expert knowledge of a user, and instead only requires a user to follow a simple set of instructions when bootstrapping or extending a network. One of KALwEN's key features is that it allows sensor devices from different manufacturers, which expectedly do not have any pre-shared secret, to establish secure communications with each other. KALwEN is decentralized, such that it does not rely on the availability of a local processing unit (LPU). KALwEN supports secure global broadcast, local broadcast, and local (neighbor-to-neighbor) unicast, while preserving past key secrecy and future key secrecy (FKS). The fact that the cryptographic protocols of KALwEN have been formally verified also makes a convincing case. With both formal verification and experimental evaluation, our results should appeal to theorists and practitioners alike. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: A hardware-based mechanism focused on solving the protection of the agent problem, which is a well known problem named the ‘malicious host’ is presented, which bases its security in the trust and the security functionalities provided by the trusted platform module (TPM).
Abstract: Mobile agent is a promising paradigm for emerging ubiquitous computing and ambient intelligent scenarios. We believe that security is the most important issue for the widespread deployment of applications based on mobile agent technology. Indeed, community agrees that without the proper security mechanisms, use of mobile agent-based applications will be impossible. From our perspective, the security problem in mobile agents is the gathering of two subproblems; the problem of the agent protection and the problem of the host protection. This paper presents a hardware-based mechanism focused on solving the protection of the agent problem, which is a well known problem named the ‘malicious host’. The solution presented in this paper bases its security in the trust and the security functionalities provided by the trusted platform module (TPM). Thus, migration process of mobile agents is protected when it actually takes place. A complete description of the secure migration can be found in the secure migration protocol section of this paper. Moreover, a validation of this protocol was performed by means of the AVISPA tool suite. Additionally, a first study about the use of an alternative protocol as the direct anonymous attestation protocol was done. Finally, the result of this work is the Secure Migration Library for agents (SecMiLiA), which is completely described in following sections. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: This paper proposes a method that takes into consideration this aspect of user behavior while detecting masquerade attacks, based on the premise that the commands used by a legitimate user or an attacker may differ from the trained signature.
Abstract: Recently, researchers have proposed efficient detection mechanisms for masquerade attacks. Most of these techniques use machine learning methods to learn the behavioral patterns of users and to check if an observed behavior conforms to the learnt behavior of a user. Masquerade attack is detected when the observed behavior, reportedly of a specific user, does not match with the learnt pattern of this user's past data. A major shortcoming in this process is that the user may legitimately deviate temporarily from its past behavior. If the deviation is large and near-permanent, it is desirable that such deviations are captured in a detection mechanism. We propose, in this paper, a method that takes into consideration this aspect of user behavior while detecting masquerade attacks. Our scheme is based on the premise that the commands used by a legitimate user or an attacker may differ from the trained signature. But the deviation of the legitimate user is momentary whereas that of an attacker persists longer. By introducing this novel concept in the detection mechanism, the performance improves. We show this empirically using several benchmark datasets. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: This model defines the service as a fined-grained quality-of-service (QoS) (N-dimensional vector), and in order to accurate the recommendation trust computing, several concepts are introduced to reflect the recommenders' current status, history behavior, and the gap between these two behaviors.
Abstract: Trust research is a key issue in peer-to-peer (P2P) networks. Reputation-based trust models as one of the good solutions to resolve the trust problems in P2P network are received more and more attention in recent years. One of the fundamental challenges is to capture the evolving nature of a trust relationship between peers and reflect the varied bias or preference of peers in a distributed and open environment. In this paper, we present a fine-grained trust computation model for P2P networks. Our model defines the service as a fined-grained quality-of-service (QoS) (N-dimensional vector), and in order to accurate the recommendation trust computing, several concepts are introduced to reflect the recommenders' current status, history behavior, and the gap between these two behaviors. Also, we firstly introduce the Gauss-bar function to measure the preference similarity between peers. All these will result in a flexible model which represents trust in a manner more close to human intuitions and satisfies the diverse QoS requirements of peers in P2P networks. The extensive simulations have confirmed the efficiency of our model. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: This paper critically reviews the primary advances on fingerprint orientation estimation and addressesvantages and limitations of existing methods.
Abstract: Fingerprint orientation plays important roles in fingerprint enhancement, fingerprint classification, and fingerprint recognition. This paper critically reviews the primary advances on fingerprint orientation estimation. Advantages and limitations of existing methods have been addressed. Issues on future development have been discussed. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: This paper provides users with quantitative information of the confidence a relying party can have about a certificate (QoCER) and presents a formal model of trust to calculate these values.
Abstract: The growing number of Public Key Infrastructure (PKI) and the increasing number of situations where partners of a transaction may carry certificates signed by different certification authority (CA) points out the problematic of trust between the different CAs. Several trust models, like the hierarchy model, cross-certification model, and bridge CA model were proposed in order to establish and extend the domain of trust of relying parties (RP). However, each model has disadvantages and especially the scalability in large open networks like Internet. In this paper, we provide users with quantitative information of the confidence a relying party can have about a certificate. We call this information quality of certificate (QoCER). QoCER depends on two parameters which are the quality of procedures announced in the certificate policy (CP) and the quality of CA (QoCA) that represents the evaluation of the CA commitment to its policy. QoCA is calculated based on the recommendation of different actors (audit agency, RP, etc.). QoCER is balanced by another information that represents the confidence on QoCA calculation. We present a formal model of trust to calculate these values. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: This paper proposes an intrusion detection system (IDS) for a typical VANET scenario underlain on the concepts of learning automata (LA), and finds the solution approach to be effective in detecting malicious packets in the system.
Abstract: A number of security concerns are associated with vehicular ad hoc networks (VANET) – some primarily related with the transmission issues between the vehicles and the base stations, while others related with the privacy of the end-users. Security in VANET is of significant importance, considering the scale of the possible deployment of VANET and their role as a traffic manager. In this paper, we propose an intrusion detection system (IDS) for a typical VANET scenario. Our solution approach is underlain on the concepts of learning automata (LA). To the best of our knowledge, no attempts have been made so far to develop any LA-based solution for VANETs. We have designed this system considering the privacy issues involved with the identification of each vehicle. We have evaluated the performance of our proposed solution by conducting a variety of experiments and have found our solution approach to be effective in detecting malicious packets in the system. Specifically, the proposed solution is capable of detecting up to around 90–95% of the malicious packets in the system. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: This paper proposes a new random key pre-distribution scheme that always defines a relationship between the ids of neighbor nodes and the keys possessed by those nodes while maintaining the required randomness in choice of keys.
Abstract: Key establishment in sensor networks is a challenging problem because of resource constraints of the sensors. Due to resource limitations and vulnerable to physical capture of the sensor nodes, the classical public-key routines are impractical in most sensor network architectures. In this paper, we propose a new random key pre-distribution scheme. Our scheme always defines a relationship between the ids of neighbor nodes and the keys possessed by those nodes while maintaining the required randomness in choice of keys. Our proposed scheme provides better security against node capture attack than the existing random key pre-distribution schemes. Moreover, it has better trade-off between communication overhead, network connectivity and security against node capture compared to the existing random key pre-distribution schemes. In addition, it supports dynamic node addition efficiently after initial deployment of the nodes in the network. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: This paper proposes a scheme to achieve non-transferability for any malicious, but computationally bounded, legitimate credential owner.
Abstract: In credential systems, which allow the construction of privacy-preserving access control infrastructures in online environments, credential transfer occurs when Alice gives her private key to another entity who can then freely use Alice's credential as if it was his/her own. Prior approaches to limit credential transfer require tamper-resistant user hardware, or are ineffective against closely knit groups of users who are willing to share personal or valuable information with each other. In this paper we propose a scheme to achieve non-transferability for any malicious, but computationally bounded, legitimate credential owner. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: The results suggest that eDare can detect and remove unknown malware effectively and collaborative feedback and tips from end-users are meshed into the identification process, making tackling of suspect files, whose impact can be assessed on a large, distributed scale, possible.
Abstract: The early detection, alert and response (eDare) framework is presented in this paper. The goal of this framework is to address the risks stemming from malicious software propagating via networks operated by Internet/network service providers (ISP/NSP). To achieve this goal, eDare employs network-based traffic scanning appliances that enable sanitation of Internet traffic of known malware. Remaining traffic is extracted and various types of algorithms are invoked in an attempt to detect instances of previously un-encountered malware and to generate a unique and simple byte-string signature for such malware. That signature is immediately uploaded to the aforementioned network traffic scanners. To augment judgments of the algorithms, human experts are consulted for assistance in classifying files suspected of being malware about which the automatic detection algorithms are not sufficiently decisive. Finally, collaborative feedback and tips from end-users are meshed into the identification process. This makes tackling of suspect files, whose impact can be assessed on a large, distributed scale, possible. The system incorporates static and behavioral analysis of malware and novel automatic signature generation algorithm. eDare was implemented and tested using an evaluation environment especially developed for that purpose. The results suggest that eDare can detect and remove unknown malware effectively. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: Compared to the existing schemes, the proposed identity-based threshold signcryption scheme is more secure, more flexible, and the simulative game of the security proof in the schemes is more perfect.
Abstract: An identity-based threshold signcryption scheme for multiple receivers is proposed. For the n specified receivers, the ciphertext can be decrypted and verified when arbitrary t or more receivers work together. The steps of the private keys extraction, the signcryption, the decryption, and the verification are introduced in detail. The chosen-ciphertext security of the scheme is proved formally. The comparisons to the existing schemes show that the proposed scheme is more secure, more flexible, and the simulative game of the security proof in the scheme is more perfect. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: A stronger security model is described and the security of the scheme is proved in this framework achieving a better reduction cost compared to BIO-IBE and provides security against DoS attacks and better efficiency in terms of the key generation and decryption algorithms compared to the existing fuzzy IBE schemes.
Abstract: Recently, Sarier 1 proposed an efficient biometric Identity Based Encryption (IBE) scheme called BIO-IBE using the Sakai Kasahara Key Construction and proved its security in the Random Oracle Model (ROM) based on the well-exploited k-BDHI computational problem. Despite its efficiency compared to other fuzzy IBE systems implemented for biometric identities, BIO-IBE is not secure against a new type of denial of service (DoS) attack that we present. In this context, we describe a new biometric IBE scheme and show that our scheme is immune against this attack due to the signature applied on the public value PAR of the user. This way, the sender can detect whether PAR of the receiver that is stored publicly is modified by an active adversary, thus the generation of a ciphertext based on a wrong identity is avoided. The main difference of the new scheme is the structure of the key generation algorithm, where a unique biometric identity string ID obtained from the biometric attributes is used instead of picking a different polynomial for each user as in other fuzzy IBE schemes. In addition to the well-defined security model for current fuzzy IBE schemes, we describe a stronger security model and prove the security of our scheme in this framework achieving a better reduction cost compared to BIO-IBE. Finally, our scheme provides security against DoS attacks and better efficiency in terms of the key generation and decryption algorithms compared to the existing fuzzy IBE schemes. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: It is shown that a global attacker who can eavesdrop on the overall data transmissions and count them can simply visualize the transmissions and infer contextual information.
Abstract: The identity and/or location of communicating entities in wireless ad hocnetworks is extremely important due to the potential of their being identified and subsequently subjected to cyber or physical attacks. In this paper, we show that a global attacker who can eavesdrop on the overall data transmissions and count them can simply visualize the transmissions and infer contextual information. Current approaches to obfuscate the locations of source and destinations do not provide protection against such attacks. We propose two novel techniques (1) SECLOUD: Source and Destination Seclusion using Clouds to obfuscate the true source/destination nodes and make them indistinguishable among a group of neighbor nodes, and (2) ANONYRING: Anonymous Ring which hides the source/destination nodes within a group of nodes that form a ring. Both proposed techniques work well even under network-wide traffic visualization by a global attacker. Furthermore the proposed techniques are shown viasimulation to be superior to existing schemes in the literature. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: A delay efficient authentication scheme for VANETs which is based on group communication based on symmetric-key techniques within each group which is handled by the group leader, which confirmed the efficiency in terms of delay with respect to other existing techniques.
Abstract: Cooperative collision warnings (CCWs) is one of the important applications of Vehicular Ad-Hoc Networks (VANETs) where secure and timely delivery of messages to the neighboring vehicles are needed. Secure communication is as important as timely communication to take proper actions in order to avoid collisions and thus prevent fatal accidents. However, security and delay are two competing metrics since security brings additional processing overhead, increasing the packet delays. While symmetric-key-based security techniques can be more efficient as opposed to public-key cryptography (PKC) in terms of delay, they introduce significant key maintenance overheads with the increased number of vehicles in VANETs. To alleviate this overhead and take the advantage of faster processing, we exploit the natural group behavior in CCW applications. We propose a delay efficient authentication scheme for VANETs which is based on group communication. Groups are created and maintained dynamically led by leader vehicles. Since the data communication within the groups will be dominating the overall packet traffic, we utilize symmetric-key techniques within each group which is handled by the group leader. Group creations on the other hand are less frequent events and thus are done by PKC. We analyzed the security properties of our proposed scheme and tested it with real-world vehicle data. Simulations results confirmed the efficiency in terms of delay with respect to other existing techniques. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: This work proposes EnPassant, a system for using disruption-tolerant networking in privacy-preserving way, and describes a set of protocols that explore a practical range of tradeoffs between privacy and communication costs by modifying how closely the protocol adheres to the optimal predicted path.
Abstract: Disruption-tolerant networking holds a great deal of potential for making communications easier and more flexible in pervasive assistive environments. However, security and privacy must be addressed to make these communications acceptable with respect to protecting patient privacy. We propose EnPassant, a system for using disruption-tolerant networking in privacy-preserving way. EnPassant uses concepts from anonymous communications, re-routing messages through groups of peer nodes to hide the relation between the sources and destinations. We describe a set of protocols that explore a practical range of tradeoffs between privacy and communication costs by modifying how closely the protocol adheres to the optimal predicted path. We also describe the cryptographic tools needed to facilitate changes in-group membership. Finally, we present the results of extensive trace-based simulation experiments that allow us to both compare between our proposed protocols and observe the costs of increasing the number of groups and intermediate nodes in a path. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: A lower bound on the minimum number of hops on a good route is provided and it is shown that the effect of error in the location information is negligible.
Abstract: Most of the protocols to defend ad hoc networks against wormhole attacks rely on ‘trust your neighbor’ relationship. In this paper, we present an end-to-end algorithm which is more efficient than the existing algorithm both in terms of space and time. As our algorithm does not require speed and time, we do not need clock synchronization. We prove that our algorithm is able to detect wormholes with tunnel length greater than or equal to , where , is the minimum communication range, is the maximum communication range between any two nodes, and is path length in terms of the number of hop-counts. However, with the help of simulations we show that we are able to detect wormholes even when tunnel length is much less than . We also studied the effect of error in the positions of the node on the wormhole detection capability. In the absence of any error in the location, there are no false alarms and in the presence of error the effect on detection capability is negligible. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.