Teng Cheng, Qiang Liu, Qin Shi, Ze Yang · 7 authors
Near-field communication in VANETs can effectively reduce communication overhead compared to peer-to-peer communication. However, there is still plenty of room for improvements to be made to ensure identity authentication privacy protection and to enhance the security and efficiency of key distributions during transmissions. Therefore, this paper proposes an anonymous identity authentication and group key distribution scheme based on quantum random numbers. In the proposed scheme, (1) anonymous credentials for vehicles are generated by a combination of random numbers on the vehicle side and random numbers in the TA, and mutual recognition of vehicles and roadside identity is achieved through the TA in the form of zero-knowledge proof, which achieves privacy protection for the vehicle during authentication. (2) A combined key generation method was devised. The roadside and the TA in this case jointly generate the group key. The TA uses a previously filled quantum key to encrypt the group session key parameter GSPc generated by its quantum random number generator to ensure security, and the roadside obtains the group session key parameter GSPr by calculating the anonymous credentials of all legitimate vehicles to achieve fast updates of the group session key. This scheme achieves forward and backward security while guaranteeing one-at-a-time encryption. The signaling and computation overheads were calculated, and the signaling overhead was reduced by nearly half. In addition, the group key issuance time was significantly reduced compared with other schemes. Through formal security analysis and experimental verification, the security and feasibility of this protocol were proved.
Blockchain and zero-knowledge (ZK) proof techniques have advanced greatly in recent years, largely spurred by cryptocurrency development. They enable decentralized coordination of, and proofs of computational integrity in, the execution of privacy-preserving protocols.
Abstract As an important manifestation of the current development and transformation of the world’s power and energy industries, the virtual power plant is an important foundation for optimizing the layout of energy resources. However, since there are many open channels in the virtual power plant, adversaries can implement eavesdropping, replay, impersonation, forgery, and other attacks to access the virtual power plant, and even publish false data in the virtual power plant to disrupt the operation of the virtual power plant. In addition, it is easy for an adversary to deduce key information such as the layout of virtual power plant equipment through the identity of the device. In this context, to ensure the security and privacy of devices when accessing the platform, in this paper, we propose an efficient authentication protocol based on the elliptic curve cryptography and zero-knowledge proof, which requires only two information exchanges. Security analysis shows that the proposed protocol can meet security features such as mutual authentication, key agreement, perfect forward secrecy, and device anonymity. Performance analysis indicates that the proposed protocol achieves a reasonable balance between computational and signaling overhead, and it is more suitable for achieving efficient device authentication and privacy protection in virtual power plants.
This review presents a comprehensive analysis of contemporary scholarship pertaining to instant messaging (IM) user behavior and security protocols. Through meticulous selection, the authors highlight critical studies that illuminate optimized message consumption strategies and delve into the evolving landscape of IM security models. Focusing on the past four years, the review meticulously dissects cutting-edge advancements in this domain. A significant insight emerges: achieving optimal communication security necessitates the synergistic convergence of three fundamental techniques: end-to-end encryption for data confidentiality, decentralized authentication for independent user verification, and zero-knowledge proof for identity obscurity. The review postulates that the simultaneous integration of these elements within the application architecture is paramount for robust privacy and heightened security in the realm of IM.
Secure and efficient communication between vehicles is a prerequisite for providing intelligent services in the Internet of Vehicles (IoV). The openness and high mobility of the IoV communication environment impose stringent requirements on privacy and efficiency. Hence, we propose an efficient hybrid anonymous message authentication scheme for the IoV environment. The scheme is based on utilizing discrete logarithm zero-knowledge proofs and combines global pseudo identity for communication between network entities and local pseudo identity for communication within a domain, aiming to achieve efficient and authenticated secure communication among vehicles with conditional privacy protection. Additionally, through the design of a verification tuple, the message receiver can authenticate the sender's identity upon receiving the message, addressing security vulnerabilities arising from the inability of traditional schemes to promptly revoke malicious vehicles. The performance analysis indicates that the scheme, in comparison to other similar solutions, successfully mitigates the drawback of high time expenditure in traditional message authentication schemes, demonstrating its efficiency and applicability, meeting the security and efficiency requirements of communication in the IoV environment. The feasibility analysis reveals that the total delay introduced by the scheme is significantly lower than the communication duration, meeting the requirements of high-speed dynamic scenarios in the Io V.
A mobile ad-hoc network (MANET) necessitates appropriate routing techniques to enable optimal data transfer. The selection of appropriate routing protocols while utilizing the default settings is required to solve the existing problems. To enable effective video streaming in MANETs, this study proposes a novel optimized link state routing (OLSR) protocol that incorporates a deep-learning model. Initially, the input videos are collected from the Kaggle dataset. Then, the black-hole node is detected using a novel twin-attention-based dense convolutional bidirectional gated network (SA_ DCBiGNet) model. Next, the neighboring nodes are analyzed using trust values, and routing is performed using the extended osprey-aided optimized link state routing protocol (EO_OLSRP) technique. Similarly, the extended osprey optimization algorithm (EOOA) selects the optimal feature based on parameters such as node stability and link stability. Finally, blockchain storage is included to improve the security of MANET data using interplanetary file system (IPFS) technology. Additionally, the proposed blockchain system is validated utilizing a consensus technique based on delegated proof-of-stake (DPoS). The proposed method utilizes Python and it is evaluated using data acquired from various mobile simulator models accompanied by the NS3 simulator. The proposed model performs better with a packet-delivery ratio (PDR) of 91.6%, average end delay (AED) of 23.6 s, and throughput of 2110 bytes when compared with the existing methods which have a PDR of 89.1%, AED of 22 s, and throughput of 1780 bytes, respectively.
BACKGROUND: Ensuring the security and privacy of patient data is a critical concern in the healthcare industry. The growing utilization of electronic data transmission and storage in medical records has amplified apprehensions about data security. However, due to varying stakeholder interests, not all data can be freely shared, necessitating the development of secure protocols. MATERIALS AND METHODS: This study presents a highly secure protocol that integrates blockchain technology, patient biometric information, and robust cryptographic algorithms (elliptic curve cryptography (ECC) and advanced encryption algorithm (AEC)) to facilitate data encryption and decryption. The protocol encompasses secure login, secure key sharing, and data sharing mechanisms among miners, offering comprehensive security measures. To validate the effectiveness of the proposed protocol, both informal and formal security analyses are conducted. The security protocol description language in Scyther is utilized to evaluate the protocol's resilience against attacks. RESULTS: The culmination of this research is a secure protocol that leverages blockchain technology and ECC for the secure storage and sharing of medical records. The protocol covers all stages, including system setup, user registration, login mechanisms, key exchange between users and blockchain, communication between blockchains, and interaction with other miners, with a steadfast emphasis on security. Furthermore, the protocol's communication and computation costs are assessed, with a comparison to existing blockchain-based schemes. Informal proofs establish the protocol's security against common attacks faced by medical institutions. Formal simulation of the protocol using the Scyther tool provides definitive evidence of its resistance to attacks. CONCLUSIONS: As a result, this protocol presents a viable real-time implementation solution for safeguarding patient data within the healthcare domain, representing a significant contribution to data security.
In Industry 5.0, there are increasing demands for group communication with low energy consumption and high communication efficiency from a great number of Internet of Things (IoT) devices. However, group communication is still exposed to various security risks. Although some cryptographic schemes have been devised to facilitate secure group communication, the existing schemes generally rely on a trust authority to periodically issue certificates and have led to various issues, such as failing to support anonymity and flexible key management, and cannot resist the single point of failure. Therefore, in this work, leveraging Chebyshev chaotic maps and blockchain, an anonymous authentication and key management scheme is proposed to provide secure and efficient group key generation and management for mutual authentication between communication entities. The scheme exploits the blockchain to save the key materials associated with IoT devices, thereby it ensures data privacy and provides a secure environment for communication. The scheme also employs the Chebyshev polynomial to generate a group key for the IoT devices within a group, and later the group members holding the same group key can use it for secure communication. The formal and informal security analysis demonstrates that the proposed scheme can meet the security and flexible key management requirements. The detailed performance analysis shows that the proposed scheme has acceptable computation and communication energy consumption and provides superior security in comparison with existing schemes.
Internet of Things (IoT) paves the way for the modern smart industrial applications and cities. Trusted Authority acts as a sole control in monitoring and maintaining the communications between the IoT devices and the infrastructure. The communication between the IoT devices happens from one trusted entity of an area to the other by way of generating security certificates. Establishing trust by way of generating security certificates for the IoT devices in a smart city application can be of high cost and expensive. In order to facilitate this, a secure group authentication scheme that creates trust amongst a group of IoT devices owned by several entities has been proposed. The majority of proposed authentication techniques are made for individual device authentication and are also utilized for group authentication; nevertheless, a unique solution for group authentication is the Dickson polynomial based secure group authentication scheme. The secret keys used in our proposed authentication technique are generated using the Dickson polynomial, which enables the group to authenticate without generating an excessive amount of network traffic overhead. IoT devices' group authentication has made use of the Dickson polynomial. Blockchain technology is employed to enable secure, efficient, and fast data transfer among the unique IoT devices of each group deployed at different places. Also, the proposed secure group authentication scheme developed based on Dickson polynomials is resistant to replay, man-in-the-middle, tampering, side channel and signature forgeries, impersonation, and ephemeral key secret leakage attacks. In order to accomplish this, we have implemented a hardware-based physically unclonable function. Implementation has been carried using python language and deployed and tested on Blockchain using Ethereum Goerli's Testnet framework. Performance analysis has been carried out by choosing various benchmarks and found that the proposed framework outperforms its counterparts through various metrics. Different parameters are also utilized to assess the performance of the proposed blockchain framework and shows that it has better performance in terms of computation, communication, storage and latency.
Authentication and Session Key Generation Protocols (SKGPs) play an essential role in securing the communication channels of connected Internet of Things (IoT) devices. Recently, through blockchain integration, scholars have tried to enhance the security and applicability of SKGPs. In brief, blockchain is a distributed ledger technology that can provide interesting features such as immutability, transparency, and accountability without any need for the active participation of trusted parties. This survey presents a comprehensive critical review of blockchain-assisted authentication and SKGPs, suggested for different IoT domains, including Internet of Vehicles, Internet of Drones, and Industrial IoT. Our survey categorizes existing schemes based on several criteria, including IoT application domains, security aspects, and blockchain components. By presenting an unbiased critical review and taxonomy of protocols, we aim to clarify the key challenges. Our review will specifically indicate what properties authors gained or lost through the integration of blockchain. To our best knowledge, this survey is the only one that offers all prerequisites for interested readers in blockchain-integrated SKGPs, such as security features and attacks, attack models, verification tools, blockchain types, blockchain platforms, and consensus mechanisms. Further, our survey elaborates existing research gaps in blockchain-assisted SKGPs. In doing so, we aim to guide future research in this field and provide researchers with the essential information they require.
With the development of smart agricultural Internet of Things (IoT) projects, the need for extensive collaboration among agricultural devices from different domains has surged, necessitating the authentication of device identities for secure communication. Existing centralized architecture-dependent authentication mechanisms encounter issues like a sole point of failure and inefficiencies. Most authentication schemes are unable to support plentiful devices synchronously connecting to numerous data servers in other domains. To address these problems, we propose a many-to-many cross-domain authentication scheme based on the hybrid blockchain architecture for smart agriculture IoT networks. The scheme enables multiple devices simultaneously executing mutual authentication with several data service providers from other agricultural systems. This paper designs a groupable batch verification (GBV) algorithm that dynamically adjusts the batch size by performing group verification for a list of requests, enhancing the flexibility of cross-domain batch authentication. Furthermore, the proposed scheme provides a pseudonym update mechanism to protect the privacy of devices and guards services of different domains from illegal access by tracking malicious devices. The security analysis and performance evaluation demonstrate that the proposed scheme has superior security features and performance.
Intelligent transport systems (ITSs) aim to improve the performance of vehicular ad hoc networks (VANETs). It provides new opportunities for the Internet of Vehicle (IoVs) environment but poses some security concerns, especially concerning the Vehicle-to-Vehicle secure communication connection. The advent of the Next Generation technology for Internet of Vehicles (IOVs) secure communication has greatly benefited mobile networks. While 5G IoVs has many privacy and security challenges, several must be addressed. The confidentiality and privacy of data transmitted between vehicles, roadside units (RSU), and control rooms is a critical issue that must be addressed effectively. Blockchain technology presents a potential solution for securing the IOVs because of its decentralization, stability, and transaction tracking capabilities. To overcome these issues, this paper introduces BLAP-IOVs, a Blockchain-based Lightweight Authentication Protocol for generating Trustworthy IOVs communication. Comprehensive analysis and simulation results verify that the proposed BLAP-IOVs approach is efficient for secure information transmission in IOVs. Experimental results demonstrate that the proposed BLAP-IOVs approach achieves high success communication rates with acceptable vehicle-to-vehicle (V2V) loss and computation overhead. BLAP-IOVs suggest using Blockchain to improve Security, trust, and collaboration.
X. Sean Wang, Wei Wang, Cheng Huang, Ping Cao · 6 authors
Identity authentication is an essential element for industrial Internet of Things (IIoT), which guarantees secure access control for various devices. Existing authentication schemes face some security threats, including temporary secret leakage attack, key recovery attack, and forgery attack. In this article, we introduce a blockchain-based certificateless conditional anonymous authentication (BCCA) scheme specifically designed for IIoT. To optimize the authentication efficiency, BCCA employs elliptic curve design to avoid the relatively time-consuming bilinear pairing operation. Additionally, we introduce a precomputation strategy, allowing users to prepare essential materials in advance, and one-time verification support for batch signatures is applied, thus reducing authentication latency. To further enhance the security, random verification checksums are employed to counter key recovery attack, and a combination of long-term and short-term secrets is used to mitigate temporary secret leakage attack. Simulation results demonstrate that our scheme has advantages in both security and computational cost.
Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) networks are vulnerable to caller-ID (caller-identification) spoofing attacks due to the open nature of Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) signaling. Caller-ID spoofing is a critical security threat in modern telecommunication systems, allowing attackers to impersonate legitimate callers and gain access to sensitive information. While these attacks pose a significant threat to the telecom and financial industries, the existing solutions are limited to only closed-circuit options for subscribers of the same service provider. In this paper, we present a novel blockchain-based solution to effectively prevent caller-ID spoofing attacks in real time. Our approach employs a low-latency consensus algorithm to manage and verify end-to-end the caller-ID information of Internet Service Providers (ISPs) and institutions. We propose a two-step verification process, in which the accuracy and integrity of Automatic Number Identification (ANI) information is verified at different stages of the call. The proposed solution initiates a renewal of the ISP registration on every caller-ID change, making it unaffected by unusual situations such as roaming, the use of an IP-PBX (Internet Protocol Private Branch Exchange), or the use of a VPN (Virtual Private Network). We also discuss the proposed solution’s feasibility and potential deployment issues, including its integration into existing RFC (Request for Comments) efforts and the necessary regulations for service providers to demonstrate compliance. Furthermore, we address future research directions, such as handling complex call scenarios such as call forwarding and teleconference calls. Our approach not only improves the security of telecommunication systems but also provides an efficient and scalable solution to prevent caller-ID spoofing attacks.
The Internet of Things (IoT) has advanced smart grid (SG) infrastructure by providing smart meters (SMs) with enhanced capabilities such as the ability to leverage the Internet platform for bidirectional information exchange. Cryptographic keys are necessary for securely exchanging sensitive information between SMs and energy providers. To manage these keys, a secure key management protocol (KMP) with little overhead and influence on the SG’s overall performance is necessary. Although various KMPs are available for IoT-enabled SG environments, exiting solutions have several flaws in terms of certificate revocation, security requirements, and overall SG performance. To address these challenges, this paper proposes a blockchain-based computationally-efficient and highly-secure KMP for IoT-enabled SG environments. We show that, compared to existing solutions, the proposed KMP has better SM side efficiency with improved security and more properties such as perfect forward secrecy, conditional anonymity, and simple SM revocation.