Εφαρμογές της κρυπτογραφίας βάσει ταυτότητας στην ηλεκτρονική διακυβέρνηση και στη ναυσιπλοΐα

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This research focuses on investigating the feasibility of using Identity-Baced Cryptography (IBC) schemes to develop, implement, and test solutions to problems in e-governance and maritime security. IBC is a special form of public key cryptography which does not need to use certificates, as the public identifier of each entity is its own public key. In the last decade, the unique qualities of IBC have attracted research attention in areas where traditional public key cryptography methods do not lend themselves. We first examine the applicability of IBC and we then develop concrete proposals for leveraging IBC towards developing anonymous reporting in the e- government domain on one hand, and towards enhancing the security of marine navigation on the other. In modern, networked, societies electronic communication tends to substitute human contacts. This applies both to communications among individuals, but also to communications between individuals and authorities with responsibility for controlling and preventing delinquency or even crime. The electronic communication of a citizen who intends to report events or warnings to an authority potentially offers the advantage of distancing and anonymity. However, secure repeated anonymous communication between a reporter and an authority, in the long term, has not been made possible to date. In this thesis we study the use of IBC, in particular of the BLMQ-SKIBE and ECCSI-SAKKE schemes, to achieve secure, repeated anonymous communication between a reporter and the authorities, with the added advantage of offering the ability to the reporter, should and when they so wish, to reveal and prove their identity at any time. Then, we develop and evaluate an experimental implementation of our proposed solution based on the ECCSI-SAKKE scheme. The proposed solution addresses the needs of agencies with limited resources (human, financial, computing) at their disposal. Marine navigation has changed considerably in the last decades. Nowadays, one of the main technological aids of safe navigation is the Automatic Identification System (AIS), which is compulsorily on almost every ship and sends intermittently data in real time about a vessel's identity and voyage. AIS does not have mechanisms to protect such data from attacks, whose feasibility is not hard to recognize in a contemporary network and information systems environment. The lack of authentication of a vessel’s transmitted identity, and the preservation of the integrity of the data transmitted via its AIS enable attacks that will falsify either the vessel's identity or the data it transmits. The absence of mechanisms to protect the confidentiality of the transmitted data allows potential pirates or terrorists to leverage such data to attack the ship or paparazzi to invade the privacy of celebrities on board it. In this research we study the use of IBC, particularly of the BLMQ-SKIBE and ECCSI-SAKKE schemes, to enhance the AIS with mechanisms of confidentiality, authentication, and data integrity. Furthermore, we develop and evaluate an experimental implementation of our proposal with the ECCSI-SAKKE scheme, thereby demonstrating that the proposed solution can be put to operational use without changing the existing AIS communication protocol, and by making minor only changes to the software of the existing AIS devices. We aspire that this thesis may form a basis, or simply provide food for thought, for further research in possible applications of IBC, particularly in the e-governance and maritime domains.