Agreement Protocol Research Articles

Bit Level Key Agreement and Exchange Protocol for Digital Image Steganography

Background/Objectives: Key agreement and exchange process plays a critical role in information security. The existing steganographic key handling techniques use a symmetric key feature, where a single key is used by both parties for information concealing for security. Methods/Statistical analysis: This paper introduces a bit level key agreement and secured key exchange protocol for the digital image steganographic applications. This protocol is constructed with the help of simple binary arithmetic and the XOR operation, mostly suitable for digital image steganographic algorithms. The key exchange is supported by the trusted third party image database. The image database is a collection of different small size images suitable for low processing and small memory mobile computing system. Findings: The present research offers a secure way to exchange the steganographic keys between both parties engaged in the information security. With the help of this technique, the secret key needs not transfer from one end to another for information hiding and uncovering from the cover object. The method discussed in this paper requires a very short key size as compared to other methods. The key transmission process is secure along with the less processing time require to generate the keys. The key generation is carried out by the LSB insertion technique with the partial secret of each party engaged in the security data transfer. The key exchange protocol of this method is secure against the different types active and passive attacks. The secret key requirement is not dependent on the concealing side; besides, the key is directly available to the revealing side with the help of trusted third party with small binary computation. So the secret key becomes safe and undisclosed from the intruders. Application: This technique is flexible, confidential and beneficial for the variety of the steganographic data security techniques. It is suitable for low bandwidth wireless system and mobile computing applications, where the key transmission insecure because of the vulnerable communication network.

ES-AKA: An Efficient and Secure Authentication and Key Agreement Protocol for UMTS Networks

The authentication and key agreement (AKA) protocol of the Universal Mobile Telecommunication System (UMTS) was proposed to solve the vulnerabilities found in the Global System for Mobile Communications (GSM) systems. The UMTS-AKA provides mutual authentication, but is still vulnerable to redirection attack, denial of service attack, and man-in-the-middle attack. Apart from various attacks possibilities, the UMTS-AKA has a problem of counter synchronization, generates huge overhead, and utilizes more bandwidth and message exchanges during the authentication. An intruder may apply these attacks to impersonate the network or mischarge the mobile users. In this paper, we propose an efficient and secure AKA protocol namely ES-AKA to prevent the UMTS network against these problems and attacks. This protocol also solves the synchronization problem occurred between a mobile station MS and its home network HLR. The ES-AKA protocol generates lesser communication overhead as compared to UMTS-AKA, EXT-AKA, COCKTAIL-AKA, SKA-AKA, AP-AKA, X-AKA, EURASIP-AKA, Full-AKA, and U-AKA protocols. In addition, it also generates less computation overhead than the UMTS-AKA, EXT-AKA, COCKTAIL-AKA, S-AKA, Full-AKA, and U-AKA protocols. On an average, the ES-AKA protocol reduces 62 % of the bandwidth, which is the maximum reduction of the bandwidth by any AKA protocol referred in the paper. This protocol is also able to reduce 6 % of the messages exchanged (in terms of computations) during the authentication in comparison to UMTS-AKA.

Impersonation Attack on CertificateLess Key Agreement Protocol

Key agreement is a fundamental activity to establish communication between two parties. Kim et al. (2013) proposed a CertificateLess two-party authenticated key agreement (CTAKA) protocol, which is secure in extended Canetti-Krawczyk (eCK) model. This paper describes the security flaw of Kim et al.'s CTAKA protocol, which is found vulnerable against Key-Compromise Impersonation (K-CI) attack. For the resistance of the attack in Kim et al.'s CTAKA protocol, a defensive measure has been proposed, which is secure in eCK model.

An improved conference‐key agreement protocol for dynamic groups with efficient fault correction

AbstractThe pervasive usage of the Internet has made secure group communications a significant issue. Conference‐key agreement protocols provide secure group communications with lower computational cost. Providing key agreements and updates of dynamic groups in an efficient manner is a significant challenge for conference‐key agreement protocols. Auxiliary key agreement operations are needed to solve the challenge. In this paper, we propose an improved conference‐key agreement protocol, called Dynamic Conference‐Key Agreement Protocol, that consists of Initial Conference‐Key Agreement Protocol and Auxiliary Conference‐Key Agreement operations. Dynamic Conference‐Key Agreement Protocol has operations to handle dynamic groups. The proposed protocol has better fault correction and provides the same security level with the existing ones. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Secure-AKA: An Efficient AKA Protocol for UMTS Networks

In this paper, we propose an improved and efficient authentication and key agreement (AKA) protocol named "Secure-AKA" to prevent Universal Mobile Telecommunication System (UMTS) network from various attacks like man-in-the-middle attack, redirection attack, replay attack, active attacks in the corrupted UMTS networks, and especially denial of service attack. This protocol completely eliminates the need of counter synchronization between a mobile station and its home network, and protects the actual identity of each user over the network by generating a temporary identity during the authentication. The Secure-AKA protocol generates minimum communication and computation overheads as compared to UMTS-AKA, S-AKA, AP-AKA, EURASIP-AKA, COCKTAIL-AKA, X-AKA, and EXT-AKA protocols. On an average, Secure-AKA protocol reduces 65 % of the bandwidth consumption during the authentication process in comparison to UMTS-AKA, which is the maximum reduction of bandwidth by any AKA protocol referred in the paper.

Digraphs with Distinguishable Dynamics Under the Multi‐Agent Agreement Protocol

AbstractThis work studies the ability to distinguish digraphs from the output response of some observing agents in a multi‐agent network under the agreement protocol. Given a fixed observation point, it is desired to find sufficient graphical conditions under which the failure of a set of edges in the network information flow digraph is distinguishable from another set. When the latter is empty, this corresponds to the detectability of the former link set given the response of the observing agent. In developing the results, a powerful extension of the all‐minors matrix tree theorem in algebraic graph theory is proved which relates the minors of the transformed Laplacian of a directed graph to the number and length of the shortest paths between its vertices. The results reveal an intricate relationship between the ability to distinguish the responses of a healthy and a faulty multi‐agent network and the inter‐nodal paths in their information flow digraphs. The results have direct implications for the operation and design of multi‐agent systems subject to multiple link losses. Simulations and examples are presented to illustrate the analytic findings.

Hospital care services for digestive diseases in Italy: The first quantitative assessment

The scarcity of human and structural resources for specialized gastroenterology care is a problem in many Western countries. Data regarding the resources for Italian Gastroenterology, so far lacking, have been thus searched and evaluated. Based on an agreement protocol between the Italian Association of Hospital Gastroenterologists and Endoscopists (AIGO) and the Ministry of Health, national data regarding all Institutions providing gastroenterological care were analysed. Hospital beds in Gastroenterology units are presented by region, regimen of stay and per million inhabitants as of January 2011. Association of Hospital Gastroenterologists and Endoscopists also performed a survey of gastroenterology units in all Italian regions regarding number of ordinary/day hospital beds and the number of staff gastroenterologists. The Ministry data showed a total of 174 Gastronterology Units in Italy, a total of 2062 hospital beds for the discipline, for a proportion of 34.2 beds per million inhabitants. The Association of Hospital Gastroenterologists and Endoscopists survey showed a total of 1425 gastroenterologists in Italy. These data should represent a key reference for appropriate planning of specialized care for digestive diseases.

The performance evaluation of fast iterative localized re-authentication for 3G/UMTS-WLAN interworking networks

3G/UMTS-WLAN heterogeneous mobile network is a complementary platform for the trend of Beyond-3G (B3G) wireless communications. However, the design of a secured and fast re-authentication protocol in 3G/UMTS-WLAN interworking networks is a challenging task. Although EAP authentication and key agreement (EAP-AKA) protocol is adopted by the third generation partnership protocol (3GPP) to achieve authentication and security services in 3G/UMTS-WLAN interworking networks, it still suffers two main drawbacks. One is high re-authentication delays due to centralized re-authentication sessions within the RADIUS server and unnecessary multiple rounds of challenge-response messages traveling between the RADIUS server and the mobile station. The other is high intra-domain handover authentication delay incurred by EAP-AKA protocol without supporting intra-domain handover authentication. Thus, this paper proposes a novel protocol named Fast Iterative Localized Re-authentication (FIL Re-authentication) to replace the fast re-authentication in EAP-AKA protocol. Furthermore, FIL Re-authentication makes use of iterative process and localized re-authentication process for speeding up re-authentication times and reducing intra-domain handover authentication delays in 3G/UMTS-WLAN interworking networks. Additional, the simulation model based on Network Simulator 2 (NS-2) is used to provide a valid implementation and finally the performance evaluation shows that proposed protocol surpasses standard EAP-AKA protocol in terms of authentication session time, authentication delay and handover authentication delay.

Comment on Xu et al.'s Key Agreement and Password Authentication Protocol

The Internet has been population, which it was implement information technology, to every enterprize, also changed their contact mode of information flow style. Since public key conception was proposed, it had authentication function to secure while they are communication, and defense the data to leak based on stranger. In 2010, Xu et al. proposed an improvement of generalized key agreement and password authentication protocol which it based on linear equation in two unknown of congruence. In this paper, we pointed out some errors. Thus, the Xu et al.'s improved scheme may not becomes to be correction

TMPR-scheme for reliably broadcast messages among peer processes

Nowadays information systems are being shifted to distributed architectures. The peer-to-peer (P2P) model as a fully distributed system, is composed of peer processes (peers). Here, peers have to efficiently and flexibly make an agreement on one common value which satisfies an agreement condition. In the agreement protocol, each peer has to deliver values to all the peers in a group. We take advantage of the multipoint relaying (MPR) mechanism to efficiently broadcast messages. Here, if a peer which forwards messages to other peers is faulty, the peers cannot receive messages. In this paper, we newly discuss a trustworthiness-based broadcast (TBB) algorithm where only the trustworthy peers forward messages. That is, untrustworthy peers, i.e., peers prone to faults and malicious behaviours do not forward messages. Here, the transmission fault implied by faulty peers can be reduced. We evaluate the TBB algorithm in terms of the number of messages compared with the pure flooding and MPR algorithms.

Security analysis of a cocktail protocol with the authentication and key agreement on the UMTS

To overcome the congenital defects of the UMTS's Authentication and Key Agreement (AKA) protocol standard, Ou et al. proposed an improved protocol called the cocktail-AKA protocol recently. In this paper, we first show that it has some security weaknesses, which can be exploited by an adversary to mount a denial of service attack and an impersonation attack. Finally, an effective countermeasure is suggested.

Controllability of multi-agent systems based on agreement protocols

This paper investigates the controllability of multi-agent systems based on agreement protocols. First, for a group of single-integrator agents, the controllability is studied in a unified framework for both networks with leader-following structure and networks with undirected graph. Some new necessary/sufficient conditions for the controllability of networks of single-integrator agents are established. Second, we prove that, under the same topology and same prescribed leaders, a network of high-order dynamic agents is completely controllable if and only if so is a network of single-integrator agents. Third, how the selection of leaders and the coupling weights of graphs affect the controllability is analyzed. Finally, some numerical simulations are presented to demonstrate the effectiveness of the theoretical results.

A cocktail protocol with the Authentication and Key Agreement on the UMTS

At present, the Universal Mobile Telecommunications System (UMTS) is very popular in most parts of the world. It is a third-generation mobile communication technique known for its ability to conduct user authentication and for its security of communication with the use of Authentication and Key Agreement (AKA) protocol. A mobile station (MS), a service network (SN) and a home environment (HE) use the protocol to authenticate each other and make an agreement with a session key. With the UMTS-AKA protocol standard, all authentication vectors (AV) produced by the HE are transferred to the SN for mutual authentication with the MS. In this scenario, authentication is exposed to two kinds of defects. One defect is computational overhead concentrating on the HE and the other is the communication overhead for delivering the AVs. To overcome these congenital defects, this study proposes a unique UMTS-AKA protocol called the cocktail-AKA protocol. The goal of this protocol is to allow the SN to share some medicated authentication vectors (MAV) that are calculated in advance and combined with a prescription at the authentication stage. So, the HE only needs to produce a prescription authentication vector (PAV). Once the authentication stage is initiated, the SN distributes MAV and PAV and produces an effective AV for mutual authentication with the MS. The cocktail-AKA protocol can overcome both the aforesaid defects.

Denial-of-service attack resilience dynamic group key agreement for heterogeneous networks

Heterogeneous networks, which can be either integrated wired and wireless networks or fully wireless networks, are convenient as they allow user nodes to be connected whenever and wherever they desire. Group key agreement (GKA) protocols are used to allow nodes in these networks to communicate securely with each other. Dynamic GKA protocols such as Join and Leave Protocol are also important since users can join and leave the network at anytime and the group key has to be changed to provide backward and forward secrecy. Denial-of-Service (DoS) attacks on GKA protocols can disrupt GKA services for secure group communications but most GKA protocols in current literature do not consider protection against DoS attacks. Furthermore, most current GKA protocols only consider outsider attacks and do not consider insider attacks. In this paper, we present three authenticated, energy-efficient and scalable GKA protocols, namely Initial GKA, Join and Leave Protocol, that provide protection against insider and DoS attacks and key confirmation properties. We also present a detection protocol to detect malicious group insiders and continue establishing a group key after blocking these malicious insiders. Unlike current communication energy analysis that uses a single energy per bit value, our communication energy analysis separates point-to-point (P2P) and broadcast communications to provide more detailed study on communications in GKA. Both the complexity and energy analysis show that the three proposed protocols are efficient, scalable and suitable for heterogeneous networks.

An Efficient Two-Party Identity-Based Key Exchange Protocol

A key exchange (or agreement) protocol is designed to allow two entities establishing a session key to encrypt the communication data over an open network. In 1990, Gunther proposed an identity-bas...

Indo-US Nuclear Agreement and IAEA Safeguards

Nuclear transfers to a non-nuclear weapon state (NNWS) are conditioned on IAEA safeguards on all current and future peaceful nuclear activities, what are called the full-scope safeguards (FSS) or comprehensive safeguards. Since India is a NNWS according to the NPT definition, the NSG Guidelines as currently implemented would, therefore, invoke FSS if India seeks nuclear technology or nuclear power plants — even on a turnkey basis — or nuclear fuel from any NSG member-country. The condition for any progress on the deal is the separation of civilian and military nuclear facilities that India has committed to and the sequencing of the reciprocal steps envisaged in the agreement. This seems quite feasible if the Indian policy-makers are clear about India's need of fissile material in quantitative terms. A properly negotiated INFCIRC/66 type safeguards agreement and Additional Protocol with the IAEA is also possible without compromising on India's strategic programmes and national security. Finally, IAEA is likely to treat India as a nuclear weapon state and apply safeguards selectively so as not to unduly burden its scarce funds and skilled human resource.

ExOR

This paper describes ExOR,an integrated routing and MAC protocol that increases the throughput of large unicast transfers in multi-hop wireless networks. ExOR chooses each hop of a packet's route after the transmission for that hop, so that the choice can reflect which intermediate nodes actually received the transmission. This deferred choice gives each transmission multiple opportunities to make progress. As a result ExOR can use long radio links with high loss rates, which would be avoided by traditional routing. ExOR increases a connection's throughput while using no more network capacity than traditional routine.ExOR's design faces the following challenges. The nodes that receive each packet must agree on their identities and choose one forwarder.The agreement protocol must have low overhead, but must also be robust enough that it rarely forwards a packet zero times or more than once. Finally, ExOR must choose the forwarder with the lowest remaining cost to the ultimate destination.Measurements of an implementation on a 38-node 802.11b test-bed show that ExOR increases throughput for most node pairs when compared with traditional routing. For pairs between which traditional routing uses one or two hops, ExOR's robust acknowledgments prevent unnecessary retransmissions,increasing throughput by nearly 35%. For more distant pairs, ExOR takes advantage of the choice of forwarders to provide throughput gains of a factor of two to four.

Byzantine Agreement under dual failure mobile network

Networks are trending towards wireless systems that provide support for mobile computing. The Byzantine Agreement (BA) protocols used in static networks do not perform well in a dynamically changing mobile environment. Mobile commerce and related applications are necessary for wireless networks. There are numerous properties in a wireless network that play important roles. For example, the processors in a wireless network have highly mobile capabilities. Processors can immigrate into or move away from the network at any time. Although mobile technology has brought greater convenience, it is comparatively more dangerous. Wireless systems are susceptible to security flaws such as attacks by hackers. The number of allowable faulty components within the system is also decreased. To increase the number of allowable faulty components and ensure network security, a simple, secure and efficient protocol, BAM, is proposed to handle the BA problem. The fault symptoms include malicious and dormant faults. Furthermore, the proposed protocol uses the minimum number of message exchange rounds to make all healthy processors agree on a common value and can tolerate the maximum number of allowable faulty components. The proposed method will also ensure message security and increase the system's fault tolerant capability.

Algon: From Interchangeable Distributed Algorithms to Interchangeable Middleware

We present the design and implementation of a framework for interchangeable distributed algorithms. The algorithms are drawn from the set which includes mutual exclusion, deadlock detection and agreement protocols, and we have implemented several examples of the first tonsiswo of these. Algon cts of a library of algorithms, a framework for incorporating them into a new or existing system, and a tool for evaluating comparative performance. In this way, much of the complexity related to distributed systems can be isolated in its own component level and the programmer can choose from among different algorithms in the same class based on performance in a given application. Incorporating many algorithms in a single framework was made possible by the observation that algorithms in a given class, e.g. mutual exclusion, almost always expose the same methods. These methods interface with an Algon scheduler which maintains state and provides convenient hooks for the application to invoke the services of the algorithm.In this paper we describe the structure of Algon in detail, with a distributed deadlock detection algorithm as the case study. We then extend the notion of separation of concerns by creating an addition layer in Algon, underneath which the middleware that runs on each node can be interchanged, for example from Java-RMI to CORBA. Challenges in the re-tooling of the system, related to multiple inheritance, exceptions and the automatic generation of stubs and skeletons in our implementation language, Java, were overcome in novel ways. Algon has the potential to be a framework with a long life, as it can adapt to new middleware, such as .NET.

Grouping Byzantine Agreement

The reliability of the distributed system has always been an important topic of research. Byzantine Agreement (BA) protocol, which allows the fault-free processors to agree on a common value, is one of the most fundamental problems studied in a distributed system. In previous works, the problem was visited in a fully connected network or an unfully connected network with fallible processors. In this paper, the BA problem is reexamined in a group-oriented network, which has the feature of grouping, and the network topology does not have to be fully connected. We also enlarge the fault tolerant capability by allowing dormant faults and malicious faults (also called as the dual failure mode) to exist in a group-oriented network simultaneously. The proposed protocol is more efficient than the traditional BA protocols and can tolerate the maximum number of tolerable faulty processors.