Anonymous Mutual Authentication Research Articles

NFC Secure Element-Based Mutual Authentication and Attestation for IoT Access

Certain resourceful and powered Internet of Things (IoT) can become victims to launch cyber attacks. Near field communication (NFC) can be used for their secure on-demand access. In this paper, we present a novel framework for the NFC secure element (SE)-based mutual authentication and attestation for IoT access with a user device such as a mobile device using NFC-based Host Card Emulation (HCE) mode for the first time. HCE is robust as compared to the other NFC modes. A cloud-based Trusted Certified Authority (TCA) manages all cryptographic credentials and stores them in the tamper-resistant SE and Trusted Platform Module (TPM)-based attestation modules on the devices. It uses a newly proposed NFC SE-based mutual authentication and attestation (NSE-AA) protocol for proof-of-locality, end-to-end anonymous mutual authentication between the SEs and an associated remote attestation for trust. The protocol is robust and lightweight as compared to the existing schemes. We provide its informal and formal security analysis using the Real-Or-Random (ROR) model. A simulation on the Automated Validation of Internet Security Protocols and Applications (AVISPA) tool proves its safety. We also briefly present the details of a prototype with a commercial mid-range priced mobile device and Single Board Computer (SBC)-based IoT device.

An Anonymous Mutual Authenticated Key Agreement Scheme for Wearable Sensors in Wireless Body Area Networks

The advancement of Wireless Body Area Networks (WBAN) have led to significant progress in medical and health care systems. However, such networks still suffer from major security and privacy threats, especially for the data collected in medical or health care applications. Lack of security and existence of anonymous communication in WBAN brings about the operation failure of these networks. Recently, Li et al. proposed a lightweight protocol for wearable sensors in wireless body area networks. In their paper, the authors claimed that the protocol may provide anonymous mutual authentication and resist against various types of attacks. This study shows that such a protocol is still vulnerable to three types of attacks, i.e., the offline identity guessing attack, the sensor node impersonation attack and the hub node spoofing attack. We then present a secure scheme that addresses these problems, and retains similar efficiency in wireless sensors nodes and mobile phones.

Anonymous mutual authentication with location privacy support for secure communication in M2M home network services

Machine to machine (M2M) communications have significant application potential in the emerging networks including home network. The advent of M2M communication brings numerous security issues as well, while existing efforts have not fully solved those issues. In this article, we propose a secure lightweight anonymous authentication and key agreement protocol for M2M home network service, which can guarantee to resist various security issues like, forgery attacks, insider attacks, masquerade attacks, resilience to key exposure, etc. Furthermore, the proposed protocol generates reasonable additional computational and communication overhead, which is also verified by performance analysis.

Robust Anonymous Mutual Authentication Scheme for <italic>n</italic>-Times Ubiquitous Mobile Cloud Computing Services

In recent years, mobile computing has gained a huge popularity among mobile users (MUs). It basically combines the mobile devices with the cloud computing. By the means of on-demand self-service and extendibility, it can offer the infrastructures, platform, entertainments, and software services in a cloud to MUs through the mobile network. However, offering secure access to these services by preserving the privacy of the MU is indeed a challenge for any mobile cloud service provider. In this paper, we aim to propose a new robust anonymous mutual authentication scheme for mobile cloud environment. Through this scheme, both the MU and the service cloud need to prove their legitimacy, and it eventually helps the legitimate mobile cloud user to enjoy n times all the ubiquitous services in a secure and efficient way, where the value of n may differ based on the principal he/she has paid for. The security of the proposed scheme is thoroughly analyzed using both formal as well as informal security analysis. Furthermore, functionality and performance comparisons using the testbed simulation among the proposed scheme and other existing relevant schemes reveal that the proposed scheme outperforms other existing schemes.

A provably secure anonymous mutual authentication scheme with key agreement for SIP using ECC

Recently, Lu et al. and Chaudhry et al. presented an authenticated key agreement scheme for session initiation protocol (SIP), respectively. They illustrated their schemes are secure against various familiar attacks. However, we demonstrate Lu et al.’s scheme is vulnerable to stolen verifier attack and Chaudhry et al.’s scheme is insecure to session key attack. To solve these problems, we propose a new provably secure mutual authentication scheme for SIP. Informal security analysis illustrates this proposed protocol can withstand different kinds of familiar attacks including stolen verifier attack and session key attack. And the correctness and security of the proposed protocol is also proved through Protocol Composition Logic (PCL) and generic group model. Eventually, security comparison shows our proposed scheme is more secure and performance analysis demonstrates the computation cost is also acceptable.

Secure and efficient anonymous authentication scheme for three-tier mobile healthcare systems with wearable sensors

The mobility and openness of wireless communication technologies make Mobile Healthcare Systems (mHealth) potentially exposed to a number of potential attacks, which significantly undermines their utility and impedes their widespread deployment. Attackers and criminals, even without knowing the context of the transmitted data, with simple eavesdropping on the wireless links, may benefit a lot from linking activities to the identities of patient’s sensors and medical staff members. These vulnerabilities apply to all tiers of the mHealth system. A new anonymous mutual authentication scheme for three-tier mobile healthcare systems with wearable sensors is proposed in this paper. Our scheme consists of three protocols: Protocol-1 allows the anonymous authentication nodes (mobile users and controller nodes) and the HSP medical server in the third tier, while Protocol-2 realizes the anonymous authentication between mobile users and controller nodes in the second tier, and Protocol-3 achieves the anonymous authentication between controller nodes and the wearable body sensors in the first tier. In the design of our protocols, the variation in the resource constraints of the different nodes in the mHealth system are taken into consideration so that our protocols make a better trade-off among security, efficiency and practicality. The security of our protocols are analyzed through rigorous formal proofs using BAN logic tool and informal discussions of security features, possible attacks and countermeasures. Besides, the efficiency of our protocols are concretely evaluated and compared with related schemes. The comparisons show that our scheme outperforms the previous schemes and provides more complete and integrated anonymous authentication services. Finally, the security of our protocols are evaluated by using the Automated Validation of Internet Security Protocols and Applications and the SPAN animator software. The simulation results show that our scheme is secure and satisfy all the specified privacy and authentication goals.

Anonymous mutual authentication and key agreement scheme for wearable sensors in wireless body area networks

Wireless body area networks (WBANs) are used to collect and exchange vital and sensitive information about the physical conditions of patients. Due to the openness and mobility of such networks, even without knowing the context of the exchanged data or linking traffic to the identities of involved sensors, criminals are able to gain useful information about the severe conditions of patients and carry effective undetectable physical attacks. Therefore, confidentiality and mutual authentication services are essential for WBANs, and the transmission must be anonymous and unlinkable as well. Given the limitations of the resources available for these sensors, a lightweight anonymous mutual authentication and key agreement scheme for centralized two-hop WBANs is proposed in this paper, which allows sensor nodes attached to the patient’s body to authenticate with the local server/hub node and establish a session key in an anonymous and unlinkable manner. The security of our scheme is proved by rigorous formal proof using BAN logic and also through informal analysis. Besides, the security of our scheme is evaluated by using the Automated Validation of Internet Security Protocols and Applications (AVISPA) as well. Finally, we compare our proposed scheme with other related schemes and the comparison results show that our scheme outperforms previously related schemes.

An Anonymous Access Authentication Scheme Based on Proxy Ring Signature for CPS-WMNs

Access security and privacy have become a bottleneck for the popularization of future Cyber-Physical System (CPS) networks. Furthermore, users’ need for privacy-preserved access during movement procedure is more urgent. To address the anonymous access authentication issue for CPS Wireless Mesh Network (CPS-WMN), a novel anonymous access authentication scheme based on proxy ring signature is proposed. A hierarchical authentication architecture is presented first. The scheme is then achieved from the aspect of intergroup and intragroup anonymous mutual authentication through proxy ring signature mechanism and certificateless signature mechanism, respectively. We present a formal security proof of the proposed protocol with SVO logic. The simulation and performance analysis demonstrate that the proposed scheme owns higher efficiency and adaptability than the typical one.

Computationally efficient privacy preserving anonymous mutual and batch authentication schemes for vehicular ad hoc networks

In the near future, it is envisioned that vehicular Ad hoc networks (VANETs) will be making use of long-distance communication techniques, such as cellular networks and Worldwide Interoperability for Microwave Access (WiMAX), to get instant Internet access for making the communication between vehicles and fixed road side infrastructure. Moreover, VANETs will also make use of short-distance communication methods, such as Dedicated Short-Range Communications (DSRC) and Wireless Fidelity (Wi-Fi) to perform short range communication between vehicles in an ad hoc manner. This Internet connection can provide facility to other vehicles to send traffic related messages, collisions, infotainment messages other useful safety alerts. In such a scenario, providing authentication between vehicle to infrastructure and vehicle to vehicle is a challenging task. In order to provide this facility, in this paper, we propose a computationally efficient privacy preserving anonymous authentication scheme based on the use of anonymous certificates and signatures for VANETs in making them an important component of Internet of Things (IoT) and the development of smart cities. Even though there are several existing schemes available to provide such anonymous authentication based on anonymous certificates and signatures in VANETs, the existing schemes suffer from high computational cost in the certificate revocation list (CRL) checking process and in the certificate and the signature verification process. Therefore, it is not possible to verify a large number of messages in a particular period in VANETs which would lead to increased message loss. Hence, we use a computationally efficient anonymous mutual authentication scheme to validate the message source as well as to verify the integrity of messages along with a conditional tracking mechanism to trace the real identity of misbehaving vehicles and revoke them from VANET in the case of dispute. In this paper, we also introduce an efficient anonymous batch authentication protocol to be used in IoT for Road Side Units (RSUs) to authenticate multiple vehicles simultaneously rather than one after the other such that the total authentication time can be dramatically reduced. This proposed scheme is implemented and the performance analysis shows that our scheme is more efficient in terms of certificate and signature verification cost, while preserving conditional privacy in VANETs.

Anonymous Mutual Authentication and Key Agreement Protocol in Multi-Server Architecture for VANETs

Anonymous Mutual Authentication and Key Agreement Protocol in Multi-Server Architecture for VANETs

A User Anonymous Mutual Authentication Protocol

Widespread use of wireless networks has drawn attention to ascertain confidential communication and proper authentication of an entity before granting access to services over insecure channels. Recently, Truong et al. proposed a modified dynamic ID-based authentication scheme which they claimed to resist smart-card-theft attack. Nevertheless, we find that their scheme is prone to smart-card-theft attack contrary to the author’s claim. Besides, anyone can impersonate the user as well as service provider server and can breach the confidentiality of communication by merely eavesdropping the login request and server’s reply message from the network. We also notice that the scheme does not impart user anonymity and forward secrecy. Therefore, we present another authentication scheme keeping apart the threats encountered in the design of Truong et al.’s scheme. We also prove the security of the proposed scheme with the help of widespread BAN (Burrows, Abadi and Needham) Logic.

Anonymous authentication scheme based on identity-based proxy group signature for wireless mesh network

Access security is the key obstacle of the rapid popularization of wireless mesh network (WMN). We suggest the proxy group signature scheme based on identity in this paper. This scheme is combined with proxy group signature and identity-based group signature, based on designated hierarchical proxy architecture for WMN. An anonymous mutual authentication scheme is thus achieved, which not only simplifies the complex management of PKI but also guarantees anonymous authentication and owns high handover authentication efficiency. Performance and security analysis show that the scheme in this paper is efficient and resilient to a series of security and anonymity attacks.

Secure anonymous mutual authentication for star two-tier wireless body area networks

Background and objectivesMutual authentication is a very important service that must be established between sensor nodes in wireless body area network (WBAN) to ensure the originality and integrity of the patient's data sent by sensors distributed on different parts of the body. However, mutual authentication service is not enough. An adversary can benefit from monitoring the traffic and knowing which sensor is in transmission of patient's data. Observing the traffic (even without disclosing the context) and knowing its origin, it can reveal to the adversary information about the patient's medical conditions. Therefore, anonymity of the communicating sensors is an important service as well. Few works have been conducted in the area of mutual authentication among sensor nodes in WBAN. However, none of them has considered anonymity among body sensor nodes. Up to our knowledge, our protocol is the first attempt to consider this service in a two-tier WBAN. We propose a new secure protocol to realize anonymous mutual authentication and confidential transmission for star two-tier WBAN topology. MethodsThe proposed protocol uses simple cryptographic primitives. We prove the security of the proposed protocol using the widely-accepted Burrows-Abadi-Needham (BAN) logic, and also through rigorous informal security analysis. In addition, to demonstrate the practicality of our protocol, we evaluate it using NS-2 simulator. ResultsBAN logic and informal security analysis prove that our proposed protocol achieves the necessary security requirements and goals of an authentication service. The simulation results show the impact on the various network parameters, such as end-to-end delay and throughput. The nodes in the network require to store few hundred bits. Nodes require to perform very few hash invocations, which are computationally very efficient. The communication cost of the proposed protocol is few hundred bits in one round of communication. Due to the low computation cost, the energy consumed by the nodes is also low. ConclusionsOur proposed protocol is a lightweight anonymous mutually authentication protocol to mutually authenticate the sensor nodes with the controller node (hub) in a star two-tier WBAN topology. Results show that our protocol proves efficiency over previously proposed protocols and at the same time, achieves the necessary security requirements for a secure anonymous mutual authentication scheme.

An Anonymous Mutual Authentication with Key Agreement Protocol for Automobile Roaming System

Recently, several protocols came into being successively to meet the requirement of efficient operations in low-power roaming environment with the fast advance of communication technologies. Unfortunately, these protocols are not a suitable candidate for special requirements in automobile roaming system such as low consumption, high performance and convenience since these protocols pay more attention to a common network environment. In this paper, we address the problem of mutual authentication and key agreement with user anonymity for an automobile roaming system. More specifically, we propose the protocol employs elliptic curve cryptography system to enhance operational efficiency and take into account common attacks and give corresponding resist measures to ensure security. The analysis shows our scheme is user friendly and secure.

ALPP: anonymous and location privacy preserving scheme for mobile IPv6 heterogeneous networks

ABSTRACTThe integration of mobile IPv6 heterogeneous networks enhances networking performance; however, it also breaks mobile node's anonymity and location privacy. In this paper, we propose an anonymous and location privacy preserving (ALPP) scheme that consists of two complementary subschemes: anonymous home binding update and anonymous return routability. In addition, anonymous mutual authentication and key establishment schemes have been proposed to work in conjunction with ALPP to authenticate a mobile node to its foreign gateway and create a shared key between them. ALPP adds anonymity and location privacy services to mobile IPv6 signaling to achieve mobile senders and receivers' privacy. Unlike existing schemes, ALPP alleviates the trade‐off between the networking performance and the achieved privacy level. Combining onion routing and anonymizer in ALPP scheme increases the achieved location privacy level where no entity in the network except the mobile node itself can identify this node's location. Using entropy model, we show that ALPP achieves higher degree of anonymity than the mix‐based scheme. The anonymous home binding update and anonymous return routability subschemes require less computation overheads and thwart both internal and external adversaries. Simulation results demonstrate that our schemes have low control packets routing delays and are suitable for the seamless handover. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

A 2-MAKE: An efficient anonymous and accountable mutual authentication and key agreement protocol for WMNs

Multi-hop hybrid wireless mesh networks (WMNs) have recently attracted increasing attention and deployment. For easy acceptance and wide deployment of WMNs, security, privacy, and accountability issues have to be addressed by providing efficient, reliable, and scalable protocols. The fact that regular users, which may be resource-constrained wireless devices, are involved in routing activities highlights the need for efficiency and compactness. However, the said objectives, i.e., security, privacy, accountability, efficiency etc., are, most of the time, not compatible. So far no previous work has adequately reconciled these conflicting objectives in a practical framework. In this paper, we design and implement such a framework named as A 2-MAKE, which is a collection of protocols. The framework provides an anonymous mutual authentication protocol whereby legitimate users can connect to network from anywhere without being identified or tracked unwillingly. No single party (or authority, network operator, etc.) can violate the privacy of a user, which is provided in our framework in the strongest sense. Our framework utilizes group signatures, where the private keys and corresponding credentials of the users are generated in a secure three-party protocol. User accountability is implemented via user identification and revocation protocols that can be executed by two semi-trusted authorities, one of which is the network operator. The assumptions about the trust level of the network operator are relaxed with respect to similar protocols. Our framework makes use of more efficient signature generation and verification algorithms in terms of computational complexity than their counterparts in literature, where signature size is almost the same as the shortest signatures proposed for similar purposes so far.

A Novel Anonymous Mutual Authentication Protocol With Provable Link-Layer Location Privacy

Location privacy of mobile users (MUs) in wireless communication networks is very important. Ensuring location privacy for an MU is an effort to prevent any other party from learning the MU's current and past locations. In this paper, we propose a novel anonymous mutual authentication protocol with provable link-layer location privacy preservation. We first formulate the security model on the link-layer, forward-secure location privacy, which is characterized by the fact that even when an attacker corrupts an MU's current location privacy, the attacker should be kept from knowing how long the MU has stayed at the current location. Then, based on the newly devised keys with location and time awareness, a novel anonymous mutual authentication protocol between the MUs and the access point (AP) is proposed. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first developed anonymous mutual authentication scheme that can achieve provable link-layer, forward-secure location privacy. To improve efficiency, a preset in idle technique is exercised in the proposed scheme, which is further compared with a number of previously reported counterparts through extensive performance analysis.