Authenticated Key Exchange Scheme Research Articles

Provably secure lightweight certificateless lattice‐based authenticated key exchange scheme for IIoT

SummaryThrough the Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT), the manufacturing enterprises have significantly enhanced the production efficiency. The transmission of data in IIoT over public channels has brought about information leakage issues. Therefore, it is crucial to agree on a session key among the participants. In recent years, numerous authenticated key exchange (AKE) schemes have been designed. However, those AKE schemes which adopt the certificateless approach to tackle certificate management and key escrow may remain vulnerable to quantum attacks, and other AKE schemes which are based on lattice hard problem so as to achieve the post quantum security may incur key management issues. To simultaneously address the aforementioned challenges, we propose a lightweight certificateless lattice‐based authenticated key exchange (C2LAKE) scheme. Upon the hardness assumptions of the inhomogeneous small integer solution (ISIS) and computational bilateral inhomogeneous small integer solution (CBi‐ISIS) problems, the C2LAKE scheme has been demonstrated to be secure in the eCK model and the random oracle model (ROM). Better trade‐off among security and functionality features, and communication and computation costs make the C2LAKE scheme suitable and applicable in the IIoT environment.

Post-Quantum Anonymous One-Sided Authenticated Key Exchange without Random Oracles

Authenticated Key Exchange (AKE) is a cryptographic protocol to share a common session key among multiple parties. Usually, PKI-based AKE schemes are designed to guarantee secrecy of the session key and mutual authentication. However, in practice, there are many cases where mutual authentication is undesirable such as in anonymous networks like Tor and Riffle, or difficult to achieve due to the certificate management at the user level such as the Internet. Goldberg et al. formulated a model of anonymous one-sided AKE which guarantees the anonymity of the client by allowing only the client to authenticate the server, and proposed a concrete scheme. However, existing anonymous one-sided AKE schemes are only known to be secure in the random oracle model. In this paper, we propose generic constructions of anonymous one-sided AKE in the random oracle model and in the standard model, respectively. Our constructions allow us to construct the first post-quantum anonymous one-sided AKE scheme from isogenies in the standard model.

A secure and efficient authenticated key exchange scheme for smart grid

Smart grid provides convenience for power generation, consumption and distribution. Authenticated key exchange (AKE) is a fundamental technique to protect data transmission from interception and tampering in smart grid. However, since the smart meters only have limited resources in computation and communication, most of the existing AKE schemes are inefficient for smart grid. First, many schemes have to use large security parameters to compensate the loose reduction in their security proofs. Second, most of these schemes require at least three-round of communication to negotiate a secret session key with explicit key confirmation. To alleviate these issues, we propose a novel two-round AKE scheme with tight security for smart grid. Our proposed scheme integrates Diffie-Hellman key exchange and a tightly secure digital signature, in which not only mutual authentication can be realized but also the communicating parties can confirm that session keys are negotiated between them explicitly. Compared with the existing AKE schemes, the overheads in both communication and computation are lighter in our proposed scheme, because fewer rounds of communication are required and smaller security parameters can be used to achieve the same security level. Therefore, our scheme contributes to a more practical solution for secure key establishment in smart grid.

LAKE-6SH: Lightweight User Authenticated Key Exchange for 6LoWPAN-Based Smart Homes

Ensuring security and privacy in the Internet of Things (IoT) while taking into account the resource-constrained nature of IoT devices is challenging. In smart home (SH) IoT applications, remote users (RUs) need to communicate securely with resource-constrained network entities through the public Internet to procure real-time information. While the 6LoWPAN adaptation-layer standard provides resource-efficient IPv6 compatibility to low-power wireless networks, the basic 6LoWPAN design does not include security and privacy features. A resource-efficient authenticated key exchange (AKE) scheme becomes imperative for 6LoWPAN-based resource-constrained networks to render indecipherable communication functionality. This article presents a lightweight user AKE scheme for 6LoWPAN-based SH networks (LAKE-6SH) to achieve authenticity of RUs and establish private session keys between the users and network entities by employing the SHA-256 hash function, exclusive-OR operation, and a simple authenticated encryption primitive. Informal security validation illustrates that LAKE-6SH is protected against different pernicious security attacks. The security is further validated formally through the random oracle model. Moreover, through Scyther validation, it is demonstrated that LAKE-6SH is secure. In addition, it is demonstrated that LAKE-6SH renders better security features aside from its low communication and computational overheads.

Modular Framework for Constructing IoT-Server AKE in Post-Quantum Setting

Authenticated key exchange (AKE) allows two parties to authenticate each other and establish a secret session key to build a secure channel, and it has been well studied in the literature. With the approaching of quantum computers, designing post-quantum secure AKE schemes becomes an urgent task. Today, several KE schemes have been proposed while only a small number of AKE schemes exist. Very few of them have considered resource-constrained participants like IoT devices. In this paper, assuming a typical client-server setting where the client is an IoT device, we propose a modular framework that converts any post-quantum secure KE scheme into a post-quantum secure AKE scheme. Equipped with two authentication factors, the resulted AKE scheme provides a number of security guarantees including Perfect forward secrecy (PFS), Key compromise impersonation (KCI) resilience and Server compromise impersonation (SCI) resilience. We further instantiate the framework by selecting the most efficient KE scheme, namely NewHope Compact, and implement the scheme with some optimisation techniques and conduct relevant analysis and comparisons. In a nutshell, the computational time of the server side is 1.11 ms on a PC and 6.22 ms of the IoT device simulated on Raspberry Pi 3B+, and it seems to be efficient enough for most IoT application scenarios.

REAS-TMIS: Resource-Efficient Authentication Scheme for Telecare Medical Information System

The phenomenal growth of smartphones and wearable devices has begun crowd-sourcing applications for the Internet of Things (IoT). E-healthcare is considered the essential service for crowd-sourcing IoT applications that help remote access or storage medical server (MS) data to the authorized doctors, patients, nurses, etc., via the public Internet. As the public Internet is exposed to various security attacks, remote user authenticated key exchange (AKE) has become a pressing need for the secure and reliable use of these services. This paper proposes a new resource-efficient AKE scheme for telecare medical information systems, called REAS-TMIS. It uses authenticated encryption with associative data (AEAD) and a hash function. AEAD schemes are devised specifically for encrypted communication among resource-constricted IoT devices. These features of AEAD make REAS-TMIS resource-efficient. Moreover, REAS-TMIS dispenses with the elliptic curve point multiplication and chaotic map that are computationally expensive operations. In addition, REAS-TMIS renders the functionality of session key (SK) establishment for future encrypted communication between MS and users after validating the authenticity of the user. The security of SK is corroborated employing the well establish random oracle model. Moreover, Scyther-based security corroboration is implemented to show that REAS-TMIS is secure, and informal security analysis is executed to show the resiliency of REAS-TMIS against various security attacks. Besides, a thorough analysis shows that REAS-TMIS, while accomplishing the authentication phase, requires less computational, communication, and storage resources than the related authentication protocol.

Provably secure authentication key exchange scheme using fog nodes in vehicular ad hoc networks

In recent years, with the development of cloud computing, the Internet of Things (IoT), and other technologies, mobile intelligent transportation systems, particularly the vehicular ad hoc network (VANET), have been growing quickly. Researchers have attempted to use fog computing in VANETs in order to meet real-world requirements for their deployment. Fog computing is an extension of cloud computing, and thus, it inevitably inherits the same security challenges. Further, because VANETs are in an open network environment, they will also face several other potential security and privacy issues. In this study, to promote secure interaction in fog-based VANETs, a new authentication key exchange (AKE) scheme that uses fog nodes as relay nodes has been designed. The scheme completes mutual authentication and generates a session key for later confidential communication. The automatic verification tool ProVerif and the BAN (Burrows–Abadi–Needham) logic were used to formally verify the security of the scheme, and an informal analysis shows that it can resist multiple known attacks. The simulation and analysis results show that the proposed scheme is successful. Finally, performance evaluation shows the effectiveness of the approach. Compared with the previously proposed privacy protection authentication protocols, the results of the proposed scheme are more computationally efficient.

LAKE-IoD: Lightweight Authenticated Key Exchange Protocol for the Internet of Drone Environment

A drone is an unmanned aerial vehicle, which is deployed in a particular Fly Zone (FZ), and used to collect crucial information from its surrounding environment to be transmitted to the server for further processing. Generally, a Mobile User (MU) is required to access the real-time information collected by the drone stationed in a specific FZ securely. Therefore, to ensure secure and reliable communications an Authenticated Key Exchange (AKE) protocol is imperative to the Internet of Drone (IoD) environment. An AKE scheme ensures only authentic MU to access IoD network resources. Upon successful authentication, MU and drone can set up a secret session key for secure communication in the future. This paper presents a novel Lightweight AKE Protocol for IoD Environment (LAKE-IoD), which first ensures the authenticity of MU and also renders session key establishment mechanism between MU and drone with the help of a server. LAKE-IoD is an AKE protocol, which is based on an authenticated encryption scheme AEGIS, hash function, and bit-wise XOR operation. Meticulous formal security verification by employing a software tool known as Scyther and informal security analysis demonstrates that LAKE-IoD is protected against different well-known active and passive security attacks. Additionally, Burrows-Abadi-Needham logic is applied to verify the logical completeness of LAKE-IoD. Furthermore, a comparison of LAKE-IoD with the related schemes shows that LAKE-IoD incurs less communication, computational and storage overhead.

Efficient Multi-Factor Authenticated Key Exchange Scheme for Mobile Communications

Authenticated key exchange (AKE) is one of the most important applications in applied cryptography, where a user interacts with a server to set up a session key where pre-registered information (aka. authentication factor), such as a password or biometrics, of the user is stored. While single-factor AKE is widely used in practice, higher security concerns call for multi-factor AKE (MFAKE) schemes, e.g., combining both passwords and biometrics simultaneously. However, in some casually designed schemes, security is even weakened in the sense that leakage of one authentication factor will defeat the whole MFAKE protocol. Furthermore, an inevitable by-product arise that the usability of the protocol often drop greatly. To summarize, the existing multi-factor protocols did not provide enough security and efficiency simultaneously. In this paper, we make one step ahead by proposing a very efficient MFAKE protocol. We define the security model and give the according security analysis. We also implement our protocol on a smartphone and a cloud server. The theoretic comparisons and the experimental results show that our scheme achieves both security and usability.

Secure Message Communication Protocol Among Vehicles in Smart City

Secure messages exchange among different vehicles is one of the most challenging tasks in future smart cities. Any malicious activity has the potential to compromise the confidentiality, integrity, and authenticity of messages exchanged between different vehicles. To ensure secure message communication among the vehicles in a smart city environment, a novel scheme using elliptic curve cryptographic (ECC) technique has been presented in this paper. For this purpose, a two-level authentication key exchange scheme has been designed. In the first level authentication, $\text{CH}$ s are verified by series of messages exchanged between $\text{CH}$ s and the $\text{CA}$ . The verified $\text{CH}$ s are responsible for authentication of vehicles in the second level authentication, followed by exchange of messages between $\text{CH}$ and vehicle. The security analysis using widely accepted Burrows–Abadi–Needham logic, formal security analysis using random oracle model and verification using the widely known automated validation of Internet security protocols and applications (AVISPA) tool, and also the informal security analysis have been done with respect to various types of attacks. Moreover, a comparative analysis of the proposed scheme with existing related schemes reveals that it generates low overhead and latency, and high reliability during messages exchange between vehicles and the $\text{CA}$ .

Signature-based three-factor authenticated key exchange for internet of things applications

Internet of Things (IoT) is one of several technology trends, and IoT applications are found in a wide range of industry sectors such as healthcare and critical infrastructure. Authenticated key exchange schemes play an important role in protecting user and data privacy and ensuring the security of data-in-transit in IoT infrastructure (e.g. via user identification and provision of secure communication). However, designing secure authenticated key exchange (AKE) schemes remain a challenging task. In this paper, we reveal that Challa et al.’s three-factor AKE scheme is vulnerable to a number of known attacks. Then, we present an improved signature-based three-factor authenticated key exchange protocol and prove its security under the extended model of Bellare et al. (Tecnologia Electronica E Informatica 1807:139–155, 2000). A comparative summary is also presented, which demonstrates that our proposed scheme is sufficiently lightweight for IoT deployment and outperforms those of Challa et al. (IEEE Access 5:3028–3043, 2017) and Turkanovi et al. (Ad Hoc Netw 20(2):96–112, 2014), in terms of security features, computation and communication costs.

Untraceable biometric-based three-party authenticated key exchange for dynamic systems

An authenticated key exchange (AKE) between two end-users is a crucial procedure to ensure data integrity and confidentiality while they communicate through a public channel. The existing three-party AKE schemes conventionally employ a relatively easy to remember password and a systematic identity to generate and protect shared secrets, which are used to verify the legitimate participants for subsequent communications. Thus, none of these protocols could simultaneously achieve robust security, identity privacy, and revocation. The security drawbacks commonly arise from the low-entropy password stored in a server or a smart card. This study briefly reviewed and analyzed the weaknesses of Islam, and Yon and Yons’ schemes. Biometric information and a random one-time password were then utilized to design a robust protocol for systems with highly dynamic users. The proposed scheme not only resists all currently known attacks, but also provides several desirable properties, including the revocations of smart cards or users, and the reuse of compromised biometric information.

Provably Secure Dynamic ID-Based Anonymous Two-Factor Authenticated Key Exchange Protocol With Extended Security Model

Authenticated key exchange (AKE) protocol allows a user and a server to authenticate each other and generate a session key for the subsequent communications. With the rapid development of low-power and highly-efficient networks, such as pervasive and mobile computing network in recent years, many efficient AKE protocols have been proposed to achieve user privacy and authentication in the communications. Besides secure session key establishment, those AKE protocols offer some other useful functionalities, such as two-factor user authentication and mutual authentication. However, most of them have one or more weaknesses, such as vulnerability against lost-smart-card attack, offline dictionary attack, de-synchronization attack, or the lack of forward secrecy, and user anonymity or untraceability. Furthermore, an AKE scheme under the public key infrastructure may not be suitable for light-weight computational devices, and the security model of AKE does not capture user anonymity and resist lost-smart-card attack. In this paper, we propose a novel dynamic ID-based anonymous two-factor AKE protocol, which addresses all the above issues. Our protocol also supports smart card revocation and password update without centralized storage. Further, we extend the security model of AKE to support user anonymity and resist lost-smart-card attack, and the proposed scheme is provably secure in extended security model. The low-computational and bandwidth cost indicates that our protocol can be deployed for pervasive computing applications and mobile communications in practice.

A Provably Password Authenticated Key Exchange Scheme Based on Chaotic Maps in Different Realm

Until now, the overwhelming majority of password- authenticated key agreement protocols using chaotic maps are based on three architectures (client/server, two clients/server and multi-server) and four security models (heuristic security, random oracle, ideal cipher and standard model). However, with rapid changes in the modern communication environment such as wireless mesh net- works and cloud storing, it is necessary to put forward a kind more flexible and general architecture to adapt it. So, in our paper, we firstly propose a provable secure two-party in two-realm key agreement protocol using chaotic maps in the standard model. Our proposed protocol is more general and it is easy to expand to many other forms, such as three-party or N-party in different realms. The new protocol resists dictionary attacks mounted by either passive or active network intruders, allowing, in principle, even weak password phrases to be used safely. It also offers perfect forward secrecy, which protects past sessions and passwords against future compromises. Finally, we give the security proof in the standard model and the efficiency analysis of our proposed scheme.

Compact Authenticated Key Exchange from Bounded CCA-Secure KEM

How to reduce communication complexity is a common important issue to design cryptographic protocols. This paper focuses on authenticated key exchange (AKE). Several AKE schemes have been studied, which satisfy strong security such as exposure-resilience in the standard model (StdM). However, there is a large gap on communication costs between schemes in the StdM and in the random oracle model. In this paper, we show a generic construction that is significantly compact (i.e., small communication cost) and secure in the StdM. We follow an existing generic construction from key encapsulated mechanism (KEM). Our main technique is to use a bounded chosen-ciphertext secure KEM instead of an ordinary chosen-ciphertext secure KEM. The communication cost can be reduced to half by this technique, and we achieve the most compact AKE scheme in the StdM. Moreover, our construction has instantiations under wider classes of hardness assumptions (e.g., subset-sum problems and multi-variate quadratic systems) than existing constructions. This work pioneers the first meaningful application of bounded chosen-ciphertext secure KEM.

An improved and provable remote user authentication scheme based on elliptic curve cryptosystem with user anonymity

AbstractRecently, Li proposed an authenticated key exchange (AKE) scheme based on elliptic curve cryptosystem with smart cards in two versions. We point out that the two versions of Li's scheme are not secure and then we present an improved authentication scheme to overcome general disadvantages. Also, we deem that the notion of forward security is old for modern AKE schemes based on smart cards and enhance it as strong forward security. We prove that our scheme is secure with a formal security model containing the feature of strong forward security. Then, via the concrete security analysis and comparison, our scheme resists common attacks and has general security characters. Compared with other schemes, our scheme has low time, storage, and communication cost. It is suitable for communicating applications in network. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Two ID-based authenticated schemes with key agreement for mobile environments

With the rapid development of electronic commerce transactions on mobile devices, achieving secure communications between communication parties is an important issue. The typical solutions are authenticated key agreement protocols, designed to efficiently implement secure channels for two or more parties communicating via a public network by providing them with a shared secret key, called a session key. In this paper, we propose two key agreement schemes based on elliptic curve cryptosystems suited for mobile environments. The first one is an identity-based remote mutual authentication with key agreement scheme, and it is used to establish a session key between the client and the server. In the second one, we extend the proposed two-party authentication key exchange scheme to develop an efficient three-party authenticated key agreement scheme for establishing a session key between two users with the help of a trusted server. Both our proposed schemes achieve efficiency, practicability, simplicity, and strong notions of security.

One-Round Authenticated Key Exchange with Strong Forward Secrecy in the Standard Model against Constrained Adversary

Forward secrecy (FS) is a central security requirement of authenticated key exchange (AKE). Especially, strong FS (sFS) is desirable because it can guarantee security against a very realistic attack scenario that an adversary is allowed to be active in the target session. However, most of AKE schemes cannot achieve sFS, and currently known schemes with sFS are only proved in the random oracle model. In this paper, we propose a generic construction of AKE protocol with sFS in the standard model against a constrained adversary. The constraint is that session-specific intermediate computation results (i.e., session state) cannot be revealed to the adversary for achieving sFS, that is shown to be inevitable by Boyd and Gonzalez Nieto. However, our scheme maintains weak FS (wFS) if session state is available to the adversary. Thus, our scheme satisfies one of strongest security definitions, the CK + model, which includes wFS and session state reveal. The main idea to achieve sFS is to use signcryption KEM while the previous CK + secure construction uses ordinary KEM. We show a possible instantiation of our construction from Diffie-Hellman problems.