Centralized Key Management Research Articles

A Certificate-Less Distributed Key Management Scheme for Space Networks

The specificity and complexity of space networks render the traditional key management mechanism no longer applicable. The certificate-less-based distributed spatial network key management scheme proposed in this paper combines the characteristics of space networks, solving the problems regarding the difficulty of implementing centralized key management in space networks and the excessive overhead required for maintaining public key certificates by constructing a distributed key generation center and establishing strategies such as private key updates, master key component updates, and session key negotiation. This method also avoids the key escrow problem inherent in existing identity-based key management schemes. This scheme provides the DPKG construction method for space networks; designs the update strategy for the DPKG node’s master key sharing, providing a specific update algorithm; introduces the batch private key update mechanism; and uses the mapping function to evenly distribute the node’s update requests throughout the update time period, avoiding the problem of overly concentrated update requests. After analysis and simulation verification, it was proven that the scheme can meet the necessary security requirements, offering good stability and scalability.

Efficient key distribution for secure and energy-optimized communication in wireless sensor network using bioinspired algorithms

Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) play a major part in numerous applications such as smart agriculture, healthcare, and environmental monitoring. Safeguarding protected communication in this network is dominant. Securing data transmission in WSNs needs a strong key distribution device to defend against malicious attacks as well as illegal access. Traditional techniques like pre-shared or centralized key management are often unreasonable owing to resource limitations, particularly in large-scale sensor systems. To overcome this challenge, a lightweight key distribution technique is employed for safeguarding the security and privacy of data transmission streamlining processes decreasing computational overhead as well as energy consumption. By optimizing and simplifying key distribution devices, we propose to improve the complete efficacy and trustworthiness of WSNs that aid safe communication while preserving valuable energy resources. Therefore, this article designs an Efficient Key Distribution for Secure and Energy-Optimized Communication using Bioinspired Algorithms (EKD-SOCBA) for WSN. The purpose of the EKD-SOCBA technique is to accomplish security and energy efficiency in WSNs. Initially, the EKD-SOCBA technique applies a golden jackal optimization (GJO) based clustering approach to cluster the nodes and select cluster heads (CHs). Also, a lightweight Dynamic Step-wise Tiny Encryption Algorithm (DS-TEA) is applied to secure data transmission in the network. Finally, a lightweight key management phase is employed to protect the encryption key and decrease energy utilization and overhead costs. To exhibit the enhanced act of the EKD-SOCBA model, a comprehensive set of imitations was involved. Extensive results stated enhanced presentation of EKD-SOCBA methodology over other models on WSN.

Joint Security and Train Control Design in Blockchain-Empowered CBTC System

The communication-based train control (CBTC) system ensures the high efficiency and orderliness of trains and is widely used in urban rail transit networks. The adoption of wireless communication and network techniques makes the CBTC systems more vulnerable to cyber attacks. Identity authentication is an effective approach to improve system security. The existing identity authentication mechanisms in CBTC adopt a centralized key management system sensitive to single-point failures. To improve system security, in this article, we deploy a blockchain in CBTC systems. The client that runs the blockchain program not only acts as blockchain nodes to provide distributed key management for the CBTC system but they also work as a relay node to authenticate the communication between train control nodes in CBTC systems. Based on the blockchain-empowered distributed security scheme, the block producer selection and onboard blockchain client handoff decision problem are studied. With the objective to minimize the impact of the key updating process on CBTC system performance and keep the system security under a reasonable level, we formulate the block producer selection and onboard blockchain client handoff decision problem using the deep reinforcement learning approach. Extensive simulation results illustrate that the proposed blockchain-empowered security scheme can significantly improve the CBTC system security, and CBTC systems need to sacrifice part performance to ensure system security.

Improved Certificate-Based Encryption Scheme in the Big Data: Combining AES and (ECDSA – ECDH)

Big data usually running in large-scale and centralized key management systems. However, the centralized key management systems are increasing the problems such as single point of failure, exchanging a secret key over insecure channels, third-party query, and key escrow problem. To avoid these problems, we propose an improved certificate-based encryption scheme that ensures data confidentiality by combining symmetric and asymmetric cryptography schemes. The combination can be implemented by using the Advanced Encryption Standard (AES) and Elliptic Curve Diffie-Hellman (ECDH). The proposed scheme is an enhanced version of the Certificate-Based Encryption (CBE) scheme and preserves all its advantages. However, the key generation process in our scheme has been done without any intervention from the certificate issuer and avoiding the risk of compromised CA. The Elliptic Curve Digital Signature Algorithm (ECDSA) has been used with the ECDH to handle the authentication of the key exchange. The proposed scheme is demonstrated on a big dataset of social networks. The scheme is analyzed based on security criteria that have been compared with the previous schemes to evaluate its performance.

Fault-Tolerant Based Group Key Servers with Enhancement of Utilizing the Contributory Server for Cloud Storage Applications

Group key management in cloud computing has become a trending topic in recent decades. This paper deals with the implementation of clustered structure based on centralized key management. In a centralized key management scheme, the Key Server is responsible for generating user keys and group keys of the cloud. The proposed work consists of a single Central Server and a number of sub-servers and each sub-server can manage multiple different groups. To achieve fault tolerance, each group is replicated into multiple different sub-servers. Users are allocated to a specific group and the size of the group is limited. Each group has a separate group key to avoid internal attacks and they can communicate through a central server. The proposed work encourages intergroup communication and essentially reduces the computations and storage complexity of the central server. Also, we propose to remove the rekeying process upon a new user joining by maintaining a file access list for each file, which will reduce the impact of the security features that even there is a leakage of the group key after the user leaves. Further, this paper proposes a contributory key management scheme where each member of the group is responsible for generating the group key.

A centralized key management scheme for space network with resistance of nonlinear channel noise

The channel noise in space is nonlinear and pseudorandom so that the efficiency and security of existing group key management schemes are constrained seriously. To solve these problems, we proposed a centralized and identity-based key management scheme by using McEliece public key cryptosystem. In this scheme, the node identity is used as the parameter to generate the public key. Thus the authentication can be embedded into the verification of the public key. The group key is distributed with the protection of public key so that it can be implemented safely. Furthermore, the error correction capacity provided by McEliece public cryptosystem can eliminate the disturbance of noise. It transfers the negative influence caused by pseudorandom noise to an enhancement of security and increases the efficiency of the group key distribution over the noisy channel. The security of public key generation, forward secrecy and backward secrecy is analyzed. The performance is analyzed and compared with other schemes. The error correction capacity is simulated. The results show that our scheme can provide confidentiality, integrity, authentication, non-repudiation, failure tolerance and error correction with lower computation overhead and interaction rounds.

A Centralized Key Management Scheme Based on McEliece PKC for Space Network

Constrained by the limited resource, high-latency and high bit error rate, the existing group key management schemes for the space network are inefficient. To solve this problem, we proposed a centralized and identity-based key management scheme by using McEliece public-key cryptosystem (PKC). In this scheme, the node identity is used as the parameter to generate the public key. Therefore, the authentication can be embedded into the verification of the public key without needing the PKI. The group key is distributed with the protection of the public key so that the group key management scheme can be implemented safely. Furthermore, the McEliece public-key cryptosystem can resist the quantum attack and provide error correction capacity. It improves the efficiency of the group key distribution over the noisy channel. The proposed key management scheme is simulated on OPNET. The security of public-key generation, forward secrecy, backward secrecy and performance are analyzed. The results show that our scheme can provide confidentiality, integrity, authentication, non-repudiation, failure tolerance and error correction. In addition, the computation overhead and rounds of interaction are lower than former work.

Blockchain-Based Personal Health Records Sharing Scheme With Data Integrity Verifiable

The sharing of personal health records can help to improve the accuracy of the doctor's diagnosis and to promote the progress of medical research. Currently, to reduce the maintenance cost of data, personal health records are usually outsourced to a third party such as the cloud service provider. In this case, patients may lose direct control over their personal health records and the semi-trusted cloud service provider may tamper with or reveal personal health records. Therefore, ensuring the privacy and integrity of personal health records and realizing the fine-grained access control are crucial issues when personal health records are shared. As a distributed architecture with decentralized and tamper-proof features, blockchain provides a new way to protect the personal health records sharing system. In this paper, we propose a new personal health records sharing scheme with data integrity verifiable based on blockchain. Aiming at the problems of privacy disclosure, limited keyword search ability and loss of control rights in the process of personal health record sharing, the new scheme uses searchable symmetric encryption and attribute-based encryption techniques to achieve privacy protection, keyword search, and fine-grained access control. Compared with the existing similar schemes, the new scheme allows patients to distribute attribute private key for users, avoiding many security problems caused by the existing of attribute authority in the scheme. Furthermore, the new scheme uses blockchain to manage keys in the scheme, avoiding the single point failure problem of centralized key management. In particular, the new scheme stores the hash values of encrypted personal health records in blockchain, and the related index set is stored in smart contract, which can further improve the efficiency of data integrity verification. Finally, performance evaluation and security analysis indicate that our scheme is secure and feasible for practical use.

An efficient key agreement protocol for Sybil-precaution in online social networks

Identifying malicious users in online social networks (OSNs) is a challenging task that demands a great deal of skill and knowledge because these users can have multiple forms: Sybils, bots, spammers, phishers, impersonations or fake accounts. Different types of research methodologies have been proposed to solve this problem; hence, there are varied solutions. Most of the work on OSNs has focused on trust, distrust to detect and preventing these types of attacks. Some researchers have found that a suspected node can generate private/public keys to prevent its identity from being stolen by an adversary; however, they have not explained how these keys are generated and managed. We propose a new and efficient centralized key management protocol to prevent Sybil attack and to provide a secure communication service among users in OSNs. The core tenet of this method is the existence of a ‘roadblock’ that any user intending to join a group must go through, which includes a task that only a human user can accomplish. Hence, automatically controlled accounts are prevented from joining, and the group will consist only of users that have been confirmed as genuine. The mechanism is very effective in recognizing bot accounts, which enables it to guard the network against malicious behavior by fake accounts.

A Centralized Key Table based Communication Efficient Group Key Management Protocol

Group key management is an integral part of secure multicast. Minimizing the number of rekeying messages, maintaining the forward and backward secrecy has always been a challenging task. Though there are many solutions which reduce the rekeying messages from O(n) to O(log2n), they increase with the increase in group size. In this paper, we present a centralized key table based communication efficient group key management protocol in which number of rekeying messages is independent of the group size. In this protocol key management server (KMS) divides a group of n members into n subgroups of size n−1 and maintains a table of n subkeys along with member ID and one group key. Each member has n−1 subkeys, which is a subset of n subkeys of KMS and one group key. The proposed protocol requires only one multicast rekeying message per joining of a new member as well as per eviction of any existing member. As the number of rekeying messages is not dependent on group size, it requires less computation. Index Terms—Group key management, rekeying, subkeys, secure multicast, forward and backward secrecy.

Architecture of multicast centralized key management scheme using quantum key distribution and classical symmetric encryption

Multicasting refers to the transmission of a message or information from one sender to multiple receivers simultaneously. Although encryption algorithms can be used to secure transmitted messages among group members, still there are many security aspects for designing a secured multicast cryptosystem. The most important aspects of Multicasting are key generation and management. The researchers have proposed several approaches for solving problems of multicast key distribution and management. In this paper, a secure key generation and distribution solution has been proposed for a single host sending to two or more (N) receivers using centralized Quantum Multicast Key Distribution Centre “QMKDC” and classical symmetric encryption. The proposed scheme uses symmetric classical algorithms for encryption and decryption transmitted messages among multicast group members, but the generated keys which are used for authentication, encryption and decryption also play an important role for designing a secured multicast cryptosystem come from QKD protocols. Authentication verified using EPR entangled Photons and controlled-NOT gate. Multiple requests for initialization as well for transmitting sensitive information handled through priority and sensitivity levels. Multiple members’ communication is achieved with full or partial support of QMKDC.

Secure Group Communication with Hidden Group Key

ABSTRACT Grid environment is mainly concerned with sharing diverse resources belonging to different administrative domains. Security and scalability are important issues for secure group communication in a grid environment. Secure group communication among group members working on collaborative tasks involves confidentiality and authenticity of the message and the session key. In order to transmit the data in a secure way, a suitable key transfer protocol should be implemented. Key transfer protocols rely on a centralized Key Management Center (KMC), an entity responsible for managing user authentication, generating group keys and distributing it to all the members of the communicating group secretly. In this paper, we proposed a secure key transfer protocol that uses the concepts of soft dipole representation of the image and steganography for transferring password and group key securely to the users. In this protocol, users submit their images at the time of registration with the KMC. First KMC compute the soft dipole representation SI of every user's image and each user's image can be uniquely represented by its corresponding soft dipole representation. The soft dipole representation of each user's image is used as a password for authentication of corresponding user with KMC. KMC generates the group key using soft dipoles of the images of the group members. To preserve the confidentiality, the group key is embedded into an image (using information hiding technique) and KMC broadcast that image to all the group members.

Analysis and Protection of Dynamic Membership Information for Group Key Distribution Schemes

<para xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"> In secure group-oriented applications, key management schemes are employed to distribute and update keys such that unauthorized parties cannot access group communications. Key management, however, can disclose information about the dynamics of group membership, such as the group size and the number of joining and departing users. This is a threat to applications with confidential group membership information. This paper investigates techniques that can stealthily acquire group dynamic information from key management. We show that insiders and outsiders can successfully obtain group membership information by exploiting key establishment and key updating procedures in many popular key management schemes. Particularly, we develop three attack methods targeting tree-based centralized key management schemes. Further, we propose a defense technique utilizing batch rekeying and phantom users, and derive performance criteria that describe security level of the proposed scheme using mutual information. The proposed defense scheme is evaluated based on the data from MBone multicast sessions. We also provide a brief analysis on the disclosure of group dynamic information in contributory key management schemes. </para>