Authentication Credentials Research Articles

GPRS∕UMTS-aided authentication protocol for wireless LANs

Wireless local area network (WLAN) and cellular network are two important technologies for providing wireless communications. For user authentication of WLAN, the IEEE 802.1X standard provides an authentication framework that is based on the Extensible Authentication Protocol (EAP). When a roaming user wants to access WLANs provided by different operators, the user must remember multiple identities and the corresponding authentication credentials. Obviously, such an exercise is not user friendly. This problem is caused by the fact that a visited WLAN does not have the authentication credential of a roaming user. Previous proposals have studied the authentication of inter-network roaming across different WLANs, or across a cellular network and a WLAN. As is known, cellular networks provide wider service areas, ‘always-on’ and ubiquitous connectivity. The integration of WLAN and cellular networks has a management advantage that it can unify the subscriber identity and the corresponding credential. In this paper, we first propose a practical certificate distribution scheme. The certificate distribution scheme allows roaming users of a cellular network to obtain temporary certificates from their home cellular network. Afterward adopting certificate-based authentication protocol of the IEEE 802.1X standard, roaming users may use temporary certificates to access WLANs. The proposed solution achieves easy subscriber management and pervasive access. As demonstrated, the proposed solution also provides mutual authentication and strong identity protection, in addition to withstanding the man-in-the-middle attack and the eavesdropping attack. A performance evaluation shows that the proposed protocol is well suited for roaming users with mobile devices.

Certifying authenticity via fiber-infused paper

A certificate of authenticity (COA) is an inexpensive physical object that has a random unique structure with high cost of near-exact reproduction. An additional requirement is that the uniqueness of COA's random structure can be verified using an inexpensive device. Bauder was the first to propose COAs created as a randomized augmentation of a set of fibers into a transparent gluing material that randomly fixes once for all the position of the fibers within. In this paper, we propose a novel system for automated verification of fiber-based COAs and outline the key challenges in enabling high cost-efficiency of such a system. The key features of the new COA scanner are simplicity, reliability, lack of any moving components, and the ability to accurately identify exact positions of individual fibers infused in COA's containing paper. The latter feature significantly increases the forging cost compared to trivial implementations of a COA scanner.

Localised authentication for inter-network roaming across wireless LANs

Authentication for inter-network roaming across wireless LANs is an important issue for achieving the goal of pervasive access and computing. The technical challenge lies in the fact that a visited network does not initially have the authentication credentials of a roaming user. Previous proposals have suggested that a visited network obtain the credentials of a roaming user and then forward them to the user's home network for authentication. A public key certificate structure is proposed, tailored to the business model of wireless Internet service providers (ISPs). In this manner, the mutual authentication between a visited network and a roaming user can be performed locally without any contact with user's home network. As a result, the time overhead incurred by communication between the ISPs' authentication, authorisation and accounting (AAA) servers can be avoided. A concrete protocol is proposed for the initial roaming authentication, which modifies the secure socket layer (SSL) v3.0 handshake protocol in order to encrypt a roaming user's identity, thus preventing any leaks in the wireless medium. A visited network can a posteriori use a portion of the protocol execution transcript as evidence to obtain revenue from a roaming user's home network. As demonstrated, the proposed solution provides a high level of security and is computationally efficient.

Poetry and the Paleolithic, or, The Artful Forager

Poetry and the Paleolithic, or, The Artful Forager Kevin Marzahl (bio) Review of: Jed Rasula, This Compost: Ecological Imperatives in American Poetry. Athens: U of Georgia P, 2002. I remember well the March 1984 cover of National Geographic because it seemed that I could look right into it at an iridescent eagle perched on a floating branch within a third dimension that, of course, vanished if the volume was not held just so. The holography that I see today is put to more practical uses (which that Geographic issue no doubt discussed), as an element of credit cards and software authentication certificates. Reading Jed Rasula calls that eagle to mind for the simple, if idiosyncratic, reason that he applauds and practices what he calls a holographic or hologrammatic approach to writing, in which the “argument is . . . not hypotactic—that is, not hierarchically disposed, but radically egalitarian. Its parts are its wholes and vice versa” (This Compost 8). As Rasula explains elsewhere, the “ultimate implication of the holographic method is that the whole book may be derived from a single proposition” (“Brutalities” 772), an effect with considerable appeal given the media environment in which the book must compete and to which it must adapt, largely through cultivating “redundancy in the information-theoretic sense: it is coded to survive the noise of inattention and distraction” (771). I have been dwelling recently on this method because Rasula has just given us a compelling book, This Compost: Ecological Imperatives in American Poetry, in which this “radically egalitarian” hologrammatic style is supplemented by the practice of dissociative collage (8–9). Whatever Rasula has accomplished with this book (over twenty years in the making1) is ultimately inseparable from these practices, which, taken together, constitute what Rasula calls wreading. As Rasula explains, “‘Wreading’ is my neologism for the collaborative momentum initiated by certain texts, like The Maximus Poems, in which the reader is enlisted as an agent of the writing. Reciprocally, the writer discloses his or her own readerly orientation . . .” (11–12n). The result is a frequently recursive structure organized by headings rather than chapters and supporting a dense tissue of allusion and analogy peppered with utterances—call them holographemes—which are at root identical. At its best, Rasula’s wreading produces memorable assertions that achieve the “pungency” of the dialectical aphorisms that Adorno calls for in Minima Moralia: Dialectical thinking . . . means that an argument should take on the pungency of a thesis and a thesis contain within itself the fullness of its reasoning. All bridging concepts, all links and logical auxiliary operations that are not a part of the matter itself, all secondary developments not saturated with the experience of the object, should be discarded. In a philosophical text all the propositions ought to be equally close to the center. (71) The center in Rasula’s case turns out to be nothing less than a new atavism, a revival of the Olsonian muthologos. One of the virtues of This Compost is precisely its return to Olsonian posthumanism2, but its excavations in the open field yield claims entranced, and compromised, by grave archaisms exerting a strong centripetal pull on an otherwise excentric project. Holography simplifies the task of elucidating this thesis, for if the part contains—in good holographic fashion—the whole, then it should be possible to peer under a single heading of This Compost in the right light to see the whole eagle of Rasula’s argument spread its finely crafted wings. I will choose as that section “The Starry Horizon,” wherein the book’s central liability is as apparent as anywhere, but not before a brief introduction to Rasula’s aims, which he targets in the first place because “certain challenges persist: the need of long-term views, the need to reckon our own wild nature into any consideration of ‘nature’ as such” (10). Rasula’s radical atavism is immediately apparent from the book’s epigraphs (their collective avant-garde rhetoric and typography inflected with sociobiology), while his deliberately unconventional citation practices necessitate his Preface, much of which is devoted to orienting readers to the book’s unusual structure. This Compost, Rasula tells us straightaway, is first of all “an anthology of...

On-line e-wallet system with decentralized credential keepers

We propose a generalization of the architecture of an electronic wallet, as first developed in the seminal European research project CAFE. With this model you can leave most of the content of your electronic wallet at the security of your residential electronic keeper, while roaming with your favorite mobile terminals. Emerging mobile handsets with both short range Bluetooth and cellular GPRS communications provide a sufficient communication platform for this electronic wallet architecture. However, new security requirements must be addressed, and new threats of attack must be carefully analyzed and met with appropriate security protocols. The proposed approach is fundamentally distinct from the remote wallet proposals, in that it protects important user requirements and takes a multiparty security approach using a fully decentralized architecture. Technically, the user remains in control of the input/output and usage of his credentials, likely carried by smart cards. At the same time, the model provides a solution to the pressing practical problem of the multitude of special-branded cards the user has to carry and sort. Currently used magnetic stripe and chip cards with applications such as debit and credit transactions are easily included within the architecture with minor enhancement to these legacy systems and their functionality. We show in this paper how an account-based payment system can be solved with the proposed architecture. Our claim is that users achieve payment mobility and independence of both terminals and payment service providers while maintaining secure access to their payment authorization credentials.

Implementing context and team based access control in healthcare intranets.

The establishment of an efficient access control system in healthcare intranets is a critical security issue directly related to the protection of patients' privacy. Our C-TMAC (Context and Team-based Access Control) model is an active security access control model that layers dynamic access control concepts on top of RBAC (Role-based) and TMAC (Team-based) access control models. It also extends them in the sense that contextual information concerning collaborative activities is associated with teams of users and user permissions are dynamically filtered during runtime. These features of C-TMAC meet the specific security requirements of healthcare applications. In this paper, an experimental implementation of the C-TMAC model is described. More specifically, we present the operational architecture of the system that is used to implement C-TMAC security components in a healthcare intranet. Based on the technological platform of an Oracle Data Base Management System and Application Server, the application logic is coded with stored PL/SQL procedures that include Dynamic SQL routines for runtime value binding purposes. The resulting active security system adapts to current need-to-know requirements of users during runtime and provides fine-grained permission granularity. Apart from identity certificates for authentication, it uses attribute certificates for communicating critical security metadata, such as role membership and team participation of users.

The Analysis of Victoria Crosses New Zealand

The Victoria Cross is the most important medal awarded for valour in time of war in the British Commonwealth. It is arguably also the most unusual in that it was based on design work by the reigning monarch Queen Victoria and her consort Prince Albert. The crosses were cast from metal from two cannons captured at Sebastopol in 1856 and not some noble metal. The medal commands very high prices if sold and thus attracts the skills of forgery. The Victoria Crosses in New Zealand were examined by X-ray fluorescence spectroscopy and the data was compared with previously obtained information from the Australian War Memorial collection. The comparative studies allowed the issue of certificates of authenticity to the New Zealand institutes and lending bodies.

Investigating artificially coloured diamonds

COLOURLESS diamonds are rare—most have a slight natural yellow colour which makes them unsuitable as gem stones. However, a strongly coloured gem quality diamond is very valuable. Neutron irradiation is sometimes used to ‘treat’ diamonds to strengthen and improve the yellow colour, but their value is decreased if the coloration is known to be artificial. For many years gem testing laboratories have concentrated on an absorption line at 595 nm to decide the pedigree of yellow coloured diamonds. Crowningshield1 examined a very large number of treated and untreated diamonds and found that all treated diamonds except one showed the 595 nm line, whereas in only two cases of uncertain history was this line present in natural untreated stones. The rarity of this line in untreated diamonds has been confirmed by Anderson2 who further states (personal communication) that it is never seen in a cut and polished sample. The apparent universality of the 595 nm line in treated diamonds, and its absence in untreated diamonds has therefore been used has a guide to a diamond's history, and indeed the Gemological Institute of America has based its certificates of authenticity on this criterion1. This note draws attention to the fact that absorption at 595 nm in a treated diamond may be destroyed without significantly altering the colour of the stone.

MPD BUKAN ADVOKAT PARA NOTARIS BERDASARKAN UNDANG-UNDANG NO.30 TAHUN 2004 TENTANG JABATAN NOTARIS

Notary is apublic official who runs most of the public functionsin the state, especially in the civil law. Notary has authority to make authentic certificate of all deeds, agreements, and regulations which is obligated by legislation or which is desired by an interested party, to be declared in the deed authentic, guaranteeing deed date, saving certificates, giving grosse, copies and citations of certificates, all along the deed is not assigned or excluded to the officer or other person which is specified by law.In the authority need to carry out surveillance and MPD is the only aut horized institution to implement surveillance, inspection and giving punishment toward notaries in the district/city. The institution exists of Region Supervisor Council and the Central Supervisors Council.MPD has a special authority which can be run to check notary relate to the investigators request, prosecutors or judges to take a photocopy minuta or other documents which is attached to the minuta or protocols in Notary storage, calling the Notary related to deed which has been made or notary protocols which are in Notary storage.Keywords: Notary, MPD, Lawyer