Communication Overhead Research Articles

A Provably Secure Anonymous Authentication Protocol for Consumer and Service Provider Information Transmissions in Smart Grids

Smart grids integrate information technology, decision support systems, communication networks, and sensing technologies. All these components cooperate to facilitate dynamic power adjustments based on received client consumption reports. Although this brings forth energy efficiency, the transmission of sensitive data over the public internet exposes these networks to numerous attacks. To this end, numerous security solutions have been presented recently. Most of these techniques deploy conventional cryptographic systems such as public key infrastructure, blockchains, and physically unclonable functions that have either performance or security issues. In this paper, a fairly efficient authentication scheme is developed and analyzed. Its formal security analysis is carried out using the Burrows–Abadi–Needham (BAN) logic, which shows that the session key negotiated is provably secure. We also execute a semantic security analysis of this protocol to demonstrate that it can resist typical smart grid attacks such as privileged insider, guessing, eavesdropping, and ephemeral secret leakages. Moreover, it has the lowest amount of computation costs and relatively lower communication overheads as well as storage costs.

One-Shot Federated Learning with Label Differential Privacy

Federated learning (FL) has emerged as an extremely effective strategy for dismantling data silos and has attracted significant interest from both industry and academia in recent years. However, existing iterative FL approaches often require a large number of communication rounds and struggle to perform well on unbalanced datasets. Furthermore, the increased complexity of networks makes the application of traditional differential privacy to protect client privacy expensive. In this context, the authors introduce FedGM: a method designed to reduce communication overhead and achieve outstanding results in non-IID scenarios. FedGM is capable of achieving considerable accuracy, even with a small privacy budget. Specifically, the authors devise a method to extract knowledge from each client’s data by creating a scaled-down but highly effective synthesized dataset that can perform similarly to the original data. Additionally, the authors propose an innovative approach to applying label differential privacy to protect the synthesized dataset. The authors demonstrate the superiority of the approach over traditional methods by requiring only one communication round and by testing using four classification datasets for evaluation. Furthermore, when comparing the model performance for clients using their method against traditional solutions, the authors find that the approach achieves significant accuracy and better privacy.

Trusted Head Node for Node Behaviour Analysis for Malicious Node Detection in Wireless Sensor Networks

There has been a rise in the use of Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) in several fields. Depending on the malicious actions, attacks on WSN can take many forms. This research demonstrates how to leverage request and response data from each node to pinpoint the location of malicious nodes. If a node is malevolent, it will prohibit data from being sent to other nodes. They do an excellent job of pretending to be someone else. To enhance route quality, packet dropping can be used to perform a Denial of Service (DoS) assault by rejecting data packets and cutting them off from their destinations. The primary goal of this research is to expose malicious nodes within the network. To avoid being attacked by the false information fed by the adversary through compromised nodes, it is crucial to discover and isolate the nodes that have been compromised. Unfortunately, flat topology networks are difficult to keep safe because of their limited scalability and substantial communication overhead. By computing the packet drop and throughput values with valid nodes, efficient security architecture for the WSN can be proposed, allowing for the detection of malicious activity. If sensor networks are susceptible to attacks, they will be unable to fulfill their duty in a variety of event detection applications. Malicious nodes can cause unacceptable drops in event detection effectiveness and spikes in false alarm rates by producing fake readings and deceptive information. In this research, a method for identifying malicious nodes in WSNs is proposed. This research considers a Trusted Head Node (THN) for monitoring the nodes behaviour in the network to detect the malicious actions in the network. This research proposes a Trusted Head Node for Node Behaviour Analysis for Malicious Node Detection (THN-NBA-MND) in WSN. The proposed model based on node behavior analysis in frequent time intervals; detect the malicious nodes to improve the network performance in data transmission. The proposed model when contrasted with the existing model performs better in malicious node detection.

Certificateless anti-quantum blind signcryption for e-cash

Electronic cash (e-cash) has become major payment way in the era of internet of things. However, the leakage of user privacy and transaction data is becoming more and more serious in e-cash system. To solve these problems, we construct a new certificateless blind signcryption from NTRU lattice (NTRUL-CLBSC) suitable for e-cash. NTRUL-CLBSC has low communication overhead and high calculation efficiency because of small storage space and short key size in number theory research unit (NTRU) lattice. Based on RSIS and DNCC problems in NTRU lattice, NTRUL-CLBSC can guarantee the anti-quantum, anti-forgery, confidentiality and blindness, and there is no key escrow and certificate management in e-cash application.

Improved RSA dynamic cryptographic accumulator-based anonymous batch authentication scheme for Internet of Vehicles

The Internet of Vehicles (IoV) provides various services to vehicles through information sharing to ensure road safety and improve traffic efficiency. However, malicious attackers can challenge the privacy and security systems of the IoV by conducting security attacks. Currently, many schemes use bilinear pairing or elliptic curves to construct authentication systems, ensuring anonymity of vehicle identities and message security. However, these schemes suffer drawbacks such as low computational efficiency and high communication overhead in highly dynamic IoV. Therefore, we propose a new efficient certificateless message authentication scheme. The proposed scheme constructs a lightweight security authentication protocol by improving the RSA dynamic accumulator and combining it with non-interactive discrete logarithm zero-knowledge proofs. In addition, our scheme eliminates the need for bilinear pairing operations, thereby reducing computational overhead. Simultaneously, it enables real-time tracking and revocation of malicious vehicle identities. Security analysis shows that our scheme can be reduced to a secure S-RSA assumption under the random oracle model, meeting various security requirements of the IoV. Performance analysis shows that our scheme diminishes not only the computational overhead but also the communication overhead.

Shared group session key-based conditional privacy-preserving authentication protocol for VANETs

Vehicular Ad-Hoc Networks (VANETs) have significantly enhanced driving safety and comfort by leveraging vehicular wireless communication technology. Due to the open nature of VANETs, conditional privacy-preserving authentication protocol should be offered against potential attacks. Efficient and secure authentication among vehicles in VANETs are important requirements, but there are various limitations in the existing conditional privacy-preserving authentication protocols for securing VANETs. To cope with the inherent issues, we propose a conditional privacy-preserving authentication protocol based share group session key (SGSK) by integrating the self-healing key distribution technique, blockchain, and MTI/C0 protocol. In our protocol, we use SGSK instead of the time-consuming Certificate Revocation List (CRL) checking, and we revoke malicious vehicles by updating SGSK. It is shared among unrevoked vehicles within a domain and across-domain. As a result, when a malicious revoked vehicle enters a new domain, it is difficult for it to access the system and send false messages. Furthermore, our protocol can not only achieve computation efficiency by reducing the number of computing operations of bilinear pairing but also resist various attacks while keeping conditional privacy protection. We implement our protocol in the Hyperledger Fabric platform. The experimental results show that our protocol is available to revoke 180 malicious vehicles in across-domain scenarios within one second, and it can meet the requirement of verifying 600 messages per second easily. Moreover, our comprehensive performance evaluations demonstrates that our protocol outperforms other approaches in terms of vehicle revocation checking cost, computation overhead, and communication overhead. In addition, to show the feasibility and validity of our protocol, we use SUMO and NS2 to simulate the actual VANET scenario and validate the efficiency and performance of our protocol. Simulation results prove the practicability of our protocol for VANETs.

An Underwater Source Location Privacy Protection Scheme Based on Game Theory in a Multi-Attacker Cooperation Scenario.

Ensuring source location privacy is crucial for the security of underwater acoustic sensor networks amid the growing use of marine environmental monitoring. However, the traditional source location privacy scheme overlooks multi-attacker cooperation strategies and also has the problem of high communication overhead. This paper addresses the aforementioned limitations by proposing an underwater source location privacy protection scheme based on game theory under the scenario of multiple cooperating attackers (SLP-MACGT). First, a transformation method of a virtual coordinate system is proposed to conceal the real position of nodes to a certain extent. Second, through using the relay node selection strategy, the diversity of transmission paths is increased, passive attacks by adversaries are resisted, and the privacy of source nodes is protected. Additionally, a secure data transmission technique utilizing fountain codes is employed to resist active attacks by adversaries, ensuring data integrity and enhancing data transmission stability. Finally, Nash equilibrium could be achieved after the multi-round evolutionary game theory of source node and multiple attackers adopting their respective strategies. Simulation experiments and performance evaluation verify the effectiveness and reliability of SLP-MACGT regarding aspects of the packet forwarding success rate, security time, delay and energy consumption: the packet delivery rate average increases by 30%, security time is extended by at least 85%, and the delay is reduced by at least 90% compared with SSLP, PP-LSPP, and MRGSLP.

CSL-SFNet for Cooperative Spectrum Sensing in Cognitive Satellite Network with GEO and LEO Satellites

In a cognitive satellite network (CSN) with GEO and LEO satellites, there is a large propagation losses between the sensing satellite and the ground station. The results of spectrum sensing from a single satellite may be inaccurate, which will create serious interference in the primary satellite system. Cooperative spectrum sensing (CSS) has become the key technology for solving the above problems in recent years. However, most of the current CSS techniques are model-driven. They are difficult to model and implement in CSNs since their detection performance is strongly dependent on an assumed statistical model. Thus, we propose a novel CSS scheme, which uses convolutional neural networks (CNNs), self-attention (SA) modules, long short-term memory networks (LSTMs), and soft fusion networks, called CSL-SFNet. This scheme combines the advantages of CNNs, SA modules, and LSTMs to extract the features of the input signals from the spatial and temporal domains. Additionally, the CSL-SFNet makes use of a novel soft fusion technique that improves detection performance while also considerably reducing communication overhead. The simulation results demonstrate that the proposed algorithm can achieve a detection probability of 90% when the signal-to-noise ratio is −20 dB; it has a shorter running time and always outperforms the other CSS algorithms.

Efficient and quantum‐secure authenticated key exchange scheme for mobile satellite communication networks

SummaryThe mobile satellite communication (MSC) system is a vital communication method in which mobile users and network control centers connect via satellites. Since the satellite's communication is wireless, communication security is a critical factor to ensure accountable communication. Key exchange and authentication (KEA) mechanism is widely used to achieve data security for data transmitted in an insecure or open channel. Different authentication systems are suggested in the last many years to establish safe communication, whereas most existing security protocols are based on factorization or discrete logarithm. However, these systems are no longer reliable by Shor's algorithm as any discrete logarithm and factorization can be resolved in polynomial time on quantum computers. Thus, developing a quantum secure KEA protocol for MSC systems is necessary. In this direction, recently a ring learning with an error‐based KEA technique is proposed to ensure a quantum‐safe environment. This scheme is quantum‐safe and satisfies desirable security attributes but has low efficiency in computation and communication. Moreover, establishing a secure session requires six communications among involved entities. As a result, replay attack detection at an early stage is not possible for the central authority (server), which could delay the server response, and the adversary gets the advantage of drawing a denial of service scenario for authorized entities. We propose a lattice‐based KEA protocol for the MSC system to improve computation, communication efficiency, and early‐stage replay attack detection. The security analysis of the proposed scheme is presented in the random oracle model. Calculation of performance is also presented to observe advantages in computation and communication overhead.

Personalized and privacy-preserving federated graph neural network

High-performance GNN obtains dependencies within a graph by capturing the mechanism of message passing and aggregation between neighboring nodes in the graph, and successfully updates node embeddings. However, in practical applications, the inherent model structure of the graph is highly susceptible to privacy attacks, and the heterogeneity of external data can lead to a decrease in model performance. Motivated by this challenge, this work proposes a novel framework called Personalized Federated Graph Neural Network for Privacy-Preserving (PFGNN). Specifically, firstly, this work introduces a graph similarity strategy. Based on the principle that clients with similar features exhibit stronger homophily, this work divides all participating clients into multiple clusters for collaborative training. Furthermore, within each group, this work employs an attention mechanism to design a federated aggregation weighting scheme. This scheme is used to construct a global model on the server, which helps mitigate the difficulty of model generalization resulting from data heterogeneity collected from different clients. Lastly, to ensure the privacy of model parameters during the training process and prevent malicious adversaries from stealing them, this work implements privacy-enhancing technology by introducing an optimized function-hiding multi-input function encryption scheme. This ensures the security of both model data and user privacy. Experiments on real datasets show that our scheme outperforms FedAvg in accuracy, and the communication overhead is linearly related to the number of clients. Through this framework, PFGNN can handle all kinds of non-Euclidean structured data, multiple clients collaborate to train high-quality and highly secure global models. This work provides the foundation for designing efficient and privacy-preserving personalized federated graph neural networks.

An efficient provably secure authentication and key agreement protocol for satellite communication networks

AbstractThe leverage of satellite resources to establish a communication network offers a wide range of benefits, including the capability to support news gathering, broadcasting, and aeronautical and maritime tracking. The unique aspects of the satellite‐linked terrestrial network provide high‐speed services, dependable and consistent network quality, and comprehensive geographic coverage of remote regions. Unfortunately, these structural features also render the network vulnerable to unauthorized intrusion, potentially leading to significant disruptions. Consequently, the implementation of authentication measures presents an appealing solution for enhancing the overall service quality of this network. Recently, Kumar et al. presented an authentication and key agreement scheme for satellite communications. Strikingly, their scheme proves inadequate in safeguarding against several malicious attacks and reveals certain design weaknesses. In this article, we present a reliable and secure authentication protocol that takes advantage of the complexities inherent in the elliptic curve discrete logarithm problem. We assess the protocol's effectiveness against various types of attacks using formal proof, Burrows–Abadi–Needham logic, informal descriptive proof analysis, and the verification tool SCYTHER. Furthermore, we compare the computational, communication, and storage overhead of our proposed protocol to an existing one, demonstrating its efficiency and superiority.

Improvement of Practical Byzantine Fault Tolerance Consensus Algorithm Based on DIANA in Intellectual Property Environment Transactions

In response to the shortcomings of the consensus algorithm for intellectual property transactions, such as high communication overhead, random primary node selection, and prolonged consensus time, a Practical Byzantine Fault Tolerance (PBFT) improvement algorithm based on Divisive Analysis (DIANA) D-PBFT algorithm is proposed. Firstly, the algorithm adopts the hierarchical clustering mechanism of DIANA to cluster nodes based on similarity, enhancing node partition accuracy and reducing the number of participating consensus nodes. Secondly, it designs a reward and punishment system based on node ranking, to achieve consistency between node status and permissions, timely evaluation, and feedback on node behaviours, thereby enhancing node enthusiasm. Then, the election method of the primary node is improved by constructing proxy and alternate nodes and adopting a majority voting strategy to achieve the selection and reliability of the primary node. Finally, the consistency protocol is optimised to perform consensus once within the cluster and once between all primary nodes, to ensure the accuracy of the consensus results. Experimental results demonstrate that the D-PBFT algorithm shows a better performance, in terms of communication complexity, throughput, and latency.

Double‐layer Byzantine fault‐tolerant grouping consensus algorithm based on raft

AbstractAddressing the scalability issues, excessive communication overhead, and challenges in adapting to large‐scale network node environments faced by the Practical Byzantine Fault Tolerance (PBFT) consensus algorithm currently employed in consortium blockchains, this paper proposes a Double Layer Consensus Algorithm Based on RAFT and PBFT Consensus Algorithms (DLCA_R_P). The nodes in the blockchain are initially divided into several groups to form the lower‐layer consensus network. Subsequently, the leaders of these groups constitute the upper‐layer consensus network, creating a dual‐layer consensus network structure. Within the lower‐layer consensus network, the PBFT consensus algorithm is employed for consensus among the groups, while the primary accountants form the upper‐layer RAFT consensus network. The algorithm incorporates a supervision mechanism and a reputation mechanism to enhance the security of the consensus network. Additionally, a grouping mechanism is introduced to transform the consensus network into a dynamic structure. Experimental results analysis demonstrates that compared to traditional PBFT consensus algorithms, DLCA_R_P reduces consensus latency by two orders of magnitude and improves throughput by one order of magnitude in a scenario with 100 nodes. Furthermore, it exhibits significant advantages over other improved algorithms. Thus, the DLCA_R_P consensus algorithm exhibits excellent scalability and can be widely applied in various scenarios within consortium blockchains.

A novel authentication scheme for long-term evolution mobility management: A security investigation

Long-term evolution in wireless broadband communication aims to provide secure communication for users and a high data rate for a fourth-generation network. Even though the fourth-generation network provides security, some loopholes lead to several attacks on the fourth-generation network attacks. The denial-of-service attack occurs when the user communicates with a rogue base station, and the radio base station in fourth-generation long-term evolution networks ensures that the user is attached to the rogue node assigned network. The location leak attack occurs when the packets are sniffed to find any user’s location using its temporary mobile subscriber identity. Prevention of rogue base station and location leak attacks helps the system achieve secure communication between the participating entities. Earlier works in long-term evolution mobility management do not address preventing attacks such as denial-of-service, rogue base stations and location leaks and suffer from computational costs while providing security features. Hence, the present paper addresses the vulnerability of these attacks. It also investigates how these attacks occur and exposes communication in the fourth-generation network. To mitigate these vulnerabilities, the paper proposes a novel authentication scheme. The proposed scheme is simulated using Network Simulator 3, and the security analysis of the proposed scheme is shown using AVISPA –a security tool. Numerical analysis demonstrates that the proposed scheme significantly reduces communication overhead and computational costs associated with the fourth-generation long-term evolution authentication mechanism.

An Efficient Lightweight Authentication Scheme for Smart Meter

With the rapid development of the information age, smart meters play an important role in the smart grid. However, there are more and more attacks on smart meters, which mainly focus on the identity authentication of smart meters and the security protection of electricity consumption data. In this paper, an efficient lightweight smart meter authentication scheme is proposed based on the Chinese Remainder Theorem (CRT), which can realize the revocation of a single smart meter user by publishing a secret random value bound to the smart meter identity. The proposed scheme not only protects the security of smart meter electricity consumption data by using encryption, but also resists identity attacks from both internal and external adversaries by using hash functions and timestamps. Experiment shows that the proposed scheme has lower computation overhead and communication overhead than other authentication schemes and is more suitable for smart meter authentication.

Crossover Boosted Grey Wolf Optimizer‐based framework for leader election and resource allocation in Intrusion Detection Systems for MANETs

AbstractMobile Ad hoc Networks (MANETs) is a self‐organizing networks without having a fixed infrastructure for making them susceptible to security threats. Intrusion Detection Systems (IDS) promotes security in MANETs by identifying malicious activities. Leader election is a fundamental aspect of IDS deployment, impacting resource allocation and system efficiency. This article presents a novel approach, the Crossover Boosted Grey Wolf Optimizer (CBGWO), for leader election and resource allocation in MANET‐based IDS. The proposed CBGWO algorithm integrates the Grey Wolf Optimizer (GWO) with innovative crossover operators that have an ability to enhance the capabilities of exploration and exploitation in the optimization process. The leader election problem is solved through applying multi‐objective optimization by considering energy consumption, reputation, and communication overhead. Objective functions are defined to maximize energy efficiency while maintaining a balanced distribution of leadership roles. Extensive simulations are conducted, varying network densities and the percentage of selfish nodes. Results demonstrate the effectiveness of the CBGWO‐based model in balancing energy consumption, prolonging network lifespan, and enhancing intrusion detection by comparing different state‐of‐the‐art models such as PCA‐FELM, CTAA‐MPSO, FLS‐RE, LEACH, DCAIDS, WOA‐GA, and VOELA. The proposed model achieved an energy consumption of 4.31 J, network lifetime of 560.482 ms, and average intrusion detection latency of 0.12 s, respectively. The proposed model outperforms than existing random and connectivity‐based leader election methods that is evaluated by taking main consideration of energy efficiency and network survivability. This research contributes to the field by introducing a robust algorithm for leader election in MANET‐based IDS, addressing challenges posed by network dynamics and resource constraints. The CBGWO‐based approach showcases its potential to achieve effective leader election and efficient resource allocation, thereby enhancing the security and sustainability of MANETs.

COER: A Network Interface Offloading Architecture for RDMA and Congestion Control Protocol Codesign

RDMA (Remote Direct Memory Access) networks require efficient congestion control to maintain their high throughput and low latency characteristics. However, congestion control protocols deployed at the software layer suffer from slow response times due to the communication overhead between host hardware and software. This limitation has hindered their ability to meet the demands of high-speed networks and applications. Harnessing the capabilities of rapidly advancing Network Interface Card (NIC) can drive progress in congestion control. Some simple congestion control protocols have been offloaded to RDMA NIC to enable faster detection and processing of congestion. However, offloading congestion control to the RDMA NIC faces a significant challenge in integrating the RDMA transport protocol with advanced congestion control protocols that involve complex mechanisms. We have observed that reservation-based proactive congestion control protocols share strong similarities with RDMA transport protocols, allowing them to integrate seamlessly and combine the functionalities of the transport layer and network layer. In this paper, we present COER, an RDMA NIC architecture that leverages the functional components of RDMA to perform reservations and completes the scheduling of congestion control during the scheduling process of the RDMA protocol. COER facilitates the streamlined development of offload strategies for congestion control techniques, specifically proactive congestion control, on RDMA NIC. We use COER to design offloading schemes for eleven congestion control protocols, which we implement and evaluate using a network emulator with a cycle-accurate RDMA NIC model that can load MPI programs. The evaluation results demonstrate that the architecture of COER does not compromise the original characteristics of the congestion control protocols. Compared to a layered protocol stack approach, COER enables the performance of RDMA networks to reach new heights.

Quantization avoids saddle points in distributed optimization

Distributed nonconvex optimization underpins key functionalities of numerous distributed systems, ranging from power systems, smart buildings, cooperative robots, vehicle networks to sensor networks. Recently, it has also merged as a promising solution to handle the enormous growth in data and model sizes in deep learning. A fundamental problem in distributed nonconvex optimization is avoiding convergence to saddle points, which significantly degrade optimization accuracy. We find that the process of quantization, which is necessary for all digital communications, can be exploited to enable saddle-point avoidance. More specifically, we propose a stochastic quantization scheme and prove that it can effectively escape saddle points and ensure convergence to a second-order stationary point in distributed nonconvex optimization. With an easily adjustable quantization granularity, the approach allows a user to control the number of bits sent per iteration and, hence, to aggressively reduce the communication overhead. Numerical experimental results using distributed optimization and learning problems on benchmark datasets confirm the effectiveness of the approach.

Decentralized deadlock-free enforcement of message orderings in message-based systems

Message-based systems usually consist of distributed components that communicate using asynchronous message passing. In such systems, particular message orderings may violate some required properties. Given an automata-based specification of unwanted message sequences, we propose a decentralized deadlock-free runtime enforcement algorithm to prevent the formation of such sequences. In our approach, components are equipped with monitors executed concurrently. A component is only blocked before sending or receiving the last message of a sequence, until its associated monitor checks that such a message does not complete an unwanted sequence. According to the specification of unwanted sequences, some blocked components may suffer from a deadlock. Our deadlock-free algorithm guarantees that monitors detect and resolve such deadlocks by improving the existing deadlock detection algorithms. We evaluate the efficiency and scalability of our approach in terms of the communication overhead, the prevention latency, and the overhead of deadlock detection through simulation.

An Example of Parallel Merkle Tree Traversal: Post-Quantum Leighton-Micali Signature on the GPU

The hash-based signature (HBS) is the most conservative and time-consuming among many post-quantum cryptography (PQC) algorithms. Two HBSs, LMS and XMSS, are the only PQC algorithms standardised by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) now. Existing HBSs are designed based on serial Merkle tree traversal, which is not conducive to taking full advantage of the computing power of parallel architectures such as CPUs and GPUs. We propose a parallel Merkle tree traversal (PMTT), which is tested by implementing LMS on the GPU. This is the first work accelerating LMS on the GPU, which performs well even with over 10,000 cores. Considering different scenarios of algorithmic parallelism and data parallelism, we implement corresponding variants for PMTT. The design of PMTT for algorithmic parallelism mainly considers the execution efficiency of a single task, while that for data parallelism starts with the full utilisation of GPU performance. In addition, we are the first to design a CPU-GPU collaborative processing solution for traversal algorithms to reduce the communication overhead between CPU and GPU. For algorithmic parallelism, our implementation is still 4.48 × faster than the ideal time of the state-of-the-art traversal algorithm. For data parallelism, when the number of cores increases from 1 to 8192, the parallel efficiency is 78.39%. In comparison, our LMS implementation outperforms most existing LMS and XMSS implementations.