Disclosure Attacks Research Articles

Cryptanalysis of Two Recent Ultra-Lightweight Authentication Protocols

Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) technology is a critical part of many Internet of Things (IoT) systems, including Medical IoT (MIoT) for instance. On the other hand, the IoT devices’ numerous limitations (such as memory space, computing capability, and battery capacity) make it difficult to implement cost- and energy-efficient security solutions. As a result, several researchers attempted to address this problem, and several RFID-based security mechanisms for the MIoT and other constrained environments were proposed. In this vein, Wang et al. and Shariq et al. recently proposed CRUSAP and ESRAS ultra-lightweight authentication schemes. They demonstrated, both formally and informally, that their schemes meet the required security properties for RFID systems. In their proposed protocols, they have used a very lightweight operation called Cro(·) and Rank(·), respectively. However, in this paper, we show that those functions are not secure enough to provide the desired security. We show that Cro(·) is linear and reversible, and it is easy to obtain the secret values used in its calculation. Then, by exploiting the vulnerability of the Cro(·) function, we demonstrated that CRUSAP is vulnerable to secret disclosure attacks. The proposed attack has a success probability of "1" and is as simple as a CRUSAP protocol run. Other security attacks are obviously possible by obtaining the secret values of the tag and reader. In addition, we present a de-synchronization attack on the CRUSAP protocol. Furthermore, we provide a thorough examination of ESRAS and its Rank(·) function. We first present a de-synchronization attack that works for any desired Rank(·) function, including Shariq et al.’s proposed Rank(·) function. We also show that Rank(·) does not provide the desired confusion and diffusion that is claimed by the designers. Finally, we conduct a secret disclosure attack against ESRAS.

Simple Yet Secure Encoder Architecture and Ultralightweight Mutual Authentication Protocol for RFID Tags in IoT

Internet of things (IoT) has evolved as the internet of everything, and it has grabbed the interest of all the researchers in recent days. Almost all the objects, including nonelectronics devices, can also be connected with the internet through radio frequency identification (RFID) technology. The security of the perception layer is crucial to secure the entire IoT network. RFID-enabled IoT perception layer has secured reader-to-server channel and unsecured tag to reader channel. Hence, securing the unsecured communication channel between the reader and the tag is the need of the hour. This work proposes a simple yet secure permutation approximate adder (SYSPXA)-based RFID mutual authentication protocol to address the need. The proposed protocol dramatically reduces the tag’s storage and computational overhead. It needs 40% less storage and 66.7% less permutation operation in comparison with the existing protocols. Nondisclosure of the key and freshness of key, IDS and random numbers at every mutual authentication process gives resistance to the protocol against de-synchronization attack, disclosure attack, tag tracking, replay attack. The SYSPXA protocol is validated for its security features using Burrows–Abadi–Needham (BAN) logic formal verification. The performance and security of the proposed protocol are contrasted with various futuristic permutation-based protocols, and its superiority over other protocols is highlighted. We have simulated the SYSPXA protocol with ModelSim tool for verifying its functionality. The protocol encoder architecture is implemented in the Intel cyclone IV Field Programmable Gate Array (FPGA) EP4CE115F29C7 device.

Provably Secure PUF-Based Lightweight Mutual Authentication Scheme for Wireless Body Area Networks

Wireless body area networks (WBANs) are used in modern medical service environments for the convenience of patients and medical professionals. Owing to the recent COVID-19 pandemic and an aging society, WBANs are attracting attention. In a WBAN environment, the patient has a sensor node attached to him/her that collects patient status information, such as blood pressure, blood glucose, and pulse; this information is simultaneously transmitted to his/her respective medical professional through a gateway. The medical professional receives and checks the patient’s status information and provides a diagnosis. However, sensitive information, including the patient’s personal and status data, are transmitted via a public channel, causing security concerns. If an adversary intercepts this information, it could threaten the patient’s well-being. Therefore, a secure authentication scheme is essential for WBAN environments. Recently, Chen et al. proposed a two-factor authentication scheme for WBANs. However, we found out Chen et al.’s scheme is vulnerable to a privileged insider, physical cloning, verification leakage, impersonation, and session key disclosure attacks. We also propose a secure physical-unclonable-function (PUF)-based lightweight mutual authentication scheme for WBANs. Through informal security analysis, we demonstrate that the proposed scheme using biometrics and the PUF is safe against various security attacks. In addition, we verify the security features of our scheme through formal security analyses using Burrows–Abadi–Needham (BAN) logic, the real-or-random (RoR) model, and the Automated Validation of Internet Security Protocols and Applications (AVISPA). Furthermore, we evaluate the security features, communication costs, and computational costs of our proposed scheme and compare them with those of other related schemes. Consequently, our scheme is more suitable for WBAN environments than the other related schemes.

A Robust Authentication Protocol for Wireless Medical Sensor Networks Using Blockchain and Physically Unclonable Functions

Wireless medical sensor networks (WMSNs)-based medical systems are an emerging paradigm of the Internet of Medical Things (IoMT) in which the patients and doctors can access various healthcare services via wireless communication technology without visiting the hospital in person. However, an adversary attempts a variety of security attacks because the sensitive information in various fields is exchanged via an insecure channel. Thus, robust and lightweight authentication protocols are essential for providing dependable healthcare services in WMSN-based medical systems. Recently, Wang et al. (IEEE Internet of Things Journal, doi: 10.1109/JIOT.2021.3117762) proposed blockchain and physically unclonable functions (PUFs)-based lightweight authentication protocol for WMSN. They claimed that their protocol is resistant to cyber and physical security threats and also does provide necessary security requirements. However, we prove that their protocol is vulnerable to various security attacks, such as man-in-the-middle and session key disclosure attacks and also lacks mutual authentication. As a result, we propose a robust authentication protocol for WMSN using blockchain and PUF to address the security problems raised by Wang et al.’s scheme. we assess the security of the proposed scheme by using informal and formal security analyses, such as AVISPA simulation and the ROR oracle model. Furthermore, we present the testbed experiments using Raspberry PI 4 based on MIRACL Crypto SDK. Then, we show the performance of the enhanced scheme compared with related schemes based on testbed experiments. Consequently, our scheme is better suited for practical WMSN-based medical systems because it provides greater security and efficiency than competing schemes.

Validating a membership disclosure metric for synthetic health data.

BackgroundOne of the increasingly accepted methods to evaluate the privacy of synthetic data is by measuring the risk of membership disclosure. This is a measure of the F1 accuracy that an adversary would correctly ascertain that a target individual from the same population as the real data is in the dataset used to train the generative model, and is commonly estimated using a data partitioning methodology with a 0.5 partitioning parameter.ObjectiveValidate the membership disclosure F1 score, evaluate and improve the parametrization of the partitioning method, and provide a benchmark for its interpretation.Materials and methodsWe performed a simulated membership disclosure attack on 4 population datasets: an Ontario COVID-19 dataset, a state hospital discharge dataset, a national health survey, and an international COVID-19 behavioral survey. Two generative methods were evaluated: sequential synthesis and a generative adversarial network. A theoretical analysis and a simulation were used to determine the correct partitioning parameter that would give the same F1 score as a ground truth simulated membership disclosure attack.ResultsThe default 0.5 parameter can give quite inaccurate membership disclosure values. The proportion of records from the training dataset in the attack dataset must be equal to the sampling fraction of the real dataset from the population. The approach is demonstrated on 7 clinical trial datasets.ConclusionsOur proposed parameterization, as well as interpretation and generative model training guidance provide a theoretically and empirically grounded basis for evaluating and managing membership disclosure risk for synthetic data.

Cryptanalysis and improvement of REAS‐TMIS: Resource‐efficient authentication scheme for telecare medical information system

AbstractRecently, Tanveer et al. proposed a resource‐efficient authentication scheme for telecare medical information systems employing the authenticated key exchange. Tanveer et al. vehemently claimed that the protocol is safe against smart card stolen attacks, password guessing attacks, anonymity and untraceability, replay attacks, man‐in‐the‐middle attacks, impersonation attacks, and so forth. We have scrutinized the Tanveer et al. protocol. Based on his attack model, we have analyzed that this protocol is not secured against session key disclosure attacks, privileged insider attacks, and medical server impersonation attacks. We have also discussed improvement mechanisms to protect the mentioned security threats.

Defending Industry 4.0: An Enhanced Authentication Scheme for IoT Devices

To address the security concerns of Industry 4.0, recently, Garg <italic xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">et al.</i> proposed a lightweight authentication protocol, and Akram <italic xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">et al.</i> showed some of its security drawbacks. We continue this line by exposing how Garg <italic xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">et al.</i> ’s protocol suffers from noninvasive and invasive attacks. First, we explain that a passive attacker can trace any two communicating nodes to compromise their location privacy. Next, we show that an active though noninvasive adversary can compromise the integrity of the exchanged messages without being detected and run a de-synchronization attack. Besides, the adversary can extract any shared session key from any pair of nodes in the protocol. We named this attack a pandemic session key disclosure attack, and its consequences are more harmful than the impersonation of a compromised node. Finally, we disclose how the proposed scheme does not guarantee the privacy protection for the keys when we assume an honest but curious server. To overcome those existing security flaws, we finally propose a revised protocol called <monospace xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">TARDIGRADE</monospace> . First, our informal analysis, and then, our formal security analysis using the real-or-random model shows that <monospace xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">TARDIGRADE</monospace> provides the desired security, and likewise, our performance analysis confirms a reasonable cost compared with Garg <italic xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">et al.</i> ’s protocol.

Output feedback stabilization of large-scale networked cyberphysical systems using cryptographic techniques

This paper aims to create a secure environment for state estimation and control design of a networked system composed of multiple dynamic entities and remote computational units, in the presence of disclosure attacks. In particular, both dynamic entities and computational units may be vulnerable to attacks and become malicious. The objective is to ensure that the input and output data of the benign entities are protected from the malicious parties as well as protected when they are transmitted over the network in a distributed environment. We propose a methodology integrating a novel double-layer cryptographic technique with an observer-based control algorithm to achieve the objective where the cryptographic technique addresses the security requirements and the control algorithm satisfies the performance requirements.

On the Improper Use of CRC for Cryptographic Purposes in RFID Mutual Authentication Protocols

Mutual authentication is essential to guarantee the confidentiality, integrity, and availability of an RFID system. One area of interest is the design of lightweight mutual authentication protocols that meet the limited computational and energy resources of the tags. These protocols use simple operations such as permutation and cyclic redundancy code for cryptographic purposes. However, these functions are cryptographically weak and are easily broken. In this work, we present a case against the use of these functions for cryptographic purposes, due to their simplicity and linear properties, by analyzing the LPCP protocol. We evaluate the claims of the LPCP resistance to de-synchronization and full disclosure attacks and show that the protocol is weak and can be easily broken by eavesdropping on a few mutual authentication sessions. This weakness stems from the functions themselves as well as the improper use of inputs to these functions. We further offer suggestions that would help in designing more secure protocols.

Buddy Stacks: Protecting Return Addresses with Efficient Thread-Local Storage and Runtime Re-Randomization

Shadow stacks play an important role in protecting return addresses to mitigate ROP attacks. Parallel shadow stacks, which shadow the call stack of each thread at the same constant offset for all threads, are known not to support multi-threading well. On the other hand, compact shadow stacks must maintain a separate shadow stack pointer in thread-local storage (TLS) , which can be implemented in terms of a register or the per-thread Thread-Control-Block (TCB) , suffering from poor compatibility in the former or high performance overhead in the latter. In addition, shadow stacks are vulnerable to information disclosure attacks. In this paper, we propose to mitigate ROP attacks for single- and multi-threaded server programs running on general-purpose computing systems by using a novel stack layout, called a buddy stack (referred to as Bustk ), that is highly performant, compatible with existing code, and provides meaningful security. These goals are met due to three novel design aspects in Bustk . First, Bustk places a parallel shadow stack just below a thread’s call stack (as each other’s buddies allocated together), avoiding the need to maintain a separate shadow stack pointer and making it now well-suited for multi-threading. Second, Bustk uses an efficient stack-based thread-local storage mechanism, denoted STK-TLS , to store thread-specific metadata in two TLS sections just below the shadow stack in dual redundancy (as each other’s buddies), so that both can be accessed and updated in a lightweight manner from the call stack pointer rsp alone. Finally, Bustk re-randomizes continuously (on the order of milliseconds) the return addresses on the shadow stack by using a new microsecond-level runtime re-randomization technique, denoted STK-MSR . This mechanism aims to obsolete leaked information, making it extremely unlikely for the attacker to hijack return addresses, particularly against a server program that sits often tens of milliseconds away from the attacker. Our evaluation using web servers, Nginx and Apache Httpd , shows that Bustk works well in terms of performance, compatibility, and security provided, with its parallel shadow stacks incurring acceptable memory overhead for real-world applications and its STK-TLS mechanism costing only two pages per thread. In particular, Bustk can protect the Nginx and Apache servers with an adaptive 1-ms re-randomization policy (without observable overheads when IO is intensive, with about 17,000 requests per second). In addition, we have also evaluated Bustk using other non-server applications, Firefox , Python , LLVM , JDK and SPEC CPU2006 , to demonstrate further the same degree of performance and compatibility provided, but the protection provided for, say, browsers, is weaker (since network-access delays can no longer be assumed).

A Secure and Anonymous User Authentication Scheme for IoT-Enabled Smart Home Environments Using PUF

With the continuous development of Internet of Things (IoT) technology, research on smart home environments is being conducted by many researchers. In smart home environments, home users can remotely access and control a variety of home devices such as smart curtains, lights, and speakers placed throughout the house. Despite providing convenient services, including home monitoring, temperature management, and daily work assistance, smart homes can be vulnerable to malicious attacks because all messages are transmitted over insecure channels. Moreover, home devices can be a target for device capture attacks since they are placed in physically accessible locations. Therefore, a secure authentication and key agreement scheme is required to prevent such security problems. In 2021, Zou <italic xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">et al</i> . proposed a two-factor-based authentication and key agreement scheme using elliptic curve cryptography (ECC) in smart home environments. They claimed that their scheme provides user anonymity and forward secrecy. However, we prove that their scheme suffers from forgery, ephemeral secret leakage, and session key disclosure attacks. To overcome the security vulnerabilities of Zou <italic xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">et al</i> .’s scheme and provide home users with secure communication in smart home environments, we propose a secure user authentication scheme using physical unclonable functions (PUF). We utilize Real-or-Random (ROR) model and Burrows-Abadi-Needham (BAN) logic to verify the session key security and mutual authentication of the proposed scheme, respectively. Furthermore, we use the Automated Validation of Internet Security Protocols and Applications (AVISPA) tool to simulate the resistance of our scheme to security attacks. After that, we analyze and compare the communication costs, computational consumption, and security functionalities along with related schemes.

TrustSAMP: Securing Streaming Music Against Multivector Attacks on ARM Platform

Streaming music has dominated the digital music industry in recent years, which allows users to enjoy a huge music library online with a low subscription price. Terminal-side audio DRM (Digital Right Management) is very critical for streaming music industry, compromising of which will cause unrestricted listening, dumping and unauthorized secondary distribution. However, existing DRM protection schemes mainly focus on defeating software attacks but lack complete shielding against the physical memory disclosure attacks, which may even be launched by the owner of the terminal device. In this paper, we propose a terminal-side audio DRM solution called TrustSAMP to protect the copyrighted audio data against both software attacks and physical memory disclosure attacks. The basic idea is to process the audio data plaintext only in certain on-SoC components secured by ARM TrustZone. To minimize the TCB (Trusted Computing Base) of the secure world, we separate the control flow and the data flow of the Linux audio subsystem and port only the codes used for audio data decryption and plaintext transfer into the secure world. Moreover, we leave most driver codes of the audio-associated on-SoC components in the rich OS (i.e., in the normal world), and introduce a tiny proxy in the secure world to control the associated registers according to the requests from the normal-world drivers. The prototype implemented on real hardware shows that TrustSAMP can play a variety of wav-format audio with very small overhead and negligible loss of audio quality.

A Secure Three-Factor Authentication Protocol for E-Governance System Based on Multiserver Environments

In electronic governance (e-governance) system, citizens can access government services such as transportation, licensing and immigration remotely over the Internet. With the development of information and communication technology, usage of the e-governance system has been increased. To efficiently provide citizens with various e-governance services, multi-server environments can be applied to the e-governance system. However, messages can be inserted, deleted, and modified by a malicious adversary since these are transmitted through a public channel. Therefore, many researchers have suggested mutual authentication protocols for secure communication in multi-server environments. In 2020, Sudhakar <i>et al</i>. proposed a smart card based lightweight authentication protocol for multi-server environments. We analyze Sudhakar <i>et al</i>.&#x2019;s protocol to propose a secure mutual authentication protocol in the e-governance system based on multi-server environments. However, we disclosure that their protocol is not resistant to smart card stolen, insider, man-in-the-middle, user impersonation, and session key disclosure attacks. Moreover, Sudhakar <i>et al</i>.&#x2019;s protocol does not provide mutual authentication. To improve these security problems, we suggest a secure three-factor mutual authentication protocol for the e-governance system based on multi-server environments. We prove our protocol&#x2019;s security using informal security analysis, Burrows-Abadi-Needham (BAN) logic, and Real-or-Random (ROR) model. We also simulate our protocol utilizing Automated Validation of Internet Security Protocols and Applications (AVISPA) tool.We estimate the proposed protocol&#x2019;s security functionalities, computation costs, and communication overheads compared with existing related protocols. Consequently, we demonstrate that our protocol is secure and suitable for the e-governance system.

Amassing the Security: An Enhanced Authentication Protocol for Drone Communications over 5G Networks

At present, the great progress made by the Internet of Things (IoT) has led to the emergence of the Internet of Drones (IoD). IoD is an extension of the IoT, which is used to control and manipulate drones entering the flight area. Now, the fifth-generation mobile communication technology (5G) has been introduced into the IoD; it can transmit ultra-high-definition data, make the drones respond to ground commands faster and provide more secure data transmission in the IoD. However, because the drones communicate on the public channel, they are vulnerable to security attacks; furthermore, drones can be easily captured by attackers. Therefore, to solve the security problem of the IoD, Hussain et al. recently proposed a three-party authentication protocol in an IoD environment. The protocol is applied to the supervision of smart cities and collects real-time data about the smart city through drones. However, we find that the protocol is vulnerable to drone capture attacks, privileged insider attacks and session key disclosure attacks. Based on the security of the above protocol, we designed an improved protocol. Through informal analysis, we proved that the protocol could resist known security attacks. In addition, we used the real-oracle random model and ProVerif tool to prove the security and effectiveness of the protocol. Finally, through comparison, we conclude that the protocol is secure compared with recent protocols.

Improved Verifier-Based Three-Party Password-Authenticated Key Exchange Protocol from Ideal Lattices

With the advent of large-scale social networks, two communication users need to generate session keys with the help of a remote server to communicate securely. In the existing three-party authenticated key exchange (3PAKE) protocols, users’ passwords need to be stored on the server; it cannot resist the server disclosure attack. To solve this security problem, we propose a more efficient 3PAKE protocol based on the verification element by adopting a public-key cryptosystem and approximate smooth projection hash (ASPH) function on an ideal lattice. Using the structure of separating authentication from the server, the user can negotiate the session key only after two rounds of communication. The analysis results show that it can improve the efficiency of computation and communication and resist the server disclosure attack, quantum algorithm attack, and replay attack; moreover, it has session key privacy to the server. This protocol can meet the performance requirement of the current communication network.

A Lightweight and Privacy-Preserving Answer Collection Scheme for Mobile Crowdsourcing

Mobile Crowdsourcing (MCS) has become an emerging paradigm evolved from crowdsourcing by employing advanced features of mobile devices such as smartphones to perform more complicated, especially spatial tasks. One of the key procedures in MCS is to collect answers from mobile users (workers), which may face several security issues. First, authentication is required to ensure that answers are from authorized workers. In addition, MCS tasks are usually location-dependent, so the collected answers could disclose workers'' location privacy, which may discourage workers to participate in the tasks. Finally, the overhead occurred by authentication and privacy protection should be minimized since mobile devices are resource-constrained. Considering all the above concerns, in this paper, we propose a lightweight and privacy-preserving answer collection scheme for MCS. In the proposed scheme, we achieve anonymous authentication based on traceable ring signature, which provides authentication, anonymity, as well as traceability by enabling malicious workers tracing. In order to balance user location privacy and data availability, we propose a new concept named current location privacy, which means the location of the worker cannot be disclosed to anyone until a specified time. Since the leakage of current location will seriously threaten workers'' personal safety, causing such as absence or presence disclosure attacks, it is necessary to pay attention to the current location privacy of workers in MCS. We encrypt the collected answers based on timed-release encryption, ensuring the secure transmission and high availability of data, as well as preserving the current location privacy of workers. Finally, we analyze the security and performance of the proposed scheme. The experimental results show that the computation costs of a worker depend on the number of ring signature members, which indicates the flexibility for a worker to choose an appropriate size of the group under considerations of privacy and efficiency.

Utility-Based SK-Clustering Algorithm for Privacy Preservation of Anonymized Data in Healthcare

Background: The increasing need for various data publishers to release or share the healthcare datasets has imparted a threat for the privacy and confidentiality of the Electronic Medical Records. However, the main goal is to share useful information thereby maximizing utility as well as ensuring that sensitive information is not disclosed. There always exist utility-privacy tradeoff which needs to be handled properly for the researchers to learn statistical properties of the datasets. Objective: The objective of the research article is to introduce a novel SK-Clustering algorithm that overcomes identity disclosure, attribute disclosure and similarity attacks. The algorithm is evaluated using metrics such as discernability measure and relative error so as to show its performance compared with other clustering algorithms. Methodology: The SK-Clustering algorithm flexibly adjusts the level of protection for high utility. Also the size of the clusters is minimized dynamically based on the requirements of the protection required and we add extra tuples accordingly. This will drastically reduce information loss thereby increasing utilization. Results: For a k-value of 50 the discernabilty measure of SK algorithm is 65000 whereas the Mondrian algorithm exhibits 70000 discernability measure and the Anatomy algorithm has a discernability measure of 150000. Similarly, the relative error of our algorithm is less than 10% for a tuple count of 35000 when compared to other k-anonymity algorithms. Conclusion: The proposed algorithm executes more competently in terms of minimal discernability measure as well as relative error, thereby proving higher data utility compared with traditionally available algorithms.

Mondrian Based Real Time Anonymization Model

The presence of private information belonging to individuals in data heaps called "Big Data" causes the privacy of the person to be endangered against disclosure attacks. To protect personal privacy in big data, it is ensured that anonymous data is created, stored, and shared in systems with anonymization methods. However, de-identified data cannot be reinstatement. The aim of this study is to create a new method that provides instant disidentification and does not disrupt the data structure in the system. In the study, the Hadoop ecosystem was used to process large data heaps. With the proposed model, it has been ensured that the requests from the user are processed in the Hadoop ecosystem with the services in the middle layer, thus obtaining anonymous data. The algorithm used for disidentification is optimized and results are compared according to algorithms in the literature. With the proposed model, it has been observed that the user is user-friendly in terms of querying and obtaining an anonymous data set. According to the analysis results, an algorithm that works with 40% efficiency compared to other algorithms in terms of processing speed was created with the disidentification algorithm used in the model.

Mimosa: Protecting Private Keys Against Memory Disclosure Attacks Using Hardware Transactional Memory

Cryptography is essential for computer and network security. When cryptosystems are deployed in computing or communication systems, it is extremely critical to protect the cryptographic keys. In practice, keys are loaded into the memory as plaintext during cryptographic computations. Therefore, the keys are subject to memory disclosure attacks that read unauthorized data from RAM. Such attacks could be performed through software exploitations, such as OpenSSL Heartbleed, even when the integrity of the victim system's binaries is maintained. They could also be done through physical methods, such as cold-boot attacks, even if the system is free of software vulnerabilities. This paper presents Mimosa, to protect RSA private keys against both software-based and physical memory disclosure attacks. Mimosa uses hardware transactional memory (HTM) to ensure that (a) whenever a malicious thread other than Mimosa attempts to read the plaintext private key, the transaction aborts and all sensitive data are automatically cleared with hardware, due to the strong atomicity guarantee of HTM; and (b) all sensitive data, including private keys and intermediate states, appear as plaintext only within CPU-bound caches, and are never loaded to RAM chips. To the best of our knowledge, Mimosa is the first solution to use transactional memory to protect sensitive data against memory attacks. However, the fragility of TSX transactions introduces extra cache-clogging denial-of-service (DoS) threats, and attackers could sharply degrade the performance by concurrent memory-intensive tasks. To mitigate the DoS threats, we further partition an RSA private-key computation into multiple transactional parts by analyzing the distribution of aborts, while (sensitive) intermediate results are still protected across transactional parts. Through extensive experiments, we show that Mimosa effectively protects cryptographic keys against attacks that attempt to read sensitive data in memory, and introduces only a small performance overhead, even with concurrent cache-clogging workloads.

MUMAP: Modified Ultralightweight Mutual Authentication protocol for RFID enabled IoT networks

Flawed authentication protocols led to the need for a secured protocol for radio frequency identification (RFID) techniques. In this paper, an authentication protocol named Modified ultralightweight mutual authentication protocol (MUMAP) has been proposed and cryptanalysed by Juel-Weis challenge. The proposed protocol aimed to reduce memory requirements in the authentication process for low-cost RFID tags with limited resources. Lightweight operations like XOR and Left Rotation, are used to circumvent the flaws made in the other protocols. The proposed protocol has three-phase of authentication. Security analysis of the proposed protocol proves its resistivity against attacks like desynchronization, disclosure, tracking, and replay attack. On the other hand, performance analysis indicates that it is an effective protocol to use in low-cost RFID tags. Juel-Weis challenge verifies the proposed protocol where it shows insusceptibility against modular operations.