Key Forward Secrecy Research Articles

A Drone-Assisted Anonymous Authentication and Key Agreement Protocol with Access Control for Accident Rescue in the Internet of Vehicles

The drone-assisted Internet of Vehicles (DIoV) displays great potential in the punctual provision of rescue services without geographical limitations. To ensure data security in accident response and rescue services, authentication schemes with access control are employed. These schemes ensure that only specific rescue vehicle operators acting within a valid period can achieve mutual authentication from a designated processor, while access for mismatched, revoked, or expired users is denied. However, the current alternatives fail to ensure session key forward secrecy, entities’ mutual authentication, and user anonymity, thereby compromising users’ privacy and the security of communications. Moreover, executing too many time-consuming operations on vehicles’ resource-constrained devices inevitably degrades the performance of the authentication protocol. Balancing security and performance in the design of an authentication protocol with access control presents a significant challenge. To address this, a more efficient and robust authentication with access control has been designed. The proposed protocol ensures user anonymity through dynamic pseudonym allocation, achieves forward secrecy by excluding the long-term key from session key generation, and obtains mutual authentication by verifying the integrity of the messages exchanged. According to the security and performance analysis, it is demonstrated that the proposal is a robust, efficient, and cost-effective solution. In particular, the proposal can reduce the computational overhead by 66% compared to recent alternatives.

A Blockchain-Assisted Security Protocol for Group Handover of MTC Devices in 5G Wireless Networks.

In the realm of the fifth-generation (5G) wireless cellular networks, renowned for their dense connectivity, there lies a substantial facilitation of a myriad of Internet of Things (IoT) applications, which can be supported by the massive machine-type communication (MTC) technique, a fundamental communication framework. In some scenarios, a large number of machine-type communication devices (MTCD) may simultaneously enter the communication coverage of a target base station. However, the current handover mechanism specified by the 3rd Generation Partnership Project (3GPP) Release 16 incurs high signaling overhead within the access and core networks, which may have negative impacts on network efficiency. Additionally, other existing solutions are vulnerable to malicious attacks such as Denial of Service (DoS), Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks, and the failure of Key Forward Secrecy (KFS). To address this challenge, this paper proposes an efficient and secure handover authentication protocol for a group of MTCDs supported by blockchain technology. This protocol leverages the decentralized nature of blockchain technology and combines it with certificateless aggregate signatures to mutually authenticate the identity of a base station and a group of MTCDs. This approach can reduce signaling overhead and avoid key escrow while significantly lowering the risk associated with single points of failure. Additionally, the protocol protects device anonymity by encrypting device identities with temporary anonymous identity markers with the Elliptic Curve Diffie-Hellman (ECDH) to abandon serial numbers to prevent linkage attacks. The resilience of the proposed protocol against predominant malicious attacks has been rigorously validated through the application of the BAN logic and Scyther tool, underscoring its robust security attributes. Furthermore, compared to the existing solutions, the proposed protocol significantly reduces the authentication cost for a group of MTCDs during handover, while ensuring security, demonstrating commendable efficiency.

Efficient Group Handover Authentication for Secure 5G-Based Communications in Platoons

In recent years, the world of vehicular communication is in full progress. With the emergence of the fifth-generation (5G) technology, the high bandwidth and low latency features in the 5G vehicle to everything (5G-V2X) network become possible. However, the current 5G mechanism specified by the Third Generation Partnership Project (3GPP) Release 16 incurs high signaling overhead over the radio access network and the core network when a vehicle platoon moves from a source base station to the target base station. Moreover, it also has several security problems in terms of the failure of key forward secrecy (KFS) and lack of mutual authentication. In this paper, we propose an efficient authentication protocol for vehicle platoons in all handover scenarios. By the proposal, the identities of base stations and vehicles are mutually authenticated by certificateless aggregated signatures, which can also reduce signaling overhead and is free from key escrow problems. The proposed protocol has been formally evaluated by BAN-logic and the Scyther tool to show its ability to resist major typical malicious attacks. It has also been analyzed on its security functionality. The performance evaluation demonstrates that the proposed protocol is efficient in terms of signaling, computational and communication cost.

A Robust Two-Factor User Authentication Scheme-Based ECC for Smart Home in IoT

The unprecedented proliferation of smart home together with wireless sensor networks has enriched human’s daily life. Inevitably, the smart home without the guard of authentication mechanism is bound to bring a series of security issues. Hence, a great number of authentication protocols have been designed to verify the user’s identity and ensure that the data be accessed with authorization in smart home. Recently, (M. Shuai et al., 2019) (Computers & Security, 2019) proposed a two-factor anonymous authentication scheme for smart home and presented that their scheme can be immune to various attacks. However, by careful analysis, we found that (M. Shuai et al.’s, 2019) scheme needed further improvements in session key forward secrecy and against: type-I node capture attack and node impersonation attack. As a going step to this direction, here, we first design a robust two-factor user authentication also for smart home based on the elliptic curve cryptography. Second, we give security proofs to demonstrate that the construction of the proposed scheme can be of user anonymity, session key forward secrecy, and resist all attacks shown in this article. Third, performance comparisons covered in storage/network communication/computation costs are carried out to indicate that our scheme can be comparable to those newly designed schemes, especially, the user and gateway in our scheme need only 352 and 320 bits, respectively.

A privacy-preserving handover authentication protocol for a group of MTC devices in 5G networks

Machine Type Communication (MTC) has been emerging for a wide range of applications and services for the Internet of Things (IoT). In some scenarios, a large group of MTC devices (MTCDs) may enter the communication coverage of a new target base station simultaneously. However, the current handover mechanism specified by the Third Generation Partnership Project (3GPP) Release 16 incurs high signaling overhead over the access network and the core network for such scenario. Moreover, other existing solutions have several security problems in terms of the failure of key forward secrecy (KFS) and lack of mutual authentication. In this paper, we propose an efficient authentication protocol for a group of MTCDs in all handover scenarios. By the proposal, the messages from two MTCDs are concatenated with an aggregated message authentication code (MAC) and sent by an authenticated group member to reduce the signaling cost. The proposed protocol has been formally evaluated by Scyther tool to prove its security. And it has been analysed on its security functionality to show its ability to resist major typical malicious attacks. Temporary identities of MTCDs have been used to preserve users’ privacy. It can be expected that the proposed protocol is applicable to all kinds of group mobility scenarios such as a platoon of vehicles or a high-speed train. The performance evaluation demonstrates that the proposed protocol is efficient in terms of computational, communication, signaling, and energy cost.

An efficient anonymous group handover authentication protocol for MTC devices for 5G networks

Machine Type Communication (MTC) has been emerging for a wide range of applications and services for the Internet of Things (IoT). In some scenarios, a large group of MTC devices (MTCDs) may enter the communication coverage of a new target base station simultaneously. However, the current handover mechanism specified by the Third Generation Partnership Project (3GPP) incur high signalling overhead over the access network and the core network for such scenario. Moreover, other existing solutions have several security problems in terms of failure of key forward secrecy (KFS) and lack of mutual authentication. In this paper, we propose an efficient authentication protocol for a group of MTCDs in all handover scenarios. By the proposal, the messages of two MTCDs are concatenated and sent by an authenticated group member to reduce the signalling cost. The proposed protocol has been analysed on its security functionality to show its ability to preserve user privacy and resist from major typical malicious attacks. It can be expected that the proposed scheme is applicable to all kinds of group mobility scenarios such as a platoon of vehicles or a high-speed train. The performance evaluation demonstrates that the proposed protocol is efficient in terms of computational and signalling cost.

Robust and Universal Seamless Handover Authentication in 5G HetNets

The evolving fifth generation (5G) cellular networks will be a collection of heterogeneous and backward-compatible networks. With the increased heterogeneity and densification of 5G heterogeneous networks (HetNets), it is important to ensure security and efficiency of frequent handovers in 5G wireless roaming environments. However, existing handover authentication mechanisms still have challenging issues, such as anonymity, robust traceability and universality. In this paper, we address these issues by introducing RUSH, a Robust and Universal Seamless Handover authentication protocol for 5G HetNets. In RUSH, anonymous mutual authentication with key agreement is enabled for handovers by exploiting the trapdoor collision property of chameleon hash functions and the tamper-resistance of blockchains. RUSH achieves universal handover authentication for all the diverse mobility scenarios, as exemplified by the handover between 5G new radio and non-3GPP access regardless of the trustworthiness of non-3GPP access and the consistency of the core network. RUSH also achieves perfect forward secrecy, master key forward secrecy, known randomness secrecy, key escrow freeness and robust traceability. Our formal security proofs based on the BAN-logic and formal verification based on AVISPA indicate that RUSH resists various attacks. Comprehensive performance evaluation and comparisons show that RUSH outperforms other schemes in both computation and communication efficiencies.

An effective approach to solving large communication overhead issue and strengthening the securities of AKA protocols

SummaryAuthentication and key agreement (AKA) is a challenge‐response‐like security protocol that uses symmetric‐key cryptography to establish authenticated keys between 2 parties. Its application in the third‐generation mobile system universal mobile telecommunications system (UMTS) is called UMTS‐AKA, and the version applied in the fourth‐generation mobile communication system long‐term evolution (LTE) is called LTE‐AKA. Both UMTS‐AKA and LTE‐AKA share the same weakness: the network operators need to maintain a large space of authentication vectors for visiting stations, and the transmission of the vectors causes lots of overhead. This weakness will be amplified when there are billions of devices accessing the network in the Internet‐of‐things scenarios. In addition, these schemes provide only key distribution (not key agreement) and cannot provide session key forward secrecy. In this paper, we propose a range‐bound key assignment technique to tackle the challenges. The proposed scheme drastically reduces the communication overhead and greatly strengthens the security robustness. The securities are analyzed and are verified using the AVISPA toolset.

Strongly secure identity-based authenticated key agreement protocols without bilinear pairings

In this paper, we present two strongly secure pairing-free identity-based (ID-based) two-party authenticated key agreement (AKA) protocols achieving implicit authentication, which are proven secure in the extended Canetti–Krawczyk (eCK) model. The proposals can offer provable security against both passive and active adversaries in the random oracle model. Our schemes capture all basic desirable security properties including key-compromise impersonation resilience, ephemeral secrets reveal resistance, (weak) perfect forward secrecy and master key forward secrecy etc. We show the security of one of these proposals can be reduced to the standard computational Diffie–Hellman assumption, and the security of the other relies on the gap Diffie–Hellman assumption while having a lower computational overhead. Currently, there are few pairing-free ID-based AKA protocols that are provably secure in such strong security models as the eCK model. Our schemes can provide strong security assurances and in the meanwhile achieve a good computational efficiency. Compared with previous related schemes, our protocols have advantages over them in security, efficiency or both.

An anonymous and provably secure authentication scheme for mobile user

SummaryChebyshev chaotic map is an important tool used in the domain of cryptography to develop different schemes for numerous applications. In 2014, Lin put forwarded a mobile user authentication system using dynamic identity and chaotic map. Lin declared that the scheme offers mutual authentication and session key agreement between user and server. Moreover, they stated that the scheme offers user anonymity and resilience against known attacks. However, we carefully examined Lin's scheme and found that it is no longer usable for practical applications as (i) it has no facility to identify the wrong password and identity, which are inputted by the user during login and password update phases, (ii) it has no facility to protect user impersonation attack, and (iii) it has the problem of session key forward secrecy. We put forwarded an enhanced scheme based on extended chaotic map to repair the fragilities of Lin's scheme. We formally examined the security of our scheme and demonstrated that it is provably secured in random oracle model. Further, we presented some informal cryptanalysis to make sure that the enhanced scheme is secure from known attacks. Our scheme is also computation efficient against other competitive protocols. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

An Uniform Handover Authentication between E-UTRAN and Non-3GPP Access Networks

To achieve seamless handovers between the Evolved Universal Terrestrial Radio Access Network (E-UTRAN) and other access networks is a challenging task as it requires comprehensive real-time interconnectivity in the LTE networks. The third Generation Partnership Project (3GPP) has suggested support the mobility between the E-UTRAN and non-3GPP access networks, which requires full access authentication procedures and distinct procedures for different mobility scenarios, which will bring a lot of message exchanges and increase the system complexity. Besides, the existing handover schemes for other wireless networks are not suitable for the mobility scenarios in the LTE networks due to their inherent vulnerabilities. In this paper, we propose a fast and secure handover authentication scheme to fit in with all of the mobility scenarios in the LTE networks. Compared with other handover schemes, our scheme cannot only provide strong security guarantees including Perfect Forward Secrecy (PFS) and Master Key Forward Secrecy (MKFS) and user anonymity, but also achieve a simple authentication process with robust efficiency in terms of communication cost, storage cost and computational cost. The experimental results and formal verification by using the TLA+ and TLC show that the proposed scheme is secure against various malicious attacks.

Strongly secure identity-based authenticated key agreement protocols

In this paper, we present a strongly secure identity-based (ID-based) two-party authenticated key agreement (AKA) protocol, which captures all basic desirable security properties including master key forward secrecy, ephemeral secrets reveal resistance and so on, and is provably secure in the extended Canetti–Krawczyk (eCK) model. The security of the protocol can be reduced to the standard Computational Bilinear Diffie–Hellman assumption in the random oracle model. Our scheme is secure as long as each party has at least one uncompromised secret. Also, we give a strongly secure variant of the protocol. The variant has a much lower computational overhead than the original scheme, while its security relies on the Gap Bilinear Diffie–Hellman assumption. Currently, there are few ID-based AKA protocols that are provably secure in the strong eCK model. Compared with previous ID-based AKA schemes, our protocols have advantages over them in security or efficiency.

Cryptanalysis of an Efficient Secret Handshakes Scheme with Unlinkability

In 2011, Gu-Xue proposed an improved secret handshakes scheme with unlinkability based on the Huang-Cao scheme that can achieve strong unlinkability against an outsider adversary. How- ever, this paper points out that Gu-Xue scheme is insecure to key-compromise impersonation (K-CI) attack and cannot provide master key forward secrecy (MFS).

A pairing-free identity-based authenticated key agreement protocol with minimal message exchanges

Based on the computational Diffie–Hellman problem, this paper proposes an identity-based authenticated key agreement protocol which removes bilinear pairings. Compared with previous protocols, the new protocol minimizes message exchange time with no extra cost. The protocol provides strong security guarantees including key compromise impersonation resilience, perfect forward secrecy, and master key forward secrecy. A security proof with the modular approach in the modified Bellare–Rogaway model is also provided.

Enhanced McCullagh-Barreto identity-based key exchange protocols with master key forward security

Master key forward security is an important property for identity-based key exchange protocols. Unfortunately, most of existing identity-based key exchange protocols do not satisfy this property. In this paper, we firstly analyse Xie's modified protocol to show that signature is undesirable for an identity-based key agreement protocol with the master key forward secrecy. Then we present two improved protocols from McCullagh-Barreto identity-based key agreement protocol to capture the master key forward security. Our first protocol is efficient and its security can be proved with the help of a decisional oracle, while the second one achieves stronger security and its security can be reduced to a computational problem in the random oracle model. The master key forward secrecy is proved under the computational Diffie-Hellman assumption.

Weaknesses and improvements of a remote user authentication scheme using smart cards

In 2005, Liu et al. proposed an improvement to Chien et al.'s remote user authentication scheme, using smart cards, to prevent parallel session attack. This article, however, will demonstrate that Liu et al.'s scheme is vulnerable to masquerading server attack and has the system's secret key forward secrecy problem. Therefore, an improved scheme with better security strength, by using counters instead of timestamps, is proposed. The proposed scheme does not only achieve their scheme's advantages, but also enhances its security by withstanding the weaknesses just mentioned.