Key Sharing Scheme Research Articles

Redactable consortium blockchain based on verifiable distributed chameleon hash functions

With the evolving application demands, the inherent immutability of consortium blockchains hinders their widespread adoption. For example, expired data stored on the chain cannot be deleted, and erroneous data cannot be redacted, seriously limiting the flexibility of consortium blockchains. However, existing redactable blockchain solutions need to be improved in aspects of decentralization, efficiency, and fault tolerance. This paper develops a new verifiable distributed chameleon hash (VDCH) function to solve the above problems. With VDCH, nodes share chameleon keys with a secure multi-party computation protocol based on a verifiable key-sharing scheme, and the collision shares can be verified with a Schnorr non-interactive zero-knowledge proof protocol, which enhances the fault tolerance of the consortium chain while maintaining its decentralized nature. Then, this paper proposes a consensus protocol called CVTSS based on verifiable threshold signatures, which provides protocol support for collaborative hash collision computation by multiple nodes using VDCH, thus avoiding the dependence on Nakamoto consensus and improving the redaction efficiency. Meanwhile, CVTSS uses threshold signatures to prevent malicious nodes from tampering with data using one-time chameleon keys. Finally, this paper constructs an efficient, practical, and secure redactable consortium chain scheme based on VDCH and CVTSS. Theoretical analysis and experimental results show that the proposed scheme can operate safely in the presence of malicious nodes with an acceptable time cost.

Design of three-factor secure and efficient authentication and key-sharing protocol for IoT devices

The remarkable advance of the Internet of Things (IoT) has smoothed the way to the interconnection of various mobile devices in secure access and communication. In order to guarantee user privacy and anonymity in public networks, a large number of mutual authentication and key-sharing protocols between different IoT devices and multi-servers have been proposed. Due to resource-constrained and inefficient IoT devices, most previous protocols can confront assorted malicious attacks, such as eavesdropping, counterfeiting, chip cloning, device forgery, and other attacks. These attacks may be exposed the user’s private key or other sensitive data. To solve these problems, physical unclonable function (PUF) is a lightweight security primitive that utilizes random process deviations that cannot be controlled during chip manufacturing to generate device-unique digital signatures. In this paper, we combined the key-sharing scheme based on PUF on the hardware side, which solves relevant security problems such as device cloning and key tampering. Furthermore, we propose a three-factor secure and efficient authentication and key-sharing protocol, leveraging the inherent security properties of passwords, biometrics, and PUFs. We demonstrate the security of our proposed protocol based on computational Bilinear Diffie–Hellman Problem (BDH) and k-CAA hard problems and the Proverif tool. Compared with existing relevant protocols, our protocol meets various security properties and defends against varied security threats. The low computational cost, communication overhead, and device storage indicate that our protocol is applicable to resource-constrained IoT devices.

PUF based Secure and Lightweight Authentication and Key-Sharing Scheme for Wireless Sensor Network

The deployment of wireless sensor networks (WSN) in an untended environment and the openness of the wireless channel bring various security threats to WSN. The resource limitations of the sensor nodes make the conventional security systems less attractive for WSN. Moreover, conventional cryptography alone cannot ensure the desired security against the physical attacks on sensor nodes. Physically unclonable function (PUF) is an emerging hardware security primitive that provides low-cost hardware security exploiting the unique inherent randomness of a device. In this article, we have proposed an authentication and key sharing scheme for the WSN integrating Pedersen’s verifiable secret sharing (Pedersen’s VSS) and Shamir’s secret sharing (Shamir’s SS) scheme with PUF which ensure the desired security with low overhead. The security analysis depicts the resilience of the proposed scheme against different active, passive and physical attacks. Also, the performance analysis shows that the proposed scheme possesses low computation, communication and storage overhead. The scheme only needs to store a polynomial number of PUF challenge-response pairs to the user node. The sink or senor nodes do not require storing any secret key. Finally, the comparison with the previous protocols establishes the dominance of the proposed scheme to use in WSN.

Lattice-based Key-sharing Schemes

Public-key cryptography is an indispensable component used in almost all of our present-day digital infrastructure. However, most if not all of it is predominantly built upon hardness guarantees of number theoretic problems that can be broken by large-scale quantum computers in the future. Sensing the imminent threat from continued advances in quantum computing, NIST has recently initiated a global-level standardization process for quantum resistant public-key cryptographic primitives such as public-key encryption, digital signatures, and key encapsulation mechanisms. While the process received proposals from various categories of post-quantum cryptography, lattice-based cryptography features most prominently among all the submissions. Lattice-based cryptography offers a very attractive alternative to traditional public-key cryptography mainly due to the variety of lattice-based schemes offering varying flavors of security and efficiency guarantees. In this article, we survey the evolution of lattice-based key-sharing schemes (public-key encryption and key encapsulation schemes) and cover various aspects ranging from theoretical security guarantees, general algorithmic frameworks, practical implementation aspects, and physical attack security, with special focus on lattice-based key-sharing schemes competing in the NIST’s standardization process.

Secure Collaborative Key Management System for Mobile Cloud Data Storage

Mobile Cloud Computing (MCC) is the combination of mobile computing, cloud computing and wireless networks to make mobile thin client devices resource-rich in terms of storage, memory computational power and battery power by remotely executing the wide range of mobile application’s data in a pay-per-use cloud computing environment. In MCC, one of the primary concern is the security and privacy of data stored in cloud. The existing techniques are not efficient to manage secret keys during key generation and key distribution processes. The objective of this project work is to develop a secure collaborative key management system (SCKMS) for mobile cloud data storage by implementing by the cryptographic techniques for file encryption and file decryption, key generation, key encryption, key distribution and key decryption processes. In our proposed methodology, DriverHQ public cloud infrastructure is used for accessing the secure file as Storage as a Service (SaaS) mechanism. For generating the secret key, the proposed work implemented with Pseudo Random Number Generator (PRNG) algorithm, it produces the sequence of random numbers for every time. The keys are distributed using general Secret key Sharing Scheme (SSS). The key pattern matching process is implemented to spilt the secret key into three partitions and sent it to client (mobile devices), cloud server and decryption server. The decryption server key and cloud sever key are mapped with client key. The key shares are grouped together using key-lock pair mechanism and it achieves key integrity during untrusted medium communication. The proposed work also eliminates key escrow and key exposure problems. The files are encrypted and decrypted using Rivest-Shamir-Adleman (RSA) algorithm. The RSA algorithm is more vulnerable against the brute force attack, because of using larger key size. Thus, the proposed SCKMS achieves data confidentiality and data integrity in mobile cloud storage data when compared to existing Key Management System (KMS). The work also reduces encryption & decryption computation and storage overhead in client mobile devices, and minimizes the energy consumption of the mobile devices efficiently.

HIBS-KSharing: Hierarchical Identity-Based Signature Key Sharing for Automotive

Equipped with various sensors and intelligent systems, modern cars turn into entities with connectivity, autonomy, and safety. Car rental/car sharing is an innovative transportation concept and integral in today’s urban living. It enables users to access a fleet of vehicles located throughout cities. Complementing public transportation, the car-sharing service helps people to meet their transportation needs economically and in an environmentally responsible manner. When a customer wants to rent a car from a rental company or an owner wants to share a private car with his/her friends or family members, the customer or the user should gain admission to the car, such as unlocking the door and starting the engine. In this paper, we proposed a novel and secure key-sharing system named hierarchical identity-based signature key sharing (HIBS-KSharing), which consists of key generation, key transmission, and key management (e.g., remote issuing, revocation of access rights, and their delegation to other users or sharers). We implemented our proposed system based on Nexus smartphones and near-field communication devices. Compared with existing key-sharing schemes of car rental/sharing, our proposed HIBS-KSharing system is secure and easily extended.

Position-based Key Sharing with Higher Connectivity and Multivariate Optimized Resource Consumption in WSN

Objectives: This paper proposes an efficient Position-based Key Sharing (PKS) scheme to achieve higher connectivity and ideal flexibility with much less consumption of resources in Wireless Sensor Network and improve the network lifetime. Methods: The design of PKS scheme consists of three steps. Initially Random Position-based Key Pre-distribution is designed in PKS scheme with the objective of increasing the connectivity through assignment of random keys and a unique ID for each sensor node in the network. Multivariate Optimization-based Collective Key Detection in PKS optimizes communication resources by assigning priority with smaller distance than to higher distance. Then, Multivariate Optimization is applied in PKS to optimize communication resources that use Message Broadcast Format for collective key detection. Finally, Key Path organization with secured channel is established based on the closest neighboring sensor nodes vertices. The design of Key-Path Detection algorithm provides a secured communication between sensor nodes and therefore supports data traffic in WSN. Findings: The results are simulated in NS2 for efficient management of data traffic in WSN. The simulation results showed that the proposed PKS scheme out performed than the existing state of the art works in terms number of sensor nodes, connectivity, resource consumption, security and network life time. Improvement: The proposed PKS scheme is able to optimize the resource usage and also improve the network lifetime as compared to the state-of-the-art works.Keywords: Connectivity, Collective Key Detection, Key Sharing, Multivariate Optimization, Pre-distribution, Wireless Sensor Network

A secure file sharing service for distributed computing environments

Distributed cryptographic file systems enable file sharing among their users and need the adoption of a key management scheme for the distribution of the cryptographic keys to authorized users according to their specific degree of trust. In this paper we describe the architecture of a basic secure file sharing facility relying on a multi-party threshold-based key-sharing scheme that can be overlaid on top of the existing stackable networked file systems, and discuss its application to the implementation of distributed cryptographic file systems. It provides flexible access control policies supporting multiple combination of roles and trust profiles. A proof of concept prototype implementation within the Linux operating system framework demonstrated its effectiveness in terms of performance and security robustness.

Generic Secure Key Sharing Technique for Prevention of Security Attacks on Location based Geo-casting and Forwarding Routing Protocol in Mobile Ad-hoc Networks

A Mobile Ad-hoc NETwork (MANET) is composed of Mobile Nodes (MNs) without any infrastructure. MNs selforganize to form a network over radio links. Multicast routing plays a significant role in MANETs. Due to unique characteristics, such as dynamic network topology, limited bandwidth, and limited battery power, routing in MANETs is a particularly challenging task compared to conventional networks. At present, several efficient routing protocols have been proposed for MANETs. Most of these protocols assume a trusted and cooperative environment. However, in the presence of malicious nodes, the network is vulnerable to various kinds of attacks. The success of Mobile Ad-hoc NETwork (MANETs) strongly depends on people‟s confidence in its security. In large and dense Mobile Ad-hoc NETwork, location-based routing protocols can offer significant performance improvement over topology-based routing protocols. The objective of this paper is to prevent possible types of routing attacks like backhole, flooding and wormhole attack on location- based geocasting and forwarding (LGF) routing protocol in Mobile Ad-hoc NETwork (MANET). However, there are several potential security issues for the development of position-based routing protocols. The routing attacks against location-based geocasting and forwarding is eliminated by Trust based solution and Shamir Secret Key Sharing Scheme. It has been proved that Shamir Secret Key Sharing Scheme is best solution compared with trust based solution on the metrics packet delivery ratio, control overhead and total overhead.

Hierarchical CRGK Supporting a Secure Multicast Communication for a Large Number of Users

A multicast content service, including numerous devices, requires an efficient group key management scheme as one of its core components. The purpose of group key management is to provide a secure key-sharing scheme among the members of a group so that messages transmitted via broadcasting or multicasting are not exposed to non-members. The Chinese Remaindering Group Key (CRGK) is an efficient group key management scheme based on the Chinese Remainder Theorem (CRT). It optimizes the number of re-key messages, the user-side key computation cost, and the number of stored keys. However, CRGK is not fit for a group with a large number of members because of the high computation complexity of the CRT. In this paper, we propose a Hierarchical CRGK (HCRGK) scheme that supports a group with a large number of members. We improved CRGK by adopting it to include an n-ary tree structure. The tree approach simplifies the group key management by distributing the group key computation to subgroups. Our scheme requires at most (logmN + 1) re-key messages for a group with N members and a short computation time even when the group is very large.

Collusion Attacks to Tanaka's Corrected ID-Based Non-interactive Key Sharing Scheme

In 2006, Tanaka has proposed an efficient variant of Maurer-Yacobi's identity-based non-interactive key sharing scheme. In Tanaka's scheme, the computational complexity to generate each user's secret information is much smaller than that of Maurer-Yacobi's scheme. Tanaka's original key sharing scheme does not provide completeness, and so Tanaka has corrected the original scheme to provide completeness. In this paper, we show that Tanaka's corrected key sharing scheme is not secure against collusion attacks. That is, two users can collaborate to factorize a system modulus with their secret information and thus break the key sharing scheme.

Multiple Key Sharing and Distribution Scheme With$(n,t)$Threshold for NEMO Group Communications

In this paper, a novel secure key sharing and distribution scheme for network mobility (NEMO) group communications is proposed. The scheme offers the capability of multiple key sharing and distribution for current and future application scenarios, and a threshold mechanism that effectively improves flexibility and robustness of the key sharing and distribution process. Both forward and backward secrecy are guaranteed by compulsive key refreshment and automatic key refreshment mechanisms, which provide dynamic in-progress group communication joining/leaving and periodic keys renewal, respectively. Security and performance analysis are presented to demonstrate that the proposed scheme meets the special security requirements for NEMO group communications and is competent for key sharing and distribution service.

A Hierarchical Non-interactive Key-Sharing Scheme with Low Memory Size and High Resistance against Collusion Attacks

Efficient ID-based key sharing schemes are desired worldwide for secure communications on Internet and other networks. The Key Predistribution Systems (KPSs) are a large class of such key sharing schemes. The remarkable property of KPSs is that in order to share the key, a participant should only input its partner’s identifier to its secret KPS algorithm. Although it has many advantages in terms of efficiency, on the other hand it is vulnerable to certain collusion attacks. While conventional KPSs establish communication links between any pair of entities in a communication system, in many practical communication systems, such as broadcasting, not all links are required. In this paper, we propose a new version of KPS which is called the Hierarchical KPS. In the Hierarchical KPS, simply by removing unnecessary communication links, we can significantly increase the collusion threshold. As an example, for a typical security parameter setting, the collusion threshold of the Hierarchical KPS is 16 times higher than that of the conventional KPS while using the same amount of memory at the KPS center. The memory required by the user is even reduced by a factor 1/16 in comparison with the conventional linear scheme. Hence, Hierarchical KPS provides a more efficient method for secure communication.