Lightweight Authentication Protocol Research Articles

Design of Secure and Lightweight Authentication Protocol for Wearable Devices Environment.

Wearable devices are used in various applications to collect information including step information, sleeping cycles, workout statistics, and health-related information. Due to the nature and richness of the data collected by such devices, it is important to ensure the security of the collected data. This paper presents a new lightweight authentication scheme suitable for wearable device deployment. The scheme allows a user to mutually authenticate his/her wearable device(s) and the mobile terminal (e.g., Android and iOS device) and establish a session key among these devices (worn and carried by the same user) for secure communication between the wearable device and the mobile terminal. The security of the proposed scheme is then demonstrated through the broadly accepted real-or-random model, as well as using the popular formal security verification tool, known as the Automated validation of Internet security protocols and applications. Finally, we present a comparative summary of the proposed scheme in terms of the overheads such as computation and communication costs, security and functionality features of the proposed scheme and related schemes, and also the evaluation findings from the NS2 simulation.

LWDSA: light-weight digital signature algorithm for wireless sensor networks

The essential security mechanism in wireless sensor networks (WSNs) is authentication, where nodes can authenticate each other before transmitting a valid data to a sink. There are a number of public key authentication procedures available for WSN in recent years. Due to constraints in WSN environment there is a need for light-weight authentication procedure that consumes less power during computation. This proposed work aims at developing a light-weight authentication protocol using MBLAKE2b with elliptic curve digital signature algorithm (ECDSA). The proposed protocol is also tested using the protocol verification tool Scyther and found to be secure in all claims and roles. This proposed algorithm increases the network life time and reduces the computation time, which is essential for the constrained environment like WSNs.

COMPARATIVE ANALYSIS OF INTERNET OF THINGS LIGHTWEIGHT AUTHENTICATION PROTOCOL DESIGN SCHEMES

— Lightweight authentication is a branch of the modern authentication techniques, which intended to be used in constraints network such IoT and WSN which has devices with low or extremely low resources. There are several ways for designing a lightweight authentication protocol, researchers are competing to find the best ways that fit with the features of the Internet of Things. In this paper, we propose generalized approaches to design lightweight authentication protocols. Also, we highlight some principals and security requirements for the implementation of lightweight authentication. Finally, we provide a comparative study of using symmetric and asymmetric cryptography techniques for designing lightweight authentication protocols for IoT.

Privileged-Insider 공격에 안전한 원격 사용자 인증 프로토콜

Recently, Due to the rapid development of the internet and IT technology, users can conveniently use various services provided by the server anytime and anywhere. However, these technologies are exposed to various security threat such as tampering, eavesdropping, and exposing of user's identity and location information. In 2016, Nikooghadam et al. proposed a lightweight authentication and key agreement protocol preserving user anonymity. This paper overcomes the vulnerability of Nikooghadam's authentication protocol proposed recently. This paper suggests an enhanced remote user authentication protocol that protects user's password and provides perfect forward secrecy.

Low Cost RFID Security Protocol Based on Rabin Symmetric Encryption Algorithm

Research shows that heavy-weighted RFID authentication protocol is weak to adapt to low-cost RFID tags because of the usage of public key Encryption Algorithm. The lightweight authentication protocol is suitable for low-cost RFID security authentication protocol because it adopts only the operation of AND, OR, XOR and shift, etc., but is hard to resist complex attacks. In this article, we use the features of the Rabin public key cryptography algorithm, which verifies that the signature process requires only low-cost square multiplication and modulo operations. Based on this, an RFID security authentication protocol with Rabin encryption algorithm is designed. The protocol improves the security of low-cost RFID tags to the height of the public key cryptosystem, and greatly increasing the security of low-cost RFID.

Security Analysis of the Qian et al. Protocol: A Revised Tree-LSHB+ Protocol

Low-cost radio-frequency identification tags are confronted with various security and privacy issues due to their limits in computational and storage capabilities. Many lightweight authentication protocols have been proposed so far to resist all possible attacks and threats. A revised Tree-LSHB+ protocol was recently proposed by Qian et al. [Wirel Pers Commun 77(4):3125–3141. doi: 10.1007/s11277-014-1699-x , 2014] after a security analysis on the original Tree-LSHB+ protocol proposed by Deng et al. [Wirel Pers Commun 72(1):159–174. doi: 10.1007/s11277-013-1006-2 , 2013]. And it claimed to be secure against secret information disclosure attack. In this paper, we present an active attack against it in a general man-in-the-middle attack where an adversary is capable of eavesdropping, intercepting, manipulating, and blocking the messages transmitted between a legitimate reader and a legitimate tag. The attack is proved to be efficient to disclose all the authentication keys shared between a reader and a tag. Additionally, we introduce another possible active attack which can even retrieve all the secrets in the tree-traversal stage.

LVAP: Lightweight V2I authentication protocol using group communication in VANETs

SummaryThe authentication protocol is vital for the security of the wireless sensor network to resist the known threats, such as eavesdropping, replay attack, man‐in‐the‐middle attack, etc. In this paper, a lightweight authentication protocol for vehicular ad hoc networks is proposed using the symmetric encryption, the group communication method, and the proactive authentication technique, which not only achieves the desired security goals but also guarantees the practical anonymity and the accountability. The analysis demonstrates that the proposed protocol works properly in the high‐density and the low‐density traffic environment.

Lightweight authentication protocols for wearable devices

In the wearable communication environment, wearable devices are used for various applications including fitbit flex tracks steps, sleep cycles, workout stats, and recording health-related sensitive information. The decreasing costs and increasing performance of Information Communication Technologies (ICTs) have made wearable devices more cost effective. Different types of wearable devices are being used today by citizens to improve their health and lifestyle. However, the data (such as health-related or movement data) generated from the user’s daily activities is often private and therefore, ensuring the security and privacy of this data is important. First, we present some emerging trends of wearable devices followed by a discussion of the main security and functionality requirements along with the threats to the wearable communication environment. We then present a review of some of the recently proposed lightweight authentication protocols for wearable devices based on performance metrics such as computation cost and communication cost. We also compare these authentication protocols in terms of various security features they support. Finally, we discuss some future challenges in the area of security protocols for wearable devices that need to be addressed in the future.

An enhanced 1-round authentication protocol for wireless body area networks with user anonymity

The Wireless Body Area Networks (WBAN) emerges with the development of wearable devices and medical sensors, which can be used in healthcare monitoring to improve the quality of medical services. The data collected by WBAN usually be transmitted via wireless channel, and includes some sensitive information of the patients’. Therefore, how to design light-weight security protocols for WBAN with resource-constrained devices is a tough challenge. Recently, Liu et al. presented a lightweight authentication protocol for WBAN with less computation and communication cost. However, some weaknesses of this protocol are found through security analysis. In this paper, an improved single-round authentication protocol is proposed to remove the flaws of previous work. Meanwhile, the formal and informal security analysis of our protocol are discussed. The comparison results show that our protocol improves the security with equivalent cost.

A Standard Mutual Authentication Protocol for Cloud Computing Based Health Care System.

Telecare Medical Information System (TMIS) supports a standard platform to the patient for getting necessary medical treatment from the doctor(s) via Internet communication. Security protection is important for medical records (data) of the patients because of very sensitive information. Besides, patient anonymity is another most important property, which must be protected. Most recently, Chiou et al. suggested an authentication protocol for TMIS by utilizing the concept of cloud environment. They claimed that their protocol is patient anonymous and well security protected. We reviewed their protocol and found that it is completely insecure against patient anonymity. Further, the same protocol is not protected against mobile device stolen attack. In order to improve security level and complexity, we design a light weight authentication protocol for the same environment. Our security analysis ensures resilience of all possible security attacks. The performance of our protocol is relatively standard in comparison with the related previous research.

Lightweight three-factor authentication and key agreement protocol for internet-integrated wireless sensor networks

Wireless sensor networks (WSNs) will be integrated into the future Internet as one of the components of the Internet of Things, and will become globally addressable by any entity connected to the Internet. Despite the great potential of this integration, it also brings new threats, such as the exposure of sensor nodes to attacks originating from the Internet. In this context, lightweight authentication and key agreement protocols must be in place to enable end-to-end secure communication. Recently, Amin et al. proposed a three-factor mutual authentication protocol for WSNs. However, we identified several flaws in their protocol. We found that their protocol suffers from smart card loss attack where the user identity and password can be guessed using offline brute force techniques. Moreover, the protocol suffers from known session-specific temporary information attack, which leads to the disclosure of session keys in other sessions. Furthermore, the protocol is vulnerable to tracking attack and fails to fulfill user untraceability. To address these deficiencies, we present a lightweight and secure user authentication protocol based on the Rabin cryptosystem, which has the characteristic of computational asymmetry. We conduct a formal verification of our proposed protocol using ProVerif in order to demonstrate that our scheme fulfills the required security properties. We also present a comprehensive heuristic security analysis to show that our protocol is secure against all the possible attacks and provides the desired security features. The results we obtained show that our new protocol is a secure and lightweight solution for authentication and key agreement for Internet-integrated WSNs.

Design of Lightweight Authentication and Key Agreement Protocol for Vehicular Ad Hoc Networks

Due to the widespread popularity in both academia and industry, vehicular ad hoc networks (VANETs) have been used in a wide range of applications starting from intelligent transportation to e-health and itinerary planning. This paper proposes a new decentralized lightweight authentication and key agreement scheme for VANETs. In the proposed scheme, there are three types of mutual authentications: 1) between vehicles; 2) between vehicles and their respective cluster heads; and 3) between cluster heads and their respective roadside units. Apart from these authentications, the proposed scheme also maintains secret keys between roadside units for their secure communications. The rigorous formal and informal security analysis shows that the proposed scheme is capable to defend various malicious attacks. Moreover, the ns-2 simulation demonstrates the practicability of the proposed scheme in VANET environment.

A light weight authentication protocol for IoT-enabled devices in distributed Cloud Computing environment

With the widespread popularity and usage of Internet-enabled devices, Internet of things has become one of the most popular techniques of the modern era. However, data generated from various smart devices in IoT environment is one of the biggest concerns. To process such a large database repository generated from different types of devices in IoT environment, Cloud Computing (CC) has emerged as a key technology. But, the private information from IoT devices is stored in distributed private cloud server so that only legitimate users are allowed to access the sensitive information from the cloud server. Keeping focus on all these points, this article first shows security vulnerabilities of the multi-server cloud environment of the protocols proposed by Xue et al. and Chuang et al. Then, we propose an architecture which is applicable for distributed cloud environment and based on it, an authentication protocol using smartcard has been proposed, where the registered user can access all private information securely from all the private cloud servers. To strengthen the proposed protocol, we have used AVISPA tool and BAN logic model in this article. Moreover, an informal cryptanalysis confirms that the protocol is protected against all possible security threats. The performance analysis and comparison confirm that the proposed protocol is superior than its counterparts with respect to various parameters.

Achieving protection against man-in-the-middle attack in HB family protocols implemented in RFID tags

Purpose In the past few years, HB-like protocols have gained much attention in the field of lightweight authentication protocols due to their efficient functioning and large potential applications in low-cost radio frequency identification tags, which are on the other side spreading so fast. However, most published HB protocols are vulnerable to man-in-the-middle attacks such as GRS or OOV attacks. The purpose of this research is to investigate security issues pertaining to HB-like protocols with an aim of improving their security and efficiency. Design/methodology/approach In this paper, a new and secure variant of HB family protocols named HB-MP* is proposed and designed, using the techniques of random rotation. The security of the proposed protocol is proven using formal proofs. Also, a prototype of the protocol is implemented to check its applicability, test the security in implementation and to compare its performance with the most related protocol. Findings The HB-MP* protocol is found secure against passive and active adversaries and is implementable within the tight resource constraints of today’s EPC-type RFID tags. Accordingly, the HB-MP* protocol provides higher security than previous HB-like protocols without sacrificing performance. Originality/value This paper proposes a new HB variant called HB-MP* that tries to be immune against the pre-mentioned attacks and at the same time keeping the simple structure. It will use only lightweight operations to randomize the rotation of the secret.

A lightweight authentication and key agreement protocol preserving user anonymity

Nowadays with widespread employment of the Internet, servers provide various services for legal users. The vital issue in client/server connections is authentication protocols that make the communication channel safe and secure against famous attacks. Recently, Kumari et al. and Chaudhry et al. proposed two authentication and key agreement protocols and illustrated that their proposed protocols are secure against various security attacks. However, in this paper we demonstrate that both protocols are vulnerable to off-line password guessing attacks. Moreover, we show that Kumari et al.'s protocol does not provide the property of user anonymity. In order to overcome these weaknesses, we propose a lightweight authentication and key agreement protocol. The correctness of the proposed protocol is proved using BAN logic. Security analysis demonstrates that the proposed protocol resists various security attacks and provides user anonymity. Furthermore, performance analysis confirms that the computation cost of the proposed protocol is acceptable.

SLAP: Succinct and Lightweight Authentication Protocol for low-cost RFID system

Data security is crucial for a RFID system. Since the existing RFID mutual authentication protocols encounter the challenges such as security risks, poor performance, an ultra-lightweight authentication protocol named Succinct and Lightweight Authentication Protocol (SLAP) is proposed. SLAP is only composed of bitwise operations like XOR, left rotation and conversion which is easy to implement on a passive tag. The proposed conversion operation as the main security component guarantees the security of RFID system with the properties such as irreversibility, sensibility, full confusion and low complexity, which better performed or even absent in other previous protocols. Security analysis shows that SLAP guarantees the functionalities of mutual authentication as well as resistance to various attacks such as de-synchronization attack, replay attack and traceability attack, etc. Furthermore, performance evaluation also indicates that the proposed scheme outperforms the existing protocols in terms of less computation requirement and fewer communication messages during authentication process.

The Vulnerability Analysis of Some Typical Hash-Based RFID Authentication Protocols

The low-cost RFID tags have very limited computing and storage resources and this makes it difficult to completely solve their security and privacy problems. Lightweight authentication is considered as one of the most effective methods to ensure the security in the RFID system. Many light-weight authentication protocols use Hash function and pseudorandom generator to ensure the anonymity and confidential communication of the RFID system. But these protocols do not provide such security as they claimed. By analyzing some typical Hash-based RFID authentication protocols, it is found that they are vulnerable to some common attacks. Many protocols cannot resist tracing attack and de-synchronization attack. Some protocols cannot provide forward security. Gy?z? Godor and Sandor Imre proposed a Hash-based authentication protocol and they claimed their protocol could resist the well-known attacks. But by constructing some different attack scenarios, their protocol is shown to be vulnerable to tracing attack and de-synchronization attack. Based on the analysis for the Hash-based authentication protocols, some feasible suggestions are proposed to improve the security of the RFID authentication protocols.

Comparative Study on Various Authentication Protocols in Wireless Sensor Networks.

Wireless sensor networks (WSNs) consist of lightweight devices with low cost, low power, and short-ranged wireless communication. The sensors can communicate with each other to form a network. In WSNs, broadcast transmission is widely used along with the maximum usage of wireless networks and their applications. Hence, it has become crucial to authenticate broadcast messages. Key management is also an active research topic in WSNs. Several key management schemes have been introduced, and their benefits are not recognized in a specific WSN application. Security services are vital for ensuring the integrity, authenticity, and confidentiality of the critical information. Therefore, the authentication mechanisms are required to support these security services and to be resilient to distinct attacks. Various authentication protocols such as key management protocols, lightweight authentication protocols, and broadcast authentication protocols are compared and analyzed for all secure transmission applications. The major goal of this survey is to compare and find out the appropriate protocol for further research. Moreover, the comparisons between various authentication techniques are also illustrated.

Lightweight identity-based authentication protocol for wireless sensor networks

Wireless sensor network WSN is often deployed in hostile environments, which make it vulnerable to attacks. WSN comprises a large number of sensor nodes with different hardware abilities and functions. Due to the limited memory resources and energy constraints, complex security algorithms cannot be used in WSN. Hence, it is necessary to balance between security requirements and energy consumption. In this paper, we propose a lightweight public-key-based authentication protocol for WSNs. Our protocol uses identity-based encryption in order to lighten the energy consumption from the public-key certificate management. We have developed two variations of the proposed solution depending on the manner and when an attack should be detected. We perform an overall evaluation of our approach through simulations. The results indicate out performance of our approach in terms of energy consumption while providing effective security.

A Lightweight Authentication Protocol Based on Partial Identifier for EPCglobal Class-1 Gen-2 Tags

RFID is a key technology that can be used to create the pervasive society. The tag is an important part of the RFID system and most popular tags are some low-cost passive tags. These tags have limited computing and storing resources, and no more attentions are paid to their security and privacy. So the application of these tags is not secure. Lightweight authentication protocols are considered as an effective method to solve the security and privacy of low-cost RFID tags. We propose a novel lightweight authentication protocol by means of some functions provided by EPCglobal Class-1 Gen-2 tags. The protocol enhances the difficulty to reveal the tag’s secrecy by using the tag’s partial identifier to generate the session messages between the tag and the reader. The tag’s partial identifier is generated randomly for each authentication. Otherwise, the tag’s identifier is randomly divided into two separate parts so as to avoid colliding from the 16-bit cyclic redundancy coding function. Some random numbers, which are generated by the tag and the reader respectively, randomize the session messages between the tag and the reader so as to resist against tracing attack and replay attack. Our proposed protocol can assure forward security and it can resist against de-synchronized attack. This protocol only uses some lightweight functions and it is very suitable to low-cost RFID tags