Cryptographic Hash Research Articles

A blockchain-based cloud forensics architecture for privacy leakage prediction with cloud

Digital forensics has intelligently evolved into cloud forensics, which protects against cybercrime. However, centralized evidence gathering and maintenance reduces the credibility of digital evidence. This article suggests a unique digital forensic architecture for the Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) cloud combining rapidly expanding Software Defined Networking (SDN) and Blockchain technologies to address this serious issue. Blockchain helps to store the gathered evidence, which means it is shared among many peers in the proposed forensic architecture. The Secure-Ring-Verification-based Authentication (SRVA) technique is recommended to ensure security from suspicious accounts. The Harmony Search Optimization (HSO) technique helps to produce secret keys that strengthen the cloud environment. Depending on their level of sensitivity, all information is encrypted and kept on a cloud server. Sensitive Aware Deep Elliptic Curve Cryptography (SAD-ECC) method was used for encryption. In the cloud, a piece of information is saved, and the SDN manager creates the blocks and stores the history of that piece of data as metadata. Utilizing Secure Hashing Algorithm-3 (SHA-3), a Merkle Hash Tree is constructed for each block. The proposed technology uses Fuzzy-based Smart Contracts (FSCs) to enable clients to trail their data. At last, evidence analysis is made possible by creating a Logical-Graph of Evidence (LGoE) using data collected through Blockchain. The network simulator-3.26 and java (for cloud and Blockchain) environment are used for experiments. A thorough investigation shows that the suggested forensic architecture exhibits favorable response, evidence insertion, and verification times.

Provably Unforgeable Threshold EdDSA with an Offline Participant and Trustless Setup

We present an EdDSA-compatible multi-party digital signature scheme that supports an offline participant during the key-generation phase, without relying on a trusted third party. Under standard assumptions, we prove our scheme secure against adaptive malicious adversaries. Using a classical game-based argument, we prove that if there is an adversary capable of forging the scheme with non-negligible probability, then we can build a forger for the original EdDSA scheme with non-negligible probability. The scheme requires only two communication rounds in the signature generation phase and avoids expensive multi-party evaluation of cryptographic hash functions. We present our solution in a setting where two parties generate the keys and compute signatures, with a third party which can be brought online after the key generation when one of the other parties becomes unavailable. This setting is a perfect fit for custodial solutions where partially trusted services are employed by a user to increase resiliency. We provide also a possible solution to retain the resiliency of the recovery in the presence of a malicious party.

Enhancing Security in ZigBee Wireless Sensor Networks: A New Approach and Mutual Authentication Scheme for D2D Communication.

The latest version of ZigBee offers improvements in various aspects, including its low power consumption, flexibility, and cost-effective deployment. However, the challenges persist, as the upgraded protocol continues to suffer from a wide range of security weaknesses. Constrained wireless sensor network devices cannot use standard security protocols such as asymmetric cryptography mechanisms, which are resource-intensive and unsuitable for wireless sensor networks. ZigBee uses the Advanced Encryption Standard (AES), which is the best recommended symmetric key block cipher for securing data of sensitive networks and applications. However, AES is expected to be vulnerable to some attacks in the near future. Moreover, symmetric cryptosystems have key management and authentication issues. To address these concerns in wireless sensor networks, particularly in ZigBee communications, in this paper, we propose a mutual authentication scheme that can dynamically update the secret key value of device-to-trust center (D2TC) and device-to-device (D2D) communications. In addition, the suggested solution improves the cryptographic strength of ZigBee communications by improving the encryption process of a regular AES without the need for asymmetric cryptography. To achieve that, we use a secure one-way hash function operation when D2TC and D2D mutually authenticate each other, along with bitwise exclusive OR operations to enhance cryptography. Once authentication is accomplished, the ZigBee-based participants can mutually agree upon a shared session key and exchange a secure value. This secure value is then integrated with the sensed data from the devices and utilized as input for regular AES encryption. By adopting this technique, the encrypted data gains robust protection against potential cryptanalysis attacks. Finally, a comparative analysis is conducted to illustrate how the proposed scheme effectively maintains efficiency in comparison to eight competitive schemes. This analysis evaluates the scheme's performance across various factors, including security features, communication, and computational cost.

A novel blockchain architecture with mutable block and immutable transactions for enhanced scalability

Blockchain is a distributed ledger based technology that stores and processes data without a central point of control. The growing number of blockchain-based transactions has increased the demands for scalability and storage solutions. To address these challenges, we introduce a new modified blockchain approach called mutable block with immutable transaction (MBIT), which quantifies unspent coins by storing user-specific transactions in a block using a trapdoor cryptographic hash function. New transactions are added to the user-specific block without altering the existing transactions, which guarantees transaction immutability, consistency, and security. Experimental results demonstrate that compared with current models, the MBIT blockchain model reduces both verification and confirmation times. Additionally, we analyzed the storage overhead of a node and wallet import time of the proposed model.

Hash-based cryptography, its security and feasibility in modern cryptosystems

Hash-based signatures are one of the most promising classes of cryptographic schemes considered quantum resistant ones. The strength of cryptographic hash functions is one of the most important aspects of ensuring the security of hash-based schemes.
 Since classical hash-based signatures require tracking the number of signatures used, they were considered to be stateful for a long time. The SPHINCS scheme overcome this limitation, subsequently refined to SPHINCS+.
 The paper provides an assessment of the security of ES based on hash functions relative to side channel attacks.It also gives an analysis of recommendations for the use of one of the candidates of the NIST competition, based on hash cryptography - SPHINCS+, and conclusions about the feasibility of its use.

Design and implementation of secure boot architecture on RISC-V using FPGA

There are many well-known open-source bootloaders solutions available today such as UEFI/BIOS, Coreboot and Uboot. Recently, RISC-V as an open-source Instruction Set Architecture, has gained a lot of attention in new embedded products creation and academic research purpose. In this study, RISC-V Instruction Set Architecture boot flow and boot solutions are studied, simulated, experimented, and summarized. Security feature is implemented in firmware and measured against non-secured firmware to compare boot performance without security inclusion. A new proposed method to create a security block in Register Transfer Level to generate Secure Hash Algorithms 5 digest is implemented using Field Programmable Gate Array. The performance of this method is analyzed with the numbers of logic gate required and the execution time in software versus hardware. As a result of this study, it is observed that in simulated environment, secured firmware incurred 3.3 Megabytes of additional binary size and 747 ms (35%) additional boot time compared to non-secured firmware. A hardware implementation is proposed in Field Programmable Gate Array (FPGA) to reduce the need for a larger size firmware and longer boot time to implement security. The results of this implementation indicate a requirement of 32,048 gates to implement a SHA512 IP that reduce software execution time by 1132%.

Performance Analysis of Scattered Record Utilizing Block chain for Identifying Visual Substance Imitation

Visual content captured by monitoring devices are vulnerable to local or remote malicious modifications of visual information by offenders. These malicious visual content code changes (called forgeries) are divided into Cloning, Splicing, Inter-frame and Intra-frame forgeries. Rapidly improving editing software tools have made visual content manipulation feasible. Consequently, malicious attackers are trying to manipulate the visual content. Detecting visual content tampering is a major need for many applications Distributed databases can be used to detect visual content tampering by storing the evidence created by hashing the visual content at the source itself. However, these distributed databases lack in data transparency and security against Byzantine failures in an untrusted environment. Blockchain is a technology with the inherent ability to store data in a chronological chained link of events: establishing an irrefutable database. Using cryptographic hashes together with blockchain one can generate cryptographic hashes of the data content from a video recording, and consequently transmit these hashes to a blockchain. In this thesis we have proposed a model called Evidence chain based on Blockchain to ensure the credibility of the visual content. Unlike bitcoin which is a digital currency the proposed system documents content hash by using IPFS, Hash based technology, RSA, Elliptic Curve Cryptography. Image and Video segments are hashed and stored in chronological order as a chain of blocks which are detectable and non-altering guaranteeing the validity of the information. This research is significant in establishing the trust between any two parties. Key words: Block chain, Intra-frame, IPFS, Elliptic Curve Cryptography.

Review on E-Health Privacy and Security through ECC, SHA-256, and Multi-Authority Approaches

The rapid digitization of healthcare services has led to the proliferation of electronic health (E-Health) systems, providing convenience and improved patient care. However, the increasing use of E-Health platforms also raises concerns about the privacy and security of sensitive medical information. This review paper explores the challenges surrounding E-Health privacy and security and presents a comprehensive approach to addressing these concerns through the implementation of Elliptic Curve Cryptography (ECC), Secure Hash Algorithm 256 (SHA-256), and multi-authority schemes. The synergistic application of these cryptographic techniques not only fortifies the protection of patient data but also establishes a robust framework for secure data sharing and management in E-Health systems.

Hashes are not suitable to verify fixity of the public archived web.

Web archives, such as the Internet Archive, preserve the web and allow access to prior states of web pages. We implicitly trust their versions of archived pages, but as their role moves from preserving curios of the past to facilitating present day adjudication, we are concerned with verifying the fixity of archived web pages, or mementos, to ensure they have always remained unaltered. A widely used technique in digital preservation to verify the fixity of an archived resource is to periodically compute a cryptographic hash value on a resource and then compare it with a previous hash value. If the hash values generated on the same resource are identical, then the fixity of the resource is verified. We tested this process by conducting a study on 16,627 mementos from 17 public web archives. We replayed and downloaded the mementos 39 times using a headless browser over a period of 442 days and generated a hash for each memento after each download, resulting in 39 hashes per memento. The hash is calculated by including not only the content of the base HTML of a memento but also all embedded resources, such as images and style sheets. We expected to always observe the same hash for a memento regardless of the number of downloads. However, our results indicate that 88.45% of mementos produce more than one unique hash value, and about 16% (or one in six) of those mementos always produce different hash values. We identify and quantify the types of changes that cause the same memento to produce different hashes. These results point to the need for defining an archive-aware hashing function, as conventional hashing functions are not suitable for replayed archived web pages.

Candidate iO from Homomorphic Encryption Schemes

We propose a new approach to construct general-purpose indistinguishability obfuscation (iO). Our construction is obtained via a new intermediate primitive that we call split fully homomorphic encryption (split FHE), which we show to be sufficient for constructing iO. Specifically, split FHE is FHE where decryption takes the following two-step syntactic form: (i) a secret decryption step that uses the secret key and produces a hint which is (asymptotically) shorter than the length of the encrypted message, and (ii) a public decryption step that only requires the ciphertext and the previously generated hint (and not the entire secret key) and recovers the encrypted message. In terms of security, the hints for a set of ciphertexts should not allow one to violate semantic security for any other ciphertexts. Next, we show a generic candidate construction of split FHE based on three building blocks: (i) A standard FHE scheme with linear decrypt-and-multiply (which can be instantiated with essentially all LWE-based constructions), (ii) a linearly homomorphic encryption scheme with short decryption hints (such as the Damgård-Jurik encryption scheme, based on the DCR problem), and (iii) a cryptographic hash function (which can be based on a variety of standard assumptions). Our approach is heuristic in the sense that our construction is not provably secure and makes implicit assumptions about the interplay between these underlying primitives. We show evidence that this construction is secure by providing an argument in an appropriately defined oracle model. We view our construction as a big departure from the state-of-the-art constructions, and it is in fact quite simple.

Design of programmable hardware security modules for enhancing blockchain based security framework

Globalization of the chip design and manufacturing industry has imposed significant threats to the hardware security of integrated circuits (ICs). It has made ICs more susceptible to various hardware attacks. Blockchain provides a trustworthy and distributed platform to store immutable records related to the evidence of intellectual property (IP) creation, authentication of provenance, and confidential data storage. However, blockchain encounters major security challenges due to its decentralized nature of ledgers that contain sensitive data. The research objective is to design a dedicated programmable hardware security modules scheme to safeguard and maintain sensitive information contained in the blockchain networks in the context of the IC supply chain. Thus, the blockchain framework could rely on the proposed hardware security modules and separate the entire cryptographic operations within the system as stand-alone hardware units. This work put forth a novel approach that could be considered and utilized to enhance blockchain security in real-time. The critical cryptographic components in blockchain secure hash algorithm-256 (SHA-256) and the elliptic curve digital signature algorithm are designed as separate entities to enhance the security of the blockchain framework. Physical unclonable functions are adopted to perform authentication of transactions in the blockchain. Relative comparison of designed modules with existing works clearly depicts the upper hand of the former in terms of performance parameters.

A Dynamic Image Encryption Scheme Based on Quantum Walk and Chaos-Induced DNA

The development of quantum information technology and increasing attention of people to the secure transmission of image information in the Internet have put forward higher requirements for traditional image encryption algorithms that not only take advantage of the exponential acceleration ability of quantum computing compared with classical computing but also reduce the risk of encryption algorithms being cracked. Therefore, in order to seek the combination of the advantages of quantum computing and classical image encryption algorithms, this paper proposes a new dynamic encryption image scheme of quantum walk and chaos-induced DNA. Firstly, the RGB three-channel pixels of the color image are extracted and combined into a one-dimensional array, and a random sequence is generated by quantum walk to reorder it to obtain a preliminary scrambled image; secondly, the color image is processed by the SHA-256 algorithm and divided into the generated message digest as the initial condition of the chaotic model. The random sequence was generated by the high-dimensional chaotic model which encodes each pixel independently and disorderly as DNA bases. The difference of the chaotic sequence ensures the dynamic selection of random DNA encoding and decoding rules during encryption. At the same time, the number of times of DNA encryption of the encoded pixel value is also controlled by the dynamic induction of the chaotic sequence, and ultimately, the DNA coding sequence is replaced with the decimal pixel value to obtain the encrypted image. The simulation results show that the information entropy of the encrypted image is above 7.99, and the correlation of each channel is close to 0, which can effectively resist brute force attacks, plaintext attacks, statistical analysis attacks, noise attacks, etc. In addition, in this paper, extracting the watermark embedded in the encrypted image to judge whether image information is tampered or forged further improves the security of the image information.

Survey on Government Fund Allocation Using Blockchain

Abstract: Governments have a lot of responsibilities, which involves a lot of money transactions for various projects, employees, and farmer schemes. Corruption is a big problem as it's hard to track and can slow progress. We can solve this by using blockchain technology. Blockchain is a list of records that are linked and secured using cryptography. Each record contains transaction data, a timestamp, and a cryptographic hash of the previous record. We use security algorithms like AES encryption and decryption to protect the data. This project proposes a system to track government funds using key pair generation, metadata file decryption, and data verification algorithms.

Blockchain-Based Digital Cheque Clearance and Verification System

This research work possesses detailed functioning of cheque truncations. Cheque is a financial document issued by an individual bank to its customers for the purpose of a transaction from one person to another as well as self-transaction. This is also known as CTS (Cheque truncation system). The proposed system is based on blockchain where all banks are starting to adapt its contents for various purposes on day-to-day usage for its customers. This proposed cheque-clearing system includes more secure as well as sophisticated facilities in it. The cheques do deposit physically but can get cleared and verified digitally. Our proposed system is highly scalable because it’s used algorithms and techniques. On average, cheques get approximately a day or 3 to get clear, to evaluate this time consumption it is a fast and secure solution on to this problem which is time-saving. This research work focuses on the detailed functioning of cheque truncation and the adoption of blockchain technology in the Indian banking system for cheque clearing and various other applications. Cheque truncation is the process of eliminating physical movement of cheques in the clearing process. Traditionally, the physical cheques are exchanged between banks, leading to delays and security risks. With the introduction of the Cheque Truncation System (CTS), cheques are processed digitally, reducing the clearing time and enhancing efficiency. The proposed cheque-clearing system leverages blockchain technology, specifically the SHA-256 algorithm, to provide a more secure and sophisticated solution. SHA-256 is a cryptographic hashing algorithm that generates a unique hash value for each transaction or data element. It ensures the integrity and immutability of the data stored on the blockchain. The adoption of blockchain in cheque clearing brings several benefits to the Indian banking system. Firstly, it enables faster and more efficient clearing of cheques. Instead of the traditional T+1 clearing time, where T is the day of submission, the blockchain-based system significantly reduces the clearing time, potentially processing transactions within minutes. Moreover, the blockchain-based cheque clearing system offers enhanced security. The use of SHA-256 algorithm ensures that the transaction data is tamper-proof and cannot be altered once recorded on the blockchain. This protects against fraudulent activities and enhances trust among stakeholders. Beyond cheque clearing, blockchain technology has various other applications in the Indian banking system. It can be utilized for secure and transparent record-keeping of customer transactions, simplifying Know Your Customer (KYC) processes, streamlining international remittances, enabling smart contract-based agreements, and improving the overall efficiency and transparency of banking operations. The scalability of the proposed system is a significant advantage. Blockchain technology is designed to handle a high volume of transactions and can be scaled horizontally by adding more nodes to the network. This ensures that the system can accommodate the increasing number of cheques and transactions efficiently. By leveraging blockchain technology, the proposed system offers a fast, secure, and scalable solution to the existing challenges in cheque clearing. It enables digital verification and clearance of cheques, reduces the clearing time significantly, enhances security, and opens up opportunities for broader adoption of blockchain in the Indian banking sector.

A multipath routing protocol for secure energy efficient communication in Wireless Sensor Networks

A Wireless Sensor Network (WSN) is comprised of a number of sensor nodes (SNs) that are randomly placed in an open, harsh environment for many applications. Due to the resource-constrained nature of SNs and hostile deployment environments, energy efficiency and security are considered two key factors in designing WSN routing protocols. This paper proposes an Energy Efficient Secure Multipath (EESM) routing protocol to securely construct efficient routes and transmit data packets between SNs and the base station (BS). EESM achieves energy efficiency through minimal task allocation among SNs whereas all computation-intensive tasks such as network information collection, routing table generation, and network maintenance are performed by the BS. The proposed protocol incorporates lightweight security mechanisms including a one-way hash chain, message authentication code, encryption, and clique-based coordinator selection and monitoring schemes to defend against numerous security attacks. Simulation results show that EESM can successfully detect and protect the network against various security attacks such as replay attacks, sybil attacks, sinkhole attacks, spoofing attacks, compromised node attacks, and so on. In terms of energy efficiency, the proposed protocol achieves an up to 37% increase in network lifetime and a 6% increase in throughput over Secure and Energy Efficient Multipath (SEEM) routing, Secure and Reliable Multipath Routing (SRMR), and Reliable and Multipath Encounter Routing (RMER) protocols. The paper implements the protocol in a real environment using Arduino motes to analyze security overheads and network setup time.

Methods to Encrypt and Authenticate Digital Files in Distributed Networks and Zero-Trust Environments

The methods proposed in this paper are leveraging Challenge–Response–Pair (CRP) mechanisms that are directly using each digital file as a source of randomness. Two use cases are considered: the protection and verification of authenticity of the information distributed in storage nodes and the protection of the files kept in terminal devices operating in contested zero-trust environments comprised of weak signals in the presence of obfuscating electromagnetic noise. With the use of nonces, the message digests of hashed digital files can be unique and unclonable; they can act as Physical Unclonable Functions (PUF)s in challenge–response mechanisms. During enrollment, randomly selected “challenges” result in unique output data known as the “responses” which enable the generation and distribution of cryptographic keys. During verification cycles, the CRP mechanisms are repeated for proof of authenticity and deciphering. One of the main contributions of the paper is the development of mechanisms accommodating the injection of obfuscating noises to mitigate several vectors of attacks, disturbing the side channel analysis of the terminal devices. The method can distribute error-free cryptographic keys in noisy networks with light computing elements without relying on heavy Error Correcting Codes (ECC), fuzzy extractors, or data helpers.

Implementing an electronic public health record for policy planning in the UK military sector: Validation of a secure hashing algorithm

The digitalisation of healthcare services is a major resource to inform policy-makers. However, the availability of data and the establishment of a data flow present new issues to address, such as data anonymisation, records' reliability, and data linkage. The veterans' population in the UK presents complex needs and many organisations provide social and healthcare support, but their databases are not linked or aggregated to provide a comprehensive overview of service planning. This study aims to test the sensitivity and specificity of a Secure Hashing Algorithm to generate a unique anonymous identifier for data linkage across different organisations in the veterans' population. A Secure Hashing Algorithm was performed by considering two input variables from two different datasets. The uniqueness of the identifier was compared against the single personal key adopted as a current standard identifier. Chi-square, sensitivity, and specificity were calculated. The results demonstrated that the unique identifier generated by the Secure Hashing Algorithm detected more unique records when compared to the current gold standard. The identifier demonstrated optimal sensitivity and specificity and it allowed an enhanced data linkage between different datasets. The adoption of a Secure Hashing Algorithm improved the uniqueness of records. Moreover, it ensured data anonymity by transforming personal information into an encrypted identifier. This approach is beneficial for big data management and for creating an aggregated system for linking different organisations and, in this way, for providing a more comprehensive overview of healthcare provision and the foundation for precision public health strategies.

A data security scheme based on EEG characteristics for body area networks.

Body area network (BAN) is a body-centered network of wireless wearable devices. As the basic technology of telemedicine service, BAN has aroused an immense interest in academia and the industry and provides a new technical method to solve the problems that exist in the field of medicine. However, guaranteeing full proof security of BAN during practical applications has become a technical issue that hinders the further development of BAN technology. In this article, we propose a data encryption method based on electroencephalogram (EEG) characteristic values and linear feedback shift register (LFSR) to solve the problem of data security in BAN. First, the characteristics of human EEG signals were extracted based on the wavelet packet transform method and as the MD5 input data to ensure its randomness. Then, an LFSR stream key generator was adopted. The 128-bit initial key obtained through the message-digest algorithm 5 (MD5) was used to generate the stream key for BAN data encryption. Finally, the effectiveness of the proposed security scheme was verified by various experimental evaluations. The experimental results showed that the correlation coefficient of data before and after encryption was very low, and it was difficult for the attacker to obtain the statistical features of the plaintext. Therefore, the EEG-based security scheme proposed in this article presents the advantages of high randomness and low computational complexity for BAN systems.

Quantum Secure Multi-Party Summation with Identity Authentication Based on Commutative Encryption

In quantum secure multi-party summation protocols, some attackers can impersonate legitimate participants in the summation process, and easily steal the summation results from the participants. This is often overlooked for existing secure multi-party summation protocols, thus rendering them insecure. Based on commutative encryption, a quantum secure multi-party summation protocol with identity authentication is proposed in this paper. In the protocol, each participant encodes a secret integer on photons via unitary operations. At the same time, a one-way hash function technique with a key is utilized to perform identity authentication operations for each participant. Finally, the summation is calculated with the help of a semi-trusted third party. The analysis of the protocol shows that the proposed protocol is correct and resistant to common and impersonation attacks. Compared to related protocols, the use and measurement of single photons makes the protocol easier to implement into existing technology. Furthermore, the simulation experiments on the IBM Q Experience cloud platform demonstrate the effectiveness of the presented protocol.

A robust ECC-based authentication framework for energy internet (EI)-based vehicle to grid communication system

The integration of electric vehicles (EVs) into the smart grid system through Vehicle-to-Grid (V2G) technology enables bi-directional power delivery, allowing EVs to distribute excess electricity to the grid and recharge as needed. However, V2G networks face significant security and privacy challenges due to the involvement of large amounts of data and untrusted entities. To address these challenges, we propose a new authentication protocol based on Elliptic Curve Cryptography (ECC) that enables secure communication between EVs and charging stations in V2G networks. The proposed plan functions by going through four primary phases, which are: 1) Initialization, 2) Registration, 3) Authentication and 4) password change, vehicle revoke and new joining. Our protocol aims to maintain secure connections while minimizing computation and communication costs through the use of lightweight cryptographic operations such as one-way hash functions, concatenation, and bitwise Xor operations. We validated the security of our protocol through both informal and formal security analyses, including verification with the Scyther Verification tool, which confirms that the proposed protocol is free from security threats within bounds. Our ECC-based authentication protocol for V2G is more secure and lightweight compared to other related protocols in the same context. Our contributions are: 1) A new ECC-based authentication framework for energy Internet (EI)-based V2G communication systems, and 2) The use of lightweight cryptographic operations to reduce computational expenditure and improve resource utilization. Overall, our proposed protocol provides a robust and secure framework for V2G communication that can address the significant security and privacy challenges facing V2G networks.