One-time Pad Research Articles

EAFS: An Efficient, Accurate, and Forward Secure Searchable Encryption Scheme Supporting Range Search

Forward privacy in existing searchable symmetric encryption approaches generally supports only keyword searches, rather than range searches. In addition, existing approaches that support range search over encrypted datasets have limitations associated with efficiency, accuracy, and security. Seeking to address these limitations, we formally propose the definition of the forward privacy for secure range searches. Also, we demonstrate how three widely used cryptographic tools— order-preserving encryption (OPE), pseudorandom function, and one-time pad–can be leveraged to design an efficient, accurate, and forward secure (EAFS) searchable encryption scheme supporting range search in encrypted numerical databases. In the proposed EAFS scheme, a trapdoor only matches the last data record that satisfies the search range, and the other results are found iteratively using the previous result. The chain-like search and the embedded ciphertexts of OPE simultaneously guarantee its efficiency, forward privacy, and accuracy. We also use the simulation-based method to demonstrate that our scheme is secure. Then, we implement EAFS in Microsoft Azure and evaluate its performance. The evaluation findings demonstrate that our proposed scheme supports secure range search practically and efficiently.

Bio-Inspired Multi-Level Hybrid Crypto System

Research in information Security is very much essential as there is an increase in data breach. DNA cryptography is one of the invention in the field of data security which provides hope for an unbreakable algorithm. This paper presents a multi-level hybrid crypto system based on DNA cryptography and DNA steganography. The proposed method uses a DNA sequence from publicly available DNA data base as a onetime pad. Initially plaintext is converted into DNA form of cipher text and then using central dogma of molecular biology concept DNA strings are converted into amino acid codes which represents the protein form of data. The crux of the algorithm lies on the one-time pad used for encryption process. The proposed system combines the advantages of DNA cryptography, DNA steganography and one time pad. Security analysis shows that proposed method is strong enough to resist brute force attacks as well as cryptanalytic attacks.

Cipher constrained encoding for constraint optimization in extended nucleic acid memory

As the time elapsed by, the present real life problems have guided the human race towards a data driven society. This in turn caused an exponential hype of data generation globally that led to a new challenge for the human to store and manage such an enormous amount of data. It was further analysed through other research works that this is going to manufacture immense tension on the availability of silicon and magnetic memories in the near future. At this point in time, good data compression algorithms became the prime focus of the computing community. However, it was able to check the pace of the growing scarcity of data storage technologies but could not solve the problem from the root. As a result, it became a necessity to develop an efficient alternative data storage technology when the Nucleic Acid Memory (NAM) was brought forward as a promising solution. On the other hand, the research on expansion of the genetic alphabets beyond the standard nucleotides have emerged recently which have drawn a significant attention in the domain of biological science simultaneously. This led to the creation of the Extended Nucleic Acid Memory (ENAM). However, the initial proposals were put forward without considering the real life sequencing constraints namely the homopolymer runlength and the GC content constraint. But, it was observed in the literature that encoding techniques which accounted for countering the sequencing constraints had to pay a penalty in terms of digital data holding capacity per nucleotide. In this context, taking the inspiration from the domain of cryptography a new encoding algorithm namely the Cipher Constrained Encoding (CCE) has been proposed in this work which has the capability of considering both the sequencing constraints without significantly penalizing the data capacity per nucleotide. Few properties of the Vigenére and Vernam Cipher have been adapted and integrated with basic statistical analytical techniques which was very efficient in checking the violation of the sequencing constraints. Furthermore, experimentation has been done and the results have been reported and compared with the previous works found in the literature which demonstrated promising outcome.

On the robustness of information-theoretic authentication in quantum cryptography

In addition to the quantum channel, an auxiliary classical authentic communication channel is required for quantum key distribution. To provide unconditional security in quantum cryptography, which based on the fundamental laws of quantum mechanics, information-theoretic authentication is required, and not authentication based on computational complexity. The paper provides a security proof of information-theoretic authentication in quantum cryptography using ɛ-ASU2 hash functions. The internal structure of ɛ-ASU2 hash functions is not used in the proof, so these hash functions can be implemented by a different composition of other hash functions, for example, including the composition ɛ-AXU2 functions with a reused key and subsequent encryption of the tag with a one-time pad key, which is taken from the previous session of quantum key distribution. It is also shown that information-theoretic authentication preserves composable security of the keys. This authentication method can also be used for key agrrement in in networks with trusted nodes (Molotkov 2022 Laser Phys. Lett. 19 045201–9; Arbekov and Molotkov 2020 Laser Phys. Lett. 17 055202–8) and with quantum key distribution.

Quantum Stream Cipher Based on Holevo-Yuen Theory.

In this review paper, we first introduce the basic concept of quantum computer-resistant cryptography, which is the cornerstone of security technology for the network of a new era. Then, we will describe the positioning of mathematical cryptography and quantum cryptography, that are currently being researched and developed. Quantum cryptography includes QKD and quantum stream cipher, but we point out that the latter is expected as the core technology of next-generation communication systems. Various ideas have been proposed for QKD quantum cryptography, but most of them use a single-photon or similar signal. Then, although such technologies are applicable to special situations, these methods still have several difficulties to provide functions that surpass conventional technologies for social systems in the real environment. Thus, the quantum stream cipher has come to be expected as one promising countermeasure, which artificially creates quantum properties using special modulation techniques based on the macroscopic coherent state. In addition, it has the possibility to provide superior security performance than one-time pad cipher. Finally, we introduce detailed research activity aimed at putting the quantum stream cipher into practical use in social network technology.

New Key Generation and Encryption Algorithms for Privacy Preservation in Mobile Ad Hoc Networks

Mobile Ad Hoc Networks (MANETs) get widespread applications along with the evolving technologies. However, MANETs are at risk due to the shortage of security mechanisms. In this paper, we propose new algorithms for key generation and encryption for privacy preservation in MANETs. Our key generation algorithm modified Fibonacci sequence by adding scrambling factors to generate random key sequences with required length but incurred low computational overhead, whereas the encryption/decryption algorithm utilizes the One Time Pad (OTP) system by adding scrambling factors for data confidentiality which satisfies the randomness, diffusion, and confusion tests. Simulation of the proposed algorithms was conducted using Matlab and NS-2. Experiment results showed that the proposed algorithms produced random key sequences and random Ciphertexts. Through several tests i.e. speed, correlation and autocorrelation, diffusion, and confusion tests, the simulation result showed the superiority of our algorithms over the other algorithms. For the proof of concept, the proposed algorithms have been simulated in the network simulator, where the result showed that along with the increase of the number of nodes, the throughput of the network increased, while the delay is relatively constant around 6000 ms for 20 up to 70 nodes.

Topology-Abstraction-Based Protection Scheme in Quantum Key Distribution Networks with Partially Trusted Relays

Quantum key distribution (QKD) can protect the exchange process of confidential information between communicating parties. By using the basic principles of quantum mechanics and combined with “one-time pad” cipher encryption, information can be unconditionally secure. The BB84 protocol first describes the method of transmitting information by photon polarization state, and it expounds the transmission process of services between trusted relays. However, due to the defects of real experimental devices, there are security vulnerabilities in QKD in a real system. The birth of measurement-device-independent quantum key distribution (MDI-QKD) protocol solves the problem, providing immunity to hacker attacks at the end of the detector. It can enable both sides of the transmission service to establish a connection and generate secret keys through an untrusted relay node to ensure information security. However, the types and properties of link nodes in quantum key distribution network (QKDN) based on partially trusted relay are more complex, which can easily result in network fault. Therefore, how to prevent the impact of failure on QKDN has become an urgent problem. In this paper, we propose a protection scheme for QKDN with partially trusted relays. The method deals with trusted and untrusted relays differently and constructs the working and protection paths of the secret key for each service. It reduces resource conflict between the protection and working paths by establishing a key protection threshold, which realizes the resource trade-off between the two factors. Simulation results show that the scheme provides effective protection to the services, and it improves the stability and reliability of QKDN based on partially trusted relay.

Unconditional Authentication Based on Physical Layer Offered Chain Key in Wireless Communication.

Authentication is a critical issue in wireless communication due to the impersonation and substitution attacks from the vulnerable air interface launched by the malicious node. There are currently two kinds of authentication research in wireless communication. One is based on cryptography and relies on computational complexity, the other is based on physical layer fingerprint and can not protect data integrity well. Both of these approaches will become insecure when facing attackers with infinite computing power. In this paper, we develop a wireless unconditional authentication framework based on one-time keys generated from wireless channel. The proposed unconditional authentication framework provides a new perspective to resist infinite computing power attackers. We study the performance of the unconditional authentication framework in this paper. First, a physical layer offered chain key (PHYLOCK) structure is proposed, which can provide one-time keys for unconditional authentication. The physical layer offered chain keys are generated by XORing the physical layer updated keys extracted from the current channel state information (CSI) and the previous chain keys. The security of PHYLOCK is analyzed from the perspective of information theory. Then, the boundary of the deception probability is conducted. It is shown that unconditional authentication can achieve a probability of deception , where is the entropy of the one-time key used for one message. Finally, the conditions for unconditional authentication are listed. Our analysis shows that the length of the key and the authentication code need to be twice the length of the message and the encoding rules of the authentication code need to satisfy the restrictions we listed.

A novel plaintext-related chaotic image encryption scheme with no additional plaintext information

In the latest image chaotic encryption research, more and more encryption schemes associate the key generation mechanism with the plaintext in order to resist the chosen plaintext attack. However, large amounts of the additional data related to the plaintext need to be sent to the receiver when the sender encrypts a large number of images, which leads to the problems of large transmission cost, high key storage space requirement and complicated key management. In order to solve such problems, this paper proposes a novel plaintext-related chaotic image encryption scheme with no additional plaintext information. The relationship between the plaintext and the secret keys is established by selecting some key pixels in the original image randomly and securely by Henon map. The encryption process is divided into two parts. The first part is to encrypt the selected key pixel while keeping their secret positions unchanged. The second part is to encrypt the remainder pixels based on hyperchaotic Lorenz system and DNA encoding using the generated keys. The proposed encryption mechanism can not only achieve the equivalent effect of one-time pad to resist the chosen plaintext attack, but also avoid transmitting additional information associated with the plaintext in the communication channel, which greatly saves the transmission cost and the required key storage space, and simplify the key management. The encryption scheme in this paper has also passed various security analyses to ensure the security of the ciphertext image.

An Efficient Key Management and Multi-Layered Security Framework for SCADA Systems

Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition (SCADA) networks play a vital role in industrial control systems. Industrial organizations perform operations remotely through SCADA systems to accelerate their processes. However, this enhancement in network capabilities comes at the cost of exposing the systems to cyber-attacks. Consequently, effective solutions are required to secure industrial infrastructure as cyber-attacks on SCADA systems can have severe financial and/or safety implications. Moreover, SCADA field devices are equipped with microcontrollers for processing information and have limited computational power and resources. This makes the deployment of sophisticated security features challenging. As a result, effective lightweight cryptography solutions are needed to strengthen the security of industrial plants against cyber threats. In this paper, we have proposed a multi-layered framework by combining both symmetric and asymmetric key cryptographic techniques to ensure high availability, integrity, confidentiality, authentication and scalability. Further, an efficient session key management mechanism is proposed by merging random number generation with a hashed message authentication code. Moreover, for each session, we have introduced three symmetric key cryptography techniques based on the concept of Vernam cipher and a pre-shared session key, namely, random prime number generator, prime counter, and hash chaining. The proposed scheme satisfies the SCADA requirements of real-time request response mechanism by supporting broadcast, multicast, and point to point communication.

Gbit/s secure key generation and distribution based on the phase noise of an amplified spontaneous emission source.

In this paper, a secure key generation and distribution scheme based on the phase noise of an amplified spontaneous emission source is proposed and experimentally verified. A giant key generator that contains two distribution arms is used to generate a specific beat dependent on the path length difference of the arms. Through the method of balanced subtraction of the local signals, the effect of the intensity noise has been mainly excluded, and the two legal users obtain the consistent differential signal that depended on the phase noise. Experiment results show that the correlation coefficient of the key signals reaches to about 0.89, and the bit generation rate of the scheme achieves to 3.06 Gbit/s under a length of 20 km standard single-mode optical fiber route, as the bit error rate stays under 0.02%. Moreover, the converted digital key stream has passed the NIST statistical test suite, which means that the scheme is inherently random in the statistical sense. With the excellent performance mentioned above, the proposed scheme provides a simple and efficient solution for the method of one-time pad.

‘Pushing’ keys through quantum networks and the complexity of search of the true key

The question of the transfer of an external independent key through trusted nodes, between which the keys obtained during the quantum key distribution are located, is investigated. It is shown that when pushing external ɛ K -secret key through a chain of trusted nodes connecting separate segments with ɛ i -secret keys obtained by quantum key distribution, the final matched key between the extreme nodes of the network turns out to be -secret (where i is the number of the network segment, N s is the number of network segments connecting the extreme nodes), provided that the external key is encrypted on the ɛ i –secret keys in the one-time pad mode. It is also shown that for any measurements of an eavesdropper providing him with additional information about the keys, the complexity of partial/complete search for an matched key is determined by the secrecy parameter ɛ.

Quantum private broadcasting

In private broadcasting, a single plaintext is broadcast to multiple recipients in an encrypted form, such that each recipient can decrypt locally. When the message is classical, a straightforward solution is to encrypt the plaintext with a single key shared among all parties, and to send to each recipient a copy of the ciphertext. Surprisingly, the analogous method is insufficient in the case where the message is quantum [i.e., in quantum private broadcasting (QPB)]. In this work, we give three solutions to $t$-recipient quantum private broadcasting ($t$-QPB) and compare them in terms of key lengths. The first method is the independent encryption with the quantum one-time pad, which requires a key linear in the number of recipients, $t$. We show that the key length can be decreased to be logarithmic in $t$ by using unitary $t$-designs. Our main contribution is to show that this can be improved to a key length that is logarithmic in the dimension of the symmetric subspace, using a concept that we define of symmetric unitary $t$-designs, which may be of independent interest.

Single Exposure Phase-Only Optical Image Encryption and Hiding Method via Deep Learning

Phase-only optical image security technology Based on one-time pad is an encryption and hiding method by introducing random key through phase modulation, which can improve the security of the system to a great extent. The application of traditional phase-only optical image encryption and hiding (POIEH) method is often limited by the amount of data and the quality of decrypted image. In this paper, a single exposure POIEH method using deep learning (DL) is proposed. The original image and corresponding encrypted hidden interferogram acquired with POIEH system are constructed to the train datasets for the learning of an end-to-end designed U-net, then the corresponding relationship between the encrypted hidden interferogram and the reconstructed image is learned and only single-frame encrypted hidden interferogram is needed to perform the reconstruction of POIEH. This method can realize real-time image encryption and hiding and high-quality decryption with only one interferogram. Simulation results and performance analysis show that the proposed method has higher security, stronger generalization ability and robustness.

Design of a Two Layered Blockchain-Based Reputation System in Vehicular Networks

Vehicles on the road, where an Intelligent Transportation System (ITS) is built, can share a lot of traffic information and drive more safely and efficiently through data sharing. Since incorrect information misleads vehicles and causes confusion in traffic, a vehicular trust model is needed to check the message’s trustworthiness while considering the vehicle’s properties and protecting its privacy. In this paper, we proposed a two layered blockchain-based reputation system, which consists of a local one-day message blockchain and a global vehicle reputation blockchain. It can administrate the reputation score securely and preserve the vehicle’s partial privacy. The proposed model efficiently manages local traffic information through the local one-day blockchain, reducing the memory overhead of vehicles. As the vehicle’s actual identity and activities in other areas are hidden by using one-time public keys, partial privacy of the vehicle is preserved. According to the activity of the vehicle, the vehicle’s reputation score is updated and stored permanently in the global reputation blockchain. We also suggested the location-based practical byzantine fault tolerance (LPBFT), a new consensus algorithm for fast block generating. The LPBFT lowers message propagation time through location-based primary node selection and is about 1.4 times faster than existing PBFT. The simulation results show the efficiency and the feasibility of LPBFT and our proposed protocol.

Secure delegated quantum computation based on Z-rotation encryption

Quantum computing on encrypted data allows a client who has limited quantum capacity to delegate his or her private computation to an untrusted quantum server, while the input and output are encrypted by the quantum one-time pad and only the client can correctly decrypt them. Generally, the client is required to have ability to prepare some single qubits and perform some basic gates. In this work, we consider a further restricted situation where the client can only prepare one single qubit and perform one basic gate. Specifically, we show that as long as the client can prepare a fixed qubit and perform a fixed phase gate P, then he or she can still achieve the secure delegated quantum computation. Besides, our protocol can provide a more rigorous security for any quantum computation. For example, even if some encryption keys about the computation are leaked, it can still guarantee the privacy of the input and output. Finally, our protocol experimentally has a great significance in reducing the device complexity of the client's side.

One-time pad scheme based on polar code and OFDM for MMW-RoF system at W-band.

The physical layer security of millimeter-wave radio-over-fiber (MMW-RoF) system at W-band is a promising topic. This paper experimentally demonstrates a one-time pad scheme based on polar code and orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) for MMW-RoF system. In the proposed scheme, the initial key is obtained by looking-up table mapping randomly, and chaotic sequence is generated by using 4-D cellular neural network (CNN). The key for next frame is placed in the partial frozen bits of polar code, which can realize the one-time pad mechanism. The encrypted OFDM signal carried by 100GHz millimeter-wave is successfully transmitted over 50 km standard single-mode fiber (SSMF) and 5 m wireless channel in this experiment. The experimental results show that, compared with the traditional OFDM signal, the proposed scheme in SCL8 decoder can achieve ∼4.1 dB gain at the BER of 10-3, which can effectively use the frozen bits of polar code to transmit more information and improve the security and reliability of the whole system.

Using ECG signal as an entropy source for efficient generation of long random bit sequences

Electrocardiogram (ECG) signal produced by the human heart has been investigated as a potential entropy source for cryptographic random bit generation for a long time. The throughput of existing methods remains as the bottleneck for its deployment in practical applications. To overcome this problem, we develop a Bernoulli entropy source by processing a single heartbeat ECG signal to obtain a long random bit sequence (RBS). The proposed method converts the signal into an IID (independent and identically distributed) source of entropy using efficient interpolation and optimization techniques. Several heartbeat signals, obtained from two different databases, were used to test the entropy source generating RBSs with one million bits. The entropy source was evaluated with the latest NIST recommendation for IID source validation and it passed all recommended tests and the average min-entropy obtained from several heartbeat signals of different individuals was close to the perfect entropy value of 1.0. It was also observed that the entropy increases monotonically with the increase of the length of keys. The proposed method can efficiently produce a long RBS for cryptographic applications, such as key generation for one-time pad and image encryption. The method could be further explored to generate a true random number with a personalized signature, which is crucial for information security in the future generation of computing.

On the Generator of Stable Cubical Multivariate Encryption Maps Over Boolean Rings for Protection of Large Information System

Encryption based on Walks in Algebraic GRAphs (EWAGRA) is used for protection of authors' rights, access to electronic books or documents located at a certain knowledge base (Information Quality Assurance Support Systems of a university, digital library supporting distance education, various digital archives and etc). The method allows generating nonlinear stream ciphers, which have some similarities with a one-time pad: different keys produce distinct ciphertexts from the same plaintext. In contrast to the case of a one-time pad, the length of the key is flexible and the encryption map is a nonlinear poly- nomial map, which order is growing with the growth of the dimension n of the plaintext space. The encryption has good resistance to attacks of the adversary when he has no access to plaintext space or has a rather small number of intercepted plaintext- ciphertext pairs. It is known that encryption and decryption maps are cubical maps. So, interception of n3 + O(n) plaintext-ciphertext pairs allows conducting a plain linearization attack for finding the inverse map. We consider the idea of the modification of this encryption algorithm after sending each message without using key exchange protocols. So the new algorithm is resistant to plain linearization attacks.

Automatic Key Update Mechanism for Lightweight M2M Communication and Enhancement of IoT Security: A Case Study of CoAP Using Libcoap Library.

The ecosystem for an Internet of Things (IoT) generally comprises endpoint clients, network devices, and cloud servers. Thus, data transfers within the network present multiple security concerns. The recent boom in IoT applications has accelerated the need for a network infrastructure that provides timely and safe information exchange services. A shortcoming of many existing networks is the use of static key authentication. To enable the use of automatic key update mechanisms in IoT devices and enhance security in lightweight machine-to-machine (M2M) communications, we propose a key update mechanism, namely, double OTP (D-OTP), which combines both one-time password (OTP) and one-time pad to achieve an IoT ecosystem with theoretically unbreakable security. The proposed D-OTP was implemented into the Constrained Application Protocol (CoAP) through the commonly used libcoap library. The experimental results revealed that an additional 8.93% latency overhead was required to obtain an unbreakable guarantee of data transfers in 100 CoAP communication sessions.