Pre-shared Key Research Articles

Bio-metric Encryption of Data Using Voice Recognition

In symmetric cryptosystems, the protection of secret keys is based on the traditional user authentication and likewise the security of the cryptosystem depends on the secrecy of the secret keys. In the event of lost, theft or infection of these secrete keys; the security of the cryptosystems would be compromised hence exposing critical information. Biometrics has been commercially used to verify user’s identity. Voice biometrics has been proven to be even more effective because it cannot be stolen in some cases like face, fingerprint or even iris biometrics. The research proves that a well-designed system will prompt an authentication question and on verification user must provide both the desired answer as well as desired matching threshold or the system ignores the user features. This research proposes a software-based architecture solution for Biometric Encryption of data using Voice Recognition that employed the Dynamic Time Warping (DTW) technique to solve the problem of speech biometric duration varying with non-linear expansion and contraction. The approach then used database to store the monolithically bind cryptographic key with the equivalent biometric hardened template of the user in such manner that identity of the key will stay hidden unless there is a successful biometric authentication by intended party. The research used the MIT mobile device speaker verification corpus (MDB) and A data set in quiet environment (QDB) for training and verifying session. Finally using the Equal Error Rate (EER) the research evaluated performance or rate at which False Acceptance Rate (FAR) and a False Rejection Rate (FRR) are equal. Therefore, according to the result it offers a better substitute method of user authentication than traditional pre-shared keys for benefit of protecting secret keys.

Message authentication algorithm for OFDM communication systems

With the huge expansion in the telecommunications industry, the need for robust information security is becoming more critical than ever. Physical Layer Security has, recently, emerged as a promising candidate to secure emerging communication systems in a lightweight manner. This approach has proven to be superior to existing schemes, which has motivated many researchers to shift their work towards studying, understanding and exploiting the randomness of the physical layer. In this context, this paper presents a novel keyed-hash function for Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing (OFDM) systems based on the physical characteristics and properties of wireless channels. More specifically, communicating entities sharing the same channel, extract common properties and mix them with a pre-shared secret key to produce a channel-based dynamic key. This key will later be used to generate the cipher primitives needed for performing source authentication and message integrity of the transmitted OFDM symbols. Since OFDM symbols, in the frequency-domain and time-domain, have different properties, the proposed keyed-hash function is modified and adapted to suit each case leading to two variants of the solution. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first work that proposes a keyed-hash function for complex OFDM symbols, based on physical layer conditions. Finally, different security and performance tests are conducted to prove the robustness and efficiency of this technique, in comparison to currently employed message authentication schemes.

Guaranteeing Information Transfer Integrity Through Two Non-Colluding Malicious Nodes Against i.i.d. Attacks

This paper considers channel coding problems with the requirement of guaranteeing information integrity in the presence of malicious relays (MRs). The proved random channel coding scheme yields to an achievable rate formula which is identical to its counterpart obtained in the non-MRs system as long as a non-manipulable condition is satisfied. No pre-shared secret or secret transmission is needed for the proved scheme. Hence the obtained rate is generally larger than those achieved based on secret transmission schemes. In addition, we further prove that the systems with binary symmetric channels (BSCs) and binary erasure channels (BECs) are readily to satisfy the non-manipulable condition. Simulations based on turbo codes are also presented. The results indicate that our theoretical work is still available to practical channel codes.

ASSURE: A Hardware-Based Security Protocol for Resource-Constrained IoT Systems

The Internet of Things technology is expected to generate tremendous economic benefits; this promise is undermined by major security threats. This is mainly due to the ubiquitous nature of this technology, which makes it easy for potential adversities to have access to IoT devices and carry well-established attacks. The development of defence mechanisms, in this case, is a challenging task; this is due to the fact that most IoT devices have limited computing and energy resources, which makes it hard to implement classic cryptographic algorithms. This paper addresses this challenge by proposing a lightweight mutual authentication and key agreement protocol named ASSURE based on Rivest Cipher (RC5) and physically unclonable functions (PUFs). To understand the effectiveness of this protocol, a rigorous security analysis under various cyber-attack scenarios is performed. In order to evaluate the overheads of the proposed solution, a wireless sensor network using typical IoT devices called Zolertia Zoul re-mote is constructed. The functionality of the proposed scheme is verified using a server-client configuration. Then, energy consumption and memory utilization are estimated and compared with the existing solutions, namely, the DTLS (datagram transport layer security) handshake protocol in pre-shared secret (key) mode and UDP (user datagram protocol). Experimental analysis results indicate that the proposed protocol can save up to 39.5% energy and uses 14% less memory compared with the DTLS handshake protocol.

Lightweight group key distribution schemes based on pre‐shared pairwise keys

In a secure communication, a one-time session key is needed to be shared among all participants. Most well-known key distribution schemes, such as Diffie–Hellman public-key key distribution scheme invented in 1976 and quantum key distribution scheme invented in 1984 (also called the BB84 scheme), can only allow two users to share a key in conventional one-to-one communications. There are many research papers in the literature to propose group key distribution schemes for multiple participants in modern group communications. In this study, the authors propose lightweight group key distributions using pre-shared pairwise keys. The authors first propose a three-party group key distribution scheme. They then extend the basic three-party scheme to establish a group key for a large size of group communications. The proposed generalised schemes can be based to any type of pairwise key distribution schemes, e.g. either quantum or non-quantum. Moreover, both generalised multi-party group key distribution schemes are lightweight. The main operations in the proposed schemes are key comparison between two or more than two keys (i.e. logic XOR operation) and the computation of key derivation functions.

Distortion-Based Lightweight Security for Cyber-Physical Systems

In cyber-physical systems (CPS), inference based on communicated data is of critical significance as it can be used to manipulate or damage the control operations by adversaries. This calls for efficient mechanisms for secure transmission of data since control systems are becoming increasingly distributed over larger geographical areas. Distortion-based security, recently proposed as one candidate for secure transmissions in CPS, is not only more appropriate for these applications but also quite frugal in terms of prior requirements on shared keys. In this article, we propose distortion-based metrics to protect CPS communication and show that it is possible to confuse adversaries with just a few bits of preshared keys. In particular, we will show that a linear dynamical system can communicate its state in a manner that prevents an eavesdropper from accurately learning the state.

Design and Analysis of Wireless Network with Wireless Distribution System using Multi-Factor Authentication-based User Authentication

Wireless networks are one of the best alternatives in building practical and flexible computer networks that have high mobility. Most of them use wireless networks to support existing cable networks, but on wireless networks, they still use cable media as a backbone of the access point, which supports communication users can access the internet and find information. The problem of using cables as backbone media can be a significant challenge in places that are difficult to reach by wires. Wireless networks provide convenience and convenience that is high enough to use. As long as they are in an area that is supported by a wireless network, users can access the internet at any time. To make the wireless network connected to the internet safe and easy to use, we can create a user authentication system based on Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA) that can be used to authenticate and authorize. In general, each user can use existing wireless network services by verifying users based on Wifi Protected Access 2 Pre-Shared Key (WPA2-PSK). The purpose of this research is to develop a wireless network that uses Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA) based user authentication to be able to connect to the wireless network to increase security and provide the use of existing wireless networks. The research method used in this study uses descriptive qualitative research methods, with data collection using literature study and observation techniques. After analysis and design, it can be concluded that user authentication is based on Multi-factor Authentication (MFA) in a safe and user-friendly manner that can determine the users who are allowed and not allowed to use wireless networks.

A general location-authentication based secure participant recruitment scheme for vehicular crowdsensing

Vehicular crowdsensing is an emerging paradigm where vehicles perform the sensing task published by the requester so as to earn either monetary or non-monetary incentives. During this process, sensitive information of vehicles (location, identity et al.) are easy to leak. Unfortunately, previous works pay little attention on the privacy-preserving in the participants recruitment process. In this paper, we propose a location authentication based secure participant recruitment (LA-SPR) scheme for vehicular crowdsensing that enables each vehicle to perform (1) location authentication and key transmission simultaneously without any pre-shared secret, and (2) participant recruitment process without revealing the actual location and sensitive information to server or the requester. It’s worth mentioning that, our scheme uses a spatial-temporal location tag and fuzzy extractor to realize location authentication and key transmission simultaneously within a round of communication between vehicles and server. We exploit Trust Authority (TA) to collect credible anchor’s location tag and vehicle candidates. We regard the sensing score, which is uploaded to the server by each vehicle, as a secret and encrypted with RSA to prevent information leakage. We obtain comprehensive results demonstrating the feasibility, security, and efficiency of our scheme by theoretical analysis and performance evaluation.

3D CUBE Algorithm for the Key Generation Method: Applying Deep Neural Network Learning-Based

Current encryption systems are run with a hybrid mode in which symmetric and asymmetric key methods are mixed. This hybrid mode is devised to employ the fast processing speed of the symmetric key while circumventing the difficulty of providing services due to computational complexity of the asymmetric key method by limiting its use to secured key exchange. To implement a secured symmetric key-based cryptographic system to circumvent the crack problem due to the emergence of quantum computers in asymmetric key exchanges, the problem of sharing a key transferred in the most secure manner should be solved while symmetric keys in use are kept up-to-date. This paper proposes a three-dimensional (3D) cube algorithm that can be used by creating the up-to-date key in a symmetric key encryption system to provide security resistance in a quantum computer environment. More specifically, it presents a solution to the secured key sharing method that can minimize the damage due to the pre-shared key (PSK) leakage. This is done by using the method of inducing the symmetric key creation based on deep neural network learning without sharing the PSK between systems to securely maintain the key while creating and using the key that is variably used through the symmetric key encryption system of the 3D cube algorithm. Thus, the proposed algorithm secures confidentiality and integrity of data transferred over a network because information that can be obtained by malicious attackers is small (because the symmetric key used in encryption and decryption is induced without exchanging the PSK with the application of deep neural network learning).

Message Integrity Protection Over Wireless Channel: Countering Signal Cancellation via Channel Randomization

Physical layer message integrity protection and authentication by countering signal-cancellation has been shown as a promising alternative to traditional pure cryptographic message authentication protocols, due to the non-necessity of neither pre-shared secrets nor secure channels. However, the security of such an approach remained an open problem due to the lack of systematic security modeling and quantitative analysis. In this paper, we first establish a novel signal cancellation attack framework to study the optimal signal-cancellation attacker's behavior and utility using game-theory, which precisely captures the attacker's knowledge using its correlated channel estimates in various channel environments as well as the online nature of the attack. Based on theoretical results, we propose a practical channel randomization approach to defend against signal cancellation attack, which exploits state diversity and swift reconfigurability of reconfigurable antenna to increase randomness and meanwhile reduce correlation of channel state information. We show that by proactively mimicking the attacker and placing restrictions on the attacker's location, we can bound the attacker's knowledge of channel state information, thereby achieve a guaranteed level of message integrity protection in practice. Besides, we conduct extensive experiments and simulations to show the security and performance of the proposed approach. We believe our novel threat modeling and quantitative security analysis methodology can benefit a wide range of physical layer security problems.

Prudently Secure Information Theoretic LSB Steganography for Digital Grayscale Images

The endangerment of online data breaches calls for exploring new and enhancing existing sneaky ways of clandestine communication to tailor those to match the present and futuristic technological and environmental needs, to which malicious intruders wouldn't have an answer. Cryptography and Steganography are the two distinct techniques that, for long, have remained priority choices for hiding vital information from the unauthorized. But the visibility of the encrypted contents makes these vulnerable to attack. Also, the recent legislative protection agreed to law enforcement authorities in Australia to sneak into pre-shared cryptographic secret keys (PSKs) shall have a devastating impact on the privacy of the people. Hence, the need of the hour is to veil in the encrypted data underneath the cover of Steganography, whose sole intent is to hide the very existence of information. This research endeavor enhances one of the most famous images Steganography technique called the Least Significant Bit (LSB) Steganography, from the security and information-theoretic standpoint by taking a known-cover and known-message attack scenario. The explicit proclamation of this research endeavor is that the security of LSB Steganography lies in inducing uncertainty at the time of bit embedding process. The test results rendered by the proposed methodology confers on the non-detectability and imperceptibility of the confidential information along with its strong resistance against LSB Steganalysis techniques.

A Secure Communication System in Self-Organizing Networks via Lightweight Group Key Generation

Self-organizing networks provide rapid and convenient networking for many situations and have gained extensive research. With the progress of researches, security issues have attracted people's attention. There is no central node in self-organizing networks, and therefore the traditional key distribution methods based on public infrastructure do not work. The standardized pre-shared keys have predictable security risks. The physical-layer secret key generation has become a technology worth considering due to its lightweight, security, and decentralization. However, most of the previous work has focused on two devices, and remains a challenge to expand the pairwise key into the group key. Since the channel reciprocity only exists between two devices, some information would be exchanged on the unencrypted channel, causing information leakage. This paper designs a secure communication system in self-organizing networks. It adopts an adaptive quantizer to generate the pairwise keys and proposes DORCE, Difference Of quantization Results at one deviCE. The authenticated users share the group key via the difference between pairwise keys. The algorithm is implemented in a mesh topology, which is suitable for self-organizing networks because users' joining and leaving will not have a great impact on the network topology. The algorithm's Key Achievable Rate is up to 4 bits. Experimental results demonstrate that DORCE can generate the group keys in seconds. The Key Generation Rate is above 10 bits per second, enabling a group key generation to be used in a communication system for self-organizing networks. All the generated keys pass the NIST Statistical Test Suite.

Design and realization of efficient & secure multi-homed systems based on random linear network coding

Multi-homing is a new mechanism that enables hosts with multiple network interfaces (IP addresses), to connect to more than one data link. This technology enhances Internet connectivity and reliability without compromising efficient performance. Like any communication system, the security of multi-homed systems is of great importance. However, this issue remains largely un-attempted, where only few papers in the literature discuss, address and present security solutions for multi-homed systems. On the other hand, Random Linear Network Coding (RLNC) has recently emerged as a new coding technique that aims at improving system performance by efficiently transmitting and compressing data in general multi-source multicast networks. In this paper, a data confidentiality and availability scheme based on RNLC, is proposed for multi-homed systems. The proposed solution exploits the random physical characteristics of wireless channels, along with a pre-shared secret key, to derive dynamic keys which are used to generate random and dynamic cryptographic primitives. These primitives mainly include two permutation tables and a set of secret invertible RLNC matrices, all of which change for every input message. It has been shown that by securing the cryptographic primitives needed in the ciphering/deciphering process, one can jointly enhance the security and performance of transmitted data in multi-homed systems. Finally, security and performance analysis are presented to validate the efficiency and security of the proposed encryption/encoding scheme.

Lightweight Dynamic Crypto Algorithm for Next Internet Generation

Modern applications, especially real time applications, are hungry for high-speed end-to-end transmission which usually conflicts with the necessary requirements of confidential and secure transmission. In this work, a relatively fast, lightweight and attack-resistant crypto algorithm is proposed. The algorithm is a symmetric block cipher that uses a secure pre-shared secret as the first step. Then, a dynamic length key is generated and inserted inside the cipher text. Upon receiving the cipher text, the receiver extracts the key from the received cipher text to decrypt the message. In this algorithm, ciphering and deciphering are mainly based on simple XoR operations followed by substitutions and transpositions in order to add more confusion and diffusion to the algorithm. Experimental results show faster encryption/decryption time when compared to known encryption standards.

Unbalancing Pairing-Free Identity-Based Authenticated Key Exchange Protocols for Disaster Scenarios

In disaster scenarios, such as an area after a terrorist attack, security is a significant problem since communications involve information for the rescue officers, such as polices, militaries, emergency medical technicians, and the survivors. Such information is critically important for the rescue organizations; and protecting the privacy of the survivors is required. Normally, authenticated key exchange (AKE) is an underlying approach for security. However, available AKE protocols are either inconvenient or infeasible in disaster areas due to the very nature of disasters. To address the security problem in disaster scenarios, we propose two pairing-free identity-based AKE (ID-AKE) protocols that have unbalanced computational requirements on the two parties. Compared with existing AKE protocols, the proposed protocols have a number of advantages in disaster scenarios: 1) they are more convenient than symmetric cryptography-based AKE protocols since they do not require any preshared secret between the parties; 2) they are more feasible than asymmetric cryptography-based AKE protocols since they do not require any online server; and 3) they are more friendly to battery-powered and computationally limited devices than pairing-based and pairing-free ID-AKE protocols since they do not involve any bilinear pairing (a time-consuming operation), and have lower computational requirement on the limited party. Security of the proposed protocols are analyzed in detail; and prototypes of them are implemented to evaluate the performance. We also illustrate the application of the protocols through a vivid use case in a terrorist attack scenario.

Universally composable secure geographic area verification without pre-shared secret

The geographic area information of smart devices is required for realizing efficient area-based operations in 5G networks, Internet of Things, and so on. Because majority of smart devices are unmanned and are deployed in a hostile environment, secure geographic area verification is one of the important security issues for ensuring the accuracy of geographic area information of smart devices. In this study, we investigate the composition security of geographic area verification in a universally composable (UC) framework. First, we design the ideal functionality of geographic area verification; further, we propose a novel pre-shared secret-free secure geographic area verification protocol CAVδ. We also propose an improved protocol CAVT δ exhibiting a smaller false accept ratio than that exhibited by CAVδ. The proposed protocols can be used for verifying the geographic area information of smart devices without the requirement of any pre-shared secret during the initialization phase and additional key management when the protocols are running. Furthermore, the proposed protocols support the batch verification of multiple smart devices in one run, which is considered to be suitable for several location-critical smart devices. Subsequently, in the UC framework, we proved that our protocols achieve the necessary composition security and that our protocols exhibit an ability to resist colluding attacks.

A new efficient and configurable image encryption structure for secure transmission

This paper presents a novel robust symmetric image encryption structure (IES) based on stream ciphers and perceptual hashing for secure image transmission over public networks. The main design objectives of the proposed structure are to utilize, without modifications, any stream ciphers, and perceptual hash functions, easy replaceability of both stream cipher and hashing algorithms, preserve the original performance of the embedded algorithms and to retain all the security of the underlying algorithms. In the proposed structure, a one-time session key is generated from both the image and a pre-shared key between the sender and the recipient of the image. This one-time session key is used by a stream cipher to encrypt the image, which achieves high plaintext sensitivity (diffusion) and high key sensitivity (confusion). To achieve the robustness property of the proposed structure against incidental modifications of the encrypted image, a one-time key encryption key (KEK) is generated from both the perceptual hash of the encrypted image and the pre-shared key. The KEK is used to encrypt the one-time session key which is then embedded into the encrypted image. To demonstrate the efficiency and the robustness of the proposed IES, an image encryption algorithm based on the IES is proposed. Experimental results demonstrate the high security, low complexity and high speed of the proposed IES.

Robust image hashing using exact Gaussian–Hermite moments

In this work, a new method for robust image hashing is presented. The objectives of image hash are robustness and uniqueness. Exact Gaussian-Hermite moments and their invariants are used to extract highly accurate features for grey-scale images. The hash value is estimated by the sender from the features of the given image and then appended to the image to be sent. On the other hand, the authenticity of the received image has been checked by decrypting the hash value at the receiver side. To increase the level of security, a pre-shared key is used between the sender and the receiver. This process is to encrypt the hash value using a secret key before attaching with the image and then transmitting it. The similarity between different hashes is calculated by using Euclidean distance. Numerical simulation ensures the robustness of the proposed method against different kinds of attacks and preserves the image content. Hash different images exhibit very low collision probability which proves the suitability of the proposed method for robust image hash. The proposed method is compared with the existing hash methods where the obtained results clearly show the superiority of the proposed method.

A Group-Oriented DTLS Handshake for Secure IoT Applications

The datagram transport layer security (DTLS) is a de facto standard for the end-to-end security of the constrained application protocol (CoAP) that defines the following three security modes: preshared key (PSK), raw public key, and certificate. The pros and cons of each security mode are obvious. Even though the PSK mode is the most preferable in terms of the performance of the DTLS handshake, the in-advance distribution of a unique symmetric key for each pair of endpoints is difficult as the number of pairs increases. Alternatively, the certificate mode provides a convenient key-management functionality but its performance is very poor. The focus of most of the previous works is the reduction of the computational load for a single DTLS handshake that is induced by the certificate mode. In this paper, a group-oriented end-to-end security is considered, together with the introduction of a new security mode. Namely, a security association is established between a CoAP client and a group of CoAP servers (sensor devices); however, a fine-grained access control can be enforced so that each CoAP client can access a limited number of CoAP servers in the group. Furthermore, when each CoAP client performs several DTLS handshakes with the CoAP servers in the group, the first DTLS handshake involves a single public-key operation. A public-key operation, however, is not required for the subsequent DTLS handshakes, so the overall computational burden can be reduced. Also, a testbed was established along with the implementation of the proposed security mechanism for the conduction of a performance comparison with the other security mechanisms. Note to Practitioners —Datagram transport layer security (DTLS) is a standards-based security protocol to secure communications in an IoT environment, including home, factory, or building automation systems. However, to develop a practical security solution based on DTLS, several assumptions inherent to DTLS need to address the practical requirements of various IoT scenarios. Furthermore, some barriers associated with implementing DTLS in an IoT environment should be overcome. This paper presents an interface to extend the basic security functionalities provided by DTLS. Through the interface, a general security platform can be constructed and combined with DTLS. Hence, fine-grained access control and group security can be merged with DTLS, together with standards compliance.

GopJam: Key-less jamming mitigation via gossiping

We propose GopJam, a solution to thwart jamming from a network perspective. GopJam combines a keyless approach with a gossip-based diffusion of the information to be broadcast. To the best of our knowledge, we are the first ones to leverage these two features at the same time.Our contributions are manifold: first, we provide a theoretical model for the message propagation speed and the associated broadcast delay. Later, we test GopJam against two adversarial models: a standard one where the jammer—as widely accepted in the literature—, jams a fraction of the radio spectrum; and, a smart one where the jammer exploits a combination of the eavesdropping and jamming functionalities in order to improve its chances to disrupt the propagation of the message. Among the several features enjoyed by GopJam, it is worth noticing that, being keyless, it does not require any pre-shared secret to evade the action of the jammer; therefore, it is particularly suitable for scenarios characterized by a moderate to high network node volatility. Further, GopJam is particularly effective also in benign scenarios (no jamming): our protocol enjoys the characteristics of gossiping protocols, guaranteeing a short delay in network message propagation. For instance, with a fraction of the jammed spectrum equal to δJ = 0.9, and the smart adversary configuration, the protocol requires just about 1000 time slots to deliver the message to the 100% of the nodes (512). Finally, extensive simulations prove the effectiveness of our protocol in delivering the message to all the network nodes in each of the considered scenarios (benign scenario, standard jammer, and the newly introduced smart jammer).This work, other than being relevant on its own, also paves the way to further research in the brand new area of gossip-based counter-jamming techniques.