Private Key Management Research Articles

BPKEM: A biometric-based private key encryption and management framework for blockchain.

The fundamental technology behind bitcoin, known as blockchain, has been studied and used in a variety of industries especially in finance. The security of blockchain is extremely important as it will affects the assets of the clients as well as it is the lifeline feature of the entire system that needs to be guaranteed. Currently, there is a lack of a methodical approach to guarantee the security and dependability of the private key during its whole life. Furthermore, there is no quick, easy, or secure way to create the encryption key. A biometric-based private key encryption and management framework (BPKEM) for blockchain is proposed not only to solve the private key lifecycle manag- ement problem, but also it maintains compatibility with existing blockchain systems. For the problem of private key encryption, a biometric-based stable key generation method is proposed. By using the relative invariance between facial and fingerprint feature points, this measure can convert feature points into stable and distinguishable descriptors, then using a reusable fuzzy extractor to create a stable key. The correct- ness and efficiency of the newly proposed biometric-based blockchain encryption tech- nique in this paper has been validated in the experiments.

Monitoring Key Pair Usage through Distributed Ledgers and One-Time Signatures

Private key management is a complex obstacle arising from the traditional public key infrastructure model. However, before any related security breach can be addressed, it must first be reliably detected. Certificate Transparency (CT) is an example of a certificate issuance monitoring strategy, developed to detect the possible malfeasance of certification authorities (CAs). To the best of our knowledge, CT and other detection mechanisms do not cover digitally signed documents made by an end user, which are also susceptible to CA misbehavior. We modify the CT framework to handle signed documents via logging certificates in the blockchain to enable the secure and user-friendly monitoring of one-time signatures, backdating protection, and effective CA misbehavior detection. Moreover, to demonstrate the feasibility of our proposal, we present distinct deployment scenarios and analyze the storage, performance, and monetary costs.

Security risk and response analysis of typical application architecture of information and communication blockchain

As the role of blockchain technology in various industries becomes more and more important, the technical limitations of its consensus mechanism, private key management and smart contracts are gradually emerging. However, security events such as blockchain platform applications are emerging one after another. As a new round of transformative power in the network era, it combines the blockchain with existing technologies to generate new formats and new models. Technology applications and existing cybersecurity regulatory policies have brought new challenges. This paper analyzes the typical application architecture of blockchain technology, and analyzes the security risks of blockchain application architecture from key layers such as storage layer, protocol layer, extension layer, and application layer. This article combines the DOC mechanism with IOT application scenarios to propose a blockchain-based confidential IOT service model (Beekeeper 1.0) that supports first-order homomorphic multiplication, and a blockchain-based confidential IOT service model that supports high-order homomorphic multiplication (Beekeeper 2.0), Beekeeper 2.0 significantly improves Beekeeper 1.0 in server capabilities, verification efficiency, verification key length, and device work diversity. This article finds that the chain code call delay basically increases with the increase in the transaction sending rate. When the transaction sending rate reaches 300TPS, the chain code calling delay only increases a little, and when the transaction sending rate reaches 300TPS, the success rate of the transaction on the chain increases. Finally, the average blockchain access delay increases with the increase in the transaction sending rate. The blockchain access delay is affected by less throughput, and the transaction success rate is stable at 98%.

An Improved Outlier Detection Mechanism for Hierarchical Key Management in Hierarchical Mobile Ad-hoc Networks (MANETs)

The purpose of this paper is to present an outlier detection mechanism for hierarchical key management which utilizes hybrid (public and private) key management scheme for implementing lightweight cryptographic primitives in hierarchical MANETs. Further, a comparative analysis of key management schemes is to be performed for identifying an efficient key management scheme for hierarchical MANETs. In key management methods, public and private group key management schemes are integrated at local level (subgroup) and global level (network). These key management schemes uses various topologies for minimizing communicational and computational costs. After implementing an efficient key management scheme, outliers in network are identified using packet analysis at key generation, key distribution, message transmission and key re-generation phases. It is observed that Teo and Tan key management approach with shamir’s threshold key distribution mechanism is an efficient approach key management scheme for group authentication and hierarchical key management. Further, a minimum improvement of 9.7% and 0.91%, and maximum improvements of 25.3% and 87.7% are observed for Packet Delivery Rate (APDR) and Average Throughput (AT) respectively in a network of 1000 nodes. The proposed method requires four sequential analysis of outlier detection schemes at different layers of MANET protocol stack because single scheme per layer is not efficient in identifying outliers in proposed network. The proposed key management method is useful for MANETs in group authentication and implementation of lightweight cryptographic primitives with secure key. Further, outlier detection mechanism can be extended for identifying various active and passive attacks.

Blockchain Isn’t Always the Solution (or Why Tokenizing Equity Securities Is Not the Answer to the Proxy Voting Problem)

The U.S. proxy voting process is widely viewed as inefficient, opaque, and frequently inaccurate. The conventional wisdom is that voting inaccuracy has arisen largely as a result of decisions made in the 1960s to transition to a system of share immobilization pursuant to which most shares are held in “street name” by securities intermediaries as a fungible mass of shares that is not directly traceable to any individual. In particular, although the street name system facilitates securities trading, holding shares in fungible bulk makes it difficult, if not impossible, for street name investors to confirm that their shares are voted in accordance with their wishes since there is purportedly no way to provide end-to-end voting confirmations. Consequently, a number of academics and practitioners, including several SEC commissioners, have expressed an interest in exploring whether blockchain technology could provide end-to-end vote confirmations by enabling market participants to trace share ownership to the ultimate beneficial owner, and bypass the layers of intermediaries. But while blockchain technology may work in certain cases, it probably will not be the panacea that its proponents expect. Reliance on blockchain technology presumes that the aforementioned problems are primarily a function of existing technology. But several securities industry pilot projects have demonstrated that end-to-end vote confirmations are already possible under the existing proxy voting system, and in any event, the Depository Trust Corporation’s (“DTC”) Direct Registration System (“DRS”) Service has enabled investors to avoid holding their securities in street name since 1996. In addition, while blockchain technology could facilitate end-to-end voting, investors would have to hold custody of their own tokens and, for a number or reasons, many investors will not. More to the point, blockchains use public key cryptography, and the loss of private keys associated with a particular token would result in the loss of that token. Due to the complexities of safeguarding private keys, and the severe consequences for failing to do so, many token holders have relied on centralized exchanges or third-party custodians to hold their tokens and, absent a dramatic improvement in private key management technology, there is little reason to think that this trend will change. While this would seem to contradict one of the primary rationales for adopting blockchain technology – eliminating intermediaries – the logic is clear; after all, ask yourself if you have ever used the login reset function on a financial website because you have forgotten your username or password, and if the answer is “yes,” the rationale for delegating key management to third parties becomes completely understandable. There may be other problems with migrating the existing trading and clearance system to a blockchain. In particular, putting equity securities on a blockchain may increase the risk of a cyber attack on a holder of those securities. That’s because trades involving equity securities on a blockchain are cleared and settled nearly instantaneously, and the asset used in clearing and settling any such a trade is likely to be another blockchain token that is either a bearer instrument or easily converted into another token that is a bearer instrument. The proceeds of such an attack can, therefore, be easily laundered. Securities holders might avoid the problem by not disclosing that they own securities tokens, but most state laws require issuers to maintain records on the identity and holdings of their security holders and to give that information to security holders under certain circumstances. Federal securities laws also require security holders that meet certain ownership criteria to file beneficial ownership reports under Sections 13 and 16 of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934 (the “Exchange Act”). Finally, if equity securities are converted into tokens, there will presumably be an incentive to implement some form of blockchain voting. Yet a number of researchers have pointed out that using blockchains may exacerbate the problems inherent in internet voting. Moreover, unless the voting procedures are carefully thought out and implemented, migrating to a blockchain-based voting system could also facilitate vote buying.

English

English

Energy efficient geographical key management scheme for authentication in mobile wireless sensor networks

In wireless sensor networks, a sensor node communicates with a small set of neighbour sensor nodes and with the base station through a group leader or a cluster head. However, in some occasions, a sensor node required to move in the sensor networks. The node has to change its own position with the requirement of applications. Considering this phenomena, in this paper, we propose to design an angular function and private key management system authenticated by group leader for the transmission of a node. In the proposed scheme, the group is divided into sectors. The motion of the node is related with the angles to the group leader, which is the basis of our proposal. The nodes movement and activity should be tracked. The proposed scheme attains high connectivity and security with the help of the directional transreceiver. The lifetime of a node is increased, and it enables a node to move through the network and to transmit data to its neighbors.

Efficient and dynamic key management for multiple identities in identity-based systems

The traditional identity-based cryptography requires a user, who holds multiple identities, to hold multiple private keys, where each private key is associated with an identity. Managing multiple private/public keys is a heavy burden to a user due to key management and storage. The recent advancement of identity-based cryptography allow a single private key to map multiple public keys (identities); therefore the private key management is simplified. Unfortunately, the existing schemes capturing this feature do not allow dynamic changes of identities and have a large data size proportional to the number of the associated identities. To overcome these problems, in this paper, we present an efficient and dynamic identity-based key exchange protocol and prove its security under the Bilinear Diffie–Hellman assumption in the random oracle model. Our protocol requires a relatively small bandwidth for a key agreement communication, in comparison with other existing schemes.

PKMv2 - EAP authentication cost reduction of mobile WiMAX network entry process by the proposed key caching mechanisms

The much anticipated technology of mobile WiMAX, the worldwide interoperability for microwave access, aims to provide seamless support to its users but an inevitable is that the long delay which occurs during the handoff management in every network process. Secure key distribution is done by private key management version 2 (PKMv2) with extensible authentication protocol (EAP). Handovers may cause delays and packet losses that affect real-time communication performance. Hence, we optimise the services by introducing new ideology in key caching mechanism which minimises the authentication cost and processing time consumes 56.8% than earlier approach. This can be investigated analytically and the network entry process can be simulated through MATLAB GUI model with MySQL as the backend for storing respective ID. The simulation is carried with the network simulator. This paper proposes three types of key caching. This approach is justified through its timing analysis result which indicates that the key caching mechanism can efficiently swift the handoff processes.

지문인식 기반의 전자의무기록 시스템 인증 모델

의료정보는 환자에게 중요한 개인정보로써 반드시 보호돼야 한다. 특히 전자의무기록에 접근할때, 의료인의 강화된 신원확인에 대한 인증방식이 필요하다. 기존의 공인인증서 기반 인증모델은 개인키 관리, 권한위임 등 문제점으로 전자의무기록의 특성을 반영하지 못했다. 본 논문에서는 전자의무기록 시스템에 의료인이 접근하는 경우 지문인식 기반 인증 모델을 적용하여 강화된 인증방식을 제안한다. 전자의무기록의 지문인증 모델은 의료업무의 특성을 반영하여 개인키 관리, 권한위임 문제를 원천적으로 해결하였다. Ensuring the security of medical records is becoming an increasingly important problem as modern technology is integrated into existing medical services. As a consequence of the adoption of EMR(Electronic Medical Records) in the health care sector, it is becoming more and more common for a health professional to edit and view a patient's record. In order to protect the patient's privacy, a secure authentication model to access the electronic medical records system must be used. A traditional identity based digital certificate for the authenticity of EMR has private key management and key escrow of a user's private key. In order to protect the EMR, The traditional authentication system is based on the digital certificate. The identity based digital certificate has many disadvantages, for example, the private key can be forgotten or stolen, and can be easily escrow of the private key. Nowadays, authentication model using fingerprint recognition technology for EMR has become more prevalent because of the advantages over digital certificate -based authentication model. Because identity-based fingerprint recognition can eliminate disadvantages of identity-based digital certificate, the proposed authentication model provide high security for access control in EMR.

An efficient dynamic authenticated key exchange protocol with selectable identities

In the traditional identity-based cryptography, when a user holds multiple identities as its public keys, it has to manage an equal number of private keys. The recent advances of identity-based cryptography allow a single private key to map multiple public keys (identities) that are selectable by the user. This approach simplifies the private key management. Unfortunately, the existing schemes have a heavy computation overhead, since the private key generator has to authenticate all identities in order to generate a resultant private key. In particular, it has been considered as a drawback that the data size for a user is proportional to the number of associated identities. Moreover, these schemes do not allow dynamic changes of user identities. When a user upgrades its identities, the private key generator (PKG) has to authenticate the identities and generate a new private key. To overcome these problems, in this paper we present an efficient dynamic identity-based key exchange protocol with selectable identities, and prove its security under the bilinear Diffie–Hellman assumption in the random oracle model.

Private key management: best practice for the enterprise

Most IT security specialists would be horrified at the idea that critical parts of their work are based on incorrect assumptions. However, we have learned that this is exactly what is happening in enterprises globally on a daily basis – and it is putting the security of our data at risk.