Proper Authentication Research Articles

A Survey of Security Threats and Authentication Schemes in WiMAX

WiMAX networks have advantages over the wired network, such as convenience, mobility, and flexibility. The security concerns in this network may prevent its further widespread adoption. Hence, improving the security of WiMAX is of considerable importance. In WiMAX networks by providing security features like authentication, authorization and encryption. The absence of proper authentication mechanism can lead to many threats like denial of service, masquerading and attacks on the authentication protocol. Authentication is the most difficult from the perspective of network security; hence, various forms and threats related to authentication are needed to be studied. The aim of this paper is to study the various authentication schemes such as RSA, EAP and HMAC.

A Secure and Efficient Uniqueness-and-Anonymity-Preserving Remote User Authentication Scheme for Connected Health Care

Connected health care has several applications including telecare medicine information system, personally controlled health records system, and patient monitoring. In such applications, user authentication can ensure the legality of patients. In user authentication for such applications, only the legal user/patient himself/herself is allowed to access the remote server, and no one can trace him/her according to transmitted data. Chang et al. proposed a uniqueness-and-anonymity-preserving remote user authentication scheme for connected health care (Chang et al., J Med Syst 37:9902, 2013). Their scheme uses the user's personal biometrics along with his/her password with the help of the smart card. The user's biometrics is verified using BioHashing. Their scheme is efficient due to usage of one-way hash function and exclusive-or (XOR) operations. In this paper, we show that though their scheme is very efficient, their scheme has several security weaknesses such as (1) it has design flaws in login and authentication phases, (2) it has design flaws in password change phase, (3) it fails to protect privileged insider attack, (4) it fails to protect the man-in-the middle attack, and (5) it fails to provide proper authentication. In order to remedy these security weaknesses in Chang et al.'s scheme, we propose an improvement of their scheme while retaining the original merit of their scheme. We show that our scheme is efficient as compared to Chang et al.'s scheme. Through the security analysis, we show that our scheme is secure against possible attacks. Further, we simulate our scheme for the formal security verification using the widely-accepted AVISPA (Automated Validation of Internet Security Protocols and Applications) tool to ensure that our scheme is secure against passive and active attacks. In addition, after successful authentication between the user and the server, they establish a secret session key shared between them for future secure communication.

Proactive P2P worm containment via automatic authentication

PurposeNowadays, proactive P2P worm (PRWORM) poses a latent threat to internet infrastructure and common users for the fatal vulnerabilities in homogeneous P2P software. It is more difficult to contain PRWORM because of its fast spread speed. Current techniques are not adequate to quarantine PRWORM, mainly because of their inaccuracy and slow response to attacks. The purpose of this paper is to propose an accurate and real‐time approach for PRWORM containment.Design/methodology/approachFirst, the authors present a new methodology to contain PRWORM via proper authentication of initiators of P2P communications. Second, three simple network protocols are proposed to fulfill automatic authentication.FindingsBoth simulations and strictly mathematical proof by Strand Space Model represent that the authors' work is able to accurately quarantine PRWORM in real time. Furthermore, proof shows the three network protocols are resistant to popular attacks such as man‐in‐the‐middle attack and replay attack.Originality/valueFirst, the authors propose an authentication based method to contain proactive P2P worm and second, use strand space model to proof the effectiveness and security of the method.

Pharmacognostic and phytochemical investigation of root of Solanum nigrum Linn.: An ethnomedicinally important herb

Background: Roots of Solanum nigrum Linn. (Solanaceae), commonly known as black night shade (Kakamachi), is traditionally used in the treatment of worms and abdominal pain. Until date no scientific evaluation has been reported on its roots. Aim: The present study deals with the microscopical, histochemical, physicochemical, fluorescence analysis, preliminary phytochemical and chromatographic study of roots of S. nigrum L. Materials and Methods: Thin sections of fresh root were used for the microscopical and histochemical evaluation. Root powder was used for physicochemical and fluorescence analysis. For preliminary phytochemical study water, methanol and ether soluble extractives were used. Chromatographic study was carried out on methanol soluble extractive. Results: Diagnostic features of the roots are presence of prismatic crystals, border pitted vessels, and tannin content. Physico‑chemical analysis of root powder shows ash value 3.99% w/w, 13.04% w/w and 11.85% w/w of water and alcohol soluble extractive values respectively. Phytochemical investigations of root shows presence of alkaloids, tannins and saponins along with other phytoconstituents in different extracts. In chromatographic study, alcoholic extract of root shows 10, 7 and 8 number of spots at 256 nm, 366 nm wavelengths and after spray of vanillin sulphuric acid, respectively. Conclusion: The information generated in this study will be helpful for the proper identification and authentication of roots of this herb. Key words: Kakamachi, pharmacognosy, phytochemistry, Solanun nigrum Linn

Implementation of Secure Authentication Mechanism for LBS using best Encryption Technique on the Bases of performance Analysis of cryptographic Algorithms

Today’s location-sensitive service relies on user’s mobile device to determine its location and send the location to the application. With the growth of the importance and of the audience of location-based services, questions of security and privacy are brought forward. As services are being built on top of this technology, the number of parties increases significantly, and the possibility of a malicious insider (or a misbehaving insider) emerges. The extent to which the parties care to trust each other has reduced, and trust amongst the various parties can no longer be assumed by a location-based service. An attacker may try to steal a service (e.g., claiming to be a client to get free internet access), service providers may gain of private information. There should be a proper authentication mechanism between client and server to access the services. In this paper we have proposed an Authentication Mechanism in which mobile Phone Users will send request for some services from server. Firstly Location Verification is done; server verifies the User’s Mobile Phone’s location against authorized location. After User/Device Authentication is done, server checks User/Device Identification. If both conditions are true, server will grant access to the users for services and resources. The information flow between client and server should be securely managed. The security of transmitted data over a wireless channel aims at protecting the data from unauthorized intrusion.Encryption algorithms, which play a main role in information security systems, consume a significant amount of computing resources and battery energy, which are very limited because usage time of a mobile device is constrained by its most critical resource – battery. High energy consumption has a direct impact on the battery life, and, consequently, on the duration and extent of the user’s mobility. Thus, the reduction of energy consumption of a portable system is of the primary importance. We have compared the encryption algorithms to encrypt the User/Device information before sending it to server. Numerical results obtained through simulation are compared on the bases of throughput of various Encryption Algorithms. Encryption time is used to calculate the throughput of an encryption scheme. Increased throughput results in decrease of power consumption. The results are shown with respect to key size variation. It has been observed that AES 128 bit encryption Algorithm is better solution for our application.

Mobile Client's Access Mechanism for Location based Service using Cell-ID

location-sensitive service relies on user's mobile device to determine its location and send the location to the application. A location-based service is a service that determines the location of a mobile device and uses this to provide functionalities and information specific to that location. With the growth of the importance and of the audience of location-based services, questions of security and privacy are brought forward. As services are being built on top of this technology, the number of parties increases significantly, and the possibility of a malicious insider (or a misbehaving insider) emerges. The extent to which the parties care to trust each other has reduced, and trust amongst the various parties can no longer be assumed by a location-based service. An attacker may try to steal a service (e.g., claiming to be a client to get free internet access), service providers may gain of private information. There should be a proper authentication mechanism between client and server to access the services. By considering some important factors like Cost, Energy Efficiency, we have proposed an Access Mechanism in which mobile Phone Users will send request for some services from server. Firstly Location Verification is done; server verifies the User's Mobile Phone's location against authorized location. After User/Device Authentication is done, server checks User/Device Identification. If both conditions are true, server will grant access to the users for services and resources.

Comparative pharmacognosy of medicinal plant species used as Prsniparni

Background: Substitution or adulteration of a particular genuine drug with other species due to demand exceeding the supply of the original species, is rampant in the present trade scenario. As a result, proper authentication of the drug for safe administration as an herbal medicine assumes paramount significance. Aim: Prsniparni, Uraria picta (Jacq.) DC., is one such drug for which three different botanical entities are commonly used as substitutes, namely U. lagopodoides (L.)DC; Desmodium gangeticum (L.) DC., and Pseudarthria viscida (L.) Wight and Arn.; all belonging to the family Fabaceae. The anatomical, histochemical and powder microscopic characters of the four species were compared in the field‑collected samples to validate the quality herbal drug and to find the similarity and dissimilarity of the substitute species. Materials and Methods: Histological and histochemical characters were studied using sectioned materials following standard protocols. Histochemical methods were adopted to localize the presence of the primary metabolites such as starch, lipids, total proteins and amino acids and the secondary metabolites such as volatile oils, resins, tannins, lignin and pectin. Results: The present study shows that the authentic species U. picta and substitute species U. lagopodoides showing higher similarities of 90% based on histology, histochemistry and powder microscopy analysis. Other two candidates, D. gangeticum and P. viscida showing 60 % and 55% similarities, respectively, when compared to U. picta. Thus, the similarity matrix were developed using characters based on anatomical, histochemical and powder microscopy. Conclusion: Ayurvedic texts suggest use of substitute herbs for the rare species. The substitution is proved to be logical by our studies that U. lagopodoides can be used as a substitute species in the place of U. picta under Prsniparni and also the present study validates the genuinity of the drug by anatomical, histochemical as well as powder microscopy characters to quality checking of the raw drug. Key words: Ayurveda, Desmodium gangeticum, histochemistry, powder microscopy, Pseudarthria viscida, similarity matrix, Uraria lagopodoides, Uraria picta

A novel smart card and dynamic ID based remote user authentication scheme for multi-server environments

With the purpose of using numerous different network services with single registration, various multi-server authentication schemes have been proposed. Furthermore, in order to protect the users from being tracked when they login to the remote server, researchers have proposed some dynamic ID based remote user authentication schemes for multi-server environments. Recently, Lee et al. have pointed out the security weaknesses of Hsiang and Shih’s dynamic ID based multi-server authentication scheme, and proposed an improved dynamic ID based authentication scheme for multi-server environments. They claimed that their scheme provided user anonymity, mutual authentication, session key agreement and can resist several kinds of attacks. In this paper, however, we find that Lee et al.’s scheme is still vulnerable to forgery attack and server spoofing attack. Besides, their scheme cannot provide proper authentication if the mutual authentication message is partly modified by the attacker. In order to remove these security weaknesses, we propose a novel smart card and dynamic ID based authentication scheme for multi-server environments. In order to protect the user from being tracked, the proposed scheme enables the user’s identity to change dynamically when the user logs into the server. The proposed scheme is suitable for use in multi-server environments such as financial security authentication since it can ensure security while maintaining efficiency.

A secret sharing scheme for EBTC using steganography

In this paper, a new method based on Block Truncation Coding (BTC) and the halftoning technique is proposed for secret sharing of lossy compressed images. BTC is a simple and efficient image compression technique. However, it yields images of undesirable quality, and significant blocking effects are seen as the block size that is used increases. A modified method known as Enhanced Block Truncation Coding (EBTC) is proposed to solve these problems. For secret sharing, we propose a (2, 2) secret sharing scheme which provides authentication using DE scheme. This scheme was developed for data hiding with grayscale images, but our proposed EBTC uses bitmap images for which the DE scheme is not appropriate. We show the solution for such a problem. Moreover, we reduce the computation complexity for secret sharing using the DE algorithm because past schemes which used polynomial or interpolation algorithms require too much time for secret sharing. In addition, we show how to authenticate a cover image. Experimental results show that our proposed scheme provides secret sharing with proper authentication and acceptable computational complexity.

Secured E-Counselling Framework Using Composite Web Services

In this paper, we proposed a Secured E-Counselling Framework using Composite Web services to enhance the counselling, which is fully works as an online. This framework will be a great relief to the students in terms of reporting, registration and searching the information about college and university. Moreover this software gives an overview of the entire institute in a sort interval time and will be also great help to University to manage in the whole counselling procedure by reduce their paper work and their time. Students counselling system for Engineering/MBA/MCA is conducted by face to face communication in between the student and staff. This is suitable only for the students who are nearer to that university which conduct counselling. But this system will not be a comfortable one for the students who are coming from long distance. To avoid this problem, attending the counselling through the online from their own place with proper authentication is proposed. This task is accomplished by Student Online Counselling system.

Digital Watermarking: Applications, Techniques and Attacks

As information transmission technology progresses, the technology to protect data from unauthorized users also needs to be enhanced. Data can be plagiarized, modified, deleted etc without proper authentication and authorization. Various security mechanisms have evolved that enhances the security of digital media. Each technology to be applied successfully should ensure a balance between the three pillars of security; confidentiality, integrity and availability. Digital watermarking is one such technique. It is a mechanism to monitor the digital media with the help of information residing within the content itself. To put it simply, digital watermarking is embedding of information into source content that can be detected and extracted. Digital watermarking can be applied to media like text, audio, image, video etc. This paper provides a comprehensive idea behind this technology and its usage.

다중요소방식을 이용한 시스템 접근방안

In this paper, as a proper authentication method, we made it authenticate a user who has unauthorized device with using authorized device received from telecommunication company using QR code. We designed a better performance protocol which can authenticate mutually using safer and uncomplicated operations than existing user authentication system. Proposed user authentication system authenticates previously authorized mobile device without any information of client who is requesting to get access from outside, so we can basically prevent attack from hackers. In the future, we can possibly use it as user authentication method in common internet environment or we could study on user unique information instead of mobile device information.

A Novel Algorithm HSHA to Secure Wireless Ad hoc Network

Ad hoc networks are a new wireless networking paradigm for mobile hosts. Unlike traditional mobile wireless networks, ad hoc networks do not rely on any fixed infrastructure. Instead, hosts rely on each other to keep the network connected. The military tactical and other security-sensitive operations are still the main applications of ad hoc networks, although there is a trend to adopt ad hoc networks for commercial uses due to their unique properties. One main challenge in design of these networks is their vulnerability to security attacks. Here we study the threats an ad hoc network faces and the security goals to be achieved. We identify the new challenges and opportunities posed by this new networking environment and explore new approaches to secure its communication. In particular, we take advantage of the inherent redundancy in ad hoc networks — multiple routes between nodes — to defend routing against denial of service attacks. We use replication and new cryptographic schemes, such as HSHA Key cryptography, to build a highly secure and highly available key management service, which forms the core of our security framework. It helps the network to let the intruder cannot access the packet without the proper authentication. Unauthorized user cannot access the packet. There are various consequences of this algorithm.

Genuine ARP (GARP)

Address Resolution Protocol (ARP) is used to map the network address (IP address) to a physical address (MAC address). Being a stateless protocol and lacking proper authentication mechanism in the ARP messages, ARP is vulnerable for cache poisoning attack. Attacker can perform Man-In-The-Middle (MITM) attack or Denial of Service (DoS) attack and can access sensitive information, modify the contents, or deny the host from getting services. Different techniques for the detection and prevention of ARP cache poisoning attack have been proposed. Detection techniques (such as ARPWatch and Intrusion Detection techniques) generate false positives. Some prevention technique makes change in the switch itself and some uses cryptographic techniques. Secure-ARP and Ticket based ARP (TARP) are cryptographic techniques but suffer from single point failure and ticket flooding attacks respectively. ARP is a stateless protocol and ARP messages lacks the address authentication mechanism. As an ARP reply is unicast, all host systems in the LAN are not aware of the attacker present in the LAN. In this paper, we have proposed a protocol known as "Genuine Address Resolution Protocol (GARP)". Two novel concepts, viz., broadcastbased reply, and the Certifier for proof of IP address ownership have been proposed in GARP. As a reply is broadcast, the host, whose IP the attacker is using for attack, is aware of the attacker and subsequently makes other hosts in the LAN also aware of the attacker. Thus, the protocol prevents possible attack from the same attacker in the future. Statefulness is achieved by two tables, viz., the pending table and the blacklist table. The pending table holds the reply till its genuineness is proved and the blacklist table holds the MAC of attacker. Furthermore, the Certificate Authority is responsible for monitoring the ARP activities, which intervenes with appropriate messages at appropriate instances. The Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol (DHCP) server could be loaded with the additional service of monitoring ARP activities. The protocol has been implemented on Linux operating system. GARP was tested for various possible cases of ARP cache poisoning attack. From the results, it could be inferred that the GARP provides security against ARP cache poisoning attacks.

An Efficient Distributed Model for XMLised Blob Data Generation

In today’s Internet computing, eXtensible Markup Language (XML) is preferred tool for exchange of data’s by all the organizations irrespective of its size. As there are lots of data exchange is involved within the organization as well as outside the organization, there is high requirement for reliable, consistent, and platform-independent mode of data sharing especially with respect to multimedia files like audio and video files. The major problem with most of the relational database is its incompatible formats between computer systems. XML will be hardware and software independent thereby having full integration with any environments. Thus, this paper aims to convert or transform the multimedia files stored in the relational database into an xml document for data sharing in a distributed Environment. As XML is text based, data sharing becomes very easy and faster when compared to the multimedia files, thereby increasing the internet computing performance. By providing proper authentication details, the blob data stored in relational database can be fetched in a XML format that can be used independently for multiple purpose.

A hybrid user authentication protocol for mobile IPTV service

IPTV, a technological convergence that combines communication and broadcasting technologies, delivers customized, interactive TV content and other multimedia information over wired and wireless connections. Providing secure access to IPTV services calls for authentication, without proper and secure authentication mechanisms, an individual impersonating a subscriber could steal a service. This paper proposes a new authentication protocol to authenticate IPTV users. The authors based the proposed protocol, a hybrid authentication protocol providing lightweight, personalized user authentication, on RFID (radio-frequency identification) and USIM (Universal Subscriber Identity Module) technologies. In the proposed protocol, USIM performs highly personalized authentication, and the authenticated subscriber's RFID tags can have a temporary authority to execute authentication. These RFID tags become Agent Tags authorized to authenticate subscribers. Agent Tags identify and authenticate themselves to RFID readers in the set-top box, thus, simplifying the authentication process.

Web Authentication Protocol Using Zero Knowledge Proof

ABSTRACT Market research surveys report that 75% of hacks occur at the application layer. Of the multiple vulnerabilities that exist in Web application software, proper authentication of the client and the server to each other is fundamental to the security of the system. In the current scenario, we manage this with the adoption of password-based client authentication and PKI-based server authentication. There exist unresolved vulnerabilities in this system due to the misuse of the client's passwords (impersonation) by those managing the servers. The clients' trust of the server based on the certificates issued by an increasing number of certification authorities is questionable in terms of validity and freshness. For proper authentication in Web applications, we need to verify two conditions: 1) the binding of the identity of the entity with the publicly known name or key and 2) the entity does possess the corresponding private key for the identified public key. In this paper, we use the elliptic curve discrete log problem-based version of classical zero knowledge protocol for proving number 2 and modifications of the existing schemes for proving number 1. We have done a prototype implementation of the solution and security analysis required to satisfy the security objectives.

Cryptanalysis And Further Improvement Of A Biometric-Based Remote User Authentication Scheme Using Smart Cards

Recently, Li et al. proposed a secure biometric-based remote user authentication scheme using smart cards to withstand the security flaws of Li-Hwang's efficient biometric-based remote user authentication scheme using smart cards. Li et al.'s scheme is based on biometrics verification, smart card and one-way hash function, and it also uses the random nonce rather than a synchronized clock, and thus it is efficient in computational cost and more secure than Li-Hwang's scheme. Unfortunately, in this paper we show that Li et al.'s scheme still has some security weaknesses in their design. In order to withstand those weaknesses in their scheme, we further propose an improvement of their scheme so that the improved scheme always provides proper authentication and as a result, it establishes a session key between the user and the server at the end of successful user authentication.

Lightweight and provably secure user authentication with anonymity for the global mobility network

AbstractSeamless roaming in the global mobility network (GLOMONET) is highly desirable for mobile users, although their proper authentication is challenging. This is because not only are wireless networks susceptible to attacks, but also mobile terminals have limited computational power. Recently, some authentication schemes with anonymity for the GLOMONET have been proposed. This paper shows some security weaknesses in those schemes. Furthermore, a lightweight and provably secure user authentication scheme with anonymity for the GLOMONET is proposed. It uses only symmetric cryptographic and hash operation primitives for secure authentication. Besides, it takes only four message exchanges among the user, foreign agent and home agent. We also demonstrate that this protocol enjoys important security attributes including prevention of various attacks, single registration, user anonymity, user friendly, no password/verifier table, and use of one‐time session key between mobile user and foreign agent. The security properties of the proposed protocol are formally validated by a model checking tool called AVISPA. Furthermore, as one of the new features in our protocol, it can defend smart card security breaches. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Pharmacognostical evaluation of Acacia catechu willd. heartwood with special reference to tyloses

Acacia catechu (L.) willd, commonly known as Khadira, is widely used in Ayurveda for the treatment of diseases. A detailed investigation of fresh and powder of heartwood of A. catechu was carried out. The diagnostic characters of heartwood of this plant includes tylosis formation, fibers with prism, fibers with scleroids, fragment of border pitted vessels, starch grains with hylem along with yellowish dark brown colouring matter, lignified fibers and fibers passing through medullary rays. Physicochemical studies revealed loss on drying (7.15%), total ash (2.8%), acid insoluble ash (0.04%), alcohol-soluble extractive (15.78%), water-soluble extractive (12.00%) and tannin content in raw drug is (08.28%). Quantitative microscopy includes tyloses, parenchyma length and circumferences. Preliminary analysis of various functional groups revealed the presence of alkaloids, tannin, saponins, carbohydrate, starch, steroid and proteins. The information generated by this particular study will provide relevant pharmacognostical and physicochemical data needed for proper identification and authentication of heartwood of this particular species. Key words: Acacia catechu, heart wood, pharmacognosy, tylosis