Proxy Signature Research Articles

An efficient and provable certificate-based proxy signature scheme for IIoT environment

Recently, the deployment of sensors and actuators to collect and disseminate data in various applications such as e-healthcare, vehicular adhoc networks (VANETs) and smart factories has revolutionized several new communication technologies. The Internet of Things (IoT) is one of those emerging communication technologies. These revolutionary applications of IoT in industrial environment are termed as Industry 4.0 and it has vitalized the concept of Industrial IoT (IIoT). Being wireless communication, the authentication and integrity of data are the most important challenges. To mitigate these challenges, several digital signature schemes are proposed in the literature. However, due to identity-based or certificate-less construction, those schemes suffer from inborn key escrow and secret key distribution problems. To resolve such issues, the first certificate-based proxy signature (PFCBPS) scheme without pairing is proposed. The proposed PFCBPS scheme is provably secure in random oracle model (ROM). The performance comparison (in terms of computational costs of different phases and length of resulting delegation and signature) shows that the proposed PFCBPS scheme’s total computational cost is 46.69 ms which is 52.24% of He et al. [8], 61.40% of Debiao et al. [5], 23.33% of Seo et al. [20], 28% of Hu et al. [9] and 36.84% of Verma and Singh [23]. Thus, it is more suitable to IIoT environment than existing competitive schemes.

Provable secure attribute-based proxy signature

Provable secure attribute-based proxy signature

Secure and efficient identity-based proxy signature scheme with message recovery

Digital signature with proxy delegation, which is a secure ownership enforcement tool, allows an original signer to delegate signature rights to a third party called proxy, so that the proxy can sign messages on behalf of the original signer. In today’s modern society, many applications use this mechanism. Several types of delegations are quite prevalent and the delegation of signing authority is one of them. In a traditional digital signature scheme, signer transmits signature along with message for verification, which leads to additional communication, computation cost and requires extra bandwidth. To resolve these issues, in this paper, we present an efficient ID-based proxy signature scheme with message recovery using bilinear pairings. Because of the message recovery feature, the proxy signer need not send the message to the verifier, so that the proposed scheme reduces the bandwidth requirement and communication cost. Our proposed scheme is proven secure against existential forgery under adaptively chosen message and identity attacks in the random oracle model (ROM) with the assumption that the Computational Diffie-Hellman Problem (CDHP) is intractable. We compare our scheme with related schemes. The efficiency analysis shows that the scheme is computationally efficient. Thus the proposed ID-based proxy signature scheme is secure and efficient both in terms of computation and communication costs than the related existing schemes.

A Trust Value Sharing Scheme in Heterogeneous Identity Federation Topologies

Recent developments in heterogeneous identity federation systems have heightened the need for the related trust management system. The trust management system evaluates, manages, and shares users’ trust values. The service provider (SP) members of the federation system rely on users’ trust values to determine which type and quality of service will be provided to the users. While identity federation systems have the potential to help federated users save time and energy and improve service experience, the benefits also come with significant privacy risks. So far, there has been little discussion about the privacy protection of users in heterogeneous identity federation systems. In this paper, we propose a trust value sharing scheme based on a proxy ring signature for the trust management system in heterogeneous identity federation topologies. The ring signature schemes can ensure the validity of the data and hide the original signer, thereby protecting privacy. Moreover, no group manager participating in the ring signature, which naturally matches with our decentralized heterogeneous identity federation topologies. The proxy signature can reduce the workload of the private key owner. The proposed scheme shortens the calculation time for verifying the signature and then reduces the overall time consumption in the process of trust sharing. Our studies prove that the proposed scheme is privacy-preserving, efficient, and effective.

Cryptanalysis and Improvement of a Proxy Signcryption Scheme in the Standard Computational Model

Proxy signcryption is essential security primitive for emerging secure communication such as e-business, mobile agents, online voting, contract signing, and online auction. It combines the functionality of a proxy signature and encryption to achieve basic security features maintaining a low computational and communicational cost. Ming proposed Proxy Signcryption (PSC) scheme in the standard computational model, claimed it to be secured against: (1) Indistinguishable Chosen Ciphertext Attack (IND-CCA) under the Decisional Bi-linear Diffie-Hellman (DBDH) assumption (2) Existentially Unforgeable Chosen Message Attack (EUF-CMA) under the Computational Diffie Hellman (CDH) assumption. This paper first provides a security analysis to check the correctness and validity of the said PSC scheme. Furthermore, it proves PSC is vulnerable to the launched cryptanalysis attacks. It is established that the PSC is neither semantically secured against IND-CCA nor existentially secured against EUF-CMA in its defined security model. Secondly, we propose an improved new proxy signcryption scheme (N-PSC) based on Elliptic Curve Cryptosystem (ECC) without bi-linear pairing secure against IND-CCA and EUF-CMA for Type-1 adversary A 1 in the standard computational model. It is also proved that the new proposed N-PSC scheme achieves an extra security property of judge verification in case of signature dispute between the proxy correspondents, as well as it outperforms the existing states of the art schemes including the Ming scheme in terms of cost efficiency which makes the new proposed scheme suitable for scarce resources constraint proxy enabled communication applications.

A Provably Secure Certificateless Proxy Signature Scheme Against Malicious-But-Passive KGC Attacks

AbstractIn certificateless proxy signature (CLPS), the key generation center is responsible for initializing the system parameters and can obtain the opportunity to adaptively set some trapdoors in them when wanting to launch some attacks. Until now, how to withstand the malicious-but-passive key generation center (MKGC) attacks in CLPS is still an interesting problem. In this paper, we focus on the challenging issue and introduce a CLPS scheme provably secure in the standard model. To the best of our knowledge, we are the first to demonstrate its security under MKGC attacks by adopting the technology of embedding the classic difficulty problems into the target entity public key rather than the system parameters during the security proof process.

Personal data storage and management using error correction codes and elliptic curves proxy signature algorithm

Recently personal data storage and management have become one of the most important issues in the field of information technologies. 2018 was the year when well-known GDPR was issued which stated general personal data protection regulations. It’s very important to study methods and tools which can enhance the security of information systems processing personal data. Distributed data storages are widely used for fault tolerance as well as cryptography is used for access control.

Identity-Based Threshold Key-Insulated Proxy Signature in the Standard Model

Loss of secret keys is the deadly attack in public key cryptosystems. We present an identity-based threhold key-insulated proxy signature (IBTKIPS) scheme to settle the problem of key exposure in the identity-based proxy signature system. The proposed IBTKIPS scheme is secure in the standard model. In the IBTKIPS scheme, we use at least k out of n helper keys to refresh the temporary secret keys. The IBTKIPS scheme is more flexible and securer than the identity-based proxy signature scheme.

Identity-Based Parallel Key-Insulated Proxy Signature Without Random Oracles

Exposure of private keys is the dangerous attack in the public key cryptosystems. We put forward an identity-based parallel key-insulated proxy signature (IBPKIPS) scheme to deal with the problem of key exposure in the identity-based proxy signature system. Our IBPKIPS scheme is secure without random oracles. In the IBPKIPS scheme, we use two different helper keys to renew the temporary private keys. Our IBPKIPS scheme is securer and more flexible than the identity-based proxy signature scheme.

Canopy structure in Late Cretaceous and Paleocene forests as reconstructed from carbon isotope analyses of fossil leaves

Abstract While modern forests have their origin in the diversification and expansion of angiosperms in the Late Cretaceous and early Cenozoic, it is unclear whether the rise of closed-canopy tropical rainforests preceded or followed the end-Cretaceous extinction. The “canopy effect” is a strong vertical gradient in the carbon isotope (δ13C) composition of leaves in modern closed-canopy forests that could serve as a proxy signature for canopy structure in ancient forests. To test this, we report measurements of the carbon isotope composition of nearly 200 fossil angiosperm leaves from two localities in the Paleocene Cerrejón Formation and one locality in the Maastrichtian Guaduas Formation of Colombia. Leaves from one Cerrejón fossil assemblage deposited in a small fluvial channel exhibited a 6.3‰ range in δ13C, consistent with a closed-canopy forest. Carbon isotope values from lacustrine sediments in the Cerrejón Formation had a range of 3.3‰, consistent with vegetation along a lake edge. An even-narrower range of δ13C values (2.7‰) was observed for a leaf assemblage recovered from the Cretaceous Guaduas Formation, and suggests vegetation with an open canopy structure. Carbon isotope fractionation by Late Cretaceous and early Paleogene leaves was in all cases similar to that by modern relatives, consistent with estimates of low atmospheric CO2 during this time period. This study confirms other lines of evidence suggesting that closed-canopy forests in tropical South America existed by the late Paleocene, and fails to find isotopic evidence for a closed-canopy forest in the Cretaceous.

Malleability and ownership of proxy signatures: Towards a stronger definition and its limitations

Proxy signature is a cryptographic primitive that allows an entity to delegate singing rights to another entity. Noticing the ad-hoc nature of security analysis prevalent in the existing literature, Boldyreva, Palacio and Warinschi proposed a formal security model for proxy signature. We revisit their proposed security definition in the context of the most natural construction of proxy signature – delegation-by-certificate. Our analysis indicates certain limitations of their definition that arise due to malleability of proxy signature as well as signature ownership in the context of standard signature. We propose a stronger definition of proxy signature to address these issues. However, we observe that the natural reductionist security argument of the delegation-by certificate proxy signature construction under this definition seems to require a rather unnatural security property for a standard signature.

CB-PS: An Efficient Short-Certificate-Based Proxy Signature Scheme for UAVs

Recently, the deployment and usage of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) to monitor and track a geographical region have been increased exponentially. The network infrastructure designed to deploy UAVs consists of sensors, actuators, and other communication smart devices for data collection and processing. As security and privacy is one of the challenging tasks in such an environment, so to design an efficient and secure data dissemination scheme is a challenging task due to limited storage and computation power of UAVs. To mitigate various attacks in such an environment, several efficient signature schemes were proposed in the literature. However, none of these schemes work well due to high computation and communication costs. To overcome these challenges, this paper presents a short proxy signature (CB-PS) scheme in certificate-based setting. Due to implicit usage of certificates, CB-PS solves inherent key escrow of ID-based designated verifier proxy signature. It also eliminates the necessity of secret key distribution in ID-based schemes. The proposed CB-PS scheme is adaptively unforgeable in a random oracle model. It is also efficient with respect to both signature length and computational complexity. The comparison of computational costs reveals that the proposed scheme consumes the least cost 15.45 ms in comparison to the costs of existing competitive schemes.

Security and Privacy enforced wireless mobile communication using PI-MAKA protocol design

The fast development of mobile networks and compact mobile devices bring attention to the users for wireless mobile communication. But providing security and protecting the privacy of users are the main challenges of wireless mobile communication. Recently, Authenticated Key Agreement protocols are used for secure and reliable communication in wireless mobile communication. However, the User-to-User Mutual Authentication and Key Agreement scheme is based on bilinear pairings, which involves relatively high computation cost when compared to elliptic curve scalar point multiplication. Hence, in this paper, we propose a Pairing-Free Identity-Based Mutual Authentication and Key Agreement protocol for wireless mobile communications. It consists of the following phases: Setup and Key generation, Mobility Management Entity authentication and Proxy Signature generation, Proxy Signature verification and User-to-User authentication. Experimental results show that Pairing-Free Identity-Based Mutual Authentication and Key Agreement attains significantly less computational and communication cost when compared to User-to-User Mutual Authentication and Key Agreement scheme.

Obfuscating EVES Algorithm and Its Application in Fair Electronic Transactions in Public Clouds

In EUROCRYPT’10, Hada proposed a secure obfuscator of encrypted signature scheme which can be executed on an untrusted server to solve the security problem of untrusted proxy signature. In Hada's scheme, the server can generate a valid signature for the user without obtaining user's secret key; however, the scheme cannot resist the collusion attack. In this paper, we extend the study of encrypted signature schemes and propose an obfuscator for encrypted verifiable encrypted signature (EVES), and model the application in electronic transactions. The proposed scheme cannot only prevent the semihonest server from obtaining user's sensitive information, but also resist to the collusion activities between verifier/receiver and untrusted cloud. We show that the obfuscation scheme achieves the requirement of virtual black-box security under standard cryptographic assumptions. The experiments show that the time of constructing the EVES obfuscator is 63 ms, the signing time of the obfuscated algorithm is 78 ms, and the verifying time of obfuscated signature is 63 ms, which is more efficient and practical than related schemes, and the scheme can be deployed in scenarios requiring electronic transactions in outsourced clouds.

Efficient and Secure Certificateless Directed Proxy Signature Scheme without Pairings

Efficient and Secure Certificateless Directed Proxy Signature Scheme without Pairings

An Efficient Proxy Ring Signature Without Bilinear Pairing*

Proxy ring signature is a proxy signature designed to protect the privacy of the proxy signer. In this paper, we propose a new proxy ring signature based on the Schnorr's signature. Our scheme combines the idea of the Schnorr's signature with the method of existing structure of proxy ring signature. In order to improve the performance, we eliminate the use of bilinear pairing operation. We only use the hash function in the signature verification phase. Because of above features, the proxy ring signature scheme we proposed is more efficient in computation. We also prove that our scheme is unforgeable against all kinds of adversaries in the random oracle model.

Oxygen minimum zone-type biogeochemical cycling in the Cenomanian-Turonian Proto-North Atlantic across Oceanic Anoxic Event 2

Oceanic Anoxic Events (OAEs) in Earth's history are regarded as analogues for current and future ocean deoxygenation, potentially providing information on its pacing and internal dynamics. In order to predict the Earth system's response to changes in greenhouse gas concentrations and radiative forcing, a sound understanding of how biogeochemical cycling differs in modern and ancient marine environments is required. Here, we report proxy records for iron (Fe), sulfur and nitrogen cycling in the Tarfaya upwelling system in the Cretaceous Proto-North Atlantic before, during and after OAE2 (∼93 Ma). We apply a novel quantitative approach to sedimentary Fe speciation, which takes into account the influence of terrigenous weathering and sedimentation as well as authigenic Fe (non-terrigenous, precipitated onsite) rain rates on Fe-based paleo-redox proxies. Generally elevated ratios of reactive Fe (i.e., bound to oxide, carbonate and sulfide minerals) to total Fe (FeHR/FeT) throughout the 5 million year record are attributed to transport-limited chemical weathering under greenhouse climate conditions. Trace metal and nitrogen isotope systematics indicate a step-wise transition from oxic to nitrogenous to euxinic conditions over several million years prior to OAE2. Taking into consideration the low terrigenous sedimentation rates in the Tarfaya Basin, we demonstrate that highly elevated FeHR/FeT from the mid-Cenomanian through OAE2 were generated with a relatively small flux of additional authigenic Fe. Evaluation of mass accumulation rates of reactive Fe in conjunction with the extent of pyritization of reactive Fe reveals that authigenic Fe and sulfide precipitation rates in the Tarfaya Basin were similar to those in modern upwelling systems. Because of a smaller seawater nitrate inventory, however, chemolithoautotrophic sulfide oxidation with nitrate was less efficient in preventing hydrogen sulfide release into the water column. As terrigenous weathering and sediment flux determine how much authigenic Fe is required to generate an anoxic euxinic or ferruginous proxy signature, we emphasize that both have to be taken into account when interpreting Fe-based paleo-redox proxies.

A Novel Quantum Group Proxy Blind Signature Scheme Based on Five-Qubit Entangled State

A novel quantum group proxy blind signature scheme based on five-qubit entangled state is proposed. The quantum key distribution, quantum encryption algorithm and some laws of quantum mechanics (such as quantum no-cloning theorem and Heisenberg uncertainty principle) are used to guarantee the unconditional security of this scheme. Analysis result shows that the signature can neither be forged nor disavowed by any malicious attackers and our scheme satisfies all the characteristics of group signature and proxy signature. This protocol can be applied in real life such as E-commerce transaction.

A Quantum Proxy Signature Scheme by Using Random Sequence to Blind the Message

A quantum proxy signature scheme by using random sequence to blind the message is proposed. Our scheme introduces the trusted party Trent and enhances the eavesdropping check to ensure higher security. It only uses the Von Neumann measurement, which reduces measurement times and improves efficiency. Meanwhile, our scheme uses random sequence to enhance message’s blindness. We use the physical characteristics of quantum mechanics to guarantee scheme’s blindness, unconditional security, unforgeability, undeniability.

Autoxidation of the sea ice biomarker proxy IPSO25 in the near-surface oxic layers of Arctic and Antarctic sediments

Over the last decade or so, the mono- and di-unsaturated highly branched isoprenoid (HBI) lipids IP25 (Ice Proxy with 25 carbon atoms) and IPSO25 (Ice Proxy for the Southern Ocean with 25 carbon atoms) have emerged as useful proxies for sea ice in the Arctic and Antarctic, respectively. A more complete understanding of their respective proxy signatures, however, requires more detailed knowledge of their stability in the water column and in sediments. In the current study, we focused on the autoxidation of IPSO25, first by performing laboratory-based oxidation reactions on a purified sample and characterizing products based on detailed mass spectral analysis. We then analysed for the same oxidation products in near-surface sediments retrieved from the Arctic and the Antarctic, and some suspended organic matter from the Antarctic. Our data show that IPSO25 is susceptible to partial autoxidation within the oxic layers of Arctic and Antarctic sediments, while the same processes appear not to be so important in the water column. Although the number of primary autoxidation reactions identified in sediments was not as large as in laboratory experiments, there was evidence for their subsequent modification by biotic degradation. Quantifying the extent of degradation of IPSO25 and IP25 in sediments, and thus the impact of such process on the use of these biomarkers as paleo sea ice proxies, remains challenging at this stage, since most of the primary oxidation products do not accumulate, likely due to secondary biodegradation reactions. Some interesting differences in reactivity were also observed between IPSO25 and IP25 present in the same Arctic sediments. This suggests that factors other than environmental control may influence the IPSO25/IP25 ratio (i.e. DIP25) in Arctic sediments.