Secret Information Research Articles

FPGA Accelerated Implementation of 3D Mesh Secret Sharing Based on Symmetric Similarity of Model

Secret sharing is particularly important in the field of information security, which allows for the reconstruction of secret information from secure shares. However, due to the large amount of data and non-integer data type of 3D (three-dimensional) models, it is less efficient to perform sharing compared to the 2D(two-dimensional) digital images. In order to enable efficient sharing of 3D models as well, this article designs different circuit modules to parallelize the process of sharing 3D models. The proposed structure exploits the vertex extension to perform a complete reconstruction of the 3D model. In the sharing phase, the symmetric similarity of 3D model is exploited to realize the sharing in parallel, which improves the efficiency of sharing. In the reconstruction phase, the Strassen algorithm is used to optimize matrix multiplication, which saves circuit resources. Simulation results show that the structure performs more than 100 times faster than software. The utilization of circuit resources and the size of the share are both optimized. The validity of the designed hardware architecture is confirmed after analyzing the data from experiments performed on several 3D models.

A dynamic semi-quantum private comparison protocol for size relations

Abstract Semi-quantum private comparison allows multiple ``classical'' users who have restricted quantum capabilities to compare their private data with the assistance of a quantum third party. In this work, we propose a novel dynamic semi-quantum private comparison protocol using a circular transmission mode along with $d$-dimensional single-particle states. The protocol enables the comparison of data size relations among several ``classical'' users, while the third party can only determine the relative sizes without accessing the users' secret information. Security evaluations demonstrate that the designed protocol withstands typical external and internal attacks. Compared to previous works, this protocol offers several improvements: first, it supports dynamic addition or removal of users, enhancing applicability in practical scenarios; second, it eliminates the need for pre-shared keys, reducing quantum resource consumption; third, it avoids the use of high-dimensional multi-particle entangled states, thereby enhancing the feasibility of implementation. Therefore, the proposed protocol may have more practical potential compared to previous protocols.

FACSNet: Forensics aided content selection network for heterogeneous image steganalysis

The main goal of image steganalysis, as a technique of confrontation with steganography, is to determine the presence or absence of secret information in conjunction with the specific statistical characteristics of the carrier. With the development of deep learning technology in recent years, the performance of steganography has been gradually enhanced. Especially for the complex reality environment, the image content is mixed and heterogeneous, which brings great challenges to the practical application of image steganalysis technology. In order to solve this problem, we design a forensics aided content selection network (FACSNet) for heterogeneous image steganalysis. Considering the heterogeneous situation of real images, a forensics aided module is introduced to pre-categorise the images to be tested, so that the network is able to detect different categories of images in a more targeted way. The complexity of the images is also further analysed and classified using the content selection module to train a more adapted steganalyser. By doing this, the network is allowed to achieve better performance in recognising and classifying the heterogeneous images for detection. Experimental results show that our designed FACSNet is able to achieve excellent detection performance in heterogeneous environments, improving the detection accuracy by up to 7.14% points, with certain robustness and practicality.

Dynamic quantum secret sharing with identity verification based on quantum walks

Abstract A dynamic quantum secret sharing protocol with authentication is proposed based on quantum walks. The protocol can share specific secrets and also update the secret information periodically based on the existing quantum walks structure. Participants can be added or removed while keeping the original secret unchanged. This is more flexible in practical applications. Before the secrets are shared, each participant is authenticated to ensure the legitimacy of all participants' identities. In addition, the protocol uses single photons as quantum resources, avoiding the complex preparation of entangled states, which makes the protocol more advantageous and potential in practical applications. Security analyses show that the protocol is resistant to collusion attack and other common attacks.

Advancements in Spatial Domain Image Steganography: Techniques, Applications, and Future Outlook

Abstract. Image steganography, a technique for transmitting secret information hidden within images over public networks undetected, serves as a discreet alternative to cryptography in the field of information security. This article explores new steganography techniques based on the Least Significant Bit (LSB) method, widely recognized for its simplicity in embedding secret data by altering the least significant bit of pixels in the spatial domain. The performance of these LSB-based methods is critically assessed using criteria such as Peak Signal-to-Noise Ratio (PSNR), embedding capacity, and histogram analysis. A comprehensive review of recent literature provides a foundation for this evaluation, highlighting advancements and identifying areas for future improvement. Additionally, the article discusses practical applications of LSB-based steganography in healthcare, government operations, and cloud storage, suggesting directions for further research and development in this subtly powerful area of data security.

Semi-quantum secret sharing protocol with specific bits based on third party

Abstract The fundamental concept of secret sharing involves dividing a secret into multiple parts and distributing them among several participants, who collectively safeguard the secret. When it comes to restoring the secret, cooperation among specific participants is necessary to reconstruct the original secret. Quantum secret sharing (QSS) employs quantum methods to address some limitations of classical secret sharing. Semi-QSS, an advancement of quantum methods, requires fewer quantum resources. Previous semi-quantum protocols demanded at least one participant with full quantum capabilities and randomly generated secret information. This paper introduces a protocol allowing three participants lacking complete quantum capabilities to share secret information of specific bits with the assistance of a third party possessing complete quantum capabilities. Unlike previous approaches, this protocol does not require participants to possess full quantum capabilities and shares secret information of specific bits. These characteristics make the protocol more practical and flexible for real-world applications.

Design of Provably Secure and Lightweight Authentication Protocol for Unmanned Aerial Vehicle systems

Drones also called Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) have become more prominent in several applications such as package delivery, real-time object detection, tracking, traffic monitoring, security surveillance systems, and many others. As a key member of IoT, the group of Radio Frequency IDentification (RFID) technologies is referred to as Automatic Identification and Data Capturing (AIDC). In particular, RFID technology is becoming a contactless and wireless technique used to automatically identify and track the tagged objects via radio frequency signals. It also has drawn a lot of attention among researchers, scientists, industries, and practitioners due to its broad range of real-world applications in various fields. However, RFID systems face two key concerns related to security and privacy, where an adversary performs eavesdropping, tampering, modification, and even interception of the secret information of the RFID tags, which may cause forgery and privacy problems. In contrast to security and privacy, RFID tags have very limited computational power capability. To deal with these issues, this paper puts forward an RFID-based Lightweight and Provably Secure Authentication Protocol (LPSAP) for Unmanned Aerial Vehicle Systems. The proposed protocol uses secure Physically Unclonable Functions (PUFs), Elliptic-Curve Cryptography (ECC), secure one-way hash, bitwise XOR, and concatenation operations. We use Ouafi and Phan’s formal security model for analyzing security and privacy features such as traceability and mutual authentication. The rigorous informal analysis is carried out which ensures that our proposed protocol achieves various security and privacy features as well as resists various known security attacks. The performance analysis demonstrates that our proposed protocol outperforms other existing protocols. In addition, Scyther and Automated Validation of Internet Security Protocols and Applications (AVISPA) tool simulation results demonstrates that there is no security attack possible within bounds. Therefore, our proposed LPSAP protocol achieves an acceptable high level of security with the least computational, communication, and storage costs on passive RFID tags.

Efficient multi-party quantum secret-sharing protocol

ContextQuantum secret sharing allows one secret dealer to divide his/her secret among different participants. Only when all the participants pool their secret pieces together can the secret be reconstructed. Quantum secret-sharing protocol can provide high security for users who need to share some secret information among some partners. It is also a useful tool in many applications such as secure operations of joint sharing of quantum money, sharing ancilla states, and distributed quantum computation. ObjectiveWe propose a novel multi-party quantum secret-sharing protocol (MPQSSP). MethodsIn our protocol, the dealer mixes the particle sequence of the Bell states and sends the sequence to the participants. The participants encode their secret pieces into Pauli operators, which are applied to the received particle sequence. After annularly transmitting and operating the particle sequence, the participants return the particle sequence to the dealer, who can share a secret with the partners by measuring the returned sequence with the Bell basis. ResultsThe proposed MPQSSP has the merits as follows. First, its qubit efficiency can be 100% when the sample bits of the secret and the corresponding sample qubits are ignored (In our protocol when the qubit efficiency is computed, the sample bits and the corresponding Bell states used to check eavesdropping are ignored). Second, it can protect participants' privacy and interests, since the dealer cannot derive the secret piece of any participant although he/she masters the secret. Third, the participants need not perform many quantum operations and measurements to check the eavesdropping, which helps improve the efficiency of the protocol. Fourth, compared with most of the similar MPQSSPs, the quantum resources of the proposed one are relatively easier to prepare. At last, the proposed protocol has the security against various eavesdropping attacks. ConclusionThe merits above show that Our MPQSSP is relatively more practical and efficient than similar ones.

Secret Information Needs & Practices of LGBTQ+ Young Adults

ABSTRACTYoung adults have been shown to prefer online sources when searching for information about sensitive topics, such as sexual health (Baker et al., 2020; Buhi et al., 2009). This is especially true for LGBTQ+ young adults, who may want to keep potentially sensitive information needs about their sexuality or gender identity a secret as they explore their identity, or because they may need to for safety reasons (Delmonaco & Haimson, 2022; Kitzie, 2019). This pilot survey study aimed to explore what types of information needs LGBTQ+ young adults may keep secret from the people in their lives, at what age they had their first secret information need, what skills helped them to fulfill their secret information needs, and which skills/resources they would have liked to have when trying to address their secret information needs. Preliminary results suggest that topics relating to health and participants' LGBTQ+ identities were more likely to be kept secret than other everyday life information needs.

A robust coverless image-synthesized video steganography based on asymmetric structure

Due to the ability of hiding secret information without modifying image content, coverless image stegonagraphy has gained higher level of security and become a research hot spot. However, in existing methods, the issue of image order disruption during network transmission is overlooked. In this paper, the image-synthesized video carrier is proposed for the first time. The selected images which represent secret information are synthesized to a video in order, thus the image order will not be disrupted during transmission and the effective capacity is greatly increased. Additionally, an asymmetric structure is designed to improve the robustness, in which only the receiver utilizes a robust image retrieval algorithm to restore secret information. Specifically, certain images are randomly selected from a public image database to create multiple coverless image datasets (MCIDs), with each image in a CID mapped to hash sequence. Images are indexed based on secret segments and synthesized into videos. After that, the synthesized videos are sent to the receiver. The receiver decodes the video into frames, identifies the corresponding CID of each frame, retrieves original image, and restores the secret information with the same mapping rule. Experimental results indicate that the proposed method outperforms existing methods in terms of capacity, robustness, and security.

Time-Varying Cypher Assignment Based on Secrecy Capacity

Wireless communication is a convenient but not secure transmission media. For internet application, such as E-commerce, there are a lot of private information existed. To protect the secret information inside and to set up a secure communication becomes an urgent topic. The purpose of a perfect communication system is to ensure the authentic destination could correctly and successfully receive the exact desired information from the transmitter. Also, the system with authorization and authentication could protect the transmitted information away from the eavesdroppers. Generally, the encryption scheme is applied to. Although these methods have been employed in the system for the security, those unexpected and advanced attackers have been continuously developing. Error-free cryptogram based on Shannon’s theorem could provide a solution for the information security. It could be implemented with physical-layer security coding scheme. In this paper, the cypher generator is proposed with physical-layer coding scheme. The cypher format includes two parts. One is the prefixed code and the other is error-control code. The major purpose of prefixed code is the key to find the position indexing of code in the cypher. In this cypher generator, the interleaver plays a role to disturb the original data. It increases the degree of difficulty to break the cypher. With cryptanalysis, the practical example of LDPC is given. With AI technology, the advanced algorithm might be developed for cypher coding and decoding.

Forensic Investigation and Legal Issues: Hiding Information through Steganography

Abstract: This paper presents information hiding, also known as data embedding, for transmitting secret information through a network. Data security is the prime aspect of conveying information through communication channels. The data hiding and information procedure can be done using several methods, i.e., cryptography, steganography, and digital watermarking. Most people need clarification about cryptography and steganography because both methods are used for hiding information, but there is a minor difference between them. In cryptography, the secret message is hidden, known as “Secret Writing”; in steganography, secret communication is known as “covered Writing”. This paper mainly focuses on steganography for data and information hiding. Steganography is used primarily on terrorism, where the terrorists secretly transmit their data to others globally. The existence of the steganography evaluation model is dominant for stronger development of preferable techniques and the way to cover the extant ones. Despite the ordinary parameters, they are generally acknowledged for the comprehensive assessment of the steganography technique, which is deficient. Nowadays there are many forensic investigations are ongoing on terrorist attacks, which are done through secret transmission of data or information. Many challenges are faced by steganography forensics during the analysis of embedded data. This paper urges digital forensics to be more forward than criminals who use data-hiding techniques that can take advantage of and obscure their criminal activities. This paper concludes the need to develop more robust tools and steganalysis techniques.

Optical frequency combs and chaos in a hybrid atom–cavity optomagnonical system via the synergy of double-probe fields

We theoretically investigate the modulation of optical frequency combs and chaos by the synergy of double-probe fields in the hybrid atom–cavity optomagnonical system consisting of a yttrium iron garnet sphere, a two-level atom, and a tapered fiber. Our results show that in the case of a single-probe field, the atom-optical mode coupling strength and amplitude strength of the probe field can effectively modify the tooth spacing (from one to one-half tooth spacing) of the optical frequency combs, as well as the entry or withdrawal of chaos. In a chaotic region, the relative phases between the control and probe fields can also be adjusted to withdraw chaotic motion. Moreover, we demonstrate the generation of hybridized fraction-order frequency combs via the synergy of double-probe fields, which is caused by the sum and difference frequency effects of sidebands. Interestingly, it is found that through the synergy of the double-probe fields, the system can enter a chaotic state under lower applied field intensity, which is modulated by the amplitude strengths and relative phases of the dual probe fields. In addition to providing insight into the characteristics of optical frequency combs and chaos in the hybrid atom–cavity optomagnonical system, our research may offer a new perspective for the development of precision measurements and secret information processing.

TEE-MR: Developer-friendly data oblivious programming for trusted execution environments

Trusted execution environments (TEEs) enable efficient protection of integrity and confidentiality for applications running on untrusted platforms. They have been deployed in cloud servers to attract users who have concerns on exporting data and computation. However, recent studies show that TEEs’ side channels, including memory, cache, and micro-architectural features, are still vulnerable to adversarial exploitation. As many such attacks utilize program access patterns to infer secret information, data oblivious programs have been considered a practical defensive solution. However, they are often difficult to develop and optimize via either manual or automated approaches. We present the oblivious TEE with MapReduce (TEE-MR) approach that uses application frameworks, an approach between fully manual and fully automated, to hide the details of access-pattern protection to significantly minimize developers’ efforts. We have implemented the approach with the MapReduce application framework for data-intensive applications. It can regulate application dataflows and hide application-agnostic access-pattern protection measures from developers. Compared to manual composition approaches, it demands much less effort for developers to identify access patterns and to write code. Our approach is also easy to implement, less complicated than fully automated approaches, for which we have not seen a working prototype yet. Our experimental results show that TEE-MR-based applications have good performance, comparable to those carefully developed with time-consuming manual composition approaches.

Using Hardware Events to Detect Side-Channel Attacks

The article discusses the monitoring system being developed by authors for the detection of Side-Channel Attacks, SCA. The theoretical justification of the chosen method of detecting SCA attacks is given: analysis of hardware events of the target system. The architecture of the monitoring system is described, including low-level data collection processes and an expert system that analyzes the collected data. The results of the proof-of-concept on various classes of SCA-attacks are presented. The paper considers a class of attacks on side-channels that use the processor cache to obtain secret information. A method of countering attacks of this class based on the use of a hardware event mechanism is proposed. As a result of the analysis of existing hardware events, predicates have been built for the Intel architecture, allowing one to identify the suspicious behavior of programs in the Linux OS environment. To test the proposed method, a prototype monitoring system was implemented that successfully coped with the detection of simulated SCA-attacks. The advantages and disadvantages of this method are considered, and the direction of further research is indicated.

A Novel Authenticated Quantum Anonymous Secret Sharing for Classical and Quantum Information

AbstractAnonymous secret sharing (ASS) is an essential cryptographic concept that facilitates the sharing and reconstruction of secret information while safeguarding the identity of the involved secret receivers, which has broad applications in key management, data backup, and distributed systems. In this study, a novel authenticated quantum anonymous secret sharing (QASS) protocol that emphasizes information privacy and identity anonymity protection is proposed. Employing ‐level multipartite GHZ states as a quantum resource, one‐sided anonymous entanglement (AE) is innovatively established between the dealer and anonymous receivers, enabling the dealer to distribute a random share of secret information. Additionally, by establishing a one‐sided AE between anonymous receivers and restorer, the restorer can securely collect and reconstruct the secret information using quantum teleportation (QT). Rigorous security analysis demonstrates that protocol can resist attacks from active adversaries and potentially dishonest users. Quantum experiments on IBM Qiskit validate the correctness and feasibility of the proposed QASS protocol. This work contributes to the advancement of quantum anonymous communication, addressing the requirements for information privacy and identity anonymity in practical application environments.

SPA-GPT: General Pulse Tailor for Simple Power Analysis Based on Reinforcement Learning

In side-channel analysis of public-key algorithms, we usually classify operations based on the differences in power traces produced by different basic operations (such as modular square or modular multiplication) to recover secret information like private keys. The more accurate the segmentation of power traces, the higher the efficiency of their classification. There exist two commonly used methods: one is equidistant segmentation, which requires a fixed number of basic operations and similar trace lengths for each type of operation, leading to limited application scenarios; the other is peak-based segmentation, which relies on personal experience to configure parameters, resulting in insufficient flexibility and poor universality. In this paper, we propose an automated trace segmentation method based on reinforcement learning applicable to a wide range of common implementation of public-key algorithms. The introduction of reinforcement learning, which doesn’t need labels, into trace processing for side-channel analysis marks its debut in this field. Our method has good universality on the traces with varying segment lengths and differing peak heights. By using prioritized experience replay optimized Deep Q-Network algorithm, we reduce the required number of parameters to one, which is the key length. We also employ various techniques to improve the segmentation effectiveness, such as clustering algorithm and enveloped-based feature enhancement. We validate the effectiveness of the new method in nine scenarios involving hardware and software implementations of different public-key algorithms executed on diverse platforms such as microcontrollers, SAKURA-G, and smart cards. Specifically, one of these implementations is protected by time randomization countermeasures. Experimental results show that a basic version of our method can correctly segment most traces. The enhanced version is capable of reconstructing the sequence of operations during trace segmentation, achieving an accuracy rate of 100% for the majority of the traces. For traces that cannot be entirely restored, we utilize reward values of reinforcement learning to correct errors and achieve fully recovery. We also conducted comparative experiments with supervised seq2seq methods, revealing our approach’s 42% higher accuracy in operation recovery and 96% faster time efficiency. In addition, we applied our method to the post-quantum cryptography Kyber, and successfully recovered an intermediate value crucial for deriving the secret key. Besides, power traces collected from these devices have been uploaded as open databases, which are available for researchers engaged in public-key algorithms to conduct related experiments or verify our method.

Multi-particle-based multi-party controllable quantum secure dialogue

Based on the six-particle entangled state, this paper proposes a multi-party controllable quantum secure dialogue protocol, where the dialogue parties only need to perform single operation to efficiently encode secret information and embed the control information into a fixed particle sequence in order, ensuring the orderly transmission of information. Additionally, the protocol introduces a unique honesty detection mechanism, which relies on the classical XOR relationship of three qubits in a GHZ-like state, effectively guaranteeing the credibility of the controllers. The protocol allows two dialogue parties to synchronously obtain secret information with the permission of all controllers, without relying on additional classical channel, greatly enhancing communication efficiency and security. Through rigorous security analysis, it is proven that the protocol can effectively resist various potential attacks from both internal and external sources.

IoTSLE: Securing IoT systems in low-light environments through finite automata, deep learning and DNA computing based image steganographic model

The Internet of Things (IoT) is a vast network of interconnected devices and systems, including wearables, smart home appliances, industrial machinery, and vehicles, equipped with sensors and connectivity. The data collected by the IoT devices are transmitted over a network, for processing and analyzing that data, so that appropriate actions can be initiated. Security of IoT systems is a major concern, as IoT devices collect and transmit crucial information. But images captured in low-light environments pose a challenge for IoT security by limiting the ability to accurately identify objects and people, increasing the risk of spoofing, and hindering forensic analysis. This paper unfolds a novel framework for IoT security using Steganography in Low-light Environment (IoTSLE) by image enhancement and data concealment. In proposed IoTSLE, initially, the low-light images, captured by the IoT devices in a low-light environment, are enhanced by band learning with recursion and band recomposition. After that, the secret information is concealed within the enhanced image. This concealment is supervised by using a specially designed finite automata for genome sequence encoding and 2-2-2 embedding. The proposed steganography technique is capable of hiding secret information within a 512 × 512 RGB image with the payload of 2097152 bits. The experiments like, PSNR, SSIM, Q-Index, BER, NCC, and NAE etc. are conducted to analyze the imperceptibility and security of IoTSLE. The proposed IoTSLE is useful for various IoT systems in different private and government fields like, defense agencies, digital forensics, agriculture, healthcare industry, cybersecurity firms, smart home, smart city etc.

Optical information hiding based on speckle encoding with dual-multiplexing interferometry

Optical hiding schemes based on visual cryptography usually hide secret information in multiple visual keys. However, the traditional visual keys are usually Mosaic patterns, which are easy to attract the attention of attackers, and limit their randomness and security. And each visual key needs a corresponding transport carrier, leading to limited hiding capacity. To solve these problems, this paper proposes an optical information hiding method based on speckle encoding and dual-multiplexing interferometry. This method uses natural speckle with high randomness to partial replace traditional visual keys, realizing the combination application of natural speckle keys and artificial visual keys. The optical properties of wavelength and diffraction distance multiplexing interference can hide multiple visual keys in a single image, which improves the hiding capacity. Simulation and optical experiments show that the proposed method has high security, large hiding capacity, imperceptibility and robustness.