Secure Authentication Scheme Research Articles

SAIFC: A Secure Authentication Scheme for IOV Based on Fog-Cloud Federation

The Internet of Things allows vehicles to communicate with their surroundings and send various traffic and road conditions to other vehicles, making driving better. Data received from other vehicles sometimes need to be processed. In this state, the data should be sent to the Roadside unit for processing and fog if necessary. The source and destination must know each other’s identities to send and receive information, and various attacks can threaten source and destination authentication. The paper presents secure authentication scheme based on fog-cloud for the Internet of Vehicles. Formal and informal security analyses verify that the SAIFC demonstrates resistance to famous attacks. The SAIFC is compared with another scheme regarding security features, computing, and communication costs. The SAIFC simulated with the NS3 tool and compared several routing protocols in packet loss, packet delivery, end-to-end delay, throughput, and MAC/PHY overhead.

PSECAS: A physical unclonable function based secure authentication scheme for Internet of Drones

Internet of Drones (IoD) is a thriving technology that has found its application in various fields ranging from civilian to military and industries, empowering users to efficiently perform strenuous operations. However, there are multitudinous security concerns in an IoD environment, such as a drone having to exchange vital information with the control station server and respective users over an open unsecured wireless channel. It is indispensable to ensure the security of this sensitive information, on account of which a Physically Unclonable Function (PUF)-based Secure Authentication Scheme for the Internet of Drones (PSECAS) has been suggested in this paper. The security of the proffered scheme has been ensured under the ROR model and AVISPA simulation. Moreover, informal analysis demonstrates that PSECAS fulfills the necessary security requirements and is safe against various adversarial attacks. Finally, a rigorous comparison of PSECAS with other subsisting schemes exemplifies the robustness and superiority of our scheme.

A Secure and Anonymous Authentication Protocol Based on Three-Factor Wireless Medical Sensor Networks

Wireless medical sensor networks (WMSNs), a type of wireless sensor network (WSN), have enabled medical professionals to identify patients’ health information in real time to identify and diagnose their conditions. However, since wireless communication is performed through an open channel, an attacker can steal or manipulate the transmitted and received information. Because these attacks are directly related to the patients’ lives, it is necessary to prevent these attacks upfront by providing the security of WMSN communication. Although authentication protocols are continuously developed to establish the security of WMSN communication, they are still vulnerable to attacks. Recently, Yuanbing et al. proposed a secure authentication scheme for WMSN. They emphasized that their protocol is able to resist various attacks and can ensure mutual authentication. Unfortunately, this paper demonstrates that Yuanbing et al.’s protocol is vulnerable to smart card stolen attacks, ID/password guessing attacks, and sensor node capture attacks. In order to overcome the weaknesses and effectiveness of existing studies and to ensure secure communication and user anonymity of WMSN, we propose a secure and anonymous authentication protocol. The proposed protocol can prevent sensor capture, guessing, and man-in-the-middle attacks. To demonstrate the security of the proposed protocol, we perform various formal and informal analyses using AVISPA tools, ROR models, and BAN logic. Additionally, we compare the security aspects with related protocols to prove that the proposed protocol has excellent security. We also prove the effectiveness of our proposed protocol compared with related protocols in computation and communication costs. Our protocol has low or comparable computation and communication costs compared to related protocols. Thus, our protocol can provide services in the WMSN environment.

ASPA-MOSN: An Efficient User Authentication Scheme for Phishing Attack Detection in Mobile Online Social Networks

Over the last few years, with the massive growth of smartphone technology and mobile Internet, the use of various online social networks (OSNs) have increased rapidly. This ever-growing use of social networks leverages cyber-attackers to exploit various phishing schemes, spoofed accounts, and other threats to steal users’ credentials. Phishing is an online crime that employs both technical subterfuge and social engineering to steal consumers’ personal identity, financial account credentials, and other sensitive information. In general, a phishing attack is carried out by the exercise of sending fraudulent communications (like a fake email with harmful uniform resource locators), that pretends to come from a reputable source. The problem of designing user authentication protocol for mitigating phishing attacks in OSNs is a challenging research problem. In this article, we propose a secure and lightweight cryptography-based authentication scheme, called authentication scheme for phishing attack (ASPA)-mobile online social network (mOSN), that provides resistance to phishing and other related attacks in OSNs. The security of the proposed scheme is explained using both informal security analysis and formal security analysis through the widely recognized real-or-random model and ProVerif simulation tool. Finally, we compare the security, functionality, computation, and communication costs of the proposed ASPA-mOSN with related schemes. The comparison results show that ASPA-mOSN outperforms other existing competing schemes.

A secure authentication and key agreement scheme with dynamic management for vehicular networks

The development of 5G communication, big data technology and intelligent transportation system has driven the rapid development of vehicle network (VANET). However, with the rapid development of vehicle networks, it will be invaded by various security problems, such as privacy disclosure, session key security, forward security, etc. To eliminate the security threats faced by the vehicle network and ensure privacy and secure communication between vehicles and roadside units(RSU), it is necessary to introduce a secure, reliable, and efficient authentication key agreement scheme. Therefore, based on the principle of challenge authentication handshake protocol, we propose a novel security authentication and key agreement scheme for the vehicle networks. The scheme meets mutual authentication, and is the session key of communication protocol between vehicle and roadside unit to resist common attacks. In addition, compared with other schemes, our scheme has the advantage that we can flexibly set time keys to constrain vehicle behaviour and achieve dynamic vehicle management. We also give a formal security proof of the scheme under the random oracle model (ROM). Finally, the efficiency of the protocol is evaluated, and the computing and communication overhead of our scheme is about 35% lower than that of the existing scheme. So, our scheme is more practical.

Provably Secure Mutual Authentication and Key Agreement Scheme Using PUF in Internet of Drones Deployments.

Internet of Drones (IoD), designed to coordinate the access of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), is a specific application of the Internet of Things (IoT). Drones are used to control airspace and offer services such as rescue, traffic surveillance, environmental monitoring, delivery and so on. However, IoD continues to suffer from privacy and security issues. Firstly, messages are transmitted over public channels in IoD environments, which compromises data security. Further, sensitive data can also be extracted from stolen mobile devices of remote users. Moreover, drones are susceptible to physical capture and manipulation by adversaries, which are called drone capture attacks. Thus, the development of a secure and lightweight authentication scheme is essential to overcoming these security vulnerabilities, even on resource-constrained drones. In 2021, Akram et al. proposed a secure and lightweight user-drone authentication scheme for drone networks. However, we discovered that Akram et al.'s scheme is susceptible to user and drone impersonation, verification table leakage, and denial of service (DoS) attacks. Furthermore, their scheme cannot provide perfect forward secrecy. To overcome the aforementioned security vulnerabilities, we propose a secure mutual authentication and key agreement scheme between user and drone pairs. The proposed scheme utilizes physical unclonable function (PUF) to give drones uniqueness and resistance against drone stolen attacks. Moreover, the proposed scheme uses a fuzzy extractor to utilize the biometrics of users as secret parameters. We analyze the security of the proposed scheme using informal security analysis, Burrows-Abadi-Needham (BAN) logic, a Real-or-Random (RoR) model, and Automated Verification of Internet Security Protocols and Applications (AVISPA) simulation. We also compared the security features and performance of the proposed scheme and the existing related schemes. Therefore, we demonstrate that the proposed scheme is suitable for IoD environments that can provide users with secure and convenient wireless communications.

LAKA-UAV: Lightweight authentication and key agreement scheme for cloud-assisted Unmanned Aerial Vehicle using blockchain in flying ad-hoc networks

Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) can be employed in various applications, including traffic control, and delivery application. However, these services are susceptible to various security attacks because sensitive data are exchanged through an open channel. Thus, a secure authentication scheme is essential for UAV. UAV has limited storage resources and computing capabilities. To overcome these problems, cloud computing is considered as a promising solution. Cloud computing provides various properties such as storage availability and scalability. Unfortunately, the cloud server’s database can be a major target for an adversary because it is a centralized system. If an adversary intrudes on the cloud server’s database, he/she may attempt to intercept or learn the stored data. To mitigate these issues, we design a secure and lightweight authentication and key agreement scheme for cloud-assisted UAV using blockchain in flying ad-hoc networks, called LAKA-UAV. LAKA-UAV utilizes blockchain technology to ensure access control and data integrity using log transactions and the cloud server securely manages collected data from UAV. We prove the security of LAKA-UAV based on informal security analysis and formal security verification implementation. Based on testbed experiments using MIRACL, LAKA-UAV provides about 2.13 times more efficient performance on average compared with related schemes in terms of computation. We present the blockchain implementation using Hyperledger Sawtooth platform.

LAS-SG: An Elliptic Curve-Based Lightweight Authentication Scheme for Smart Grid Environments

The communication among smart meters (SMs) and neighborhood area network (NAN) gateways is a fundamental requisite for managing the energy consumption at the consumer site. The bidirectional communication among SMs and NANs over the insecure public channel is vulnerable to impersonation, SM traceability, and SM physical capturing attacks. Many existing schemes’ insecurities and/or inefficiencies call for an efficient and secure authentication scheme for smart grid infrastructure. In this article, we present a privacy preserving and lightweight authentication scheme for smart grid (LAS-SG) using elliptic curve cryptography. The proposed <italic xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">LAS-SG</i> is proved as secure under the standard model. Moreover, the efficiency of the LAS-SG is extracted through a real-time experiment, which attests that proposed <italic xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">LAS-SG</i> completes a round of authentication in 20.331 ms by exchanging only two messages and 192 B. Due to the adequate efficiency and ample security, the proposed <italic xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">LAS-SG</i> is more appropriate for SG environments.

Multi-Factor Biometric Authentication Framework to User for Securing Digital Transaction

The recent growth of digital transactions over the internet is high. This is the newest topic which is to be implemented as well as need to study related with the security. The development of technology we need to improve and build the safe authentication scheme over the internet. The safe authentication scheme is protecting the user valuable information against security threats. While performing digital transactions over the internet, the protection is turn into high importance and demand for authentication is more necessary than before. In the traditional authentication there are so many problems such as username, password &amp; so on. Also, intruders will crack various ways of hacking user information, passwords including brute force attack, shoulder surfing, dictionary attacks, etc.&#x0D; This paper is useful to performing a secure authentication scheme using different fusion techniques for digital transactions. The propose system approach here combines user details as like user name, password, OTP and biometrics (traits as like fingerprint, face &amp; iris) fusion verification for a more valid user authentication. Our proposed point of view has been initiating to improve security benefits for various forms of invasion &amp; authentication layers turn on password-based attacks.

Energy-Aware Next-Generation Mobile Routing Chains with Fog Computing for Emerging Applications

The Internet of Things (IoT) provides robust services to connected sensors in a distributed manner, and maintains real-time communication using wireless standards. The smart network has offered many autonomous smart systems to collect information from remote nodes, and share it by exploring the network layer. Researchers have recently offered a variety of ways to increase the effectiveness of emerging applications using trustworthy relaying systems. However, there are still many issues with route reformulation due to frequent disconnections of mobile devices and resource limitations. Furthermore, most of the existing methods for IoT systems are unable to utilize network resources, which lowers the performance of green networks. Thus, providing a foolproof solution for the autonomous system with energy efficiency is a challenging task. Therefore, this paper presents an algorithm for the mobile network using fog computing to reduce network disconnectivity. Furthermore, using security services, the proposed algorithm efficiently explores the characteristics of the device, and avoids malicious traffic to drain the additional energy consumption of the network. The main aspects of the proposed algorithm are as follows: (i) using the adjustable transmission power, the proposed algorithm offers a fault-tolerant solution to transmit the aggregated data over the unpredictable wireless system; (ii) with the support of fog nodes, the data load is reduced among devices with the offering of a secured authentication scheme. Using simulations, the proposed algorithm is tested, and its significance is demonstrated against other related studies.

Design of Secure and Lightweight Authentication Scheme for UAV-Enabled Intelligent Transportation Systems Using Blockchain and PUF

Unmanned-aerial-vehicle (UAV)-enabled intelligent transportation system (ITS) is an advanced technology that can provide various services including autonomous driving, real-time creation of high-definition maps, and car sharing. In particular, a UAV-enabled ITS can be realized through the combination of traditional vehicular ad hoc networks (VANETs) and UAVs that can act as flying roadside units (RSUs) at the outskirts and monitor road conditions from predefined locations to spot car accidents and any law violations. Notably, to realize these services, real-time communication between UAVs and RSUs must be guaranteed. However, UAVs have limited computing powers, and if extensive computation is required during communication, the provision of real-time ITS services may be hindered. Furthermore, UAVs and RSUs communicate via public channels that are prone to various attacks, such as replay, impersonation, trace, and session key disclosure attacks. Thus, in this article, a secure and lightweight authentication scheme is proposed for UAVs and RSUs using the blockchain technology. The proposed scheme is analyzed using informal and formal methods including Burrows–Abadi–Nikoogadam (BAN) logic, automated validation of internet security protocols and applications (AVISPA) simulation tool, and real–or–random (RoR) model, and its performance is compared with that of related schemes. The results reveal that the proposed scheme is more efficient and secure as compared to the other competing schemes.

Security Challenges of Selective Forwarding Attack and Design a Secure ECDH-Based Authentication Protocol to Improve RPL Security

Today, we could describe the Internet of Things (loT) as the pervasive and global network that provides a system for monitoring, controlling, processing, and analyzing the data generated by IoT devices. The huge amount of data generated by IoT devices when transported and routed through the internet presents several challenges. One of the common routing protocols in IoT networks is RPL (Routing Protocol for Low Power and Lossy Networks), but it is prone to security issues and attacks. Due to the presence of sensitive data in IoT and its exchange in the open network, issues of privacy and security in this network should be given special attention. In addition, the nodes in the Internet of Things have limited resources, and the symmetric encryption key is used to encrypt the data of all nodes, which has security weaknesses. Therefore, an efficient and secure authentication scheme is needed so that IoT nodes can authenticate each other and share a secure session key. In this article, we review security aspects of RPL protocols focusing on selective forwarding attacks. Further, we propose a key agreement and authentication mechanism based on ECDH (Elliptic-Curve Diffie–Hellman). We show that our design is very secure, that it meets security requirements, and that it can withstand known attacks while having low costs for computation and communication.

Secure e-Prescription Management System: Mitigating Blended Threat in IoBE

New information and communication technologies (ICT) are being applied in various industries to upgrade the value of the major service items. Moreover, data collection, storage, processing, and security applications have led to the creation of an interrelated ICT environment in which one industry can directly influence the other. This is called the “internet of blended environments” (IoBE), as it is an interrelated data environment based on internet-of-things collection activities. In this environment, security incidents may increase as size and interconnectivity of attackable operations grow. Consequently, preemptive responses to combined security threats are needed to securely utilize IoBE across industries. For example, the medical industry has more stringent information protection measures than other industries. Consequently, it has become a major target of attackers, as more clinician–patient interactions occur over the internet owing to COVID-19. Therefore, this study aims to acquire security for IoBE while focusing on the medical industry. Among the various types of medical ICT services, this study analyzes data flow and potential security threats from the e-prescription lifecycle perspective, which is highly utilized, strongly data-centric, and has numerous security issues. Based on our analysis, we propose a secure authentication and data-sharing scheme.

Understanding Failures in Security Proofs of Multi-Factor Authentication for Mobile Devices

Multi-factor authentication is a promising way to enhance the security of password-based authenticated key exchange (PAKE) schemes. It is widely deployed in various daily applications for mobile devices (e.g., e-Bank, smart home, and cloud services) to provide the first line of defense for system security. However, despite intensive research, how to design a secure and efficient multi-factor authentication scheme is still a challenging problem. Hundreds of new schemes have been successfully proposed, and many are even equipped with a formal security proof. However, most of them have been shortly found to be insecure and cannot achieve the claimed security goals. Now a paradox arises: How can a multi-factor scheme that was “formally proven secure” later be found insecure? To answer this seemingly contradicting question, this paper takes a substantial first step towards systematically exploring the security proof failures in multi-factor authentication schemes for mobile devices. We first investigate the root causes of the “provable security” failure in vulnerable multi-factor authentication schemes under the random oracle model, and classify them into eight different types in terms of the five steps of conducting a formal security proof. Then, we elaborate on each type of these eight proof failures by examining three typical vulnerable protocols, and suggest corresponding countermeasures. Finally, we conduct a large-scale comparative measurement of 70 representative multi-factor authentication schemes under our extended evaluation criteria. The schemes we select range from 2009 to 2022, and the comparison results suggest that understanding failures in formal security proofs is helpful to design more secure multi-factor authentication protocols for mobile devices.

Retracted: Efficient and Secure Key Management and Authentication Scheme for WBSNs Using CP‐ABE and Consortium Blockchain

Retracted: Efficient and Secure Key Management and Authentication Scheme for WBSNs Using CP‐ABE and Consortium Blockchain

Blockchain-Based Physically Secure and Privacy-Aware Anonymous Authentication Scheme for Fog-Based Vanets

Vehicular Ad-hoc Networks (VANETs) have a lot of potential for improving traffic management and driver safety. However, employing a wireless channel for vehicle communication has security and privacy concerns such as authentication, confidentiality, integrity, access control, and availability. Hence, it is indispensable to address the security and privacy aspects of the vehicles utilized in these contexts. In this study, a blockchain-based physically secure, and privacy-aware anonymous authentication technique leveraging the fog computing architecture. The proposed method can efficiently solve security and privacy problems using its attributes of support to movement, reduced latency, and location monitoring. In addition, the decentralized nature of blockchain technology is used to ensure the data security of vehicles. The vehicle is not required to store the secret keys to do anonymous authentication and provides physical security for the vehicle. The implied scheme provides essential security features with less storage, computational and communication costs than related competitive schemes.

Secure and Lightweight User Authentication Scheme for Cloud-Assisted Internet of Things

Cloud-assisted Internet of Things (IoT) overcomes the resource-constrained nature of the traditional IoT and is developing rapidly in such fields as smart grids and intelligent transportation. In a cloud-assisted IoT system, users can remotely control the IoT devices and send specific instructions to them. If the users’ identities are not verified, adversaries can pretend as legitimate users to send fake and malicious instructions to IoT devices, thereby compromising the security of the entire system. Thus, a sound authentication mechanism is indispensable to ensure security. At the same time, it should be noted that a gateway may connect to massive IoT devices with the exponential growth of interconnected devices in a cloud-assisted IoT system. The efficiency of authentication schemes is easily impacted by the computation capability of the gateway. Recently, several schemes have been designed for cloud-assisted IoT systems, but they have problems of one kind or another, making them not very suitable for cloud-assisted IoT systems. In this paper, we take a typical scheme (proposed at IEEE TDSC 2020) as an example to identify the common weaknesses and challenges of designing a user authentication scheme for cloud-assisted IoT systems. In addition, we propose a new secure user authentication scheme with lightweight computation on gateways. The proposed scheme provides secure access between remote users and IoT devices with many ideal attributions, such as forward secrecy and multi-factor security. Meanwhile, the security of this scheme is proved under the random-oracle model, heuristic analysis, the ProVerif tool and BAN logic. Compared with ten state-of-the-art schemes in security and performance, the proposed scheme achieves all the listed twelve security requirements with minimum computation and storage costs on gateways.

A secure blockchain-enabled vehicle identity management framework for intelligent transportation systems

The need for secure and reliable identity management and authentication scheme for vehicles is becoming increasingly prominent with the digitization of the Intelligent Transportation System (ITS) in smart cities. Today, ITS is extensively acknowledged and employed in a variety of nations. Several existing ITS solutions in smart cities have observant limitations such as trust, security, threats, and centralization platform that can be vulnerable to the authentication and validation of vehicles. The differentiation in compatibility and requirement of IoT-based applications/services produced different challenges for establishing a uniform standard for data exchange, data usage, encoding mechanisms, and data storage for the identity management of vehicles. In this paper, identity generation and management methods are proposed using Blockchain to address existing challenges in ITS applications prevailing with the security of existing identity management and authentication of vehicles. The proposed solution focuses mainly on assurance of the validity of Personal Identification Information (PII) used for producing identity and usability of the application to make the solution suitable to raise the vehicle administration in the ITS. The experiment results and performance analysis represent that the proposed method ensures the correctness and validity of the PII and ensures the reliability and trustworthiness of such identity by securing the correct mapping of a user.

Provably Secure PUF-Based Lightweight Mutual Authentication Scheme for Wireless Body Area Networks

Wireless body area networks (WBANs) are used in modern medical service environments for the convenience of patients and medical professionals. Owing to the recent COVID-19 pandemic and an aging society, WBANs are attracting attention. In a WBAN environment, the patient has a sensor node attached to him/her that collects patient status information, such as blood pressure, blood glucose, and pulse; this information is simultaneously transmitted to his/her respective medical professional through a gateway. The medical professional receives and checks the patient’s status information and provides a diagnosis. However, sensitive information, including the patient’s personal and status data, are transmitted via a public channel, causing security concerns. If an adversary intercepts this information, it could threaten the patient’s well-being. Therefore, a secure authentication scheme is essential for WBAN environments. Recently, Chen et al. proposed a two-factor authentication scheme for WBANs. However, we found out Chen et al.’s scheme is vulnerable to a privileged insider, physical cloning, verification leakage, impersonation, and session key disclosure attacks. We also propose a secure physical-unclonable-function (PUF)-based lightweight mutual authentication scheme for WBANs. Through informal security analysis, we demonstrate that the proposed scheme using biometrics and the PUF is safe against various security attacks. In addition, we verify the security features of our scheme through formal security analyses using Burrows–Abadi–Needham (BAN) logic, the real-or-random (RoR) model, and the Automated Validation of Internet Security Protocols and Applications (AVISPA). Furthermore, we evaluate the security features, communication costs, and computational costs of our proposed scheme and compare them with those of other related schemes. Consequently, our scheme is more suitable for WBAN environments than the other related schemes.

Secure and Efficient Blockchain-Assisted Authentication for Edge-Integrated Internet-of-Vehicles

Edge-Integrated Internet-of-Vehicles (IoV) sinks service to edge nodes, which responses quickly to vehicles' requests and alleviates the burden of cloud servers. In such scenario, the entities of IoV need to be mutually authenticated since potential attacks can impersonate edge nodes to send false instructions to vehicles, or impersonate legitimate service subscribers to get free-ride IoV services. Furthermore, due to the high mobility characteristics of vehicles, frequent authentication is required between vehicles and edge nodes. We hope that the authentication process can be conducted efficiently to ensure the continuous service. Existing works cannot balance the security and efficiency well. This is still an issue worthy of discussion. In this article, we propose SEA, a secure and efficient blockchain-assisted authentication scheme for IoV. SEA achieves mutual authentication among vehicles, edge nodes and cloud servers. Specifically, the cloud server is only involved when vehicles are initially authenticated. And edge nodes realize the authentication of vehicles by querying the authentication result recorded by cloud on the blockchain, which significantly reduces the cryptographic computation overhead and eliminates network communication delay. Besides, session keys between any two entities involved are negotiated, which can secure sensitive data of vehicles. Extensive experiments have been conducted to show the security and efficiency of SEA.