Secure Communication Protocol Research Articles

Secure Communication Protocol for Arduino-based IoT Using Lightweight Cryptography

We witness massive implementations of the Internet of Things (IoT) in smart homes, smart buildings, smart vehicles, smart wearables as well as Industry 4.0 initiatives. Along with the massive adoption, IoT security has become more important and crucial in this case. Arduino, as IoT hardware platform, also requires enhancements on its security to ensure that data it transmits and receives is secured and has not been tampered in any way. Transmitting of IoT data and telecommand in plaintext is not secure. Securing transmission using traditional block cipher is computationally intensive for embedded-systems with low memory and computing power like Arduino. This research proposes a novel lightweight security communication protocol that is lightweight enough to run on the Arduino platform. The proposed protocol shall be utilizing a lightweight key agreement scheme, the SPECK lightweight block cipher, and BLAKE2s hash function. This protocol is designed to support telemetry and telecommand by using publisher-subscriber, which also is aimed to be extensible but straightforward for future enhancements. This research shows that a secure IoT communication protocol can be designed and implemented on Arduino devices and another IoT platform running Arduino core such as the ESP32. The performance evaluation of this protocol in Arduino Mega shows that the INIT phase's average execution time is 26.83 milliseconds. The key agreement is 13.50 milliseconds, and the encryption-decryption of telemetry and telecommand messages requires 25 milliseconds execution time. The protocol performance evaluation in ESP32 has an average execution time for INIT phase 44.63 milliseconds. The key agreement phase, 13.90 milliseconds, and the encryption and decryption of telemetry and telecommand messages requires an execution time of 17.10 milliseconds.

CoFA for QoS based secure communication using adaptive chaos dynamical system in fog-integrated cloud

Fog computing addresses the issues experienced in Cloud computing such as latency, delay, and bandwidth while provisioning the resources such as computation, storage, and network for IoT applications. Fog resources and their integration with Cloud poses other significant problems such as data security, overhead in data acquisition, data tampering, data privacy, data breach, etc. Designing a secure, resilient, and scalable infrastructure for IoT network is challenging because of resource heterogeneity, resource-constrained devices, and unreliable network connectivity. The researchers have developed many chaos-based encryption algorithms to enhance the security level and make it difficult for intruders to access the data. However, such traditional algorithms increase the communication overhead and computational cost. This necessitates the design of new secure communication protocols that comply with various security requirements of Class of Fog Applications (CoFA). This work proposes an efficient and intelligent method that classifies the applications arriving at the system into CoFA and maps them to five levels of chaos-based security protocols for secure communication. An adaptive sliding mode security schemes are developed using Genesio-Tesi, Modified-Jerk, Chua's chaotic, and Financial systems in CoFA framework for secure communication. A comparison-based performance study, with state-of-art, reveals the efficacy of the proposed method, which performs better for security optimization and synchronization with the least error.

LaTLS: A Lattice‐Based TLS Proxy Protocol

The function of the Internet proxy is to check and convert the data exchanged between client and server. In fact, the two-party secure communication protocol with good security is turned into an unsafe multiparty protocol. At present, there are relatively few proxy protocols that can be applied in practice. This paper analyzes the classic agent protocol mcTLS and pointed out the security issues. We focus on the security of TLS 1.3 and proposed a lattice-based multi-party proxy protocol: LaTLS. LaTLS can be proved secure in the eCK model, it can resist key-sharing attacks, counterfeiting attacks, replay attacks, and achieve forward security. Compared with traditional DH and ECDH schemes, LaTLS is more effcient. Its security is based on the shortest vector problem, therefor it has anti-quantum attack properties.

A Novel Secure Root Key Updating Scheme for LoRaWANs Based on CTR_AES DRBG 128

A long-range wide area network (LoRaWAN) has a weakness in terms of key management: its root key is static, meaning that it never changes. Since all cryptographic keys are derived from the root key, such a weakness endangers LoRaWAN security. This paper proposes a novel secure root key updating scheme for LoRaWAN that involves periodically changing the root key value based on the <italic xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">CTR_AES DRBG 128</i> algorithm. The scheme consists of two sequential phases: the initialization process that occurs at the end device and the root key update process that occurs at the join server. To validate the proposed scheme, we conduct randomness and communication protocol tests. The results indicate that the proposed scheme has a high degree of randomness, passes all 15 statistical tests in the NIST suite, and has secure communication protocols. The analyses verify that the new scheme has a mechanism to resist replay attacks and protects data integrity. The main advantage of the scheme is that it has a perfect forward secrecy feature that enhances the root key updating scheme with a lightweight computational load for the end device; additionally, root key updating can be performed automatically from a remote distance within the LoRaWAN coverage network. The proposed scheme also supports simultaneous updates for implementation in a large area with many devices. Finally, the overall results demonstrate how our proposed scheme may compensate for the weakness of LoRaWANs in key management and improve their security performance.

Cryptanalysis and improvement of an authentication scheme for IoT

With the interference of various types of embedded devices, sensors and gadgets in day-to-day life, the buzzword internet of things (IoT) has become very popular. In the context of IoT environment, proper device authentication is important. Recently, Wang et al. (2017) introduced an authentication protocol for secure communication between the embedded device and the cloud server over IoT networks. They insisted that their protocol is secure from various attacks in the open network. However, we show that Wang et al.'s (2017) protocol is not secure against impersonation attack, replay attack and it does not provide device's anonymity. To conquer these problems, we design an improvement of Wang et al.'s (2017) protocol. We show that our protocol is secure against various attacks; specifically, it is free from the attacks pointed out in Wang et al.'s (2017) protocol. Through performance evaluation of our proposed protocol with the existing related protocols, we show that the proposed protocol is suitable for IoT environment.

A Secure Three-Factor Authentication Protocol for E-Governance System Based on Multiserver Environments

In electronic governance (e-governance) system, citizens can access government services such as transportation, licensing and immigration remotely over the Internet. With the development of information and communication technology, usage of the e-governance system has been increased. To efficiently provide citizens with various e-governance services, multi-server environments can be applied to the e-governance system. However, messages can be inserted, deleted, and modified by a malicious adversary since these are transmitted through a public channel. Therefore, many researchers have suggested mutual authentication protocols for secure communication in multi-server environments. In 2020, Sudhakar <i>et al</i>. proposed a smart card based lightweight authentication protocol for multi-server environments. We analyze Sudhakar <i>et al</i>.&#x2019;s protocol to propose a secure mutual authentication protocol in the e-governance system based on multi-server environments. However, we disclosure that their protocol is not resistant to smart card stolen, insider, man-in-the-middle, user impersonation, and session key disclosure attacks. Moreover, Sudhakar <i>et al</i>.&#x2019;s protocol does not provide mutual authentication. To improve these security problems, we suggest a secure three-factor mutual authentication protocol for the e-governance system based on multi-server environments. We prove our protocol&#x2019;s security using informal security analysis, Burrows-Abadi-Needham (BAN) logic, and Real-or-Random (ROR) model. We also simulate our protocol utilizing Automated Validation of Internet Security Protocols and Applications (AVISPA) tool.We estimate the proposed protocol&#x2019;s security functionalities, computation costs, and communication overheads compared with existing related protocols. Consequently, we demonstrate that our protocol is secure and suitable for the e-governance system.

Model Checking M2M and Centralised IOT authentication Protocols.

It is very difficult to develop a perfect security protocol for communication over the IoT network and developing a reliable authentication protocol requires a detailed understanding of cryptography. To ensure the reliability of security protocols of IoT, the validation method is not a good choice because of its several disadvantages and limitations. To prove the high reliability of Cryptographic Security Protocols(CSP) for IoT networks, the functional correctness of security protocols must be proved secure mathematically. Using the Formal Verification technique we can prove the functional correctness of IoT security protocols by providing the proofs mathematically. In this work, The CoAP Machine to Machine authentication protocol and centralied IoT network Authentication Protocol RADIUS is formally verified using the well-known verification technique known as model checking technique and we have used the Scyther model checker for the verification of security properties of the respective protocols. The abstract protocol models of the IoT authentication protocols were specified in the security protocol description language and the security requirements of the authentication protocols were specified as claim events.

Analytical review on secure communication protocols for 5G and IoT networks

Analytical review on secure communication protocols for 5G and IoT networks

Analytical review on secure communication protocols for 5G and IoT networks

Analytical review on secure communication protocols for 5G and IoT networks

Research on a Secure Communication Protocol Based on National Secret SM2 Algorithm

Most of the public key algorithms used in the exchange of information for power data transmission protocols are RSA. The core of the key part of this kind of algorithm system has not been announced. For the domestic sensitive information data field, there are threats such as preset backdoors and security vulnerabilities. In response to the above problems, the article introduces a secure communication protocol based on the optimized Secret SM2 algorithm, which uses socket programming to achieve two-way encrypted communication between clients and services, and is able to complete the security protection of data encryption transmission, authentication, data tampering, etc., and proves through experiments that the security protocol is more secure than traditional methods, can effectively identify each other, carry out stable and controllable data encryption transmission, and has good applicability.

CardioID: Secure ECG-BCG Agnostic Interaction-Free Device Pairing

Usably secure ad-hoc device pairing fosters connectivity with hardware which is difficult to access (e.g., implanted) and grants convenience for ad-hoc short-term on-off pairing patterns (e.g. shared public domain). Examples are medical devices or fitness equipment. We present CardioID, an approach to extract features from heart rate variability for secure pairing keys that change with the randomness inherited in heart operation. Our processing chain is compatible with electrocardiogram (ECG, voltage), as well as ballistocardiogram (BCG, acceleration) type signals. Dissimilarities in locally generated sequences are accounted for using fuzzy cryptography exploiting Bose–Chaudhuri–Hocquenghem (BCH) codes. We propose a quantization to derive secure keys for cross BCG-ECG device pairing from heart-rate variability and analyze the performance in (inter- and intra-subject) BCG-to-ECG pairing. A secure communication protocol for Body Area Networks (BAN) is discussed. The attack surface of the protocol is analyzed, and we conduct a video-based attack study. In addition, two case studies with 5 (laboratory) and 20 (controlled in-field) subjects were conducted.

ASCP-IoMT: AI-Enabled Lightweight Secure Communication Protocol for Internet of Medical Things

The Internet of Medical Things (IoMT) is a unification of smart healthcare devices, tools, and software, which connect various patients and other users to the healthcare information system through the networking technology. It further reduces unnecessary hospital visits and the burden on healthcare systems by connecting the patients to their healthcare experts (i.e., doctors) and allows secure transmission of healthcare data over an insecure channel (e.g., the Internet). Since Artificial Intelligence (AI) has a great impact on the performance and usability of an information system, it is important to include its modules in a healthcare information system, which will be very helpful for the prediction of some phenomena, such as chances of getting a heart attack and possibility of a tumor, from the collected and analysed healthcare data. To mitigate these issues, in this paper, a new AI-enabled lightweight, secure communication scheme for an IoMT environment has been designed and named as ASCP-IoMT, in short. The security analysis of ASCP-IoMT is performed in different ways, such as an informal way and a formal way (through the random oracle model). ASCP-IoMT performs better than other similar schemes and provides superior security with extra functionality features as compared those for the existing state of art solutions. A practical implementation of ASCP-IoMT is also performed in order to measure its impact on various network performance parameters. The end to end delay values of ASCP-IoMT are 0.01587, 0.07440 and 0.17097 seconds and the throughput values of ASCP-IoMT are 5.05, 10.88 and 16.41 bps under the different considered cases, respectively. For AI-based Big data analytics phase, the values of computation time (seconds) for decision tree, support vector machine (SVM), and logistic regression are measured as 0.19, 0.23, and 0.27, respectively. Moreover, the different values of accuracy for decision tree, SVM and logistic regression are 84.24%, 87.57%, and 85.20%, respectively. From these values, it is clear that decision tree method requires less time than the other considered techniques, whereas accuracy is high in case of SVM.

Retracted: An Enhanced Hybrid Glowworm Swarm Optimization Algorithm for Traffic-Aware Vehicular Networks

A subclass of a Mobile Adhoc Network (MANET) is a Vehicular Adhoc Network (VANET). It consists of self-configuring moving vehicles which are called nodes. It is an inevitable ingredient of intelligent transportation systems. The vehicular network has some permanent devices called roadside units and moving devices called On Board Units (OBU). Every vehicle traveling on the network must possess the OBU. Safety and non-safety tidings are broadcasted in vehicular networks. Even vehicular network is derived from MANET and its characters are discriminated against the MANET. The various unique characteristics of VANETs are high mobility, changes in network topology, size of the network, long distance between the vehicles, frequently changing vehicle density, and limited time. Because of these special features, the traditional security and routing mechanisms are not suitable for VANETs. Also, the safety messages are modified or discarded by the attacker or any other node and it may lead to the loss of privacy, integrity, confidentiality, and authentication of the data. So to enhance the security of VANETs, it is very much essential to invent a secure communication protocol, to protect the infrastructure of the network and the confidentiality of the data. The simulation results reveal that the secure communication using certificate revocation approach, energy-efficient enhanced secure routing protocol, traffic-aware secure routing for VANETs using Hybrid Enhanced Glowworm Swarm Optimization (HEGSO), and trust model for secure communication in VANETs is ensuring the security in VANETs. When compared to peer existing routing protocols, the proposed scheme significantly reduces the packet failure ratio, response time, and throughput. When compared to ARIOR and I-AREOR, the proposed HEGSO technique diminished delays by 20% and 34%, respectively.

A pathology order interface based on the transmission of texts obtained from pathology requisitions and just-in-time construction of HL7 messages

BackgroundA pathology order interface using Health Level 7 standards (HL7) generally has an HL7 client program that gathers information from the clinical electronic medical record system, packages the information in the form of HL7 message, and sends the message using secure communication protocols to an HL7 interface engine located on the pathology side. We describe an alternative approach that transmits the texts obtained from requisitions, with subsequent just-in-time construction of HL7 messages. Materials and methodsThe order interface is between a dermatology clinic EMR and pathology information system. A text acquisition and processing program runs in the background in desktop computers in dermatology clinic so that a copy of pathology requisition text is obtained each time when the clinic prints a pathology requisition. Discrete elements of the data are extracted from this text, prepended to the text and saved on a shared drive within the dermatology office intranet. This text file is then transferred to pathology intranet using secure File Transfer Protocol (sFTP). Once received, an HL7 message construction program extracts the discrete data elements to construct an HL7 message. The HL7 message is then forwarded to an HL7 interface engine and entered into the pathology information system as an order. ResultsUsing an actual case as an example, the content and format of the information flowing through different steps of the interface are demonstrated. ConclusionsThe construction of such an interface does not involve the clinic EMR vendor, thus avoiding its associated cost and potential delay. This interface has advantages over our other order interfaces constructed using the conventional approach in that it does not require a change of order process and it avoids duplicate orders.

A Secure Communication System for Constrained IoT Devices-Experiences and Recommendations.

The Internet of Things networks connect a large number of devices and can be used for various purposes. IoT systems collect and process vast amounts of often sensitive data. Information security should be the key feature of an IoT network. In this paper, we present the IoT-Crypto—secure communication system for the Internet of Things. It addresses IoT features, such as constrained abilities of devices, needs to reduce the volume of the transmitted data and be compatible with the Internet. IoT-Crypto introduces an innovative, lightweight certificate format and trust model based on real-world business relations. It also specifies secure communication protocol, which uses underlying encrypted DTLS connection. This paper presents IoT-Crypto in the context of comparable solutions, discusses its distinctive features and implementation details. Results of tests and experiments performed in the IoT-Crypto network confirm that it works correctly and securely. Test network was also used to ascertain the suitability of encoding standards and BLE IPSP profile for the IoT. Directions of future work were discussed based on those results.

A Framework for Managing Device Association and Offloading the Transport Layer's Security Overhead of WiFi Device to Access Points.

Considering the resource constraints of Internet of Things (IoT) stations, establishing secure communication between stations and remote servers imposes a significant overhead on these stations in terms of energy cost and processing load. This overhead, in particular, is considerable in networks providing high communication rates and frequent data exchange, such as those relying on the IEEE 802.11 (WiFi) standard. This paper proposes a framework for offloading the processing overhead of secure communication protocols to WiFi access points (APs) in deployments where multiple APs exist. Within this framework, the main problem is finding the AP with sufficient computation and communication capacities to ensure secure and efficient transmissions for the stations associated with that AP. Based on the data-driven profiles obtained from empirical measurements, the proposed framework offloads most heavy security computations from the stations to the APs. We model the association problem as an optimization process with a multi-objective function. The goal is to achieve maximum network throughput via the minimum number of APs while satisfying the security requirements and the APs’ computation and communication capacities. The optimization problem is solved using genetic algorithms (GAs) with constraints extracted from a physical testbed. Experimental results demonstrate the practicality and feasibility of our comprehensive framework in terms of task and energy efficiency as well as security.

Cybersecurity of Cardiovascular Implantable Electronic Devices and Remote Programming.

The ability to remotely reprogram a cardiac implantable electronic device (CIED) and the ability to remotely install software or firmware updates would reduce the need for in-office visits and could provide a mechanism to rapidly deploy important software or firmware updates. The challenges of implementing remote reprogramming of cardiac implantable electronic devices are no longer technical. Using asymmetric cryptography, sophisticated end-to-end secure communication protocols and hardware accelerators, the resources required to identify and take advantage of a cybersecurity vulnerability of a single CIED would be very significant and likely well beyond the gain that an intruder would deem worthwhile.

A provably secure sharding based blockchain smart contract centric hierarchical group key agreement for large wireless ad‐hoc networks

SummaryGroup key management with privacy preserving and trust still remains a precarious and stimulating issue for securing multicast communications in an energy embarrassed large wireless ad‐hoc networks (WANETs). To address this, few researchers with the adaption of blockchain technology and practical usage of a privacy‐preserving smart contract as group controller made these group key agreements adaptable to WANET. However, proportionate to the increase in the size of the group, the processing load on the smart contract is also increasing, which made the capability of the smart contract could not work beyond a certain group size. Contemporary blockchain schemes suffer from various inherent shortcomings in their latency, scalability, and processing throughput. So, in this direction, we adopted blockchain sharding smart contract‐centric processing for making the key agreement adaptable to large WANETs. In this technique, we divide the large network intorsharded subnetworks withG1,G2,G3, …,Gras smart contract instances generated by group controllerG, which acts as subgroup controllers to their respective shards using blockchain sharding technique. This protocol is shown secure under the assumptions elliptic curve decision Diffie–Hellman and group‐elliptic curve Diffie–Hellman. The performance analysis demonstrates that the proposed protocol is highly proficient than examined protocols for secure communication in large WANETs.

An Adaptive Cluster based Vehicular Routing Protocol for Secure Communication

An Adaptive Cluster based Vehicular Routing Protocol for Secure Communication

Blockchain-Based Secure Communication for Space Information Networks

Space information networks (SINs) can be viewed as an expansion of a conventional network with a strong demand for high-speed, reliable, and real-time wireless communication, especially in extreme circumstances. However, there are a number of challenges associated with deploying SINs. With the emergence and wide application of blockchain technology, it is expected to relieve the trust issues of communication systems in SINs. In this article, we first propose a decentralized blockchain architecture for SINs, taking advantage of the increasing computation and communication capabilities of satellites. Then, by utilizing blockchain, we present two communication protocols, Fulgor and Rayo, designed for different application scenarios in SINs: Fulgor is a secure communication protocol between users and the ground station based on our proposed efficient authentication and key agreement protocol. Rayo is a user-to-user priva-cy-preserving communication protocol to protect the user's privacy and avoid DoS attacks. Finally, experiments are conducted and performed on a widely known blockchain platform, Hyperledger Fabric, and the findings demonstrate our proposal's feasibility.