Session Key Research Articles

Novel approaches to biometric security using enhanced session keys and elliptic curve cryptography

Biometric systems have taken the front seat as having core foundations in 21stcentury digital information technology, biometric systems hold a position therein or authentication processes. But the growing complexity of cyber threats requires greater security practices. This paper presents an innovative biometric security approach based on the combination of ECC and more advanced session keys. The goal is to strengthen biometric systems against sophisticated cyber threats ensuring fast and effective authentication methods. The proposed approach takes advantage of ECC’s strength in generating secure biometric data along with session keys dynamically to build a more resilient, yet flexible, security model. It is shown on the simulations that security metrics increase significantly in terms of resistance to common cryptographic attacks and data breaches without decreasing the system performance. This study describes not only the current vulnerabilities in biometric security systems towards more secure and reliable authentication systems by the convergence of biometric data to advanced cryptographic techniques.

Mechanism for Device Authentication and Session Key Generation in Industrial Internet of Things Networks

Mechanism for Device Authentication and Session Key Generation in Industrial Internet of Things Networks

Evaluation of Image Cryptography by Using Secret Session Key and SF Algorithm

In the unreliable domain of data communication, safeguarding information from unauthorized access is imperative. Given the widespread application of images across various fields, ensuring the confidentiality of image data holds paramount importance. This study centers on the session keys concept, addressing the challenge of key exchange between communicating parties through the development of a random-number generator based on the Linear Feedback Shift Register. Both encryption and decryption hinge on the Secure Force algorithm, supported by a generator. The proposed system outlined in this paper focuses on three key aspects. First, it addresses the generation of secure and randomly generated symmetric encryption keys. Second, it involves the ciphering of the secret image using the SF algorithm. Last, it deals with the extraction of the image by deciphering its encrypted version. The system’s performance is evaluated using image quality metrics, including histograms, peak signal-to-noise ratio, mean square error, normalized correlation, and normalized absolute error (NAE). These metrics provide insights into both encrypted and decrypted images, analyzing the extent to which the system preserves image quality. This assessment underscores the system’s capability to safeguard and maintain the confidentiality of images during data transmission.

Light-HHB: A Lighter Version of HHB for Resource-Constrained IoT Devices. Signature

This paper offers a lighter version of the harder HB protocol (hHB) denoted Light-hHB. This proposal uses the same framework as hHB, that is a two stages protocol: the first one for the establishment of a session key between the reader and the tag and the second one similar to HB+ which was proposed in Crypto ’05 by Hopper and Blum. We also introduce in this paper a novel and lightweight key exchange protocol inspired by the BB84 protocol named the non-quantum key exchange protocol. With the use of a practical implementation of the latter protocol in the first stage of Light-hHB, the transmission cost is drastically reduced compared to the one of hHB, which is its main drawback. In the context of resource-constrained IoT devices, Light- hHB is significantly more practical than hHB and achieves the same security goals.

Physical-Unclonable-Function-Based Lightweight Three-Factor Authentication for Multiserver Architectures

To support more complex and robust online services, enterprise-class applications prefer to interconnect multiple servers as the pedestal to enhance the system’s interoperability. However, the multiserver architecture always struggles to reconcile the trade-off between convenience and security, leaving users exposed to a variety of network attack threats. Existing security authentication schemes based on the Chebyshev Chaotic Map for multiserver architectures cannot provide three-factor (including password, biometric feature, and smart card) security. Therefore, we propose a novel Physical-Unclonable-Function-based Lightweight Three-Factor Authentication (PUF-LTA) scheme, which can achieve three-factor security. The PUF-LTA scheme mainly includes two components: (1) PUF-assisted registration and (2) lightweight mutual authentication with one-time interaction. During the PUF-assisted registration process, to defend against side-channel attacks on smart cards, the login credentials of users are XORed with the unique identifier generated by the PUF so that the adversary cannot obtain these secret login credentials. During the lightweight mutual authentication process, we combine the Chebyshev polynomial map and symmetric encryption/decryption to negotiate the session key between users and servers, which only needs one interaction. The security performance of PUF-LTA is theoretically proved by leveraging the random oracle model. In contrast with relevant multiserver authentication schemes, PUF-LTA is more efficient and suitable for resource-constrained multiserver environments because it can ensure secure three-factor authentication and support flexible biometrics and password updates with less computation cost.

An efficient key agreement and anonymous privacy preserving scheme for vehicular ad‐hoc networks with handover authentication

SummaryVehicular ad‐hoc networks (VANETs) have gained significant attention in recent years due to their potential to improve the safety and efficiency of transportation systems. VANETs are a type of wireless ad‐hoc network that enables communication between vehicles and between vehicles and roadside infrastructure. VANETs can also improve the efficiency of transportation systems by reducing traffic congestion and improving traffic flow. In addition to improving safety and efficiency, VANETs also face several challenges. One of the biggest challenges is ensuring the security and privacy of the data transmitted over the network. In this manuscript, an anonymous authentication scheme for VANET users is proposed along with privacy preservation and confidentiality. An efficient session key agreement protocol is designed for transferring location‐based information between the vehicle user and the roadside unit (RSU). Further, updated session keys are transferred to the subsequent RSU, when the vehicle user moves to another location. Moreover, re‐authentication of VANET users is completely evaded during to handover authentication, thus reducing the computational overhead. In addition, Resistance to different security assaults is discussed in this work through informal analysis. Finally, performance is compared with different relevant schemes and validated through Cygwin software.

Bilinear pairing-based access control and key agreement scheme for smart transportation

Internet of Vehicles (IoV) enabled Intelligent Transportation System (ITS) allows smart vehicles to communicate with other vehicles on road, humans (customers or pedestrians), infrastructure (parking areas, traffic lights etc), Internet, Cloud etc. The vehicles communicate with other entities over wireless open channels directly or indirectly through messages or beacons. Open channel allows various attacks, like replay, man-in-the-middle, impersonation, fabrication etc., during communication. Also, malicious vehicles can be deployed in the network to misuse or have an unauthorized access to the services. To mitigate these issues, we propose a new remote access control scheme that ensures the secure communication among the vehicles. The vehicles are dynamic in nature in an IoV paradigm, that is, they are not under fixed domains. Therefore, whenever a vehicle changes its location it has to register to the nearest trusted authority (TA) in offline or secured channel mode. To make it applicable, we propose remote registration of the vehicles via the TA. Access control mechanism occurs in two phases: 1) node authentication phase, where vehicles are remotely authenticated by TA and 2) key agreement phase, where after successful mutual authentication they compute a session key by using cryptographic techniques and pre-loaded information. The computed secret session keys are used for ensuring secure communications in future between two vehicles in a cluster as well. Informal security analysis along with formal security verification using the broadly-used Automated Validation of Internet Security Protocols and Applications (AVISPA) show that our access control scheme is secured against various potential attacks. We also show the competency of our scheme by comparing it with other existing schemes in terms of computation and communication costs.

Cryptanalysis of Secure ECC-Based Three Factor Mutual Authentication Protocol for Telecare Medical Information System

Telecare Medical Information System (TMIS) is gaining importance in the present COVID-19 crisis. TMIS as a technology, offers patients a range of remote medical services, incorporated into Wireless Body Area Network (WBAN). The patient’s medical report is confidentially transmitted over an open channel in TMIS environments. An attacker may attempt to compromise the security, such as forgery, replay, and impersonation attacks. To ensure secure communication, various authentication solutions have been introduced for TMIS. Biometrics and Elliptic Curve Cryptography-based mutual authentication protocol was recommended by Sahoo et al. in 2020 and is proved to have some loopholes in the protocol. We discovered, however, Sahoo et al. method is unable to prevent privileged insider attacks and insider attacks along with patient anonymity. Jongseok Ryu et al. recommended a ECC based three-factor mutual authentication protocol and ensures patient’s confidentiality for TMIS with proof of informal analysis. They have also performed formal security studies utilizing the Automated Validation of Internet Security Protocols and Applications (AVISPA), the Burrows-Abadi-Needham (BAN) logic and Real-Or-Random (ROR) model. However, we have reviewed the Jongseok Ryu et al.’s proposal. Based on his attacker model, we have examined that this scheme is unsafe against Message Substitution Attacks, Man-in-the-Middle attacks, Session Key Disclosure attacks, Privileged Insider attacks, and Stolen verifier attacks. we suggest a technique to be safe from the above security threats.

Complex-valued hyperchaos-assisted vector-valued artificial neural key coordination for improving security in the Industrial Internet of Things

This paper presents an innovative solution to the key exchange problem in the Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) implementation. Communication between connected devices must be safe and effective if the IIoT is to continue its fast growth. A crucial part of safeguarding the security and integrity of data shared across the IIoT ecosystem is played by cryptographic key exchange approaches. To provide reliable cryptographic key exchange in the IIoT context, this paper offers a unique approach that makes use of hyperchaotic with complex values, variable parameters, and vector-valued neural synchronization. The method addresses the continued demand for effective cryptographic key exchange across IIoT devices by using drive–response techniques to speed up important applications. Long assessment times in conventional algorithms make it difficult to hide neuronal coordination. As a result, this paper offers a condensed evaluation of ANNs’ (Artificial Neural Networks) synchronization by coordinating ANNs for session key exchange using a hyperchaotic setting. The recommended approach has several benefits, including the following: (1) introducing a hyperchaotic system to generate synchronized input vectors for ANN synchronization; (2) The adaptive rules of parameters-based control procedures are constructed mathematically; (3) reciprocal alignment of vector-valued ANNs to form a neural network for establishing session keys throughout the IIoT network; and (4) relevant numerical simulations are carried out to assess the scheme’s consistency. The recommended approach performs better than other methods that have been published in the literature, widening up opportunities for more effective and reliable industrial applications.

Anonymity preserving lightweight authentication protocol for resource-limited wireless sensor networks

Wireless sensor networks have been deployed in areas such as healthcare, military, transportation and home automation to collect data and forward it to remote users for further processing. Since open wireless communication channels are utilized for data transmissions, the exchanged messages are vulnerable to various threats such as eavesdropping and message falsifications. Therefore, many security solutions have been introduced to address these challenges. However, the resource-constrained nature of the sensor nodes makes it inefficient to deploy the conventional security schemes which require long keys for improved security. Therefore, lightweight authentication protocols have been presented. Unfortunately, majority of these schemes are still insecure while others incur relatively higher energy, computation, communication and storage complexities. In this paper, a protocol that deploys only lightweight one-way hashing and exclusive OR operations is presented. Its formal security analysis using Real-or Random (ROR) model demonstrates its capability to uphold the security of the derived session keys. In addition, its semantic security evaluation shows that it offers user privacy, anonymity, untraceability, authentication, session key agreement and key secrecy. Moreover, it is shown to resist attacks such as side-channeling, physical capture, eavesdropping, offline guessing, spoofing, password loss, session key disclosure, forgery and impersonations. In terms of performance, it has relatively lower communication overheads and improves the computation costs and supported security characteristics by 31.56% and 33.33% respectively.

Development of quantum-enhanced authenticated key agreement protocol for autonomous vehicles

Autonomous vehicle (AV) technology for self-driving has emerged as a promising solution to alleviate traffic congestion, reduce accidents, and optimize road capacity and fuel consumption. However, these sensors are vulnerable, making AVs susceptible to cyber threats. Consequently, security becomes an indispensable and integral facet of AV architecture. One such challenge is establishing a secure session key between the sensor device and other entities to ensure secure and authorized communication. While some existing schemes support pre-quantum era secure session key establishment within AV systems, post-quantum security's a discernible gap.This paper introduces an innovative quantum secure and highly efficient authentication and key agreement (AKA) scheme. We propose a cloud-centric three-factor authentication and key agreement system based on Ring Learning With Errors (RLWE) to provide robust authentication for both cloud and AVs. Furthermore, we have devised two distinct session keys within our authentication mechanism: one for secure remote control between users and AVs, and the other for ensuring enhanced privacy when accessing cloud-stored data via the cloud server. The efficacy of our proposed design is substantiated through a comprehensive comparative study that includes performance evaluation. Our proposed scheme has better efficiency than existing schemes and is suitable for the post-quantum era.

Method of Security Improvement for MST3 Cryptosystem Based on Automorphism Group of Ree Function Field


 
 
 This article is a part of a research endeavor focused on creating a quantum-resistant cryptosystem for secure encryption and decryption. Our approach employs a challenging word problem while emphasizing cost-effective implementation. Previous research has involved the development of encryption schemes based on high-order groups, offering potential security enhancements. The choice of the non-abelian group is a critical factor in shaping the encryption algorithms, feasibility of implementation, and system parameters. Our central objective is to design a cryptosystem that effectively thwarts quantum cryptanalysis. To achieve this, we employ a logarithmic signature along with a random cover across an entire finite non-abelian group. Our unique contribution lies in optimizing finite group selection, parameters, and circuit solutions for the logarithmic signature to meet specific security and implementation criteria. Within this paper, we introduce an encryption scheme utilizing automorphisms of the Ree functional field and propose a method for enhancing resistance to cryptanalysis through the binding of session keys.
 
 

A Rivest–Shamir–Adleman-Based Robust and Effective Three-Factor User Authentication Protocol for Healthcare Use in Wireless Body Area Networks

In healthcare, wireless body area networks (WBANs) can be used to constantly collect patient body data and assist in real-time medical services for patients from physicians. In such security- and privacy-critical systems, the user authentication mechanism can be fundamentally expected to prevent illegal access and privacy leakage occurrences issued by hacker intrusion. Currently, a significant quantity of new WBAN-oriented authentication protocols have been designed to verify user identity and ensure that body data are accessed only with a session key. However, those newly published protocols still unavoidably affect session key security and user privacy due to the lack of forward secrecy, mutual authentication, user anonymity, etc. To solve this problem, this paper designs a robust user authentication protocol. By checking the integrity of the message sent by the other party, the communication entity verifies the other party’s identity validity. Compared with existing protocols, the presented protocol enhances security and privacy while maintaining the efficiency of computation.

Privacy-Preserving Biometric Authentication: Cryptanalysis and Countermeasures

In this paper, we cryptanalyzed a Verifiable Threshold Predicate Encryption (VTPE) enabled Privacy-Preserving Biometric Authentication (PPBA) protocol reported in IEEE-TDSC and revealed discrepancies between its security claims and our security analysis. To be precise, the underlying authentication and key agreement scheme which is based on a challenge-response mechanism and watermark signal unsatisfactorily meets the following security scenario: (a) resistance to man-in-the-middle attacks, (b) biometric template protection, and (c) user anonymity and untraceability. To address these issues, we utilize Physical Unclonable Functions (PUF) to design a PUF driven Verifiable Threshold Predicate Encryption (PUF-VTPE) scheme and a secure PPBA protocol. The PUF-VTPE-based PPBA protocol equips with dual authentication using biometric and mobile device, which offers strong authenticity before establishing the session key. Simultaneously, the non-invertible property of PUF protects the biometric templates in the physical layer. The proposed storage-free mechanism that hides the challenge of device PUF in biometric template alleviates data leakage caused by storage challenges in PUF-based authentication protocols. Moreover, the experimental analysis suggests that the proposed PPBA protocol possesses ISO/IEC 24745 criteria of non-invertibility, unlinkability, and revocability. Additionally, the proposed PPBA protocol reduces the computational cost by about 50 <inline-formula xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"><tex-math notation="LaTeX">$\%$</tex-math></inline-formula> compared to that of the cryptanalyzed scheme.

A Novel Secure Session Key Agreement Protocol Based on Multivariate Polynomials

A Novel Secure Session Key Agreement Protocol Based on Multivariate Polynomials

An identity‐based secure VANET communication system

AbstractVehicular ad‐hoc networks (VANETs) are mobile networks intended to connect vehicles and provide secure communication. In this direction, many researchers worked on establishing secure communication in VANETs. However, VANETs still face potential security and privacy issues due to network openness. In this paper, we proposed a secure communication system for VANETs with privacy, consisting of an Enhanced privacy‐preserving mutual authentication procedure for safe communication in V2V and deriving a session key using vehicle identities and time stamps the secret values (nonce) shared during the session. Further, we compared the proposed technique with existing techniques, and satisfactory results were obtained in favor of the proposed less computation. Finally, a formal security model is established to secure against unknown key share attacks, replay attacks, and key‐compromised impersonation attacks.

A Novel Key Agreement Protocol Applying Latin Square for Cloud Data Sharing

In the cloud computing context, group data sharing, which is highly convenient for people who intend to share data with multiple members of a group, has attracted extensive research attention. However, the question of how data security might be ensured in this scenario, particularly as regards the security of group session keys, still remains an open one. To support secure group data sharing in cloud computing, it is essential to design a key agreement protocol characterized by both high flexibility and efficiency. Accordingly, this paper proposes a key agreement protocol based on Latin Square to reinforce the security of group data sharing. This protocol supports an arbitrary number of members to participate in a group and make equal contributions to generating a common session key among themselves. Compared with previous works, both the communication and the computational complexity in this protocol are significantly reduced. In addition, the services of authentication, key confirmation and fault tolerance are provided, enabling the protocol to resist different types of attacks. The results of both theoretical and experimental analysis indicate that the proposed protocol can efficiently support secure cloud data sharing for large-scale groups.

Two protocols for improving security during the authentication and key agreement procedure in the 3GPP networks

In the fifth generation of cellular networks (5G), data transmission with the highest possible speed and the lowest latency is one of the most essential 5G designing criteria. Furthermore, this generation is supposed to add new applications, features, and services to mobile phone networks with a high commitment to security and privacy. Hence, primitive protocols proposed for the 5G networks generally should be able to achieve the security requirements and also have low network overheads. In this paper, we focus on improving two primitive authentication and key agreement (AKA) protocols (5G AKA and EAP-AKA’). Our two improved protocols meet the security and performance requirements along with proper compatibility with the 3GPP security architecture. The paper’s security approach is to first construct a fixed-length key derivation scheme and show that it is strongly unforgeable under the adaptive chosen-ciphertext attack. Then, we demonstrate that, unlike the 3GPP AKA protocols, the message authentication codes (MACs) and session keys used in the improved protocols are also strongly unforgeable under the adaptive chosen-ciphertext attack. Moreover, we show that the improved protocols achieve some security requirements, such as mutual authentication, secure key agreement, and forward and backward secrecy of session keys. Furthermore, we explain informally that the improved protocols achieve other security requirements, such as following the 3GPP security architecture and resistance against known attacks. Finally, we compare the improved protocols with other AKA protocols regarding communication, computational, and storage overheads. This comparison shows that the improved protocols have appropriate overheads among other AKA protocols.

Artificial lizard search optimized fuzzy logic approach to addressing authentication and data security challenges in P2P cloud environments

The cloud is a widely used technology for inter-organizational data exchange and managing digital information. Even though it offers significant potential for user convenience it is subjected to different security as well as privacy issues due to the refusal of the cloud peer to disclose their identity to others. This arise the need for an effective data exchange among different cloud peers by preserving the anonymity and data privacy of the users. Hence, an anonymous secure data exchange solution is presented in this article by employing authentication as well as key agreement (AKA) protocol. The Fuzzy Logic-Based Anonymous Identity Generation Module is used to improve the data security and user privacy of the AKA protocol by establishing mutual authentication for multiple users via the session keys. The use of the peer-to-peer (P2P) cloud system in this study offers secure and reliable storage since data is partitioned into small blocks and stored in multiple locations. The fuzzy logic model offers registration services and prevents the P2P cloud from various attacks and temporary key leakage issues using the session key. The proposed model is tested on the NIST Special Database 302, and it demonstrates superior performance compared to existing methods. Experimental results confirm the effectiveness of the proposed method in achieving better security and resilience against various cyber-attacks. Furthermore, it minimizes communication overhead during the authentication process and provides resistance against various cyber-attacks. In this manner, the proposed model withstands different attacks and preserves user privacy when compared to the baseline security protocols.

Quantum data communication protection with the quantum permutation pad block cipher in counter mode and Clifford operators

Background: This article integrates two cryptographic schemes for quantum data protection. The result achieves authentification, confidentiality, integrity, and replay protection. The authentication, integrity, and replay aspects leverage quantum Clifford operators. Confidentiality of quantum messages is achieved using the quantum permutation pad (QPP) cryptographic scheme. Methods: Clifford operators and the QPP are combined into a block cipher in counter mode. A shared secret is used to seed a random number generator for the arbitrary selection of Clifford operators and quantum permutations to produce a signature field and perform encryption. An encryption and signature algorithm and a decryption and authentication algorithm are specified to protect quantum messages. Results: A symmetric key block cipher with authentication is described. The plain text is signed with a sequence of randomly selected Clifford operators. The signed plaintext is encrypted with a sequence of randomly selected permutations. The algorithms are analyzed. As a function of the values selected for the security parameters, there is an unavoidable risk of collision. The probability of block collision is modelled versus the number of blocks encrypted, for block sizes two, three, four, and five qubits. Conclusions: The scheme is practical but does not achieve perfect indistinguishability because of the risk of message collision. This is normal and unavoidable when fixed-size fields are assumed to make a scheme practical. The model can be used to determine the values of the security parameters and the lifetime of session keys to mitigate the risk of information leakage according to the needs of the scheme’s users. The session key can be renewed when a tolerable maximum number of messages has been sent.