Untrusted Intermediaries Research Articles

Performance Evaluation of Group OSCORE for Secure Group Communication in the Internet of Things

The Constrained Application Protocol (CoAP) is a major application-layer protocol for the Internet of Things (IoT). The recently standardized security protocol Object Security for Constrained RESTful Environments (OSCORE) efficiently provides end-to-end security of CoAP messages at the application layer, also in the presence of untrusted intermediaries. At the same time, CoAP supports one-to-many communication, targeting use cases such as smart lighting and building automation, firmware update, or emergency broadcast. Securing group communication for CoAP has additional challenges. It can be done using the novel Group Object Security for Constrained RESTful Environments (Group OSCORE) security protocol, which fulfills the same security requirements of OSCORE in group communication environments. While evaluations of OSCORE are available, no studies exist on the performance of Group OSCORE on resource-constrained IoT devices. This article presents the results of our extensive performance evaluation of Group OSCORE over two popular constrained IoT platforms, namely Zolertia Zoul and TI Simplelink. We have implemented Group OSCORE for the Contiki-NG operating system and made our implementation available as open source software. We compared Group OSCORE against unprotected CoAP as well as OSCORE. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first comprehensive and experimental evaluation of Group OSCORE over real constrained IoT devices.

Combating Software and Sybil Attacks to Data Integrity in Crowd-Sourced Embedded Systems

Crowd-sourced mobile embedded systems allow people to contribute sensor data, for critical applications, including transportation, emergency response and eHealth. Data integrity becomes imperative as malicious participants can launch software and Sybil attacks modifying the sensing platform and data. To address these attacks, we develop (1) a Trusted Sensing Peripheral (TSP) enabling collection of high-integrity raw or aggregated data, and participation in applications requiring additional modalities; and (2) a Secure Tasking and Aggregation Protocol (STAP) enabling aggregation of TSP trusted readings by untrusted intermediaries, while efficiently detecting fabricators. Evaluations demonstrate that TSP and STAP are practical and energy-efficient.

Image Authentication System using LDPC and Watermarking Technique

Now a days, the rate of using digital image is increasing exponentially because of its low cost and easy manipulation property. It is obvious that digital images captured from CCD cameras or other digital image devices have to be analyzed and determined before processing it, to keep the integrity and ensure the accuracy and reliability of the digital image. We need some sort of robust methods and standard procedures that guarantee and strengthen the authenticity of digital image. Image authentication is a technique that analyzes a digital image and determines whether it is altered or not. Image authentication technique is very useful for various organizations such as health care, law enforcement agencies and insurance sector etc. Image authentication is also important in content delivery via untrusted intermediaries, such as peer-to-peer (P2P) file sharing. Untrusted intermediaries might tamper the contents of image. Distinguishing the legitimate diversity of encodings from malicious manipulation is the challenge addressed in this paper. We developed a LDPC and watermark based new approach for image authentication. With the help of this approach we can authenticate images effectively. In our technique, we provide LDPC quantized image projection and the Encrypted image as authentication data. As well as watermark image that was embedded into original image to identify legitimate or illegitimate state of image authentication system. These data can be correctly decoded only with the help of an authentic image as side information. This technique provides the desired robustness against legitimate encoding alteration, while detecting illegitimate variations.

Implementation of Technique for Image Authentication using Regular LDPC Codes

In this paper, we propose an approach using encryption technique and LDPC source coding for the image authentication problem. Image authentication is important in content delivery via untrusted intermediaries, such as peer-topeer (P2P) file sharing. Many differently encoded versions of the original image might exist. In addition, intermediaries might tamper with the contents. Distinguishing legitimate diversity from malicious manipulations is the challenge addressed in this research. The key idea is to provide a Slepian-Wolf encoded quantized image projection as authentication data which is again encrypted using a secret key cryptography before ready to send. This can be correctly decoded with the help of an authentic image as side information. This mechanism provides the desired robustness against legitimate variations while detecting illegitimate modification. The decoder incorporating expectation maximization (EM) algorithms can authenticate images which have undergone contrast, brightness and even warping adjustments. Our novel authentication system also others tampering localization by using inference over a factor graph that represents tampering models.