A Provably Secure Lightweight Subtree-Based Short Signature Scheme With Fuzzy User Data Sharing for Human-Centered IoT

In this paper, a provably secure short certificateless proxy signature scheme is presented. It is an efficient proxy signature scheme with the shortest signature length compared with the other existing proxy signature schemes from pairings. It satisfies all the properties required for a proxy signature. We also provide complete security proofs for our new scheme. Our scheme is proved secure in the random oracle model with the assumption that the Computational Diffie-Hellman problem is infeasible.

Internet of Things (IoT) is increasingly used through smart devices with internet-based networks. Communication and data sharing between these devices have also grown in several ways. It is presenting a new dimension to the whole digital right management (DRM) industry. The main focus of IoT based DRM technology is to facilitate the authorised user for using multimedia content through smart devices. However, threats of information breach between communication channels also rapidly increasing, which is making content distribution a challenging task. Moreover, the computation and communication efficiency along with user privacy also requires an ideal DRM system. To address concerns of security, efficiency and privacy over internet-based networks, we design a content key distribution framework for DRM systems. The security proof of the proposed framework is given in the random oracle model along with informal security analysis. Moreover, the security analysis performed using widely adopted simulation tool, namely, ???Automated Validation of Internet Security Protocol and Application (AVISPA)???. The study of performance is conducted, which indicates that it fulfils the requirements of computation and computation efficiency.

SummaryIn a short signature scheme, the length of signature is much smaller than that of the general signature. Short signatures are widely used in low‐computation, low‐storage, and low‐bandwidth communication environments. The proof of security of all certificateless short signature schemes currently known is given in the random oracle model. In this paper, a new certificateless short signature scheme is constructed, and it is proved to be unforgeable in the standard model. Taken into account the computation costs, the scheme performs only one pairing operation, so it is more efficient than previous ones.

Since certificateless public key cryptosystem can solve the complex certificate management problem in the traditional public key cryptosystem and the key escrow problem in identity-based cryptosystem and the pairing computation is slower than scalar multiplication over the elliptic curve, how to design certificateless signature (CLS) scheme without bilinear pairings is a challenge. In this paper, we first propose a new pairing-free CLS scheme, and then the security proof is presented in the random oracle model (ROM) under the discrete logarithm assumption. The proposed scheme is more efficient than the previous CLS schemes in terms of computation and communication costs and is more suitable for the applications of low-bandwidth environments.

A blockchain-enabled privacy-preserving authentication management protocol for Internet of Medical Things

In the early years after the invention of public key cryptography by Diffie and Hellman in 1976, the design and evaluation of public key cryptosystems has been done merely in ad-hoc manner based on trial and error. The public key cryptosystem said to be secure as long as there is no successful cryptanalytic attack on it. But due to various successful attacks on the cryptosystems after development, the cryptographic community understood that this ad-hoc approach might not be good enough. The paradigm of provable security is an attempt to get rid of ad hoc design. The goals of provable security are to define appropriate models of security on the one hand, and to develop cryptographic designs that can be proven to be secure within the defined models on the other. There are two general approaches for structuring the security proof. One is reductionist approach and other is game-based approach. In these approaches, the security proofs reduce a well known problem (such as discrete logarithm, RSA) to an attack against a proposed cryptosystem. With this approach, the security of public key cryptosystem can be proved formally under the various models viz. random oracle model, generic group model and standard model. In this chapter, we will briefly explain these approaches along with the security proofs of well known public key cryptosystems under the appropriate model.

In Eurocrypt 2007, Camenisch, Hohenberger and Pedersen introduced the notion of multi-signer batch verification and proposed several efficient and practical batch verification schemes for signatures, including a very efficient batch verification scheme for a multi-signer setting without random oracles. This scheme is the most efficient in comparison with other existing schemes, but it can be applied only to the multi-signer setting. We observe that amongst all existing batch verification schemes, the fastest scheme for a single-signer setting is based on the BLS short signature whose proof need resort to random oracles. It is clear that batch verification for a single-signer setting is as important as for multi-signer scenarios in some applications, especially where the system has only a single signer, such as a secure time-stamping server or a certificate generation server. However, to our knowledge, the efficient batch verification of short signatures in a single-signer setting without random oracles is a challenging open problem. In this paper, we propose a new signature scheme from Gentry IBE that is as efficient as the BLS short signature scheme in batch verification. We are able to prove its security without random oracles. Our signature is approximately 320 bits in length, and a verification requires only two pairings for verifying n signatures from a single signer.

Implementing an improved ID‐based cryptographic mechanism is the main objective of the proposed work. In this article, an ID‐based cryptographic (IBC) technique using generalized discrete logarithm problem (GDLP) and the integer factorization problem (IFP) presented by Meshram et al have improved. Meshram et al have given IBC technique without using the bilinear pair and also, reveal that their technique can attain data protection and security objectives. Besides, their technique will deter the adversary from eavesdropping the encrypted information or the secret key of the user. However, it has found that their system carries a deadlock problem. Encryption process, as expected by the user, is not guaranteed to be secure. It is because the user may require private information about key authentication center (KAC), which has kept secret from users. Pang et al have proposed an improved technique that overcomes the deadlock problem. It has found that Pang et al have not discussed the analysis and proofs of security. In this article, generalized discrete logarithms in multiplicative group over finite fields and IFP have used to improve the technique and also a key distribution system has discussed. It has analyzed that the proposed strategy is safer than the technique described by Pang et al. Also, it has found that the proposed technique addresses the deadlock problem.

The Internet of Things (IoT) is a concept that is transforming our everyday life. Because of its capacity to change people's lives, it has become a vital element of our lives. IoT devices are being used by an increasing number of businesses because they provide new opportunities for wearable devices, home appliances, and healthcare. With all of these possibilities, the risks associated with IoT security are increasing. One of the most challenging aspects of any IoT application is device identification. Things in the IoT share and process data without the need for human interaction. As a result of their total authority, these entities must authenticate and recognize one another effectively. Failure to legitimately authenticating the IoT devices can make them vulnerable to a number of assaults such as DDoS and replay attacks. It is nearly hard to develop an effective authentication system due to the size and other characteristics of IoT. Although a lot of work has been done on this issue, the majority of these solutions rely on a centralized system. These centralized systems are segregated and incompatible with one another, making information exchange between them impossible. In addition, once a centralized authority is attacked, the user's privacy can be exposed easily. Proof of security, decentralization, and anonymity characteristics of blockchain can help address these issues. With blockchain technology applied to IoT systems, obstacles to IoT architecture development and security can be overcome. This paper, therefore, focuses on covering current advancements made in the application of blockchain for authentication in IoT. There is a lack of survey papers on the use of blockchain for authentication in IoT this paper will serve as an aide. This paper will also add to the knowledge of researchers who are interested in IoT security.

Ring signatures, introduced by Rivest, Shamir and Tauman (ASIACRYPT 2001), allow to sign a message on behalf of a set of users while guaranteeing authenticity and anonymity. Groth and Kohlweiss (EUROCRYPT 2015) and Libert et al. (EUROCRYPT 2016) constructed schemes with signatures of size logarithmic in the number of users. An even shorter ring signature, of size independent from the number of users, was recently proposed by Malavolta and Schroder (ASIACRYPT 2017). However, all these short signatures are obtained relying on strong and controversial assumptions. Namely, the former schemes are both proven secure in the random oracle model while the later requires non-falsifiable assumptions.

Electronic voting is an alternative mechanism of ballot based voting which empowers voters to cast their secret and secure vote electronically over a public channel. Many onward-thinking countries are adopting the electronic voting system to upgrade their election process. E-voting system is more complicated to construct. Thus it expects more security as compared to the postal voting system. The objective of the paper is twofold. Firstly, we proposed an efficient blind signature scheme using the identity-based cryptosystem in the random oracle model. The proposed scheme uses the combination of Boldyreva’s blind signature scheme and Choon-Cheon’s Identity-based signature. Additionally, we reduce its security to the Gap Diffie-Hellman Complexity (GDH). Under the adaptive chosen message and ID attacks it is secure against existential forgery attack. We show our proposed system performed better as compared to existing systems. Secondly, we construct an E-voting system based on our ID-based blind signature and Boneh’s short signature scheme (EVS-ID-BS) that fulfills the E-voting security requirements. To the best of our knowledge, EVS-ID-BS is the first practical implementation of E-voting system based on ID-BS Scheme which is constructed in the random oracle model. Proposed EVS-ID-BS scheme provides batch verifiability for a significantly large number of voters, needs less bandwidth cost and require less interaction with election authority.

A new formal model of security for proxy signature schemes is presented and a provably secure short proxy signature scheme is proposed from bilinear maps. The proposed proxy signature scheme is based on two short secure signature schemes. Finally, a security proof of the proposed proxy signature scheme is showed by reducing directly the security of the proxy scheme to the security of the two basic signature schemes. The proposed proxy signature scheme has the shortest proxy signatures, the proxy signature generation needs no pairing operation and verification needs just one pairing operation.

Since the Internet of Things (IoT) will be entwined with everything we use in our daily life, the consequence of security flaws escalates. Smart objects will govern most of the home appliances and car engines yielding potential disaster scenarios. In this context, successful attacks could lead to chaos and scary scenarios (www.darkreading.com). Unprotected personal information may expose sensitive and embarrassing data to the public and attacks may threaten not only our computers and smart devices, but our intimacy and perhaps our lives too. Because persons and objects will be bonded with each other, user consent becomes critical. Therefore, thing, object, and user Identity will be the focus of future IoT security solutions, yielding a Trust, Security, and Privacy (TSP) paradigm, which may constitute the Achilles' heel of IoT. While security issues are quite straightforward, mainly from background knowledge, privacy issues are far more complex. Privacy constitutes a rather challenging task, even for the m...

Survey on blockchain for Internet of Things

The increasing integration of Internet of Things (IoT) devices in Wireless Local Area Networks (WLANs) necessitates robust and efficient authentication mechanisms. While existing IoT authentication protocols address certain security concerns, they often fail to provide comprehensive protection against threats such as perfect forward secrecy violations, insider attacks, and key compromise impersonation, or impose significant computational and communication overhead on resource-constrained IoT systems. This paper presents a novel Extensible Authentication Protocol (EAP) based scheme for IoT-WLAN environments that addresses these security challenges while maintaining cost-effectiveness. Our approach utilizes elliptic curve cryptography and incorporates advanced features including perfect forward secrecy, strong identity protection, and explicit key confirmation. We provide a thorough security analysis using informal heuristics, formal methods (Random Oracle Model and BAN Logic), and automated verification with ProVerif. Performance evaluations demonstrate that our protocol achieves lower communication, storage, and computational costs compared to state-of-the-art solutions, with an average 79.6% reduction in computation time. A detailed comparison with existing schemes highlights the efficiency and enhanced security features of our proposed authentication mechanism for IoT-WLAN deployments.