Provably Secure Authentication Protocol for Emergency Vehicles Avoidance in VANETs

Emerging as the effective strategy of intelligent transportation system (ITS), vehicular ad hoc networks (VANETs) have the capacity of drastically improving the driving experience and road safety. In typical VANET scenarios, high mobility and volatility of vehicles result in dynamic topology of vehicular networks. That is, individual vehicle may pass through the effective domain of multiple neighboring road-side-units (RSUs) during a comparatively short time interval. Hence, efficient and low-latency cross-domain verification with all the successive RSUs is of significance. Recently, a lot of research on VANET authentication and key distribution was presented, while the critical cross-domain authentication (CDA) issue has not been properly addressed. Particularly, the existing CDA solutions mainly reply on the acquired confidential keying information from the neighboring entities (RSUs and vehicles), while too much trustworthiness is granted to the involved RSUs. Please note that the RSUs are distributively located and may be compromised or disabled by adversary, thus vital vehicle information may be revealed. Furthermore, frequent data interactions between RSUs and cloud server are always the major requisite so as to achieve mutual authentication with cross-domain vehicles, which leads to heavy bandwidth consumption and high latency. In this paper, we address the above VANET cross-domain authentication issue under the novel RSU edge networks assumption. Please note that RSUs are assumed to be semi-trustworthy entity in our design, where critical vehicular keying messages remain secrecy. Homomorphic encryption design is applied for all involved RSUs and vehicles. In this way, successive RSUs could efficiently verify the cross-domain vehicle with the transited certificate from the neighbor RSUs and vehicle itself, while the identity and secrets of each vehicle is hidden all the time. Afterwards, dynamic updating towards the anonymous vehicle identity is conducted upon validation, where conditional privacy preserving is available. Moreover, pairing-free mutual authentication method is used for efficiency consideration. Formal security analysis is given, proving that the HCDA mechanism yields desirable security properties on VANET cross domain authentication issue. Performance discussions demonstrate efficiency of the proposed HCDA scheme compared with the state-of-the-art.

Vehicular Ad-hoc Networks (VANETs) have high requirements for real-time data processing and security of message authentication. In order to solve the computing power asymmetry between vehicles and road side units (RSUs) in VANETs under high-density traffic, accelerate the processing speed of message authentication, and solve the problems of high computational overhead and long message authentication time caused by the use of bilinear pairing encryption technology in similar message-batch-authentication schemes, we propose introducing the concept of edge computing (EC) into VANETs and using idle nodes’ resources to assist the RSU in quickly authenticating messages to achieve computing power load balancing under multiple traffic flows. We propose introducing the idea of edge computing (EC) into VANETs and using idle nodes’ resources to assist RSUs in quickly authenticating messages. This scheme performs two identity-based message authentications based on the identity signature constructed by elliptic curve cryptography (ECC). One of them is the batch authentication of the vehicle sending messages by the RSU-authenticated vehicles with free resources, as temporary edge computing nodes (TENs), and the other is the authentication of the temporary TEN messages by the fixed-edge-node RSUs. The resources of the TEN are used to reduce the computational burden of RSUs and message authentication time, thereby improving the efficiency of system authentication of messages. We performed a security analysis of the scheme to prove its security properties and compared it with other schemes in terms of performance. The experimental results show that our scheme has a transmission overhead of 2400 bytes when there are four TENs, and the number of verification message requests reaches 20, which outperforms other methods. The gap will be more evident as the numbers of TEN and message verification requests increase.

A privacy-preserving authentication scheme based on Elliptic Curve Cryptography and using Quotient Filter in fog-enabled VANET

In this paper, the emerging Physical Unclonable Function (PUF) and Fast Identity Online (FIDO), are studied for the secure identification (ID) authentication of electronic contract. To solve the unstable response of PUF, error correction algorithms are applied. This paper proposes a high security authentication protocol, which is a FIDO protocol based on PUF. A comparison of the proposed protocol with three classical protocols is presented. The results shows that the proposed protocol has the advantages of anti-cloning and error-correcting compared with existing authentication protocols. Finally, the application of the FIDO protocol based on PUF into the electronic contract is also demonstrated.

Smart grid (SG) achieves more convenient and efficient power transmission through the rapid development of the information and communication technology. In addition to the transmission of electrical energy, the SG system also involves privacy and control information of service providers, which is closely related to people's livelihood. However, at present, the data in the SG system are transmitted in the form of plaintext, which does not have complete protection measures for entity privacy and communication data security. Focusing on preserving entity privacy and data security, this article proposes an anonymous secure authentication protocol (ASAP-SG) for the SG environment. Based on elliptic curve cryptography and physical unclonable function, ASAP-SG can realize authentication and key agreement between smart meters and service providers. The security of ASAP-SG has been verified with proverif tool and proven strictly under the real-or-random model. Furthermore, heuristic analysis manifests that ASAP-SG can successfully resist known security attacks. Finally, a fully comparison with the other five most advanced schemes reveals that ASAP-SG consumes the optimal computation cost on both smart meters and service providers and reduces the communication overhead by 33.3%–45.8%, on the basis of satisfying ten security objectives. These features make ASAP-SG more suitable for resource-constrained SG environment.

Machine Learning (ML) is a well-studied strategy in modeling Physical Unclonable Functions (PUFs) but reaches its limits while applied on instances of high complexity. To address this issue, side-channel attacks have recently been combined with modeling techniques to make attacks more efficient [25][26]. In this work, we present an overview and survey of these so-called “hybrid modeling and side-channel attacks” on PUFs, as well as of classical side channel techniques for PUFs. A taxonomy is proposed based on the characteristics of different side-channel attacks. The practical reach of some published side-channel attacks is discussed. Both challenges and opportunities for PUF attackers are introduced. Countermeasures against some certain side-channel attacks are also analyzed. To better understand the side-channel attacks on PUFs, three different methodologies of implementing side-channel attacks are compared. At the end of this paper, we bring forward some open problems for this research area.

The vehicular ad-hoc network (VANET) is a promising technology in near future. VANET allows vehicles to communicate with each other and with roadside units (RSUs). Wireless Access in Vehicular Environment (WAVE), defined by IEEE, provides the Internet connectivity for vehicles as well as vehicle-to-vehicle (V2V) and vehicle-to-infrastructure (V2I) communication. RSUs can form a wireless mesh network (WMN) as a backbone infrastructure to enhance the performance of VANET. However, WAVE supports only one-hop communications for IP packets in VANET, and existing researches do not consider the compatibility between VANET and WMN infrastructure formed by RSUs. We propose the extended WMN (ExWMN) which has the feasibility to extend WMN to VANET domain. In ExWMN, the vehicles can send IP packets to an access router by using the multi-hop capability of WMN. ExWMN uses the addressing scheme of WMN for the extended VANET domain and exploits geographical routing protocols instead of existing routing protocols of WMN due to VANET characteristics such as mobility and dynamically changing network topologies. ExWMN supports the compatibility between the extended VANET and a WMN infrastructure due to RSUs, which provide a bridging function between them. This paper presents the architecture and the detailed procedures of the ExWMN.

The introduction of Physical Unclonable Functions (PUFs) has been originally motivated by their ability to resist physical attacks, particularly in anti-counterfeiting scenarios. In these one-way functions, machine learning, cryptanalysis, and side-channel attacks are common attack vectors threatening the promised PUF's property of unclonability. These attacks often emulate a PUF by employing a large number of Challenge-Response Pairs (CRPs). Some solutions to defeat such attacks are based on a protocol, where a model of the underlying PUF primitives should be extracted during the enrollment phase. In this article, we introduce a novel physical cloning approach applicable to FPGA-based implementations, which allows extracting the PUF's unique physical characteristics with a few number of Challenge-Response Pairs (CRPs), that increases only linearly for a higher number of PUF components. Indeed, our proposed approach significantly accelerates the enrollment phase and makes complex enrollment protocols feasible. Our core idea relies on an on-chip delay sensor, which can be realized by ordinary FPGA components, measuring the unique characteristic of the PUF elements. We demonstrate the feasibility of our introduced technique by practical experiments on different FPGA platforms, cloning a couple of (complex) PUF constructions, i.e., XOR APUF, iPUF, composed of delay-based Arbiter PUFs.

This manuscript addresses a novel MRAM-based physically unclonable function (PUF). The PUF responses are generated using the unique energy-tilt, which is an outcome of the random geometric variations in the MRAM cells. We have verified relevant attributes of this PUF through extensive magnetic simulations and in-house fabrication results. Our fabricated PUF cells generate entropy as high as 0.99, which is comparable to most of its competitors. To our knowledge, the footprint of the PUF cells is also lower than the majority of silicon PUFs. Also, the authentication control algorithm for this PUF requires very low additional control-steps. We conclude our discussion of this novel PUF with a study of authentication overhead and protocols required by the PUF system in terms of area, power, and delay.

Communication security is essential for the proper functioning of the Internet of Things. Traditional approaches that rely on cryptographic keys are vulnerable to side-channel attacks. Physical Unclonable Functions (PUFs), leveraging unavoidable and irreproducible variations of integrated circuits to produce responses unique for individual PUF devices, are emerging as promising candidates as security primitives to provide keyless solutions. Before a PUF can be adopted for real applications, the PUF must be thoroughly examined to understand its various properties for its application feasibility. In this paper, we study XOR PUFs for broad ranges of values for circuit architecture parameters. XOR PUFs have been extensively studied, and have been shown to be unable to withstand machine learning attacks for 64-bit XOR PUFs with less than ten component PUFs. Attack methods employed in existing studies need a large number of challenge-response pairs (CRPs), which are obtainable only if the PUF has an open access interface. When PUF-embedded devices equipped with mutual authentication or response obfuscating techniques, it is difficult for attackers to accumulate large numbers of CRPs. With only a small number of accumulated CRPs available to attackers, small size PUFs, like XOR PUFs with a small number of component PUFs and stages, may become resistant to machine learning attacks. Since smaller sizes mean less resource-demanding, it is worthwhile to examine such PUFs which have usually been considered unsafe against attacks. Such are thoughts that have been motivating us in this paper to explore the PUF performances for a wide range of values of the PUF architecture parameters.

With the popularity of vehicular ad-hoc networks (VANETs), the secure communications between the vehicle and vehicle as well as between the vehicle and infrastructure have attracted people’s great attention. Vehicle privacy protection (including vehicle identity privacy and location privacy), high mobility, density, and limited bandwidth are also a problem that cannot be negligible. In VANETs, it is necessary to design a message authentication protocol to ensure data transmission security, vehicle anonymity, and unlinkability. Considering the resource-constrained environments, the certificateless aggregate signature (CLAS) scheme can compress <inline-formula xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$n$ </tex-math></inline-formula> signatures of <inline-formula xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$n$ </tex-math></inline-formula> messages from <inline-formula xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$n$ </tex-math></inline-formula> vehicles into a single signature, which reduces the signature verification time and storage overhead at the roadside unit. Based on the aforementioned analysis, we design a fully aggregated conditional privacy-preserving CLAS scheme (CPP-CLAS) for VANETs. Instead of using the expensive bilinear pairings and map-to-point hash function operations, the proposed CPP-CLAS scheme uses the elliptic curve cryptosystem (ECC) and general hash functions. Also, with the use of CLAS technology, the computation and communication cost of the scheme are significantly reduced. In addition, based on the elliptic-curve discrete logarithm problem (ECDLP), we prove that the CPP-CLAS scheme is existential unforgeability under adaptively chosen message attacks (EUF-CMAs). Performance and security analyses show that the CPP-CLAS scheme is more efficient and secure than other existing related schemes.

Vehicular ad hoc networks have played a key role in intelligent transportation systems that considerably improve road safety and management. This new technology allows vehicles to communicate and share road information. However, malicious users may inject false emergency alerts into vehicular ad hoc networks, preventing nodes from accessing accurate road information. In order to assure the reliability and trustworthiness of information through the networks, assessing the credibility of nodes has become a critical task in vehicular ad hoc networks. A new scheme for malicious node detection is proposed in this work. Multiple factors are fed into a fuzzy logic model for evaluating the trust for each node. Vehicles are divided into clusters in our approach, and a road side unit manages each cluster. The road side unit assesses the credibility of nodes before accessing vehicular ad hoc networks. The road side unit evicts a malicious node based on trust value. Simulations are used to validate our technique. We demonstrate that our scheme can detect and evict all malicious nodes in the vehicular ad hoc network over time, lowering the ratio of malicious nodes. Furthermore, it has a positive impact on selfish node participation. The scheme increases the success rate of delivered data to the same level as the ideal cases when no selfish node is present.

Physical Unclonable Functions (PUFs) are expected to represent an important solution for secure ID generation and authentication etc. In general, PUFs are considered to be more secure the larger their output entropy. However, the entropy of conventional PUFs is lower than the output bit length, because some output bits are random numbers, which are regarded as unnecessary for ID generation and discarded. We propose a novel PUF structure based on a Butterfly PUF with multiple RS latches, which generates larger entropy by utilizing location information of the RS latches generating random numbers. More specifically, while conventional PUFs generate binary values (0/1), the proposed PUF generates ternary values (0/1/random) in order to increase entropy. We estimate the entropy of the proposed PUF. According to our experiment with 40 FPGAs, a Butterfly PUF with 128 RS latches can improve entropy from 116 bits to 192.7 bits, this being maximized when the frequency of each ternary value is equal. We also show the appropriate RS latch structure for satisfying this condition, and validate it through an FPGA experiment.

In Vehicular Ad-hoc Networks (VANETs), vehicles exchange information in real-time by collaborating with Roadside Units (RSUs) and On-Board Units (OBUs) to enhance traffic efficiency and safety. Therefore, guaranteeing the integrity and confidentiality of messages, as well as the authenticity of the sender's identity, is crucial for establishing reliable communication. To address the aforementioned issues, this paper proposes an improved unforgeable aggregate signcryption scheme for VANETs, where a receiver can efficiently verify the legitimacy of multiple message sources simultaneously. The scheme enhances the security and privacy of VANETs by deploying a mapping between anonymous identities and public keys on a blockchain. Security analysis demonstrated that, under the hardness assumptions of the Elliptic Curve Discrete Logarithm Problem (ECDLP) and the Computational Diffie-Hellman Problem (CDHP), this scheme can achieve ciphertext unforgeability and confidentiality. Compared to existing related schemes, our proposed solution significantly reduces computational costs in both the signcryption and unsigncryption (especially in batch processing) phases.

The smart water monitoring system (SWMS) integrated with IoT provides improved services to the society with minimal effort. At the same time, IoT connectivity brings various active, passive, and physical security threats to the system. The conventional cryptosystems are infeasible for resource-constrained IoT devices and susceptible to physical attacks. Physically unclonable function (PUF) emerged as a low-cost, convenient hardware security primitive. In this work, we have proposed a secure (against active, passive, and physical attacks) authentication and key sharing protocol for the SWMS with low overhead. The extensive security analysis illustrates the durability of the protocol. The performance analysis shows the proposed protocol's minimal computation, communication overhead, and resource utilization. Using a mathematical PUF model (i.e., soft model) reduces the server-side burden of storing PUF challenge-response pairs. Moreover, the protocol deals with the noisy PUF responses to maintain the correctness and accuracy of the authentication process. Finally, a comparison with the existing works establishes the proposed protocol's superiority in the SWMS.