T-PBFT: A Blockchain-Based Authentication Protocol with Trust-Aware Consensus for Secure and Scalable Internet of Vehicles

A decentralized framework for device authentication and data security in the next generation internet of medical things

Hadoop framework has been evolved to manage big data in cloud. Hadoop distributed file system and MapReduce, the vital components of this framework, provide scalable and fault-tolerant big data storage and processing services at a lower cost. However, Hadoop does not provide any robust authentication mechanism for principals’ authentication. In fact, the existing state-of-the-art authentication protocols are vulnerable to various security threats, such as man-in-the-middle, replay, password guessing, stolen-verifier, privileged-insider, identity compromization, impersonation, denial-of-service, online/off-line dictionary, chosen plaintext, workstation compromization, and server-side compromisation attacks. Beside these threats, the state-of-the-art mechanisms lack to address the server-side data integrity and confidentiality issues. In addition to this, most of the existing authentication protocols follow a single-server-based user authentication strategy, which, in fact, originates single point of failure and single point of vulnerability issues. To address these limitations, in this paper, we propose a fault-tolerant authentication protocol suitable for the Hadoop framework, which is called the efficient authentication protocol for Hadoop (HEAP). HEAP alleviates the major issues of the existing state-of-the-art authentication mechanisms, namely operating-system-based authentication, password-based approach, and delegated token-based schemes, respectively, which are presently deployed in Hadoop. HEAP follows two-server-based authentication mechanism. HEAP authenticates the principal based on digital signature generation and verification strategy utilizing both advanced encryption standard and elliptic curve cryptography. The security analysis using both the formal security using the broadly accepted real-or-random (ROR) model and the informal (non-mathematical) security shows that HEAP protects several well-known attacks. In addition, the formal security verification using the widely used automated validation of Internet security protocols and applications ensures that HEAP is resilient against replay and man-in-the-middle attacks. Finally, the performance study contemplates that the overheads incurred in HEAP is reasonable and is also comparable to that of other existing state-of-the-art authentication protocols. High security along with comparable overheads makes HEAP to be robust and practical for a secure access to the big data storage and processing services.

Nanotechnology led the Internet of Nano Things to fast development through which nanoscale devices support healthcare operations and industrial automation and smart infrastructure applications. The ultra-small dimension together with decreased power capabilities and open network access of these devices poses essential security risks which exceed the capabilities of traditional security mechanisms. The authors present an integrated security solution which unites AI-powered intrusion detection with blockchain authentication and light-weight cryptographic protocols tailored for nanoscale operations. The proposed system improves secure communication through hybrid THz-molecular channel technologies which establish energy-efficient and fast data exchange for industrial and biological environments. A neuromorphic AI processing unit along with energy-harvesting circuits strengthen system reliability through maintaining low-power operation in the design. In simulation and testing using COMSOL, NS-3, and MATLAB the architectural system maintains threat detection performance at a 98.5% True Positive Rate with energy usage falling between 5 to 10 nanojoules per task. The encryption latency reached 50–100 microseconds which proved better than conventional IoNT security models regarding efficiency along with scalability performance. This research advances the process of creating decentralized security frameworks for IoNT because they implement quantum-resistant technologies which protect critical real-time applications from autonomous operations. Advanced nanoscale materials function with intelligent security mechanisms and hybrid communication protocols to create resistant next-generation IoNT infrastructures according to the study.

The authentication system plays a crucial role in the context of GLObal MObility NETwork (GLOMONET) where Mobile User (MU) often need to seamless and secure roaming service over multiple Foreign Agents (FA). However, designing a robust and anonymous authentication protocol along with a user privacy is essential and challenging task. Due to the resource constrained property of mobile terminals, the broadcast nature of a wireless channel, mobility environments are frequently exposed to several attacks. Many researchers focus their interests on designing an efficient and secure mobile user authentication protocol for mobility networks. Very recently (in 2018), Xu et al presented the novel anonymous authentication system for roaming in GLOMONET, and insisted that their protocol is more secure than existing authentication protocols. The security strength of Xu et al.’s authentication protocol is analysed and identified that the protocol is vulnerable to stolen verifier attack, privileged insider attack, impersonation attack and denial of service attack. In-fact, the protocol suffers from clock synchronization problem and cannot afford local password-verification to detect wrong passwords quickly. As a remedy, we proposed an efficient and robust anonymous authentication protocol for mobility networks. The proposed mobile user authentication protocol achieves the provable security and has the ability to resist against numerous network attacks. Besides, the correctness of the novel authentication protocol is validated using formal security tool called AVISPA (Automated Validation of Internet Security Protocols & Applications). Finally, the performance analysis and simulation results reveals that the proposed authentication protocol is computationally efficient and practically implementable in resource limited mobility environments.

A novel hybrid authentication protocol utilizing lattice-based cryptography for IoT devices in fog networks

With the rapid growth of wireless medical sensor networks (WMSNs) based healthcare applications, protecting both the privacy and security from illegitimate users, are major concern issues since patient’s precise information is vital for the proper diagnosis procedure. So, authentication protocol is one of the efficient mechanisms to deal with trustworthy and authentic users. Several authentication protocols have been proposed in WMSNs environment. However, the most of these protocols are so susceptible to security threats and not suitable for practical use. In this article, recently proposed Amin et al.’s authentication scheme is reviewed and some vulnerabilities like off-line password guessing attack, user impersonation attack, known session-key temporary information attack, the revelation of secret parameters, and identity guessing attack are pointed out. To overcome all the above mentioned vulnerabilities, we have proposed an enhanced three-factor based remote user authentication protocol in WMSNs environment. Further, the proposed protocol is validated using Burrows–Abadi–Needham logic and then simulated using Automated Validation of Internet Security Protocols and Applications tool. Moreover, the security analysis ensures that the proposed protocol is well protected from various types of malicious attacks. In addition, the performance evaluation shows better efficiency and suitability of our protocol over other related protocols.

It is evident from the past literature that in any authentication protocol there is a trade-off between efficiency and security. This paper aims to solve this problem in the domain of heterogeneous wireless networks, by proposing an efficient authentication protocol which operates in two modes namely full authentication and fast re-authentication. This paper proposes a protocol which mitigates the delay in authentication by reducing the number of message excahnges in full authentication procedure and reducing the number of authenticating parties in fast re-authentication procedure. This paper also used hash-chain technique to guarantee safety and freshness of the information. AVISPA (Autmated Validation of Internet Security Protocols and Applications) was used to formally analyse the security of the protocol. Some other existing authentication protocols were also analyzed and compared with our proposed protocol. Our analysis showed that the proposed authentication protocol is efficient while guaranteeing the security and improved performance of the heterogeneous wireless networks.KeywordsAuthentication protocolAuthentication delayHash chainAVISPA

Authentication protocol plays an important role in the short-range wireless communications for the Near Field Communication (NFC) technology. Due to the shared nature of wireless communication networks, there are several kinds of security vulnerabilities. Recently, a pseudonym-based NFC protocol (PBNFCP) has been proposed to withstand the security pitfalls found in the existing conditional privacy preserving security protocol (CPPNFC). However, this paper further analyzes PBNFCP and shows that it still fails to prevent the claimed security properties, such as impersonation attacks against an adversary, who is a malicious registered user having a valid pseudonym and corresponding private key. In order to overcome these security drawbacks, this paper proposes a secure and efficient authentication protocol (SEAP) for NFC applications using lifetime-based pseudonyms. The proposed SEAP is simulated for the formal security verification using the widely-accepted AVISPA (Automated Validation of Internet Security Protocols and Applications) tool. The simulation results show that SEAP is secure. The rigorous security and performance analysis shows that the proposed SEAP is secure and efficient as compared to the related existing authentication protocols for NFC applications.

Blockchain technology is a game-changer for the improvement of authentication mechanisms in realϋtime embedded systems implemented in industrial automation, particularly in the situations where internet is not available or inaccessible. This work focuses on integrating blockchain formats directly on embedded systems to create a decentralized, tamper-proof authentication protocol which operates without relying on outside networks. Drawing on the recovery properties of blockchain, e.g., immutability, transparency, distributed consensus, etc, this research seeks to provide solutions for significant security problems such as unauthorized access, data falsification as well as a single-point-of-failure for traditional centralized authentication models. The architecture of the proposed system integrates lightweight blockchain clients in the M2M industrial controllers and sensors to ensure secure identity verification and real-time transaction logging. This also avoids the reliance on cloud or centralized servers, thus minimizing latency and improving system robustness. Using thorough simulations, as well as on-the-fly implementation on real embedded hardware, the paper analyzes the performance overhead, scalability and security effectiveness of blockchain-based authentication. Process the performance metrics throughout, latency, energy, fault tolerance, etc. to guarantee that it is feasible for industrial automation under strict real-time constraints is studied. Additionally, the paper investigates consensus algorithms tailored to resource constrained devices and characterizes the trade-offs between security assurances and computational requirements. Smart contract capabilities are integrated to automate the policies of authentication and access control, resulting in dynamic reconfigurability under diverse operational scenarios. Research is also conducted on how to integrate with industrial communication protocols, Especially compatibility between legacy systems and the new systems. The experimental results show that the blockchain-based authentication scheme does effectively improve security to prevent identity spoofing and unauthorized command execution and response functions at real time. This solution is decentralized and remains resilient under network splits and cyberattacks on the communication infrastructure. The results demonstrate that blockchain technology can provide the industrial embedded system with self-reliant transport security, and thus enable the stronger and trust worthier automated procedures within smart factories and critical infrastructures.

The concept of two-factor multiserver authentication protocol was developed to avoid multiple number of registrations using multiple smart-cards and passwords. Recently, a variety of two-factor multiserver authentication protocols have been developed. It is observed that the existing RSA-based multiserver authentication protocols are not suitable in terms of computation complexities and security attacks. To provide lower complexities and security resilience against known attacks, this article proposes a two-factor (password and smart-card) user authentication protocol with the RSA cryptosystem for multiserver environments. The comprehensive security discussion proved that the known security attacks are eliminated in our protocol. Besides, our protocol supports session key agreement and mutual authentication between the application server and the user. We analyze the proof of correctness of the mutual authentication and freshness of session key using the BAN logic model. The experimental outcomes obtained through simulation of the Automated Validation of Internet Security Protocols and Applications (AVISPA) S/W show that our protocol is secured. We consider the computation, communication, and storage costs and the comparative explanations show that our protocol is flexible and efficient compared with protocols. In addition, our protocol offers security resilience against known attacks and provides lower computation complexities than existing protocols. Additionally, the protocol offers password change facility to the authorized user.

With the booming integration of IoT technology in our daily life applications such as smart industrial, smart city, smart home, smart grid, and healthcare, it is essential to ensure the security and privacy challenges of these systems. Furthermore, time‐critical IoT applications in healthcare require access from external parties (users) to their real‐time private information via wireless communication devices. Therefore, challenges such as user authentication must be addressed in IoT wireless sensor networks (WSNs). In this paper, we propose a secure and lightweight three‐factor (3FA) user authentication protocol based on feature extraction of user biometrics for future IoT WSN applications. The proposed protocol is based on the hash and XOR operations, including (i) a 3‐factor authentication (i.e., smart device, biometrics, and user password); (ii) shared session key; (iii) mutual authentication; and (iv) key freshness. We demonstrate the proposed protocol’s security using the widely accepted Burrows–Abadi–Needham (BAN) logic, Automated Validation of Internet Security Protocols and Applications (AVISPA) simulation tool, and the informal security analysis that demonstrates its other features. In addition, our simulations prove that the proposed protocol is superior to the existing related authentication protocols, in terms of security and functionality features, along with communication and computation overheads. Moreover, the proposed protocol can be utilized efficiently in most of IoT’s WSN applications, such as wireless healthcare sensor networks.

Wireless sensor networks (WSN) are widely used to provide users with convenient services such as health-care, and smart home. To provide convenient services, sensor nodes in WSN environments collect and send the sensing data to the gateway. However, it can suffer from serious security issues because susceptible messages are exchanged through an insecure channel. Therefore, secure authentication protocols are necessary to prevent security flaws in WSN. In 2020, Moghadam et al. suggested an efficient authentication and key agreement scheme in WSN. Unfortunately, we discover that Moghadam et al.’s scheme cannot prevent insider and session-specific random number leakage attacks. We also prove that Moghadam et al.’s scheme does not ensure perfect forward secrecy. To prevent security vulnerabilities of Moghadam et al.’s scheme, we propose a secure and lightweight mutual authentication protocol for WSNs (WSN-SLAP). WSN-SLAP has the resistance from various security drawbacks, and provides perfect forward secrecy and mutual authentication. We prove the security of WSN-SLAP by using Burrows-Abadi-Needham (BAN) logic, Real-or-Random (ROR) model, and Automated Verification of Internet Security Protocols and Applications (AVISPA) simulation. In addition, we evaluate the performance of WSN-SLAP compared with existing related protocols. We demonstrate that WSN-SLAP is more secure and suitable than previous protocols for WSN environments.

Computing in the cloud is one of the platforms that may be used to provide distributed computing resources. Supplying and managing cloud resources most effectively is referred to as resource management. A recent development in technology known as fog computing is an example of an expanded and dispersed infrastructure. This architecture maintains application processes between end devices and the network edge to provide more dependable and efficient services. These services include remote data storage, allowing customers to access their data from a distant location. Providing remote storage service is an advantageous function offered by cloud suppliers. On the other hand, the data stored in the cloud is geographically dispersed and kept in various data centers, significantly increasing the risk to users' privacy and security. One of the problems that might arise with privacy is when many data centers store the same information. Many cloud service providers check their customers' data using a Third-Party Auditor (TPA) to address concerns about client privacy and data integrity. Currently, most trusted TPAs only have one validator, making it impossible to expand the data integrity across several data centers. The various verifiers used by TPAs have been reduced in number in response to Man in the Cloud (MiTC) attacks. As a result, they cannot check and authenticate the integrity of data stored in several data centers. A unique Peer to Peer (P2P) authentication protocol with Certificate Authority (CA) and Data Storage Protocol is presented as a solution to the problem that has been outlined above to check for and go around any issues that may arise (DSP). The efficiency of the proposed protocol is demonstrated by the incorporation of TPAs and Certificate Authorities. The proposed protocol has been tested with a single user and a single storage server, as well as multiple storage servers in ownCloud with one backup server, two storage servers, three clients, and two TPAs. The NoSQL server in an organization's cloud is set up to save data to storage servers in the appropriate format. The Amanda backup server is used to back up the mirror copy of the stored data on the storage servers. Automated Validation of Internet Security Protocols with Data Fusion and Applications, or AVISPA for short, is a technology that may be used to verify data stored in the cloud. The findings make it abundantly evident that the suggested protocol is strong enough to guarantee the authenticity of data kept in several data centers.

The efficiency of cooperative communication protocols to increase the reliability and range of transmission for Vehicular Ad hoc Network (VANET) is proven, but identity verification and communication security are required to be ensured. Though it is difficult to maintain strong network connections between vehicles because of there high mobility, with the help of cooperative communication, it is possible to increase the communication efficiency, minimise delay, packet loss, and Packet Dropping Rate (PDR). However, cooperating with unknown or unauthorized vehicles could result in information theft, privacy leakage, vulnerable to different security attacks, etc. In this paper, a blockchain based secure and privacy preserving authentication protocol is proposed for the Internet of Vehicles (IoV). Blockchain is utilized to store and manage the authentication information in a distributed and decentralized environment and developed on the Ethereum platform that uses a digital signature algorithm to ensure confidentiality, non-repudiation, integrity, and preserving the privacy of the IoVs. For optimized communication, transmitted services are categorized into emergency and optional services. Similarly, to optimize the performance of the authentication process, IoVs are categorized as emergency and general IoVs. The proposed cooperative protocol is validated by numerical analyses which show that the protocol successfully increases the system throughput and decreases PDR and delay. On the other hand, the authentication protocol requires minimum storage as well as generates low computational overhead that is suitable for the IoVs with limited computer resources.

ScPUAK: Smart card-based secure Protocol for remote User Authentication and Key agreement