Abstract: A physical unclonable function (PUF) is a device that exploits inherent randomness introduced during manufacturing to give a physical entity a unique ‘fingerprint’ or trust anchor. These devices are .of potential use in a variety of applications from anti-counterfeiting, identification, authentication and key generation to advanced protocols such as oblivious transfer, key exchange, key renovation and virtual proof of reality. Here we review the development of PUFs, including those that exploit optical, circuit time-delay and volatile/non-volatile memory characteristics. We examine the various applications of PUFs, and consider the security issues that they must confront, highlighting known attacks to date and potential countermeasures. We also consider the key areas for future development such as bit-specific reliability, reconfigurability and public key infrastructure. This Review Article examines the development of physical unclonable functions, which exploit inherent randomness to give a physical entity a unique ‘fingerprint’ or trust anchor, considering the various potential applications of these devices and the security issues that they must confront.

Abstract: The Information and Communication Technology (ICT) has been used in wide range of applications, such as smart living, smart health and smart transportation. Among all these applications, smart home is most popular, in which the users/residents can control the operations of the various smart sensor devices from remote sites also. However, the smart devices and users communicate over an insecure communication channel, i.e., the Internet. There may be the possibility of various types of attacks, such as smart device capture attack, user, gateway node and smart device impersonation attacks and privileged-insider attack on a smart home network. An illegal user, in this case, can gain access over data sent by the smart devices. Most of the existing schemes reported in the literature for the remote user authentication in smart home environment are not secure with respect to the above specified attacks. Thus, there is need to design a secure remote user authentication scheme for a smart home network so that only authorized users can gain access to the smart devices. To mitigate the aforementioned isses, in this paper, we propose a new secure remote user authentication scheme for a smart home environment. The proposed scheme is efficient for resource-constrained smart devices with limited resources as it uses only one-way hash functions, bitwise XOR operations and symmetric encryptions/decryptions. The security of the scheme is proved using the rigorous formal security analysis under the widely-accepted Real-Or-Random (ROR) model. Moreover, the rigorous informal security analysis and formal security verification using the broadly-accepted Automated Validation of Internet Security Protocols and Applications (AVISPA) tool is also done. Finally, the practical demonstration of the proposed scheme is also performed using the widely-accepted NS-2 simulation.

Abstract: Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) is considered as one of the most promising revolutionary technologies to prompt smart manufacturing and increase productivity. With manufacturing being more complicated and sophisticated, an entire manufacturing process usually involves several different administrative IoT domains (e.g., factories). Devices from different domains collaborate on the same task, which raises great security and privacy concerns about device-to-device communications. Existing authentication approaches may result in heavy key management overhead or rely on a trusted third party. Thus, security and privacy issues during communication remain unsolved but imperative. In this paper, we present an efficient blockchain-assisted secure device authentication mechanism $\textsf{BASA}$ for cross-domain IIoT. Specifically, consortium blockchain is introduced to construct trust among different domains. Identity-based signature (IBS) is exploited during the authentication process. To preserve the privacy of devices, we design an identity management mechanism, which can realize that devices being authenticated remain anonymous. Besides, session keys between two parties are negotiated, which can secure the subsequent communications. Extensive experiments have been conducted to show the effectiveness and efficiency of the proposed mechanism.

Abstract: As the great prevalence of various Internet of Things (IoT) terminals, how to solve the problem of isolated information among different IoT platforms attracts attention from both academia and industry. It is necessary to establish a trusted access system to achieve secure authentication and collaborative sharing. Therefore, this article proposes a distributed and trusted authentication system based on blockchain and edge computing, aiming to improve authentication efficiency. This system consists of physical network layer, blockchain edge layer and blockchain network layer. Through the blockchain network, an optimized practical Byzantine fault tolerance consensus algorithm is designed to construct a consortium blockchain for storing authentication data and logs. It guarantees trusted authentication and achieves activity traceability of terminals. Furthermore, edge computing is applied in blockchain edge nodes, to provide name resolution and edge authentication service based on smart contracts. Meanwhile, an asymmetric cryptography is designed, to prevent connection between nodes and terminals from being attacked. And a caching strategy based on edge computing is proposed to improve hit ratio. Our proposed authentication mechanism is evaluated with respect to communication and computation costs. Simulation results show that the caching strategy outperforms existing edge computing strategies by 6%–12% in terms of average delay, and 8%–14% in hit ratio.

Abstract: Achieving low latency and providing real-time services are two of several key challenges in conventional cloud-based smart grid systems, and hence, there has been an increasing trend of moving to edge computing. While there have been a number of cryptographic protocols designed to facilitate secure communications in smart grid systems, existing protocols generally do not support conditional anonymity and flexible key management. Thus, in this article, we introduce a blockchain-based mutual authentication and key agreement protocol for edge-computing-based smart grid systems. Specifically, leveraging blockchain, the protocol can support efficient conditional anonymity and key management, without the need for other complex cryptographic primitives. The security analysis shows that the protocol achieves reasonable security assurance, and the comparative summary for security and efficiency also suggests the potential of the proposed protocol in a smart grid deployment.

Abstract: Security and privacy are the major concerns in cloud computing as users have limited access on the stored data at the remote locations managed by different service providers. These become more challenging especially for the data generated from the wearable devices as it is highly sensitive and heterogeneous in nature. Most of the existing techniques reported in the literature are having high computation and communication costs and are vulnerable to various known attacks, which reduce their importance for applicability in real-world environment. Hence, in this paper, we propose a new cloud based user authentication scheme for secure authentication of medical data. After successful mutual authentication between a user and wearable sensor node, both establish a secret session key that is used for future secure communications. The extensively-used Real-Or-Random (ROR) model based formal security analysis and the broadly-accepted Automated Validation of Internet Security Protocols and Applications (AVISPA) tool based formal security verification show that the proposed scheme provides the session-key security and protects active attacks. The proposed scheme is also informally analyzed to show its resilience against other known attacks. Moreover, we have done a detailed comparative analysis for the communication and computation costs along with security and functionality features which proves its efficiency in comparison to the other existing schemes of its category.

Abstract: The Internet of Things (IoT) is an emerging paradigm branded by heterogeneous technologies composed of smart ubiquitous objects that are seamlessly connected to the Internet. These objects are often deployed in open environments to provide innovative services in various application domains such as smart cities, smart health, and smart communities. These IoT devices produce a massive amount of confidentiality and security-sensitive data. Thus, security of these devices is very important in order to ensure the safety and effectiveness of the system. In this paper, a decentralized authentication and access control mechanism is proposed for lightweight IoT devices and is applicable to a large number of scenarios. The mechanism is based on the technology of the fog computing and the concept of the public blockchain. The results gained from the experiments demonstrate a superior performance of the proposed mechanism when compared to a state-of-the-art blockchain-based authentication technique.

Abstract: The Internet of Things (IoT) is leading today’s digital transformation Relying on a combination of technologies, protocols, and devices such as wireless sensors and newly developed wearable and implanted sensors, IoT is changing every aspect of daily life, especially recent applications in digital healthcare IoT incorporates various kinds of hardware, communication protocols, and services This IoT diversity can be viewed as a double-edged sword that provides comfort to users but can lead also to a large number of security threats and attacks In this survey paper, a new compacted and optimized architecture for IoT is proposed based on five layers Likewise, we propose a new classification of security threats and attacks based on new IoT architecture The IoT architecture involves a physical perception layer, a network and protocol layer, a transport layer, an application layer, and a data and cloud services layer First, the physical sensing layer incorporates the basic hardware used by IoT Second, we highlight the various network and protocol technologies employed by IoT, and review the security threats and solutions Transport protocols are exhibited and the security threats against them are discussed while providing common solutions Then, the application layer involves application protocols and lightweight encryption algorithms for IoT Finally, in the data and cloud services layer, the main important security features of IoT cloud platforms are addressed, involving confidentiality, integrity, authorization, authentication, and encryption protocols The paper is concluded by presenting the open research issues and future directions towards securing IoT, including the lack of standardized lightweight encryption algorithms, the use of machine-learning algorithms to enhance security and the related challenges, the use of Blockchain to address security challenges in IoT, and the implications of IoT deployment in 5G and beyond

Abstract: Through the propagation of technology in recent years, people communicate in a range of ways via multimedia. The use of multimedia technique in healthcare system also makes it possible to store, process and transfer the patient’s data presented in variety of forms such as images, text and audio through online using various smart objects. Healthcare organizations around the world are transforming themselves into more efficient, coordinated and user-centered systems through various multimedia techniques. However, the management of huge amount data such as reports and images of every person leads to increase the human efforts and security risks. In order to overcome these issues, IoT in healthcare enhances the quality of patients care and reduce the cost by allocating the medical resources in an efficient way. However, a number of threats can occur in IoT devices initiated by various intruders. Sometimes, in order to make their personal profit, even though the medical shop or pathology labs are not of good reputation, the doctors forced the patients to do the lab tests, or buy the medicines from those organizations only. Therefore, security should be at the staple of outlook in IoT elucidations. In order to prevent these issues, Blockchain technology has been encountered as the best technique that provides the secrecy and protection of control system in real time conditions. In this manuscript, we will provide a security framework of healthcare multimedia data through blockchain technique by generating the hash of each data so that any change or alteration in data or breaching of medicines may be reflected in entire blockchain network users. The results have been analyzed against conventional approach and validated with improved simulated results that offer 86% success rate over product drop ratio, falsification attack, worm hole attack and probabilistic authentication scenarios because of Blockchain technique.

Abstract: Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) are becoming very popular nowadays due to the emergence of application areas such as the Internet of Drones (IoD). They are finding wide applicability in areas ranging from package delivery systems to automated military applications. Nevertheless, communication security between a UAV and its ground station (GS) is critical for completing its task without leaking sensitive information either to the adversaries or to unauthenticated users. UAVs are especially vulnerable to physical capture and node tampering attacks. Further, since UAV devices are generally equipped with small batteries and limited memory storage, lightweight security techniques are best suited for them. Addressing these issues, a lightweight mutual authentication scheme based on Physical Unclonable Functions (PUFs) for UAV-GS authentication is presented in this paper. The UAV-GS authentication scheme is extended further to support UAV-UAV authentication. We present a formal security analysis as well as old-fashioned cryptanalysis and show that our protocol provides various security features such as mutual authentication, user anonymity, etc, and is resilient against many security attacks such as masquerade, replay, node tampering, and cloning attacks, etc. We also compare the performance of our protocol with state-of-the-art authentication protocols for UAVs, based on computation, communication, and memory storage cost.

Abstract: In any interconnected healthcare system (e.g., those that are part of a smart city), interactions between patients, medical doctors, nurses and other healthcare practitioners need to be secure and efficient. For example, all members must be authenticated and securely interconnected to minimize security and privacy breaches from within a given network. However, introducing security and privacy-preserving solutions can also incur delays in processing and other related services, potentially threatening patients lives in critical situations. A considerable number of authentication and security systems presented in the literature are centralized, and frequently need to rely on some secure and trusted third-party entity to facilitate secure communications. This, in turn, increases the time required for authentication and decreases throughput due to known overhead, for patients and inter-hospital communications. In this paper, we propose a novel decentralized authentication of patients in a distributed hospital network, by leveraging blockchain. Our notion of a healthcare setting includes patients and allied health professionals (medical doctors, nurses, technicians, etc), and the health information of patients. Findings from our in-depth simulations demonstrate the potential utility of the proposed architecture. For example, it is shown that the proposed architecture's decentralized authentication among a distributed affiliated hospital network does not require re-authentication. This improvement will have a considerable impact on increasing throughput, reducing overhead, improving response time, and decreasing energy consumption in the network. We also provide a comparative analysis of our model in relation to a base model of the network without blockchain to show the overall effectiveness of our proposed solution.

Abstract: Autonomous vehicles (AVs) are increasingly common, although there remain a number of limitations that need to be addressed in order for their deployment to be more widespread. For example, to mitigate the failure of self-driving functions in AVs, introducing the remote control capability (which allows a human driver to operate the vehicle remotely in certain circumferences) is one of several countermeasures proposed. However, the remote control capability breaks the isolation of onboard driving systems and can be potentially exploited by malicious actors to take over control of the AVs; thus, risking the safety of the passengers and pedestrians (e.g., AVs are remotely taken over by terrorist groups to carry out coordinated attacks in places of mass gatherings). Therefore, security is a key, mandatory feature in the design of AVs. In this paper, we propose a cloud-centric three-factor authentication and key agreement protocol (CT-AKA) integrating passwords, biometrics and smart cards to ensure secure access to both cloud and AVs. Three typical biometric encryption approaches, including fuzzy vault, fuzzy commitment, and fuzzy extractor, are unified to achieve three-factor authentication without leaking the biometric privacy of users. Moreover, two session keys are negotiated in our protocol, namely: one between the user and AV to support secure remote control of the AV, and the other is negotiated between the mobile device and the cloud to introduce resilience to the compromise of ephemeral security parameters to ensure cloud data access security with a high security guarantee. Finally, we formally verify the security properties and evaluate the efficiency of CT-AKA, whose findings demonstrate that the protocol achieves high security strength with reasonable computation and communication costs.

Abstract: If all vehicles are connected together through a wireless communication channel, vehicular ad hoc networks (VANETs) can support a wide range of real-time traffic information services, such as intelligent routing, weather monitoring, emergency call, etc. However, the accuracy and credibility of the transmitted messages among the VANETs are of paramount importance as life may depend on it. In this article we introduce a novel framework called blockchain-assisted privacy-preserving authentication system (BPAS) that provides authentication automatically in VANETs and preserves vehicle privacy at the same time. This design is highly efficient and scalable. It does not require any online registration centre (except for system initialization and vehicle registration), and allows conditional tracing and dynamic revocation of misbehaving vehicles. In this article, we conduct an in-depth security analysis and a comprehensive performance evaluation (which is based on the Hyperledger Fabric platform) for our proposed framework. The results demonstrate that our framework is an efficient solution for the development of a decentralized authentication system in VANETs.

Abstract: Secure real-time data about goods in transit in supply chains needs bandwidth having capacity that is not fulfilled with the current infrastructure. Hence, 5G-enabled Internet of Things (IoT) in mobile edge computing is intended to substantially increase this capacity. To deal with this issue, in this article, we design a new efficient lightweight blockchain-enabled radio frequency identification (RFID)-based authentication protocol for supply chains in 5G mobile edge computing environment, called lightweight blockchain-enabled RFID-based authentication protocol (LBRAPS). LBRAPS is based on bitwise exclusive-or (XOR), one-way cryptographic hash and bitwise rotation operations only. LBRAPS is shown to be secure against various attacks. Moreover, the simulation-based formal security verification using the broadly-accepted Automated Validation of Internet Security Protocols and Applications (AVISPA) tool assures that LBRAPS is secure. Finally, it is shown that LBRAPS has better trade-off among its security and functionality features, communication and computation costs as compared to those for existing protocols.

Abstract: The data privacy and confidentiality in Internet-of-Things (IoT) networks have been one of the most concerned problems due to increasing threats. The commonly utilized IoT chips adopt a fixed authentication and encryption scheme in the link layer even though multiple options are usually supported. As different authentication and encryption operations mean dissimilar protections and various energy consumption, the fixed security strategy neglects the remaining energy, dynamic threats, and diverse service requirements, leading to low energy efficiency. Moreover, fixed high-level security protections consume too much energy even though the security requirement may be low, which results in a short working time. To address this problem, we propose an artificial intelligence (AI)-based adaptive security specification method for 6G IoT networks where the IoT devices are connected to cellular networks via different frequency bands, including terahertz (THz) and millimeter wave (mmWave). The IoT sensing devices are assumed to support the energy harvesting technique which is expected to be widely adopted in 6G. In our proposal, the extended Kalman filtering (EKF) method is first adopted to predict future harvesting power. Then, in each energy-aware cycle, we design a mathematical model to calculate the required energy of different security strategies and choose the supported highest level protection which can meet service requirement and avoid energy exhaustion. The simulation results illustrate that the proposal can not only provide satisfied security protection for different services but also adjust the security protection to avoid the energy exhaustion, leading to a significant improvement of throughput and working time.

Abstract: With rapid development of computing technologies, large amount of data are gathered from edge terminals or Internet of Things (IoT) devices, however data trust and security in edge computing environment are very important issues to be considered, especially when the gathered data are fraud or dishonest, or the data are misused or spread without any authorization, which may lead to serious problems. In this article, a blockchain-based trusted data management scheme (called BlockTDM) in edge computing is proposed to solve the above problems, in which we proposed a flexible and configurable blockchain architecture that includes mutual authentication protocol, flexible consensus, smart contract, block and transaction data management, blockchain nodes management, and deployment. The BlockTDM scheme can support matrix-based multichannel data segment and isolation for sensitive or privacy data protection, and moreover, we have designed user-defined sensitive data encryption before the transaction payload stores in blockchain system, and have implemented conditional access and decryption query of the protected blockchain data and transactions through smart contract. Finally, we have evaluated the proposed BlockTDM scheme security, availability, and efficiency with large amount of experiments. Analysis and evaluations manifest that the proposed BlockTDM scheme provides a general, flexible, and configurable blockchain-based paradigm for trusted data management with tamper-resistance, which is suitable for edge computing with high-level security and creditability.

Abstract: The Internet of Things (IoT) enables all objects to connect to the Internet and exchange data via different emerging technologies, which makes the intelligent identification and management a reality. Wireless sensor networks (WSNs), as a crucial basis of IoT, have been applied in many fields like smart health care and smart transportation. With the development of WSNs, data security has attracted more and more attention, and user authentication is a popular mechanism to ensure the information security of WSNs. Recently, many authentication mechanisms for wireless medical sensor networks (WMSNs) have been proposed, but most of the protocols cannot achieve the features of local password change and forward secrecy while resisting stolen smart card attack. To enhance the security based on previous work, an ECC-based secure three-factor authentication protocol with forward secrecy for WMSN is proposed in this paper. It utilizes a fuzzy commitment scheme to handle the biometric information. Meanwhile, fuzzy verifier and honey_list techniques are used to solve the contradiction of local password verification and mobile device lost attack. The security of our protocol is evaluated by provable security, Proverif tool, and information analysis. Besides, the comparisons with the relevant protocols are given, and the results indicate that our protocol is robust and secure for WMSN systems.

Abstract: Increasingly, governments around the world, particularly in technologically advanced countries, are exploring or implementing smart homes, or the related smart facilities for the benefits of the society. The capability to remotely access and control Internet of Things (IoT) devices (e.g., capturing of images, audios, and other information) is convenient but risky, as vulnerable devices can be exploited to conduct surveillance or perform other nefarious activities on the users and organizations. This highlights the necessity of designing a secure and efficient remote user authentication solution. Most of the existing solutions for this problem are generally based on a single-server architecture, which has limitations in terms of privacy and anonymity (leading to users’ daily activities being predicted), and integrity and confidentiality (resulting in an unreliable behavior auditing). While blockchain-based solutions may mitigate these issues, they still face some critical challenges (e.g., providing regulation of behaviors and privacy protection of access policy). Motivated by these facts, in this article, we construct a novel secure mutual authentication system, which can be applied in smart homes and other applications. Specifically, the proposed approach integrates blockchain, group signature, and message authentication code to provide reliable auditing of users’ access history, anonymously authenticate group members, and efficiently authenticate home gateway, respectively. We also prove the security and privacy requirements, including anonymity, traceability, and confidentiality, that the proposed system satisfies, with an implementation and evaluation to demonstrate its practicality.

Abstract: The Internet of Medical Things (IoMT) is a kind of connected infrastructure of smart medical devices along with software applications, health systems and services. These medical devices and applications are connected to healthcare systems through the Internet. The Wi-Fi enabled devices facilitate machine-to-machine communication and link to the cloud platforms for data storage. IoMT has the ability to make accurate diagnoses, with fewer mistakes and lower costs of care. IoMT with smartphone applications permits the patients to exchange their health related confidential and private information to the healthcare experts (i.e., doctors) for the better control of diseases, and also for tracking and preventing chronic illnesses. Due to insecure communication among the entities involved in IoMT, an attacker can tamper with the confidential and private health related information for example an attacker can not only intercept the messages, but can also modify, delete or insert malicious messages during communication. To deal this sensitive issue, we design a novel blockchain enabled authentication key agreement protocol for IoMT environment, called BAKMP-IoMT. BAKMP-IoMT provides secure key management between implantable medical devices and personal servers and between personal servers and cloud servers. The legitimate users can also access the healthcare data from the cloud servers in a secure way. The entire healthcare data is stored in a blockchain maintained by the cloud servers. A detailed formal security including the security verification of BAKMP-IoMT using the widely-accepted Automated Validation of Internet Security Protocols and Applications (AVISPA) tool is performed to demonstrate its resilience against the different types of possible attack. The comparison of BAKMP-IoMT with relevant existing schemes is conducted which identifies that the proposed system furnishes better security and functionality, and also needs low communication and computational costs as compared to other schemes. Finally, the simulation of BAKMP-IoMT is conducted to demonstrate its impact on the performance parameters.

Abstract: The Internet of Things (IoT) is a network of globally connected physical objects, which are associated with each other via Internet. The IoT foresees the interconnection of few trillions of intelligent objects around us, uniquely and addressable every day, these objects have the ability to accumulate process and communicate data about themselves and their surrounding environment. The best examples of IoT systems are health care, building smart city with advance construction management system, public and defense surveillance and data acquisition. Recent advancement in the technology has developed smart and intelligent sensor nodes and RFIDs lead to a large number of wireless networks with smart and intelligent devices (object, or things) connected to the Internet continuously transmit the data. So to provide security and privacy to this data in IoT is a very challenging task, which is to be concerned at highest priority for several current and future applications of IoT. Devices such as smart phone, WSNs and RFIDs etc., are the major components of IoT network which are basically resource constrained devices. Design and development of security and privacy management schemes for these devices is guided by factors like good performance, low power consumption, robustness to attacks, tampering of the data and end to end security. Security schemes in IoT provide unauthorized access to information or other objects by protecting against alterations or destruction. Privacy schemes maintain the right to control about the collected information for its usage and purpose. In this paper, we have surveyed major challenges such as Confidentiality, Integrity, Authentication, and Availability for IoT in a brief manner.

Abstract: Mobile edge computing (MEC) allows one to overcome a number of limitations inherent in cloud computing, although achieving the broad range of security requirements in MEC settings remains challenging. In this paper, we focus on achieving mutual authentication with anonymity and un-traceability, as this is crucial in ensuring data security and user privacy. Specifically, we design an identity-based anonymous authenticated key agreement protocol for the MEC environment. The proposed protocol achieves mutual authentication in only a single message exchange round, as well as assures both user anonymity and un-traceability. We then evaluate the security and performance of the protocol, and demonstrate that it achieves the required security properties and outperforms prior approaches in terms of communicational and computational costs.

Abstract: The significance of the Internet of Drones (IoD) is increasing steadily and now IoD is being practiced in many military and civilian-based applications. IoD facilitates real-time data access to the users especially the surveillance data in smart cities using the current cellular networks. However, due to the openness of communication channel and battery operations, the drones and the sensitive data collected through drones are subject to many security threats. To cope the security challenges, recently, Srinivas et al. proposed a temporal credential based anonymous lightweight authentication scheme (TCALAS) for IoD networks. Contrary to the IoD monitoring framework proposed by Srinivas et al., their own scheme can work only when there is one and only one cluster/flying zone and is not scalable. Moreover, despite their claim of robustness, the investigation in this paper reveals that Srinivas et al.'s scheme cannot resist traceability and stolen verifier attacks. Using the lightweight symmetric key primitives and temporal credentials, an improved scheme (iTCALAS) is then proposed. The proposed scheme while maintaining the lightweightness provides security against many known attacks including traceability and stolen verifier. The proposed iTCALAS extends scalability and can work when there are several flying zone/clusters in the IoD environment. The formal security proof along with automated verification using ProVerif show robustness of proposed iTCALAS. Moreover, the security discussion and performance comparisons show that the iTCALAS provides the known security features and completes authentication in just 2.295~ms.

Abstract: Mobile users are increasing exponentially to adopt ubiquitous services offered by various sectors. This has attracted attention for a secure communication framework to access e-health data on mobile devices. The wearable sensor device is attached to the patient's body which monitors the blood pressure, body temperature, serum cholesterol, glucose level, etc. In the proposed secure framework, first, the task starts with the patient authentication, after that the sensors device linked to the patient is activated and the sensor values of the patient are transmitted to the cloud server. The patient's biometrics information has been added as a parameter in addition to the user name and password. The authentication scheme is coined with the SHA-512 algorithm that ensures integrity. To securely send the sensor information, the method follows two kinds of encryption: Substitution-Ceaser cipher and improved Elliptical Curve Cryptography (IECC). Whereas in improved ECC, an additional key (secret key) is generated to enhance the system's security. In this way, the intricacy of the two phases is augmented. The computational cost of the scheme in the proposed framework is 4H + Ec + Dc which is less than the existing schemes. The average correlation coefficient value is about 0.045 which is close to zero shows the strength of the algorithm. The obtained encryption and decryption time are 1.032 μs and 1.004μs respectively. The overall performance is analyzed by comparing the proposed improved ECC with existing Rivest-Shamir-Adleman (RSA)and ECC algorithms.

Abstract: Counterfeit medicines are a fundamental security problem. Counterfeiting medication poses a tremendous threat to patient safety, public health, and the economy in developed and less developed countries. Current solutions are often vulnerable due to the limited security levels. We propose that the highest protection against counterfeit medicines would be a combination of a physically unclonable function (PUF) with on-dose authentication. A PUF can provide a digital fingerprint with multiple pairs of input challenges and output responses. On-dose authentication can verify every individual pill without removing the identification tag. Here, we report on-dose PUFs that can be directly attached onto the surface of medicines, be swallowed, and digested. Fluorescent proteins and silk proteins serve as edible photonic biomaterials and the photoluminescent properties provide parametric support of challenge-response pairs. Such edible cryptographic primitives can play an important role in pharmaceutical anti-counterfeiting and other security applications requiring immediate destruction or vanishing features.