Abstract: Due to the explosive increase of electric vehicles (EVs) and universal charging stations (CS), achieving fast authentication is an important topic in the vehicle-to-grid (V2G) network at present. Fast authentication cannot only forcefully defend potential adversaries but also can greatly speed up the charging process between EVs and CSs. Although many researchers have realized this problem and proposed some lightweight cryptographic protocols for fast EV charging, desired security features are not entirely satisfied, such as man-in-the-middle attacks, replay attacks, and impersonation attacks. In this article, we propose an ultra super fast authentication protocol for EV charging by utilizing the characteristics of extended chaotic maps. Furthermore, in view of the unsolved security issues mentioned previously, our proposed protocol can provide elaborate solutions to eliminate these possible attacks in a provable manner. Finally, compared with the relevant authentication protocols for V2G network, the communication and computation costs of our protocol are decreased a lot.

Abstract: Although many smart grid authentication protocols have been presented in literature, majority of them remain susceptible to numerous attacks. In addition, some of these protocols are based on computationally intensive cryptographic primitives, which render them inefficient. To address some of these challenges, a protocol based on masked symmetric key encrypted verification codes is presented in this paper. The security analysis carried out shows that this protocol provides message confidentiality, unlinkability, and traceability for malicious network entities. It is also resilient against side-channel and forgery attacks. In terms of efficiency, limited numbers of elliptic curve multiplication and one way-hashing operations are executed during mutual authentication, message signing and verification. As such, this protocol exhibits the least computation and communication complexities in comparison with its peers.

Abstract: Wireless body area networks and medical servers exchange sensitive and private patient data that should be protected from malicious entities. To achieve this, numerous security solutions have been presented in literature. However, some of these security protocols have many security vulnerabilities that expose the wireless body area networks to attacks. In addition, the high computation, storage and communication overheads in some of the current schemes render them unsuitable for resource constrained sensor hubs. As such, the protection of exchanged packets is necessary but challenging. In this paper, a protocol that leverages on elliptic curve cryptography and pseudonyms is developed to address some of these issues. The protocol is demonstrated to be secure under the Burrows–Abadi–Needham (BAN) logic. In addition, it is shown to be resilient against some typical attacks models in wireless body area networks. Moreover, its computation and communication complexities are the lowest among other related scheme.

Abstract: In the classical world, the existence of commitments is equivalent to the existence of one-way functions. In the quantum setting, on the other hand, commitments are not known to imply one-way functions, but all known constructions of quantum commitments use at least one-way functions. Are one-way functions really necessary for commitments in the quantum world? In this work, we show that non-interactive quantum commitments (for classical messages) with computational hiding and statistical binding exist if pseudorandom quantum states exist. Pseudorandom quantum states are sets of quantum states that are efficiently generated but their polynomially many copies are computationally indistinguishable from the same number of copies of Haar random states [Ji, Liu, and Song, CRYPTO 2018]. It is known that pseudorandom quantum states exist even if $$\textbf{BQP}=\textbf{QMA}$$ (relative to a quantum oracle) [Kretschmer, TQC 2021], which means that pseudorandom quantum states can exist even if no quantum-secure classical cryptographic primitive exists. Our result therefore shows that quantum commitments can exist even if no quantum-secure classical cryptographic primitive exists. In particular, quantum commitments can exist even if no quantum-secure one-way function exists. In this work, we also consider digital signatures, which are other fundamental primitives in cryptography. We show that one-time secure digital signatures with quantum public keys exist if pseudorandom quantum states exist. In the classical setting, the existence of digital signatures is equivalent to the existence of one-way functions. Our result, on the other hand, shows that quantum signatures can exist even if no quantum-secure classical cryptographic primitive (including quantum-secure one-way functions) exists.

Abstract: As the first Byzantine fault-tolerant (BFT) protocol with linear communication complexity, HotStuff (PODC 2019) has received significant attention. HotStuff has three round-trips for both normal case operations and view change protocols. Follow-up studies attempt to reduce the number of phases for HotStuff. These protocols, however, all give up of one thing in return for another.This paper presents Marlin, a BFT protocol with linearity, having two phases for normal case operations and two or three phases for view changes. Marlin uses the same cryptographic tools as in HotStuff and introduces no additional assumptions. We implement a new and efficient Golang library for Marlin and HotStuff, showing Marlin outperforms HotStuff for both the common case and the view change.

Abstract: Lightweight cryptography (LWC)-based authenticated encryption with associative data (AEAD) cryptographic primitives require fewer computational and energy resources than conventional cryptographic primitives as a single operation of an AEAD scheme provides confidentiality, integrity, and authenticity of data. This feature of AEAD schemes helps design an access control (AC) protocol to be leveraged for enhancing the security of the resource-constrained Internet of Things (IoT)-enabled smart grid (SG) system with low computational overhead and fewer cryptographic operations. This article presents a novel and robust AC protocol, called RACP-SG, which aims to enhance the security of resource-constrained IoT-enabled SG systems. RACP-SG employs an LWC-based AEAD scheme, ASCON and the hash function, ASCON-hash, along with elliptic curve cryptography to accomplish the AC phase. Besides, RACP-SG enables a smart meter (SM) and a service provider (SEP) to mutually authenticate each other and establish a session key (SK) while communicating across the public communication channel. By using the SK, the SM can securely transfer the gathered data to the SEP. We verify the security of the SK using the widely accepted random oracle model. Moreover, we conduct Scyther-based and informal security analyses to demonstrate that RACP-SG is protected against various covert security risks, such as replay, impersonation, and desynchronization attacks. Besides, we present a comparative study to illustrate that RACP-SG renders superior security features while reducing energy, storage, communication, and computational overheads compared to the state of the art.

Abstract: Vehicle-to-grid (V2G) technology enables bidirectional energy flow between the electric vehicle and power grid thereby making the electric vehicle as a virtual power plant. This seamless exchange of energy flow is possible only when the entities involved communicate wirelessly in a secured manner. In order to ensure privacy-preserving in the V2G communication, development of a novel key establishment protocol is an active area of research. This article presents a lightweight mutual authentication and key establishment protocol for secure V2G communication among the electric vehicle user, charging station, and utility service provider. The correctness of the proposed protocol is verified using the formal method BAN logic, and many of its security threats are analyzed informally. Further, the protocol is compared for its security and efficiency with the related protocols in the literature under various aspects, and the comparison results show that our protocol outshines the others. The functional correctness of the protocol is also verified in Xilinx Zynq-7000 series FPGA board so that it can be deployed in any real-time applications.

Abstract: Tamarin is a mature, state-of-the-art tool for cryptographic protocol verification. We survey some of the larger tour de force results achieved and show how Tamarin can formalize protocols, adversary models, and properties, and scale to substantial, real world, verification problems.

Abstract: Internet-of-Things (IoT) and sensor technologies have enabled the collection of data in a distributed fashion for analysis and evidence-based decision making. However, security concerns regarding the source, confidentiality and integrity of the data arise. The most common method of protecting data transmission in sensor systems is Transport Layer Security (TLS) or its datagram counterpart (DTLS) today, but exist an alternative option based on Distributed Ledger Technology (DLT) that promise strong security, ease of use and potential for large scale integration of heterogeneous sensor systems. A DLT such as the IOTA Tangle offers great potential to improve sensor data exchange. This paper presents L2Sec, a cryptographic protocol which is able to secure data exchanged over the IOTA Tangle. This protocol is suitable for implementation on constrained devices, such as common IoT devices, leading to greater scalability. The first experimental results evidence the effectiveness of the approach and advocate for the integration of an hardware secure element to improve the overall security of the protocol. The L2Sec source code is released as open source repository on GitHub.

Abstract: Big data, due to its promotion for industrial intelligence, has become the cornerstone of the Industry 4.0 era. Federated learning, proposed by Google, can effectively integrate data from different devices and different domains to train models under the premise of privacy preservation. Unfortunately, this new training paradigm faces security risks both on the client side and server side. This article proposes a new federated learning scheme to defend from client-side malicious uploads (e.g., backdoor attacks). In addition, we use cryptography techniques to prevent server-side privacy attacks (e.g., membership inference). The secure partial aggregation protocol we designed improves the privacy and robustness of federated learning. The experiments show that models can achieve high accuracy of over 90% with a proper upload proportion, while the accuracy of the backdoor attack decreased from 99.5% to 0% with the best result. Meanwhile, we prove that our protocol can disable privacy attacks.

Abstract: The Internet of Things (IoT) has a wide range of applications that influence the life of people expeditiously. In recent years, IoT becomes an emerging technology in a number of fields. Different devices with divergent functionality are applied in IoT to work in several domains. These domains include smart home, smart farming, and Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT). Among these territories, the IIoT obtains more attention. In an IIoT environment, a legitimate user can control and access devices remotely. Legitimate users can access real-time data and share confidential information. The information is transmitted via public communication channel, which can be vulnerable to security attacks. In this article, we present a provably secure multifactor authenticated key agreement scheme to offer security regarding transmission of data in IIoT environment. This scheme will support the legitimate user to remotely access the sensing devices. Our presented scheme uses only symmetric cryptographic, bitwise XOR operation, and hash function to be resource-constrained. Our scheme is found to be resource efficient through communication and computation analysis. The performance analysis illustrates that the cost of computation and communication of our scheme is comparatively low as compared to other relevant schemes. The formal and informal security analysis proved that our scheme is secure and efficient as it can withstand several known adversarial attacks. We have used some cryptographic operations like XOR and hashing to provide security and privacy to legitimate entities.

Abstract: In the traditional medical healthcare system, each medical facility is responsible for preserving its own records. Sharing such records with another medical establishment is difficult for them. To tackle this challenge, the traditional medical system leverages internet technology to transform into a modern electronic system. In electronic healthcare systems, managing the security and privacy of patient data becomes a major issue. As an alternative, the healthcare sector might use blockchain technology to exchange digitised healthcare data. Blockchain technology is characterised by anonymity, decentralisation, and immutability. It is hard to keep all electronic healthcare data on blockchain due to the expense and volume. Cloud computing is the best solution for storing this type of data and resolving problems like these. To address these concerns, we offer a blockchain-based key agreement protocol for cloud medical network systems that enhances privacy and security. We demonstrate a formal and informal security analysis of the proposed protocol that shows that the proposed protocol is both secure and communicative. We provide security verification of the proposed protocol by using the AVISPA software tool against man in the middle attack and replay attack. Finally, we compute the computation and communication costs of the proposed protocol and other existing protocols, the proposed protocol has less computation and communication costs than other existing protocols in the electronic healthcare system.

Abstract: Electric vehicle adoption has accelerated globally, necessitating the development of an efficient charging technology. Static and partially dynamic charging are currently in use, but such types of charging reduce vehicles’ ability to stand charge, contributing to range anxiety. Dynamic charging of electric vehicles will be a promising technology in the near future, allowing an electric vehicle to charge by itself while in motion. However, assessing the security risks before enabling dynamic charging is mandatory, with authentication being a necessary step. Hence, a protocol suite EV-Auth is proposed for communicating entities in a dynamic charging system capable of mutual authentication and session key computation. To achieve practical capabilities, EV-Auth is built using lightweight cryptographic primitives. Additionally, it includes a unique feature known as seamless electric vehicle handover. The security of the proposed protocol suite is assessed both informally and formally using random oracle model and scyther tool. The performance analysis demonstrates that the proposed protocol suite satisfies the communication and computation time requirements.

Abstract: We consider a cryptographically motivated framework for quantum metrology in the presence of a malicious adversary. We begin by devising an estimation strategy for a (potentially) altered resource (due to a malicious adversary) and quantify the amount of bias and the loss in precision as a function of the introduced uncertainty in the resource. By incorporating an appropriate cryptographic protocol, the uncertainty in the resource can be bounded with respect to the soundness of the cryptographic protocol. Thus the effectiveness of the quantum metrology problem can be directly related to the effectiveness of the cryptography protocol. As an example, we consider a quantum metrology problem in which resources are exchanged through an unsecured quantum channel. We then construct two protocols for this task which offer a trade-off between difficulty of implementation and efficiency.

Abstract: In the last few years, technological advancement has led to the use of wearable body sensors for gathering patient information. Wireless body area networks played an essential role in the modern medical era. Through wearable body sensors, patient data are sent to medical professionals in real-time without any hindrance. This information moves through the public channel, and thus proper security and protection are needed because of its sensitiveness. Many authentication protocols proposed for solving these issues were neither secure nor cost-effective. This paper proposed an authentication protocol using certificateless cryptography for wireless body area networks to resolve the associated security concerns. A formal security analysis is done using the Burrows-Abadi-Needham logic shows that the proposed protocol is resilient against prevailing attacks. Additionally, we employ the Real-or-Random model for mathematical proof and Automated Verification Security Protocol and Analysis simulation tool for security analysis. A detailed comprehensive comparison with the existing protocols indicates that the proposed protocol is cost-effective with improved functionality.

Abstract: In recent years, wireless sensor networks (WSNs) have been extensively used in many fields, which provide great convenience for people’s daily work and life. With the popularity of WSNs, people’s demands for related authentication protocols are developing in a comprehensive and perfect direction, and relevant designs are focusing more on two aspects: security and performance. However, current research cannot avoid the problem that security and efficiency are not compatible. Some studies use time-consuming cryptographic structures for security, while most lightweight schemes are designed without considering certain security properties, such as perfect forward secrecy, the resistance to known session-specific temporary information attack, etc. In our view, this conflict can be resolved by using lightweight cryptography primitives with special attention to protocol vulnerabilities and ever-evolving security requirements of people. By abandoning all unnecessary cryptographic structures, we propose a comprehensive lightweight three-factor authentication protocol with various security requirements, including adaptive privacy preservation, which is suitable for the user-friendly scenario in the WSN. Through security analysis, real-or-random (ROR) model proof, Automated Validation of Internet Security Protocols and Applications experimental verification, and security aspect comparison, it is proved that our protocol is superior in the security aspect. The performance experiment under MIRACL library shows that this study has advantages in performance compared with other recent research.

Abstract: To achieve efficient vehicular network communication and service, researchers proposed fog-based vehicular networks (FVNs). One of the prerequisites for developing large-scale FVNs is ensuring the security and privacy of the entire network environment. However, the existing schemes proposed for FVNs exist considerable calculation and communication costs and/or security vulnerabilities. Therefore, to promote efficient FVN authentication, we propose a lightweight security protocol using self-certified public key cryptography. In the protocol, the trusted authority does not need to participate in the authentication process between the vehicle and the fog node online. And the vehicle can dynamically update its login password and pseudonym, without performing complicated interactive steps with the trusted authority. In addition, our protocol supports batch verification, which significantly improves the system authentication efficiency. A detailed security analysis reveals that our protocol can meet the security requirements of vehicular networks while resisting the common types of attack. Calculation and communication overhead comparisons further prove that our protocol exhibits better performance than related schemes.

Abstract: The Noise protocol framework defines a succinct notation and execution framework for a large class of 59+ secure channel protocols, some of which are used in popular applications such as WhatsApp and WireGuard. We present a verified implementation of a Noise protocol compiler that takes any Noise protocol, and produces an optimized C implementation with extensive correctness and security guarantees. To this end, we formalize the complete Noise stack in F*, from the low-level cryptographic library to a high-level API. We write our compiler also in F*, prove that it meets our formal specification once and for all, and then specialize it on-demand for any given Noise protocol, relying on a novel technique called hybrid embedding. We thus establish functional correctness, memory safety and a form of side-channel resistance for the generated C code for each Noise protocol. We propagate these guarantees to the high-level API, using defensive dynamic checks to prevent incorrect uses of the protocol. Finally, we formally state and prove the security of our Noise code, by building on a symbolic model of cryptography in F*, and formally link high-level API security goals stated in terms of security levels to low-level cryptographic guarantees. Ours are the first comprehensive verification results for a protocol compiler that targets C code and the first verified implementations of any Noise protocol. We evaluate our framework by generating implementations for all 59 Noise protocols and by comparing the size, performance, and security of our verified code against other (unverified) implementations and prior security analyses of Noise.

Abstract: Internet of Things is a promising technology but it also increases numerous security threats in data transmission. To secure neighboring sensing devices' communication in an IoT environment, a key agreement protocol is primordial. Various IoT data transmission mechanisms have been proposed in the literature to attain security. However, these propositions are not completely secure against all types of attacks. In this paper, a new certificate-based was proposed lightweight authentication and key agreement protocol for the IoT environment. The proposed protocol uses Elliptic Curves Cryptography and minimizes the number of operations needed to generate secret keys. Moreover, performed a detailed informal security analysis, and formal security verification using Automated Validation of Internet Security Protocols and Applications (AVISPA) tool, through which demonstrated that the proposed protocol is resilient against numerous known attacks. The implementation of the proposed protocol using the simulator to evaluate the impact of the proposed protocol on several network parameters.

Abstract: Vehicular ad hoc networks (VANETs) significantly improves the efficiency and safety of driving since it reduces traffic jams and avoiding accidents, in which the necessary security goals are guaranteed using cryptographic method. In reality, the computation efficiency is very important in implementing the protocol in VANETs. When a vehicle with high speed enters in the coverage of a roadside unit (RSU), the computation overhead of authentication not only affects the communication experience, but also downgrades the driving safety. The feasible solution is to share a message in advance between vehicle and RSU with the help of certification authority (CA), however, CA can deduce the vehicle’s route that should be privacy. In this paper, a privacy-preserving and lightweight V2I authentication (PLVA) protocol is proposed. Specifically, in the beginning phase, all roadside units in a region are converted to a vector using the Moore curve technique, then, a vehicle deduces the RSUs’ information on its planning route using BGN homomorphic encryption before the vehicle begins its trip, meanwhile, CA knows nothing about the route plan although it assists the above process. With the deduced RSUs’ information, fast authentication is achieved between vehicle and each RSU on its route. Moreover, performance evaluation illustrates that our PLVA is efficient in practical VANETs environment.

Abstract: The advent of the Internet of Things (IoT) has revolutionized the way we, as a society, perform different daily tasks, such as healthcare. The Internet of Health Things (IoHT) is an example of the IoT specialization handling sensitive user data and applications requiring solutions to address different security and privacy issues. IoHT requires security mechanisms in communication. However, these mechanisms need to consider the limitations of the IoHT devices and communication. Hence, symmetric cryptography is suitable to IoHT once it uses less computational and communication resources than asymmetric cryptography. But, symmetric cryptography relies on the agreement of the cryptography material (e.g., the cryptography key) among the devices, a challenge in networks with resource constraints, such as IoHT. Therefore, this article presents a Low memORy symmEtric-key geNerAtion (LORENA) method based on group secret key agreement protocol for IoHT environments. Evaluations have focused on computational efficiency, data security requirements, and scalability in a network with up to ten devices per group using a simulator and a device with limited computational resources. Results show that the protocol is lightweight, secure, and feasible to IoHT networks, presenting a linear growth in the 128-bit key distribution time for each device entering the group.

Abstract: Secure multi-party computation (MPC) is a fundamental problem in secure distributed computing. An MPC protocol allows a set of $n$ mutually distrusting parties to carry out any joint computation of their private inputs, without disclosing any additional information about their inputs. MPC with information-theoretic security provides the strongest security guarantees and remains secure even against computationally unbounded adversaries. Perfectly-secure MPC protocols is a class of information-theoretically secure MPC protocols, which provides all the security guarantees in an error-free fashion. The focus of this work is perfectly-secure MPC. Known protocols are designed assuming either a synchronous or asynchronous communication network. It is well known that perfectly-secure synchronous MPC protocol is possible as long as adversary can corrupt any $t_s < n/3$ parties. On the other hand, perfectly-secure asynchronous MPC protocol can tolerate up to $t_a < n/4$ corrupt parties. A natural question is does there exist a single MPC protocol for the setting where the parties are not aware of the exact network type and which can tolerate up to $t_s < n/3$ corruptions in a synchronous network and up to $t_a < n/4$ corruptions in an asynchronous network. We design such a best-of-both-worlds perfectly-secure MPC protocol, provided $3t_s + t_a < n$ holds. For designing our protocol, we design two important building blocks, which are of independent interest. The first building block is a best-of-both-worlds Byzantine agreement (BA) protocol tolerating $t < n/3$ corruptions and which remains secure, both in a synchronous as well as asynchronous network. The second building block is a polynomial-based best-of-both-worlds verifiable secret-sharing (VSS) protocol, which can tolerate up to $t_s$ and $t_a$ corruptions in a synchronous and in an asynchronous network respectively.

Abstract: The scientific interest in the area of Decentralized Randomness Beacon (DRB) protocols has been thriving recently. Partially that interest is due to the success of the disruptive technologies introduced by modern cryptography, such as cryptocurrencies, blockchain technologies, and decentralized finances, where there is an enormous need for a public, reliable, trusted, verifiable, and distributed source of randomness. On the other hand, recent advancements in the development of new cryptographic primitives brought a huge interest in constructing a plethora of DRB protocols differing in design and underlying primitives. To the best of our knowledge, no systematic and comprehensive work systematizes and analyzes the existing DRB protocols. Therefore, we present a Systematization of Knowledge (SoK) intending to structure the multi-faced body of research on DRB protocols. In this SoK, we delineate the DRB protocols along the following axes: their underlying primitive, properties, and security. This SoK tries to fill that gap by providing basic standard definitions and requirements for DRB protocols, such as Unpredictability, Bias-resistance, Availability (or Liveness), and Public Verifiability. We classify DRB protocols according to the nature of interactivity among protocol participants. We also highlight the most significant features of DRB protocols such as scalability, complexity, and performance along with a brief discussion on its improvement. We present future research directions along with a few interesting research problems.

Abstract: Vehicle-to-everything (V2X) communication is the key enabler for emerging intelligent transportation systems. Applications built on top of V2X require both authentication and privacy protection for the vehicles. The common approach to meet both requirements is to use pseudonyms which are short-term identities. However, both industrial standards and state-of-the-art research are not designed for resource-constrained environments. In addition, they make a strong assumption about the security of the vehicle's on-board computation units. In this paper, we propose a lightweight auto-refreshing pseudonym protocol (LARP) for V2X. LARP supports efficient operations for resource-constrained devices, and provides security even when parts of the vehicle are compromised. We provide formal security proof showing that the protocol is secure. We conduct experiments on a Raspberry Pi 4. The results demonstrate that LARP is feasible and practical.

Abstract: Most of todays Internet connections are protected through the Transport Layer Security (TLS) protocol. Its client-server handshake mechanism provides authentication, privacy and data integrity between communicating applications. It is also the security base for the 5G connectivity. While currently considered secure, the dawn of quantum computing represents a threat for TLS. In order to prepare for such an event, TLS must integrate quantum-secure (post-quantum) cryptography (PQC). The use of hybrid approaches, that combines PQC and traditional cryptography are recommended by security agencies. Efficient PQC integration at TLS requires the exploration of a wide set of design parameters and platforms. To this end this work presents the following contributions. First, wide evaluation of PQC-enhanced TLS hybrid protocols, using end-to-end communication latency as metric. Second, the exploration and benchmarking in constrained embedded devices. Third, a wide traffic analysis, including the impact and behavior of PQC-enhanced hybrid TLS in real practical scenarios.