A secure and efficient ECC-based user anonymity-preserving session initiation authentication protocol using smart card

The Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) is a signaling communications protocol, which has been chosen for controlling multimedia communication in 3G mobile networks. The proposed authentication in SIP is HTTP digest based authentication. Recently, Tu et al. presented an improvement of Zhang et al.’s smart card-based authenticated key agreement protocol for SIP. Their scheme efficiently resists password guessing attack. However, in this paper, we analyze the security of Tu et al.’s scheme and demonstrate their scheme is still vulnerable to user’s impersonation attack, server spoofing attack and man-in-the middle attack. We aim to propose an efficient improvement on Tu et al.’s scheme to overcome the weaknesses of their scheme, while retaining the original merits of their scheme. Through the rigorous informal and formal security analysis, we show that our scheme is secure against various known attacks including the attacks found in Tu et al.’s scheme. Furthermore, we simulate our scheme for the formal security analysis using the widely-accepted AVISPA (Automated Validation of Internet Security Protocols and Applications) tool and show that our scheme is secure against passive and active attacks including the replay and man-in-the-middle attacks. Additionally, the proposed scheme is comparable in terms of the communication and computational overheads with Tu et al.’s scheme and other related existing schemes.     

Cryptanalysis of a multiparty quantum key agreement protocol based on commutative encryption

Recently, Sun et al. (Quantum Inf Process 15(5):2101–2111, 2016) proposed an efficient multiparty quantum key agreement protocol based on commutative encryption. The aim of this protocol is to negotiate a secret shared key among multiple parties with high qubit efficiency as well as security against inside and outside attackers. The shared key is the exclusive-OR of all participants’ secret keys. This is achieved by applying the rotation operation on encrypted photons. For retrieving the final secret key, only measurement on single states is needed. Sun et al. claimed that assuming no mutual trust between participants, the scheme is secure against participant’s attack. In this paper, we show that this is not true. In particular, we demonstrate how a malicious participant in Sun et al.’s protocol can introduce “a” final fake key to target parties of his choice. We further propose an improvement to guard against this attack.     

A lightweight authentication and key agreement protocol preserving user anonymity

Nowadays with widespread employment of the Internet, servers provide various services for legal users. The vital issue in client/server connections is authentication protocols that make the communication channel safe and secure against famous attacks. Recently, Kumari et al. and Chaudhry et al. proposed two authentication and key agreement protocols and illustrated that their proposed protocols are secure against various security attacks. However, in this paper we demonstrate that both protocols are vulnerable to off-line password guessing attacks. Moreover, we show that Kumari et al.’s protocol does not provide the property of user anonymity. In order to overcome these weaknesses, we propose a lightweight authentication and key agreement protocol. The correctness of the proposed protocol is proved using BAN logic. Security analysis demonstrates that the proposed protocol resists various security attacks and provides user anonymity. Furthermore, performance analysis confirms that the computation cost of the proposed protocol is acceptable.

     

An efficient password-based three-party authenticated multiple key exchange protocol for wireless mobile networks

With the rapid development of wireless mobile communication, the password-based three-party authenticated key exchange protocol has attracted an increasing amount of attention. To generate more session keys at one time for different applications, Li et al. proposed a password-based three-party authenticated multiple key exchange (3PAMKE) protocol for wireless mobile networks. They claimed that their protocol could withstand various attacks. In this paper, we will show Li et al.’s protocol is not secure off-line password guessing. Furthermore, we proposed an improved 3PAMKE protocol to overcome weakness in Li et al.’s protocol. Security analysis and performance analysis shows our protocol not only overcomes security weakness, but also has better performance. Therefore, our protocol is more suitable for wireless mobile networks.     

Flexible protocol for quantum private query based on B92 protocol

Jakobi et al. for the first time proposed a novel and practical quantum private query (QPQ) protocol based on SARG04 (Scarani et al. in Phys Rev Lett 92:057901, 2004) quantum key distribution protocol (Jakobi et al. in Phys Rev A 83:022301, 2011). Gao et al. generalized Jakobi et al’s protocol and proposed a flexible QPQ protocol (Gao et al. in Opt Exp 20(16):17411–17420, 2012). When $\theta <\pi /4$ , Gao et al’s protocol exhibits better database security than Jakobi et al’s protocol, but has a higher probability with which Bob can correctly guess the address of Alice’s query. In this paper, we propose a flexible B92-based QPQ protocol. Although SARG04 protocol is a modification of B92 protocol and can be seen as a generalization of B92 protocol, our protocol shows different advantages from Gao et al’s protocol. It can simultaneously obtain better database security and a lower probability with which Bob can correctly guess the address of Alice’s query when $\theta <\pi /4$ . By introducing entanglement, the proposed QPQ protocol is robust against channel-loss attack, which also implies lower classical communication complexity. Similar to Gao et al’s protocol, it is flexible, practical, and robust against quantum memory attack.     

Cryptanalysis and improvement of a robust smart card secured authentication scheme on SIP using elliptic curve cryptography

The session initiation protocol (SIP) has been receiving a lot of attention to provide security in the Voice over IP (VoIP) in Internet and mobility management. Recently, Yeh et al. proposed a smart card-based authentication scheme for SIP using elliptic curve cryptography (ECC). They claimed that their scheme is secure against known security attacks. However, in this paper, we indicate that Yeh et al.’s scheme is vulnerable to off-line password guessing attack, user impersonation attack and server impersonation attack, in the case that the smart card is stolen and the information stored in the smart card is disclosed. As a remedy, we also propose an improved smart card-based authentication scheme which not only conquers the security weaknesses of the related schemes but also provides a reduction in computational cost. The proposed scheme also provides the user anonymity and untraceability, and allows a user to change his/her password without informing the remote server. To show the security of our protocol, we prove its security the random oracle model.     

An anonymous mobile user authentication protocol using self-certified public keys based on multi-server architectures

As a smart phone becomes a daily necessity, mobile services are springing up. A mobile user should be authenticated and authorized before accessing these mobile services. Generally, mobile user authentication is a method which is used to validate the legitimacy of a mobile login user. As the rapid booming of computer networks, multi-server architecture has been pervasive in many network environments. Much recent research has been focused on proposing password-based remote user authentication protocols using smart cards for multi-server environments. To protect the privacy of users, many dynamic identity based remote user authentication protocols were proposed. In 2009, Hsiang and Shih claimed their protocol is efficient, secure, and suitable for the practical application environment. However, Sood et al. pointed out Hsiang et al.’s protocol is susceptible to replay attack, impersonation attack and stolen smart card attack. Moreover, the password change phase of Hsiang et al.’s protocol is incorrect. Thus, Sood et al. proposed an improved protocol claimed to be practical and computationally efficient. Nevertheless, Li et al. found that Sood et al.’s protocol is still vulnerable to leak-of-verifier attack, stolen smart card attack and impersonation attack and consequently proposed an improvement to remove the aforementioned weaknesses. In 2012, Liao et al. proposed a novel pairing-based remote user authentication protocol for multi-server environment, the scheme based on elliptic curve cryptosystem is more secure and efficient. However, through careful analyses, we find that Liao et al.’s protocol is still susceptible to the trace attack. Besides, Liao et al.’s protocol is inefficient since each service server has to update its ID table periodically. In this paper, we propose an improved protocol to solve these weaknesses. By enhancing the security, the improved protocol is well suited for the practical environment.     

Tuning a two-round group key agreement

In 2007, Bohli et al. (Int J Inf Secur 6:243–254, 2007) proposed a two-round group key agreement protocol in the random oracle model, which in addition to semantic security offers strong entity authentication and a security guarantee against malicious insiders. We suggest a modification of this protocol that preserves the security guarantees and the round complexity, but reduces the amount of data that has to be sent and also reduces the number of signature computations and verifications by 50 %. Moreover, we propose a variant of Bohli et al.’s protocol whose security analysis does not require a random oracle or other idealizing assumptions.     

Cryptanalysis of a novel authentication protocol conforming to EPC-C1G2 standard

In 2006, the standard EPC Class-1 Generation-2 (EPC-C1G2) was ratified both by EPCglobal and ISO. This standard can be considered as a “universal” specification for low-cost RFID tags. Although it represents a great advance for the consolidation of RFID technology, it does not pay due attention to security and, as expected, its security level is very low. In 2007, Chien et al. published a mutual authentication protocol conforming to EPC-C1G2 which tried to correct all its security shortcomings. In this article, we point out various major security flaws in Chien et al.'s proposal. We show that none of the authentication protocol objectives are met. Unequivocal identification of tagged items is not guaranteed because of possible birthday attacks. Furthermore, an attacker can impersonate not only legitimate tags, but also the back-end database. The protocol does not provide forward security either. Location privacy is easily jeopardized by a straightforward tracking attack. Finally, we show how a successful auto-desynchronization (DoS attack) can be accomplished in the back-end database despite the security measures taken against it.     

Weakness in a RSA-based password authenticated key exchange protocol

Recently, an efficient password-authenticated key exchange protocol based on RSA has been proposed by Park et al. with formal security proof. In this letter, we analyze their protocol, and show that, unfortunately, it is insecure against an adversary who performs a dictionary attack.     

A provably secure and efficient two‐party password‐based explicit authenticated key exchange protocol resistance to password guessing attacks

Password‐based two‐party authenticated key exchange (2PAKE) protocol enables two or more entities, who only share a low‐entropy password between them, to authenticate each other and establish a high‐entropy secret session key. Recently, Zheng et al. proposed a password‐based 2PAKE protocol based on bilinear pairings and claimed that their protocol is secure against the known security attacks. However, in this paper, we indicate that the protocol of Zheng et al. is insecure against the off‐line password guessing attack, which is a serious threat to such protocols. Consequently, we show that an attacker who obtained the users' password by applying the off‐line password guessing attack can easily obtain the secret session key. In addition, the protocol of Zheng et al. does not provide the forward secrecy of the session key. As a remedy, we also improve the protocol of Zheng et al. and prove the security of our enhanced protocol in the random oracle model. The simulation result shows that the execution time of our 2PAKE protocol is less compared with other existing protocols. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Enhanced Dynamic Authentication Scheme (EDAS)

With non-stop growth in network environments, communication security is necessary. A strong protocol guarantees that users and service providers are secure against many kinds of attacks, such as impersonation and replay attack. Sood et al. proposed an authentication scheme based on dynamic identity to prevent transactions from being intercepted by malicious users. Although they claimed that their scheme has advantages over previous schemes with the same approach, we prove that their scheme is vulnerable to impersonation attack and stolen verification attack, and can be affected by clock synchronization. Therefore we propose a novel authentication scheme to enhance security and overcome limitations existing in Sood’s scheme. Our security analysis shows that our proposed method can efficiently resist known types of attacks. Experimental results also show that the method can be implemented and processed in real-time thus applicable for not only regular computers but also mobile devices.     

More efficient key-hash based fingerprint remote authentication scheme using mobile device

Today, the world is taking large leaps of progress in technology. The technology is turning the vision of achieving transparency, speed, accuracy, authenticity, friendliness and security in various services and access control mechanisms, into reality. Consequently, new and newer ideas are coming forth by researchers throughout the world. Khan et al. (Chaos Solitons Fractals 35(3):519–524, 2008) proposed remote user authentication scheme with mobile device, using hash-function and fingerprint biometric. In 2012, Chen et al. pointed out forged login attack through loss of mobile device on Khan et al.’s scheme and subsequently proposed a scheme to improve on this drawback. Truong et al. (Proceedings of 26th IEEE International Conference on Advanced Information Networking and Applications, pp 678–685, 2012) demonstrated that in Chen et al.’s scheme, an adversary can successfully replay an intercepted login request. They also showed that how an adversary can make fool of both the participants of Chen et al.’s protocol by taking advantage of the fact that the user is not anonymous in scheme. Further, they proposed an improvement to Chen et al.’s scheme to cut off its problems. Through this paper, we show that Chen et al.’s scheme has some other drawbacks too and the improvement proposed by Truong et al. is still insecure and vulnerable. We also propose an improved scheme which overcomes the flaws and inherits the goodness of both the schemes, Chen et al.’s scheme and Truong et al.’s scheme.     

A lightweight dynamic pseudonym identity based authentication and key agreement protocol without verification tables for multi-server architecture

Traditional password based authentication schemes are mostly considered in single-server environments. They are unfit for the multi-server environments from two aspects. Recently, base on Sood et al.?s protocol (2011), Li et al. proposed an improved dynamic identity based authentication and key agreement protocol for multi-server architecture (2012). Li et al. claim that the proposed scheme can make up the security weaknesses of Sood et al.?s protocol. Unfortunately, our further research shows that Li et al.?s protocol contains several drawbacks and cannot resist some types of known attacks. In this paper, we further propose a lightweight dynamic pseudonym identity based authentication and key agreement protocol for multi-server architecture. In our scheme, service providing servers don?t need to maintain verification tables for users. The proposed protocol provides not only the declared security features in Li et al.?s paper, but also some other security features, such as traceability and identity protection.     

对两种基于离散对数代理盲签名的分析

高炜等人和Yu Bao-zheng等人分别提出了两种基于离散对数的代理盲签名方案。对这两种方案进行了安全性分析。研究表明,这两种方案存在以下不足之处：高炜等人的代理盲签名方案是对谭等方案的改进,新的方案仍然具有可连接性,即代理签名者可以从一个合法的代理盲签名中恢复出此签名的中间值从而跟踪消息的拥有者。Yu Bao-zheng等人的代理盲签名方案同样具有可连接性的缺点。除此之外,用户可以通过自己持有的代理盲签名信息恢复出代理签名私钥,从而可以冒充代理签名者伪造消息m的代理盲签名或者直接利用一个合法的代理盲签名伪造出其它消息的合法代理盲签名。为了避免上述不足之处,给出了一个防止代理签名者连接性攻击的改进方案。     

A secure and efficient certificateless authenticated key agreement protocol for smart healthcare

As more and more important smart healthcare becomes in people’s daily life, its security issues draw increasing attention. It is stringent to design trusty communication protocol guaranteeing the data security and users privacy. Recently, Wang et al. proposed a certificateless authenticated key agreement (CL-AKA) protocol such that providing a resolution to transmit unforged data over open channel in smart healthcare. Claiming that their protocol could resist attacks from two types of adversaries, Wang et al. also compared their protocol with several related works. However, in this paper, we analyze their protocol and point out that the protocol lacks forward security. Moreover, aiming at remedying such defects, this paper proposes an improved CL-AKA protocol. Not only does the improved CL-AKA protocol satisfy the security requirements but also behaves efficient compared with other related works.     

A secure and efficient mutual authentication scheme for session initiation protocol

The Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) as the core signaling protocol for multimedia services is receiving much attention. Authentication is becoming increasingly crucial issue when a user asks to use SIP services. Many authentication schemes for the SIP have been proposed. Very recently, Zhang et al. has presented an authentication scheme for SIP and claimed their scheme could overcome various attacks while maintaining efficiency. In this research, we illustrate that their scheme is susceptible to the insider attack and does not provide proper mutual authentication. We then propose a modified secure mutual authentication scheme to conquer the security flaws in Zhang et al.’s scheme. Through the informal and formal security analyses, we demonstrate that our scheme is resilient possible known attacks including the attacks found in Zhang et al.’s scheme. In addition, the performance analysis shows that our scheme has better efficiency in comparison with other related ECC-based authentication schemes for SIP.     

A lightweight authentication and key agreement protocol for heterogeneous IoT with special attention to sensing devices and gateway

Focusing specifically on sensing devices with restricted resources, heterogeneous internet of things (HIoT) is an attractive scenario for IoT networks. Nonetheless, the very nature of wireless channels in these networks has given rise to a series of security challenges, which need to be considered while developing authentication protocols. Here, we scrutinized Yu and Park’s, Kumari et al.’s, and Ostad-sharif et al.'s protocols and illustrated their weaknesses against key compromise attacks, insider attacks, and violation of anonymity. Furthermore, for heterogeneous IoT contexts, a lightweight and secure authentication and key agreement protocol for heterogeneous IoT environments is presented. Concerning the restricted resources of sensing devices, an attempt is made to provide an efficient HIoT-based authentication protocol to enhance network security and performance. The gateway as a trusted authority with the maximum workload and sensing devices with the highest restrictions on resources are considered in the suggested protocol. As a result, the user bears the brunt of the workload in the individual session. The Burrows–Abadi–Needham (BAN) logic is used to validate the proposed protocol, and the Automated Validation of Internet Security Protocols and Applications (AVISPA) tool is utilized to demonstrate resilience to existing active attacks. Simulation findings and performance assessment revealed that our protocol improved communication overheads by up to 110%, computation overheads by up to 83%, and sensing device maximum storage capacity by up to 51%.

     

Two improved two-party identity-based authenticated key agreement protocols

Many authenticated key agreement protocols based on identity information were published in recent years. Hsieh et al. presented their protocol in 2002. However, Tseng et al. found a flaw in the protocol which resulted in a key compromise impersonation attack. Later, Tseng proposed his protocol conforming which conforms to all desirable security properties and is efficient. In this paper we propose two new two-party identity-based authenticated key agreement protocols. The first is based on Hsieh et al.'s protocol and makes it immune against Tseng et al.'s attack, while the second is an efficiently improved protocol based on Tseng's protocol.