A secure authentication scheme based on elliptic curve cryptography for IoT and cloud servers

The Internet of Things (IoT) is now a buzzword for Internet connectivity which extends to embedded devices, sensors and other objects connected to the Internet. Rapid development of this technology has led to the usage of various embedded devices in our daily life. However, for resource sharing and communication among these devices, there is a requirement for connecting these embedded devices to a large pool of resources like a cloud. The promising applications of IoT in Government and commercial sectors are possible by integrating cloud servers with these embedded devices. But such an integration of technologies involves security issues like data privacy and authentication of devices whenever information is exchanged between them. Recently, Kalra and Sood proposed an authentication scheme based on elliptic curve cryptography (ECC) for IoT and cloud servers and claimed that their scheme satisfies all security requirements and is immune to various types of attacks. However, in this paper, we show that Kalra and Sood scheme is susceptible to offline password guessing and insider attacks and it does not achieve device anonymity, session key agreement, and mutual authentication. Keeping in view of the shortcomings of Kalra and Sood’s scheme, we have proposed an authentication scheme based on ECC for IoT and cloud servers. In the proposed scheme in this paper, we have formally analyzed the security properties of the designed scheme by the most widely accepted and used Automated Validation of Internet Security Protocols and Applications tool. Security and performance analysis show that when compared with other related schemes, the proposed scheme is more powerful, efficient, and secure with respect to various known attacks.     

A secure authentication scheme with anonymity for session initiation protocol using elliptic curve cryptography

As a signaling protocol for controlling communication on the internet, establishing, maintaining, and terminating the sessions, the Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) is widely used in the world of multimedia communication. To ensure communication security, many authentication schemes for the SIP have been proposed. However, those schemes cannot ensure user privacy since they cannot provide user anonymity. To overcome weaknesses in those authentication schemes with anonymity for SIP, we propose an authentication scheme with anonymity using elliptic curve cryptograph. By a sophisticated analysis of the security of the proposed protocol, we show that the proposed scheme not only overcomes weaknesses in previous schemes but also is very efficient. Therefore, it is suitable for applications with higher security requirements.     

New robust biometrics-based mutual authentication scheme with key agreement using elliptic curve cryptography

In this work, we demonstrate that Chaudhry et al.’s recent biometrics-based three factor authentication scheme is vulnerable to the denial of service attack, and it also fails to provide perfect forward secrecy because it only uses the lightweight symmetric key primitives to ensure security. To enhance the information security, this article presents a new robust biometrics-based mutual authentication scheme using elliptic curve cryptography for client-server architecture based applications in mobile environment. The proposed scheme supports session key agreement and flawless mutual authentication of participants, which is proved under the BAN logic. Moreover, the proposed scheme provides prefect security attributes and resists all known attacks, and it has perfect performance in communication cost. Thereby, the proposed scheme is more suitable for client-server architecture based applications.     

A lightweight authentication scheme with user untraceability

With the rapid growth of electronic commerce and associated demands on variants of Internet based applications,application systems providing network resources and business services are in high demand around the world.To guarantee robust security and computational efficiency for service retrieval,a variety of authentication schemes have been proposed.However,most of these schemes have been found to be lacking when subject to a formal security analysis.Recently,Chang et al.(2014) introduced a formally provable secure authentication protocol with the property of user-untraceability.Unfortunately,based on our analysis,the proposed scheme fails to provide the property of user-untraceability as claimed,and is insecure against user impersonation attack,server counterfeit attack,and man-in-the-middle attack.In this paper,we demonstrate the details of these malicious attacks.A security enhanced authentication scheme is proposed to eliminate all identified weaknesses.     

An efficient mutual authentication RFID scheme based on elliptic curve cryptography

Radio frequency identification (RFID) tags have been widely deployed in many applications, such as supply chain management, inventory control, and traffic card payment. However, these applications can suffer from security issues or privacy violations when the underlying data-protection techniques are not properly designed. Hence, many secure RFID authentication protocols have been proposed. According to the resource usage of the tags, secure RFID protocols are classified into four types: full-fledged, simple, lightweight, and ultra-lightweight. In general, non-full-fledged protocols are vulnerable to desynchronization, impersonation, and tracking attacks, and they also lack scalability. If the tag resources allow more flexibility, full-fledged protocols seem to be an attractive solution. In this study, we examine full-fledged RFID authentication protocols and discuss their security issues. We then design a novel RFID authentication protocol based on elliptic curve cryptography, to avoid these issues. In addition, we present a detailed security analysis and a comparison with related studies; the results show that our scheme is more resistant to a variety of attacks and that it has the best scalability, while maintaining competitive levels of efficiency.     

A remote user authentication scheme without using smart cards

User authentication is one of the fundamental procedures to ensure secure communications over an insecure public network channel. Especially, due to tamper-resistance and convenience in managing a password file, various user authentication schemes using smart cards have been proposed. A smart card however far from ubiquitous because of the high cost of a smart card and the infrastructure requirements. In this paper, we study secure user authentication using only a common storage device such as a universal serial bus (USB) memory, instead of using smart cards. We first show that the existing schemes using smart cards cannot be immediately converted into schemes using a common storage device. We then propose a practical and secure user authentication scheme, capable of supporting the use of the common storage device, which retains all the advantages of schemes using smart cards.     

A semi-blind HVS based image watermarking scheme using elliptic curve cryptography

In the present paper, an advanced encryption technique commonly known as Elliptic Curve Cryptography (ECC) is used to embed a binary image as a watermark in five grayscale host images in a semi-blind manner. The ECC algorithm is a fast encryption technique which successfully encrypts the subject with significantly less number of bits as compared to other popular encryption algorithms such as Rivest-Shamir-Adleman (RSA) and Direct Selling Association (DSA). In the proposed watermarking scheme, embedding in the grayscale host images is carried out in DWT-SVD domain. First, entropy based Human Visual System (HVS) parameters are computed block wise to identify the most appropriate blocks in spatial domain. First level DWT is computed for these selected blocks and watermark embedding is carried out by using the calculated Singular Value Decomposition (SVD) parameters. Preliminary results of this work show that proposed scheme outperforms the other similar schemes carried out in DCT-SVD domain without using any encryption method. It is concluded that the use of DWT-SVD hybrid architecture along with the fast encryption technique ECC is responsible for better performance in present case. In the second part of this simulation, an established HVS model working in DCT domain is implemented and compared with the entropy based HVS model implemented in transform domain to embed the ECC encrypted binary watermark in images. In this case also, proposed scheme performs better both in terms of visual imperceptibility and robustness as compared to other scheme. It is concluded that HVS parameters – Luminance, Contrast and Edge Sensitivity are better placed in comparison to entropy parameters to examine image features and characteristics for watermarking purpose.     

More secure remote user authentication scheme

Recently, Yoon and Yoo proposed a remote user authentication scheme which is an improvement on Lee–Kim–Yoo’s method. However, we find out that Yoon–Yoo’s scheme easily reveals a user’s password and is vulnerable to both masquerading user attack and masquerading server attack. Yoon–Yoo’s scheme is also exposed to stolen verifier attack, because it has to maintain a user database in a remote server. This paper proposes a new remote user authentication scheme that resolves all aforementioned problems, while keeping the merits of Yoon–Yoo’s scheme.     

基于动态ID的远程用户身份认证方案

用户身份认证作为网络安全和信息安全的第一道屏障,有着非常重要的作用.口令与智能卡相结合的认证方式可以克服传统口令认证方式的诸多弊端,能够提高网络和信息系统整体的安全性.对基于动态ID的远程用户身份认证方案进行了分析,指出了该方案在入侵者持有用户智能卡的情况下,即使不知道用户口令也能够伪装成合法用户通过远程系统的身份验证,获取系统的网络资源.提出了一种改进方案,能有效抵御重放攻击、伪造攻击、口令猜测攻击、内部攻击和伪装攻击.     

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.     

一种改进的基于动态身份远程用户认证方案

基于动态身份远程用户认证可有效防止用户关键信息泄露,保证已认证用户通过授权获取网络服务.针对Wen-Li提出的基于动态身份远程用户认证与密钥协商方案进行安全性分析,指出该方案存在安全缺陷,可能导致泄露用户部分关键信息,进而遭受网络攻击.在保留Wen-Li方案优点的基础上提出一种改进的远程用户认证方案,重新设计了认证过程中的会话密钥和密钥确认消息.与Wen-Li方案相比,改进方案能够抵御中间人攻击以及盗窃智能卡攻击,并增强了方案的前向安全性.     

Cryptanalysis and improvement of an efficient mutual authentication RFID scheme based on elliptic curve cryptography

Radio frequency identification (RFID) is a wireless technology for automatic identification and data capture. Security and privacy issues in the RFID systems have attracted much attention. Many approaches have been proposed to achieve the security and privacy goals. One of these approaches is RFID authentication protocols by which a server and tags can authorize each other through an intracity process. Recently, Chou proposed a RFID authentication protocol based on elliptic curve cryptography. However, this paper demonstrates that the Chou’s protocol does not satisfy tag privacy, forward privacy and authentication, and server authentication. Based on these security and privacy problems, we also show that Chou’s protocol is defenseless to impersonation attacks, tag cloning attacks and location tracking attacks. Therefore, we propose a more secure and efficient scheme, which does not only cover all the security flaws and weaknesses of related previous protocols, but also provides more functionality. We prove the security of the proposed improved protocol in the random oracle model.     

An improved timestamp-based remote user authentication scheme

To protect the remote server from various malicious attacks, many authentication schemes have been proposed. Some schemes have to maintain a password verification table in the remote server for checking the legitimacy of the login users. To overcome potential risks of verification tables, researchers proposed remote user authentication schemes using smartcard, in which the remote server only keeps a secret key for computing the user’s passwords and does not need any verification table for verifying legal user. In 2003 Shen, Lin, and Hwang proposed a timestamp-based password authentication scheme using smartcards in which the remote server does not need to store the passwords or verification table for user authentication. Unfortunately, this scheme is vulnerable to some deadly attacks. In this paper, we analyze few attacks and finally propose an improved timestamp-based remote user authentication scheme. The modified scheme is more efficient and secure than original scheme.     

Provably secure and pairing-free certificateless digital signature scheme using elliptic curve cryptography

A provably secure certificateless digital signature scheme using elliptic curve cryptography is presented in this paper. Since the certificateless public key cryptosystem removes the complex certificate management procedure and the private key escrow problem of traditional public key cryptography (PKC) and identity-based cryptosystem (IBC), respectively, and as a result, the proposed scheme is more efficient than IBC- and PKC-based signatures. Besides, the bilinear pairing and map-to-point hash function are time-consuming operations, and thus the signatures without these two operations are more attractive in real applications and the present work has been carried out in this direction. Based on the elliptic curve discrete logarithm assumption, it is shown that the proposed scheme is unforgeable under the adaptive chosen message and identity attacks in the random oracle model against variety of adversaries. Finally, our signature scheme is compared with a number of competitive schemes and the satisfactory performance has been achieved.     

Elliptic curve cryptography based mutual authentication scheme for session initiation protocol

The Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) is the most widely used signaling protocol for controlling communication on the internet, establishing, maintaining, and terminating the sessions. The services that are enabled by SIP are equally applicable in the world of multimedia communication. Recently, Tsai proposed an efficient nonce-based authentication scheme for SIP. In this paper, we do a cryptanalysis of Tsai’s scheme and show that Tsai’s scheme is vulnerable to the password guessing attack and stolen-verifier attack. Furthermore, Tsai’s scheme does not provide known-key secrecy and perfect forward secrecy. We also propose a novel and secure mutual authentication scheme based on elliptic curve discrete logarithm problem for SIP which is immune to the presented attacks.     

基于椭圆曲线密码体制的XML盲签名方案

通过将XML数字签名技术延伸到盲签名,并在实现中使用椭圆曲线公钥密码算法,提出了基于椭圆曲线密码体制的XML盲签名方案,用实例阐述了该方案的实施流程,并分析了其安全性。该方案结合椭圆曲线密码体制和XML数字签名的优势,在实现保护用户匿名性的同时,扩大了XML数字签名在受限环境中的应用范围,提高了网络环境中信息交换的效率。     

A secure dynamic ID based remote user authentication scheme for multi-server environment using smart cards

Recently, Hsiang et al. pointed out that Liao-Wang’s dynamic ID based remote user authentication scheme for multi-server environment is vulnerable to insider attack, masquerade attack, server spoofing attack, registration center attack and is not easily reparable. Besides, Liao-Wang’s scheme cannot achieve mutual authentication. For this, Hsiang et al. proposed an improved scheme to overcome these weaknesses and claimed that their scheme is efficient, secure, and suitable for the practical application environment. However, we observe that Hsiang et al.’s scheme is still vulnerable to a masquerade attack, server spoofing attack, and is not easily reparable. Furthermore, it cannot provide mutual authentication. Therefore, in this paper we propose an improved scheme to solve these weaknesses.     

增强的基于智能卡的远程用户认证协议

基于智能卡的远程用户认证协议比基于口令的安全协议能提供更好的安全性。2011年Chen等提出一种对Hsiang-Shih方案改进的基于智能卡的远程认证协议,并称解决了相关方案中存在的各种攻击问题。指出Chen等方案仍然存在着内部攻击、丢失智能卡攻击、重放攻击和身份冒充攻击,并针对基于口令和智能卡的远程认证协议类存在的离线口令猜测攻击提出一种基于智能卡和椭圆曲线离散对数问题的认证协议。该协议能抵抗提到的所有攻击,在登陆和认证阶段只需要一个点乘运算。     

A secure dynamic ID based remote user authentication scheme for multi-server environment

Since the number of server providing the facilities for the user is usually more than one, the authentication protocols for multi-server environment are required for practical applications. Most of password authentication schemes for multi-server environment are based on static ID, so the adversary can use this information to trace and identify the user's requests. It is unfavorable to be applied to special applications, such as e-commerce. In this paper, we develop a secure dynamic ID based remote user authentication scheme to achieve user's anonymity. The proposed scheme only uses hashing functions to implement a robust authentication scheme for the multi-server environment. It provides a secure method to update password without the help of third trusted party. The proposed scheme does not only satisfy all requirements for multi-server environment but also achieve efficient computation. Besides, our scheme provides complete functionality to suit with the real applications.