An efficient anonymous authentication protocol in multiple server communication networks (EAAM)

In a multi-server authentication environment, a user only needs to register once at a central registration place before accessing the different services on the different registered servers. Both, from a user point of view as for the management and maintenance of the infrastructure, these types of environments become more and more popular. Smartcard- or smartphone-based approaches lead to more secure systems because they offer two- or three-factor authentication, based on the strict combination of the user’s password, the user’s biometrics and the possession of the device. In this paper, we propose an efficient anonymous authentication protocol in multiple server communication networks, called the EAAM protocol, which is able to establish user anonymity, mutual authentication, and resistance against known security attacks. The novelty of the proposed scheme is that it does not require a secure channel during the registration between the user and the registration center and is resistant to a curious but honest registration system. These features are established in a highly efficient way with the minimum amount of communication flows between user and server during the establishment of the secret shared key and by using light-weight cryptographic techniques such as Chebyshev chaotic map techniques and symmetric key cryptography. The performance and security of the protocol are analyzed and compared with the latest new proposals in this field.     

Toward the inclusion of end-to-end security in the OM2M platform

The Journal of Supercomputing - The exponential growth in the number of Internet of things (IoT) devices and their potential in many applications in a vast number of domains fuelled the development...     

Lightweight PUF based authentication scheme for fog architecture

Fog computing improves efficiency and reduces the amount of bandwidth to the cloud. In many use cases, the internet of things (IoT) devices do not know the fog nodes in advance. Moreover, as the fog nodes are often placed in open publicly available places, they can be easily captured. Therefore, it should be ensured that even if the key material is leaked from the fog devices, the previously generated session keys and the identity of the devices can be kept secret, i.e. satisfying anonymity, unlinkability, perfect forward secrecy and resistance against stolen devices attack. Such demands require a multi-factor authentication scheme, which is typically done by providing input of the user with password or biometric data. However, in real use case scenarios, IoT devices should be able to automatically start the process without requiring such manual interaction and also fog devices need to autonomously operate. Therefore, this paper proposes a physical unclonable function (PUF) based mutual authentication scheme, being the first security scheme for a fog architecture, capable of providing simultaneously all these suggested security features. In addition, we also show the resistance against other types of attacks like synchronization and known session specific temporary information attack. Moreover, the scheme only relies on symmetric key based operations and thus results in very good performance, compared to the other fog based security systems proposed in literature.

     

A design of composite hollow fiber membranes with tunable performance and reinforced mechanical strength

A new design of hollow fiber membranes with high mechanical strength, great surface area per volume ratio and tunable filtration performance is presented. This newly developed hollow fiber membrane was produced by an intensified production process, in which the processes of thermally induced phase separation (TIPS), non‐solvent induced phase separation (NIPS), and interfacial polymerization (IP) were combined. PVDF (polyvinylidene difluoride) hollow fiber membranes (produced by TIPS) were used as support substrates. Afterwards, PES (polyethersulfone) (made by NIPS) and PA (polyamide) layers (manufactured by IP) were coated one by one. The pure water permeability, molecular weight cut off (MWCO), salt rejection, tensile stress together with surface and cross‐sectional morphology indicate that the properties of the hollow fiber membranes can be easily adjusted from microfiltration‐like to nanofiltration‐like membranes only by varying the presence of the IP step and the concentration in the PES layer in the production system. © 2014 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J. Appl. Polym. Sci. 2015 , 132, 41247.     

Towards a complementary balanced energy harvesting solution for low power embedded systems

The specific technical challenges associated with the design of an ambient energy powered electronic system currently requires thorough knowledge of the environment of deployment, energy harvester characteristics and power path management. In this work, a novel flexible model for ambient energy harvesters is presented that allows decoupling of the harvester’s physical principles and electrical behavior using a three dimensional function. The model can be adapted to all existing harvesters, resulting in a design methodology for generic ambient energy powered systems using the presented model. We also present a solution for the mathematical problem involved with the optimization of generator sizes when more than two harvesters are used, and demonstrate the ease of use of this solution for implementations on embedded systems with few system resources. Concrete examples are included to demonstrate the versatility of the presented design in the development of electronic appliances on system level.     

CHIP: Collaborative Host Identity Protocol with Efficient Key Establishment for Constrained Devices in Internet of Things

Wireless Personal Communications - The Internet of Things (IoT) is the next evolutionary paradigm of networking technologies that interconnects almost all the smart objects and intelligent sensors...     

Anonymous Lightweight Proxy Based Key Agreement for IoT (ALPKA)

Wireless Personal Communications - The Internet of Things (IoT) technologies interconnect a broad range of network devices, differing in terms of size, weight, functionality, and resource...     

Highly efficient key agreement for remote patient monitoring in MEC-enabled 5G networks

Remote patient monitoring is one of the cornerstones to enable Ambient Assisted Living. Here, a set of devices provide their corresponding input, which should be carefully aggregated and analysed to derive health-related conclusions. In the new Fifth-Generation (5G) networks, Internet of Things (IoT) devices communicate directly to the mobile network without any need of proxy devices. Moreover, 5G networks consist of Multi-access Edge Computing (MEC) nodes, which are taking the role of a mini-cloud, able to provide sufficient computation and storage capacity at the edge of the network. MEC IoT integration in 5G offers a lot of benefits such as high availability, high scalability, low backhaul bandwidth costs, low latency, local awareness and additional security and privacy. In this paper, we first detail the procedure on how to establish such remote monitoring in 5G networks. Next, we focus on the key agreement between IoT, MEC and registration center in order to guarantee mutual authentication, anonymity, and unlinkability properties. Taking into account the high heterogeneity of IoT devices that can contribute to an accurate image of the health status of a patient, it is of utmost importance to design a very lightweight scheme that allows even the smallest devices to participate. The proposed protocol is symmetric key based and thus highly efficient. Moreover, it is shown that the required security features are established and protection against the most of the well-known attacks is guaranteed.

     

Symmetric Key-Based Secure Storage and Retrieval of IoT Data on a Semi-trusted Cloud Server

Wireless Personal Communications - The storage of data in the cloud is critical for business and private users to protect their assets from any physically accessible and easily breakable hard disk....     

Secure event logging in sensor networks

Health care applications based on sensors are gaining popularity. In wireless body area networks (WBANs), sensing data are gathered from a set of nodes deployed on the patient’s body and sent to a central server. In such environments, security and privacy must be top priorities. Moreover, since decision-making is performed on the basis of the collected data, it can be important to maintain the chronological order of events in a secure way. In view of this, this paper proposes a system for secure logging of events in sensor networks by gathering in a secure and reliable way all information at one central point. The system guarantees the chronological order of logged events sent by the different sensors. It also allows one to detect the modification, deletion, and addition of logged data. As a proof of concept, we have designed a prototype of the gateway sensor on an FPGA platform that is responsible for the secure logging and the secure transmission of this information. Our prototype is based on the low-cost Spartan-6 FPGA which is equipped with several hard IP-cores such as Ethernet and CompactFlash, which makes it suitable for event storage. As it turns out, the FPGA board (SP-605) is able to store 20,830 logged events, computes digests in 2.51 μs and only uses 56% of the LUTs of the FPGA. Thus, the reconfigurable nature of FPGAs makes them suitable for use in extending the capabilities of commercial gateways, in order to provide secure logging in a WSN.