Secure data aggregation in wireless sensor networks

A Wireless Sensor Network (WSN) is a set of sensors that are integrated with a physical environment. These sensors are small in size, and capable of sensing physical phenomena and processing them. They communicate in a multihop manner, due to a short radio range, to form an Ad Hoc network capable of reporting network activities to a data collection sink. Recent advances in WSNs have led to several new promising applications, including habitat monitoring, military target tracking, natural disaster relief, and health monitoring. The current version of sensor node, such as MICA2, uses a 16 bit, 8 MHz Texas Instruments MSP430 micro-controller with only 10 KB RAM, 128 KB program space, 512 KB external ash memory to store measurement data, and is powered by two AA batteries. Due to these unique specifications and a lack of tamper-resistant hardware, devising security protocols for WSNs is complex. Previous studies show that data transmission consumes much more energy than computation. Data aggregation can greatly help to reduce this consumption by eliminating redundant data. However, aggregators are under the threat of various types of attacks. Among them, node compromise is usually considered as one of the most challenging for the security of WSNs. In a node compromise attack, an adversary physically tampers with a node in order to extract the cryptographic secrets. This attack can be very harmful depending on the security architecture of the network. For example, when an aggregator node is compromised, it is easy for the adversary to change the aggregation result and inject false data into the WSN. The contributions of this thesis to the area of secure data aggregation are manifold. We firstly define the security for data aggregation in WSNs. In contrast with existing secure data aggregation definitions, the proposed definition covers the unique characteristics that WSNs have. Secondly, we analyze the relationship between security services and adversarial models considered in existing secure data aggregation in order to provide a general framework of required security services. Thirdly, we analyze existing cryptographic-based and reputationbased secure data aggregation schemes. This analysis covers security services provided by these schemes and their robustness against attacks. Fourthly, we propose a robust reputationbased secure data aggregation scheme for WSNs. This scheme minimizes the use of heavy cryptographic mechanisms. The security advantages provided by this scheme are realized by integrating aggregation functionalities with: (i) a reputation system, (ii) an estimation theory, and (iii) a change detection mechanism. We have shown that this addition helps defend against most of the security attacks discussed in this thesis, including the On-Off attack. Finally, we propose a secure key management scheme in order to distribute essential pairwise and group keys among the sensor nodes. The design idea of the proposed scheme is the combination between Lamport's reverse hash chain as well as the usual hash chain to provide both past and future key secrecy. The proposal avoids the delivery of the whole value of a new group key for group key update; instead only the half of the value is transmitted from the network manager to the sensor nodes. This way, the compromise of a pairwise key alone does not lead to the compromise of the group key. The new pairwise key in our scheme is determined by Diffie-Hellman based key agreement.

Privacy of RFID - models and protocols

Radio Frequency Identification is a wireless identification method that utilizes the reception of electromagnetic radio waves. This research has proposed a novel model to allow for an in-depth security analysis of current protocols and developed new flexible protocols that can be adapted to offer either stronger security or better efficiency.

Predicate encryption for multi-inner-products

Predicate encryption is a new primitive that supports flexible control over access to encrypted data. We study predicate encryption systems, evaluating a wide class of predicates. Our systems are more expressive than the existing attribute-hiding systems in the sense that the proposed constructions support not only all existing predicate evaluations but also arbitrary conjunctions and disjunctions of comparison and subset queries. Toward our goal, we propose encryption schemes supporting multi-inner-product predicate and provide formal security analysis. We show how to apply the proposed schemes to achieve all those predicate evaluations.

Cryptanalysis of the convex hull click human identification protocol

Recently, a convex hull-based human identification protocol was proposed by Sobrado and Birget, whose steps can be performed by humans without additional aid. The main part of the protocol involves the user mentally forming a convex hull of secret icons in a set of graphical icons and then clicking randomly within this convex hull. While some rudimentary security issues of this protocol have been discussed, a comprehensive security analysis has been lacking. In this paper, we analyze the security of this convex hull-based protocol. In particular, we show two probabilistic attacks that reveal the user’s secret after the observation of only a handful of authentication sessions. These attacks can be efficiently implemented as their time and space complexities are considerably less than brute force attack. We show that while the first attack can be mitigated through appropriately chosen values of system parameters, the second attack succeeds with a non-negligible probability even with large system parameter values that cross the threshold of usability.

A new human identification protocol and Coppersmith's baby-step giant-step algorithm

We propose a new protocol providing cryptographically secure authentication to unaided humans against passive adversaries. We also propose a new generic passive attack on human identification protocols. The attack is an application of Coppersmith’s baby-step giant-step algorithm on human identification protcols. Under this attack, the achievable security of some of the best candidates for human identification protocols in the literature is further reduced. We show that our protocol preserves similar usability while achieves better security than these protocols. A comprehensive security analysis is provided which suggests parameters guaranteeing desired levels of security.

Keyword field-free conjunctive keyword searches on encrypted data and extension for dynamic groups

We consider the following problem: a user stores encrypted documents on an untrusted server, and wishes to retrieve all documents containing some keywords without any loss of data confidentiality. Conjunctive keyword searches on encrypted data have been studied by numerous researchers over the past few years, and all existing schemes use keyword fields as compulsory information. This however is impractical for many applications. In this paper, we propose a scheme of keyword field-free conjunctive keyword searches on encrypted data, which affirmatively answers an open problem asked by Golle et al. at ACNS 2004. Furthermore, the proposed scheme is extended to the dynamic group setting. Security analysis of our constructions is given in the paper.

Cryptanalysis of Tav-128 Hash Function

Many RFID protocols use cryptographic hash functions for their security. The resource constrained nature of RFID systems forces the use of light weight cryptographic algorithms. Tav-128 is one such 128-bit light weight hash function proposed by Peris-Lopez et al. for a low-cost RFID tag authentication protocol. Apart from some statistical tests for randomness by the designers themselves, Tav-128 has not undergone any other thorough security analysis. Based on these tests, the designers claimed that Tav-128 does not posses any trivial weaknesses. In this article, we carry out the first third party security analysis of Tav-128 and show that this hash function is neither collision resistant nor second preimage resistant. Firstly, we show a practical collision attack on Tav-128 having a complexity of 237 calls to the compression function and produce message pairs of arbitrary length which produce the same hash value under this hash function. We then show a second preimage attack on Tav-128 which succeeds with a complexity of 262 calls to the compression function. Finally, we study the constituent functions of Tav-128 and show that the concatenation of nonlinear functions A and B produces a 64-bit permutation from 32-bit messages. This could be a useful light weight primitive for future RFID protocols.

传输层安全协议的安全性分析及改进

基于一次一密、访问控制和双证书机制对TLS(transport layer security)协议进行了安全性分析,并针对分析结果,对TLS协议的消息流程以及消息的内容进行了扩展,改进后的协议更具有安全性和实用性.

基于口令认证的密钥交换协议的安全性分析

在串空间理论模型引入了描述DH问题的方法以及分析猜测攻击的攻击者能力,对基于口令认证的密钥交换协议的安全性进行了形式化分析.提出一个对DH-EKE协议的简化,并证明了该协议的安全性:口令的秘密性,认证性,以及会话密钥的秘密性.根据分析给出基于口令认证的密钥交换协议抵抗猜测攻击的基本条件.将分析方法应用到基于口令的三方密钥交换协议上,给出单纯基于口令进行密钥交换协议的安全性需要满足的一个必要条件.

基于攻击能力增长的网络安全分析模型

网络脆弱性分析是近年来国内外研究的热点问题之一．基于攻击能力增长的网络安全性分析模型以攻击者的能力增长为主导，参考网络环境配置，模拟黑客攻击自动生成攻击图．使用攻击能力增长表示攻击者的最终目标使得攻击图的表示更为准确．最小攻击代价分析第1次考虑了相似攻击对攻击代价的影响，以便对各条路径的攻击代价进行计算；最小环境改变分析考虑入侵检测的因素对最可能的攻击路径进行分析，对于入侵检测系统的处理更加科学合理；两种分析都为改善网络配置提供了依据．与已有成果相比，模型提出的算法和方法更为实际可行．

金融信息安全浅析

20世纪50年代以来;科学技术与世界经济一体化的迅猛发展,对传统金融业产生了广泛而深刻的影响,并引发了其根本性变革。网上银行、电子商务.电子支付工具等新的服务方式正在兴起,金融运行模式也正在发生深刻的变化。金融服务领域日益广泛,服务水平不断提高。这种转变的一个重要基础就是广泛采用信息技术。信息技术在深刻改变传统

一个组播源认证方案的安全分析

组播源认证是组播通信中的一个研究热点。对一个基于不可靠通信信道的组播源认证方案进行了安全分析,给出了通过选择性地截留部分通信数据包,成功伪造了一个新的流签名的攻击方法。基于Chernoff界,讨论并给出了对原方案的参数设置的改进和限制,从而提高了方案的安全性,避免选择性截留攻击。

XOR-MAC消息认证码的安全性新证明

消息认证码(Message Authentication Codes,MACs)是保证消息完整性的重要工具.Bellare等人提出了称为XOR-MAC的消息认证码,界定了攻击者成功伪造的概率,从而证明了其安全性,但是他们给出的证明方法较为复杂.本文使用Game-Playing技术采用新的安全性定义证明了XOR-MAC的安全性,证明方法简单明了;在底层所使用的分组密码是伪随机置换的假设下,量化了该消息认证码与随机函数之间区分的概率.

基于理想的协议安全性分析

1998年，Guttman等人提出了串空间理论作为一种新的密码协议形式化分析的工具．并在1999年第1次引入了关于消息代数上的理想以及诚实的概念来分析协议的保密性．由于理想结构的特殊性使得它可以刻画协议运行中消息之间的关系，利用理想的结构来分析协议的一些安全性质，例如保密性、认证性、零知识性以及如何抵抗猜测攻击．

基于椭圆曲线的代理多签名方案的安全性分析

在一个安全的代理签名方案中，只有指定的代理签名人能够代表原始签名人生成代理签名．基于椭圆曲线离散对数问题，纪家慧和李大兴提出了一个代理签名方案和一个代理多签名方案，陈泽雄等人给出了另外两个代理多签名方案．但是，在他们的方案中，原始签名人能够伪造代理签名私钥．为了抵抗原始签名人的伪造攻击，改进了代理签名密钥的生成过程，并对改进的方案进行了安全性分析．