Arup Kumar Pal

A secure user authentication and key-agreement scheme using wireless sensor networks for agriculture monitoring

Abstract Agriculture is the backbone of our economic system and plays an important role in the life of an economy. It does not only provide raw material and food, but also provides large employment opportunities. Therefore, agriculture requires modern technology for increasing the productivity. In this context, wireless sensor networks ( WSNs ) could be utilized for monitoring the climatic parameters such as (temperature, humidity, light, carbon dioxide, soil moisture, acidity etc.) in an agriculture field. The climatic parameters are very important in terms of growth, quality and productivity of crops. But, any kind of interception, modification, insertion, and deletion on these parameters can have negative effect on crop. Therefore, security and privacy are important issues in agriculture field. In this regard, we design a novel remote user authentication scheme using wireless sensor networks for agriculture monitoring. The protocol is validated through Burrows–Abadi–Needham (BAN) logic and also simulated using Automated Validation Information Security Protocols and Applications ( AVISPA ) tool. We formally analyze the security of the scheme using random oracle model. In addition, the informal security analysis shows that the proposed protocol is secure and resists various kinds of malicious attacks. As a results, the proposed protocol is applicable in a real life application.

A Secure and Robust Three-Factor Based Authentication Scheme Using RSA Cryptosystem

In remote user authentication, a server confirms the authenticity of a user via unreliable channel. Several authentication protocols are devised in the literature relied on the identity, password and biometric of a user. But, most of the authentication protocols are either computationally expensive or not-secure from several kinds of malicious threats. In this document, the authors have suggested a secure and robust three-factor such as password, smartcard and biometric based authentication scheme by using RSA cryptosystem. The proposed protocol is validated through BAN logic. Then, formal security analysis using random oracle model shows that the identity, password, biometric and session key are highly secure from an adversary. Besides, the informal security analysis of our protocol proves that it withstands to several kinds of malicious attacks. In addition, performance comparison of presented scheme with respect to other schemes is comparatively suitable in the context of communication and computation costs.

An RGB colour image steganography scheme using overlapping block-based pixel-value differencing

This paper presents a steganographic scheme based on the RGB colour cover image. The secret message bits are embedded into each colour pixel sequentially by the pixel-value differencing (PVD) technique. PVD basically works on two consecutive non-overlapping components; as a result, the straightforward conventional PVD technique is not applicable to embed the secret message bits into a colour pixel, since a colour pixel consists of three colour components, i.e. red, green and blue. Hence, in the proposed scheme, initially the three colour components are represented into two overlapping blocks like the combination of red and green colour components, while another one is the combination of green and blue colour components, respectively. Later, the PVD technique is employed on each block independently to embed the secret data. The two overlapping blocks are readjusted to attain the modified three colour components. The notion of overlapping blocks has improved the embedding capacity of the cover image. The scheme has been tested on a set of colour images and satisfactory results have been achieved in terms of embedding capacity and upholding the acceptable visual quality of the stego-image.

An SVD Based Location Specific Robust Color Image Watermarking Scheme Using RDWT and Arnold Scrambling

In recent times, effectiveness of the robust image watermarking scheme almost successfully solves the authenticity and copyright protection problem of images. Among several existing robust watermarking schemes, very few have been designed for color images. In this paper, the authors have proposed a redundant discrete wavelet transform (RDWT) and singular value decomposition based hybrid robust color image watermarking method where scrambled watermark is used for embedding purpose to provide extra security to authentic logo. At first, RGB color image is converted to YCbCr color image and then the Y component of YCbCr color space is used to insert Arnold scrambled grayscale watermark. In the next step, Y component of the YCbCr color model is decomposed into non overlapping blocks and subsequently RDWT are applied to each block. For better imperceptibility and effectiveness, in this proposed algorithm some singular values of RDWT transformed Y component blocks are modified by non overlapping decomposed and scrambled watermark blocks. Robustness of the proposed method is experimented against common geometric transformation attacks (like rotation, flip operation, cropping, scaling, shearing and deletion of lines or column operation etc.), common enhancement technique attacks (like lowpass filtering, histogram equalization, sharpening, gamma correction, noise addition etc.), jpeg compression attacks, some combinational attacks and satisfactory results are achieved. For better evaluation, proposed scheme is verified against standard benchmark software “Checkmark”.

An efficient three factor-based authentication scheme in multiserver environment using ECC: Authentication scheme in multi-server environment

Correspondence Rifaqat Ali, Department of Computer Science and Engineering, Indian Institute of Technology (ISM), Dhanbad, Jharkhand-826004, India. Email: rifaqatali27@gmail.com Summary Recently, Li et al have developed a smartcard-based remote user authentication scheme in multiserver environment. They have claimed that their scheme is secured against some possible cryptographic attacks. However, we have analyzed that the scheme of Li et al cannot preserve all the proclaimed security goals, which are given as follows: (1) It is not withstanding password-guessing, user impersonation, insider, and smartcard theft attacks, and (2) it fails to facilitate user anonymity property. To remedy these above-mentioned security flaws, we have proposed an efficient three factor–based authentication scheme in a multiserver environment using elliptic curve cryptography. The Burrows-Abadi-Needham logic is used to confirm the security validation of our scheme, which ensures that it provides mutual-authentication and session-key agreement securely. Then, the random oracle model is also considered to analyze the proposed scheme, and it shows that the backbone parameters, ie, identity, password, biometrics, and the session key, are secure from an adversary. Further, the informal security analysis confirms that the suggested scheme can withstand against some possible mentioned attacks. Later, the Automated Validation of Internet Security Protocols and Applications tool is incorporated to ensure its security against passive and active attacks. Finally, the performance comparison of the scheme is furnished to confirm its enhanced security with other relevant schemes.

A prominent object region detection based approach for CBIR application

Image retrieval based on visual content of image has constantly been a promising research field in the area of information retrieval to retrieve most analogous images from an image database according to a visual query image provided by user. Since the retrieval efficiency of all CBIR technique depends on the mining of appropriate salient visual features from images, it is still challenging problem to extract suitable visually prominent features from an image and use them in CBIR applications. A new CBIR scheme has been projected in this paper by using an object detection approach to locate prominent object region from images and subsequently some statistical parameters are computed from the detected object region for formation of image feature vector in CBIR application. Initially, the object region is detected and cropped using Graph based visual saliency map and connected component approach respectively. Later, the cropped object region is decomposed into several non overlapping blocks and some statistical parameters have been computed from each block. The proposed technique is tested on a standard Corel image database to estimate retrieval performance of the proposed image retrieval scheme. The experimental outcomes evidently confirmed that the proposed CBIR method is outperforming in object based images.

A Secure Three-Factor Remote User Authentication Scheme Using Elliptic Curve Cryptosystem

Recently, three factors such as biometric, smart card, and password based authentication schemes have drawn considerable attention in the field of information security. In this paper, the authors have presented an elliptic curve cryptosystem based authentication scheme using biometric, smart card, and password and also analyzed the formal and informal security of the authentication scheme. In this scheme, the parameters of elliptic curve are derived from the biometric features like iris, fingerprints, etc., which is suitable to withstand the forgery. The formal and informal security analysis are done based on the BAN logic and suggested propositions, respectively. The security analysis ensures that the presented scheme can withstand various kinds of malicious attacks. In addition, the scheme is also comparable with other related schemes in the context of communication cost, computation cost, and smart card storage. The scheme is suitable to ensure high degree of security with reduced comparatively overhead.

A novel image retrieval scheme using gray level co-occurrence matrix descriptors of discrete cosine transform based residual image

Several CBIR schemes have been devised by the formation of the low dimensional image feature vector from the primitive visual features such as color, texture and/or shape of the image to speed up the retrieval process. In this paper, the visual contents of the images have been extracted using block level Discrete Cosine Transformation (DCT) and Gray Level Co-occurrence Matrix (GLCM). Since the DC coefficients based feature vector has retained the most significant visual components of the image, so initially, we have computed DC coefficients based uniform quantized histogram and some statistical parameters are derived from that histogram for the formation of the DC feature vector. Subsequently, other significant visual features are computed from the residual image where the residual image is obtained by taking the difference between the original image plane and the DC coefficients based reconstructed image plane. Thereafter, some statistical parameters from GLCMs of the residual image are considered for the construction of the GLCM based feature vector. This feature vector is suitable to identify the texture features of the residual image in a more effective way. The single feature vector has been obtained by combining DC and GLCM feature vectors since the combined extracted features from the images increase the accuracy of any image retrieval system. We have tested the scheme either in intensity image or on three color planes of an RGB color image. The experimental results are evaluated on two standard image databases and demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed scheme in terms of average retrieval accuracy. In addition, the overall speed of the proposed CBIR system is high due to the formation of the low dimensional significant feature vector. The comparative results also show that the proposed scheme provides effective accuracy than some other state-of-the-art CBIR schemes.

An indirect watermark hiding in discrete cosine transform-singular value decomposition domain for copyright protection.

Digital image watermarking has emerged as a promising solution for copyright protection. In this paper, a discrete cosine transform (DCT) and singular value decomposition (SVD) based hybrid robust image watermarking method using Arnold scrambling is proposed and simulated to protect the copyright of natural images. In this proposed scheme, before embedding, watermark is scrambled with Arnold scrambling. Then, the greyscale cover image and encrypted watermark logo are decomposed into non-overlapping blocks and subsequently some selected image blocks are transformed into the DCT domain for inserting the watermark blocks permanently. For better imperceptibility and effectiveness, in this proposed algorithm, watermark image blocks are embedded into singular values of selected blocks by multiplying with a feasible scaling factor. Simulation result demonstrates that robustness is achieved by recovering satisfactory watermark data from the reconstructed cover image after applying common geometric transformation attacks (such as rotation, flip operation, cropping, scaling, shearing and deletion of lines or columns operation), common enhancement technique attacks (such as low-pass filtering, histogram equalization, sharpening, gamma correction, noise addition) and jpeg compression attacks.

Content-based image retrieval using SVD-based Eigen images

In this paper, a content-based image retrieval scheme using the singular value decomposition (SVD) is proposed where the feature vector was estimated from the selected significant components of a singular value decomposed image. The Eigen values of the decomposed image are divided into several numbers of groups and from each group we have constructed several Eigen images and subsequently, statistical values like mean, standard deviation and entropy are computed from those Eigen images. The constructed Eigen images are suitable to analyse the original image data in various image planes. This approach is applied to each colour components for formation of colour-based final feature vector. This approach is appropriate to reduce the overall processing cost in image retrieving process due to the consideration of significant image feature in SVD domain. The scheme is tested on a standard Corel image database and satisfactory results are achieved.