Junghyun Nam

Security Enhanced User Authentication Protocol for Wireless Sensor Networks Using Elliptic Curves Cryptography

Wireless sensor networks (WSNs) consist of sensors, gateways and users. Sensors are widely distributed to monitor various conditions, such as temperature, sound, speed and pressure but they have limited computational ability and energy. To reduce the resource use of sensors and enhance the security of WSNs, various user authentication protocols have been proposed. In 2011, Yeh et al. first proposed a user authentication protocol based on elliptic curve cryptography (ECC) for WSNs. However, it turned out that Yeh et al.s protocol does not provide mutual authentication, perfect forward secrecy, and key agreement between the user and sensor. Later in 2013, Shi et al. proposed a new user authentication protocol that improves both security and efficiency of Yeh et al.s protocol. However, Shi et al.s improvement introduces other security weaknesses. In this paper, we show that Shi et al.s improved protocol is vulnerable to session key attack, stolen smart card attack, and sensor energy exhausting attack. In addition, we propose a new, security-enhanced user authentication protocol using ECC for WSNs.

Security weakness in a three-party pairing-based protocol for password authenticated key exchange

Authentication and key exchange are fundamental for establishing secure communication channels over public insecure networks. Password-based protocols for authenticated key exchange are designed to work even when user authentication is done via the use of passwords drawn from a small known set of values. Recently, Wen et al. (H.-A. Wen, T.-F. Lee, T. Hwang, Provably secure three-party password-based authenticated key exchange protocol using Weil pairing, IEE Proceedings-Communications 152 (2) (2005) 138-143) proposed a new protocol for password-based authenticated key exchange in the three-party setting, where the clients trying to establish a common secret key do not share a password between themselves but only with a trusted server. Wen et al.s protocol carries a claimed proof of security in a formal model of communication and adversarial capabilities. However, this work shows that the protocol for three-party key exchange is completely insecure and the claim of provable security is seriously incorrect. We conduct a detailed analysis of flaws in the protocol and its security proof, in the hope that no similar mistakes are made in the future.

DDH-based group key agreement in a mobile environment

A group key agreement protocol is designed to efficiently implement secure multicast channels for a group of parties communicating over an untrusted, open network by allowing them to agree on a common secret key. In the past decade many problems related to group key agreement have been tackled and solved (diminished if not solved), and recently some constant-round protocols have been proven secure in concrete, realistic setting. However, all forward-secure protocols so far are still too expensive for small mobile devices. In this paper we propose a new constant-round protocol well suited for a mobile environment and prove its security under the decisional Diffie-Hellman assumption. The protocol meets simplicity, efficiency, and all the desired security properties.

An off-line dictionary attack on a simple three-party key exchange protocol

Key exchange protocols allow two or more parties communicating over a public network to establish a common secret key called a session key. Due to their significance in building a secure communication channel, a number of key exchange protocols have been suggested over the years for a variety of settings. Among these is the so-called S-3PAKE protocol proposed by Lu and Cao for password-authenticated key exchange in the three-party setting. In the current work, we are concerned with the password security of the S-3PAKE protocol. We first show that S-3PAKE is vulnerable to an off-line dictionary attack in which an attacker exhaustively enumerates all possible passwords in an off-line manner to determine the correct one. We then figure out how to eliminate the security vulnerability of S-3PAKE.

Efficient and anonymous two-factor user authentication in wireless sensor networks: achieving user anonymity with lightweight sensor computation.

A smart-card-based user authentication scheme for wireless sensor networks (hereafter referred to as a SCA-WSN scheme) is designed to ensure that only users who possess both a smart card and the corresponding password are allowed to gain access to sensor data and their transmissions. Despite many research efforts in recent years, it remains a challenging task to design an efficient SCA-WSN scheme that achieves user anonymity. The majority of published SCA-WSN schemes use only lightweight cryptographic techniques (rather than public-key cryptographic techniques) for the sake of efficiency, and have been demonstrated to suffer from the inability to provide user anonymity. Some schemes employ elliptic curve cryptography for better security but require sensors with strict resource constraints to perform computationally expensive scalar-point multiplications; despite the increased computational requirements, these schemes do not provide user anonymity. In this paper, we present a new SCA-WSN scheme that not only achieves user anonymity but also is efficient in terms of the computation loads for sensors. Our scheme employs elliptic curve cryptography but restricts its use only to anonymous user-to-gateway authentication, thereby allowing sensors to perform only lightweight cryptographic operations. Our scheme also enjoys provable security in a formal model extended from the widely accepted Bellare-Pointcheval-Rogaway (2000) model to capture the user anonymity property and various SCA-WSN specific attacks (e.g., stolen smart card attacks, node capture attacks, privileged insider attacks, and stolen verifier attacks).

Security Enhanced Anonymous Multiserver Authenticated Key Agreement Scheme Using Smart Cards and Biometrics

An anonymous user authentication scheme allows a user, who wants to access a remote application server, to achieve mutual authentication and session key establishment with the server in an anonymous manner. To enhance the security of such authentication schemes, recent researches combined users biometrics with a password. However, these authentication schemes are designed for single server environment. So when a user wants to access different application servers, the user has to register many times. To solve this problem, Chuang and Chen proposed an anonymous multiserver authenticated key agreement scheme using smart cards together with passwords and biometrics. Chuang and Chen claimed that their scheme not only supports multiple servers but also achieves various security requirements. However, we show that this scheme is vulnerable to a masquerade attack, a smart card attack, a user impersonation attack, and a DoS attack and does not achieve perfect forward secrecy. We also propose a security enhanced anonymous multiserver authenticated key agreement scheme which addresses all the weaknesses identified in Chuang and Chens scheme.

Security Analysis of a Nonce-Based User Authentication Scheme Using Smart Cards*This work was supported by the Korean Ministry of Information and Communication under the Information Technology Research Center (ITRC) support program supervised by the Institute of Information Technology Assessment (IITA).

A remote user authentication scheme is a two-party protocol whereby an authentication server in a distributed system confirms the identity of a remote individual logging on to the server over an untrusted, open network. Recently, Lee et al. have proposed an efficient nonce-based scheme for remote user authentication using smart cards. This work reviews Lee et al.s authentication scheme and provides a security analysis on the scheme. Our analysis shows that Lee et al.s scheme does not achieve its basic aim of authenticating remote users and furthermore has a very hazardous method for changing passwords. In addition, we recommend some changes to the scheme so that it can attain at least its main security goal.

A Provably-Secure ECC-Based Authentication Scheme for Wireless Sensor Networks

A smart-card-based user authentication scheme for wireless sensor networks (in short, a SUA-WSN scheme) is designed to restrict access to the sensor data only to users who are in possession of both a smart card and the corresponding password. While a significant number of SUA-WSN schemes have been suggested in recent years, their intended security properties lack formal definitions and proofs in a widely-accepted model. One consequence is that SUA-WSN schemes insecure against various attacks have proliferated. In this paper, we devise a security model for the analysis of SUA-WSN schemes by extending the widely-accepted model of Bellare, Pointcheval and Rogaway (2000). Our model provides formal definitions of authenticated key exchange and user anonymity while capturing side-channel attacks, as well as other common attacks. We also propose a new SUA-WSN scheme based on elliptic curve cryptography (ECC), and prove its security properties in our extended model. To the best of our knowledge, our proposed scheme is the first SUA-WSN scheme that provably achieves both authenticated key exchange and user anonymity. Our scheme is also computationally competitive with other ECC-based (non-provably secure) schemes.

A weakness in the Bresson-Chevassut-Essiari-Pointcheval's Group Key Agreement scheme for low-power mobile devices

In this letter, we show that Bresson-Chevassut-Essiari-Pointchevals Group Key Agreement scheme does not meet the main security properties: implicit key authentication, forward secrecy and known key security. Also, we propose an improved version, which fixes the security flaws, found in the scheme.

A mechanical approach to derive identity-based protocols from Diffie-Hellman-based protocols

We describe a mechanical approach to derive identity-based (ID-based) protocols from existing Diffie-Hellman-based ones. As case studies, we present the ID-based versions of the Unified Model protocol, UMP-ID, Blake-Wilson et al. (1997)s protocol, BJM-ID, and Krawczyk (2005)s HMQV protocol, HMQV-ID. We describe the calculations required to be modified in existing proofs. We conclude with a comparative security and efficiency of the three proposed ID-based protocols (relative to other similar published protocols) and demonstrate that our proposed ID-based protocols are computationally efficient.