Peng Zeng

On the anonymity of some authentication schemes for wireless communications

In 2004, Zhu and Ma proposed a new and efficient authentication scheme claiming to provide anonymity for wireless environments. Two years later, Lee et al. revealed several previously unpublished flaws in Zhu-Mas authentication scheme and proposed a fix. More recently in 2008, Wu et al. pointed out that Lee et al.s proposed fix fails to preserve anonymity as claimed and then proposed yet another fix to address the problem. In this paper, we use Wu et al.s scheme as a case study and demonstrate that due to an inherent design flaw in Zhu-Mas scheme, the latter and its successors are unlikely to provide anonymity. We hope that by identifying this design flaw, similar structural mistakes can be avoided in future designs.

On the security of an enhanced novel access control protocol for wireless sensor networks

New node deployment is inevitable in a wireless sensor network because nodes in the network may be lost, exhausted, or destroyed. To secure the new node deployment process, Kim and Lee (2009) proposed an enhanced novel access control protocol (ENACP) using the elliptic curve cryptography and the hash chain. We identified an inherent flaw in their design and demonstrated that ENACP is vulnerable to a new node masquerading attack and a legal node masquerading attack, in violation of their security claims. We hope that by identifying this design flaw, similar structural mistakes can be avoided in future designs.

Security Analysis of a Dynamic Program Update Protocol for Wireless Sensor Networks

In 2008, Das and Joshi proposed a new dynamic program update protocol for wireless sensor networks using the orthogonality principle. We identify an inherent flaw in their design and demonstrate that the Das-Joshi scheme is vulnerable to an impersonation attack, in violation of their security claim. We then present a modified scheme to eliminate the security vulnerability.

Signatures in hierarchical certificateless cryptography

Many efforts have been devoted in recent years to constructing secure schemes in certificateless cryptography. The aim is to eliminate the key escrow problem of identity-based cryptography. However, most of the work takes place in traditional certificateless cryptography, which suffers from the single-point problem. Hierarchical cryptography exploits a practical security model to mirror the organizational hierarchy in the real world and hence can eliminate the single-point problem. To incorporate the advantages of both types of cryptosystems, in this paper we instantiate hierarchical certificateless cryptography by formalizing the notion of hierarchical certificateless signatures. A concrete hierarchical certificateless signature scheme is also proposed. The security of our scheme is proven under the computational Diffie-Hellman assumption. As to efficiency, our scheme has constant complexity, regardless of the depth of the hierarchy. Therefore, our proposal is secure and scalable.

An ID-based digital watermarking protocol for copyright protection

Digital watermarking techniques are a means of protecting the copyrights of digital contents. In this paper, we propose an identity-based (ID-based) digital watermarking protocol and point out several previously unpublished flaws in Hwang et al. (2005)s scheme. We hope that by identifying the design flaws, similar structural mistakes can be avoided in future designs. We also claim that our proposed digital watermarking scheme can effectively solve the problem of multiple claims of ownership, and is suitable for any practical and secure watermarking algorithm.

An Efficient Data Aggregation Scheme in Privacy-Preserving Smart Grid Communications with a High Practicability

Smart grids allow real-time monitoring and management of electricity usage, etc. to meet the varying demands of end users. In this paper, we propose an efficient data aggregation scheme in privacy-preserving smart grid communications. Specifically, users in our scheme can be divided into several groups of any size according to different criteria (e.g. geographic regions and desired features), and the control center (e.g. government, utility provider) can obtain real-time electricity usage information of each group in a privacy-preserving manner. This allows control center to conduct fine-grained analysis and make informed decisions.

An Efficient Code-Based Threshold Ring Signature Scheme with a Leader-Participant Model

Digital signature schemes with additional properties have broad applications, such as in protecting the identity of signers allowing a signer to anonymously sign a message in a group of signers (also known as a ring). While these number-theoretic problems are still secure at the time of this research, the situation could change with advances in quantum computing. There is a pressing need to design PKC schemes that are secure against quantum attacks. In this paper, we propose a novel code-based threshold ring signature scheme with a leader-participant model. A leader is appointed, who chooses some shared parameters for other signers to participate in the signing process. This leader-participant model enhances the performance because every participant including the leader could execute the decoding algorithm (as a part of signing process) upon receiving the shared parameters from the leader. The time complexity of our scheme is close to Courtois et al.’s (2001) scheme. The latter is often used as a basis to construct other types of code-based signature schemes. Moreover, as a threshold ring signature scheme, our scheme is as efficient as the normal code-based ring signature.

A Generic Construction of Proxy Signatures from Certificateless Signatures

The primitive of proxy signatures allows the original signer to delegate proxy signers to sign on messages on behalf of the original signer. It has found numerous applications in distributed computing scenarios where delegation of signing rights is common. Certificate less public key cryptography eliminates the complicated certificates in traditional public key cryptosystems without suffering from the key escrow problem in identity-based public key cryptography. In this paper, we reveal the relationship between the two important primitives of proxy signatures and certificate less signatures and present a generic conversion from the latter to the former. Following the generic transformation, we propose an efficient proxy signature scheme with a recent certificate less signature scheme.

Erratum to “An Efficient Code-Based Threshold Ring Signature Scheme with a Leader-Participant Model”

1Department of Computer and Information Technology, Zhejiang Police College, Hangzhou, Zhejiang Province, China 2Shanghai Key Laboratory of Trustworthy Computing, East China Normal University, Shanghai, China 3Department of Computer Science and Engineering, University of North Texas, Denton, TX 76203, USA 4College of Information Engineering, China University of Geosciences, Wuhan, China 5Department of Information Systems and Cyber Security, University of Texas at San Antonio, San Antonio, TX 78249, USA

A New Multidimensional and Fault-Tolerable Data Aggregation Scheme for Privacy-Preserving Smart Grid Communications

Smart grids are considered as the next generation power grids instead of the traditional power grids. Smart grids provide more efficient power management, more accurate electricity distribution and more reasonable billing statistics. With the deployment of smart grids, security and privacy issues have aroused more and more concern. In this paper, we propose a new privacy-preserving data aggregation scheme in smart grids, which enables a gateway (acted as an aggregator) to aggregate the electricity usage data of users in two dimensions. The new scheme also supports the fault-tolerant property and only needs a little communication by the smart meters.