Shin'ichiro Matsuo

Fair and Consistent Hardware Evaluation of Fourteen Round Two SHA-3 Candidates

The first contribution of our paper is that we propose a platform, a design strategy, and evaluation criteria for a fair and consistent hardware evaluation of the second-round SHA-3 candidates. Using a SASEBO-GII field-programmable gate array (FPGA) board as a common platform, combined with well defined hardware and software interfaces, we compare all 256-bit version candidates with respect to area, throughput, latency, power, and energy consumption. Our approach defines a standard testing harness for SHA-3 candidates, including the interface specification for the SHA-3 module on our testing platform. The second contribution is that we provide both FPGA and 90-nm CMOS application-specific integrated circuit (ASIC) synthesis results and thereby are able to compare the results. Our third contribution is that we release the source code of all the candidates and by using a common, fixed, publicly available platform, our claimed results become reproducible and open for a public verification.

Prototyping platform for performance evaluation of SHA-3 candidates

The objective of the SHA-3 NIST competition is to select, from multiple competing candidates, a standard algorithm for cryptographic hashing. The selected winner must have adequate cryptographic properties and good implementation characteristics over a wide range of target platforms, including both software and hardware. Performance evaluation in hardware is particularly challenging because of the large design space, wide range of target technologies, and multitude of optimization criteria. We describe the efforts of three research groups to evaluate SHA-3 candidates using a common prototyping platform. Using a SASEBO-GII FPGA board as a starting point, we evaluate the performance of the 14 remaining SHA-3 candidates with respect to area, throughput, and power consumption. Our approach defines a standard testing harness for SHA-3 candidates, including the interface specifications for the SHA-3 module on the SASEBO testing board.

Tailored Security: Building Nonrepudiable Security Service-Level Agreements

The security features of current digital services are mostly defined and dictated by the service provider (SP). A user can always decline to use a service whose terms do not fulfill the expected criteria, but in many cases, even a simple negotiation might result in a more satisfying outcome. This article aims at building nonrepudiable security service-level agreements (SSLAs) between a user and an SP. The proposed mechanism provides a means to describe security requirements and capabilities in different dimensions, from overall targets and risks to technical specifications, and it also helps in translating between the dimensions. A negotiation protocol and a decision algorithm are then used to let the parties agree on the security features used in the service. This article demonstrates the feasibility and usability of the mechanism by describing its usage scenario and proof-of-concept implementation and analyzes its nonrepudiability and security aspects.

A non-repudiable negotiation protocol for security service level agreements

Security service level agreements SSLAs provide a systematic way for end users at home or in the office to guarantee sufficient security level when doing business or exchanging sensitive personal or organizational data with an online service. In this paper, we propose an SSLA negotiation protocol that implements non-repudiation with cryptographic identities and digital signatures and includes features that make it resistant to denial of service attacks. The basic version of the protocol does not rely on the use of a trusted third party, and it can be used for all kinds of simple negotiations. For the negotiation about SSLAs, the protocol provides an option to use an external knowledge base that may help the user in the selection of suitable security measures. We have implemented a prototype of the system, which uses JSON Web Signature for the message exchange and made some performance tests with it. The results show that the computational effort required by the cryptographic operations of the negotiation protocol remains at a reasonable level. Copyright

Accountable security mechanism based on security service level agreement

This paper proposes a mechanism that realizes accountable security using a security service level agreement (SSLA), which defines the security level of a service agreed to between a user and service provider. The mechanism consists of three major components: security expression, translation, and negotiation techniques. The security expression technique provides a means to describe security requirements and capabilities of a user and service provider, as well as the SSLA between them, in different levels of detail. The translation technique provides a means to translate such information among different levels of detail, and the negotiation technique provides a means to negotiate and agree upon the SSLA between the user and service provider. Both the user and service provider need to be accountable and non-repudiable against the agreed to SSLA in order to empower it. The mechanism uses cryptographic identities and digital signatures for this purpose. This paper demonstrates the feasibility and usability of the mechanism by describing its usage scenario and implementing its prototype, and analyzes this mechanism.