Yan-Ming Lai

An Enhanced Mobile-Healthcare Emergency System Based on Extended Chaotic Maps

Mobile Healthcare (m-Healthcare) systems, namely smartphone applications of pervasive computing that utilize wireless body sensor networks (BSNs), have recently been proposed to provide smartphone users with health monitoring services and received great attentions. An m-Healthcare system with flaws, however, may leak out the smartphone user’s personal information and cause security, privacy preservation, or user anonymity problems. In 2012, Lu et al. proposed a secure and privacy-preserving opportunistic computing (SPOC) framework for mobile-Healthcare emergency. The brilliant SPOC framework can opportunistically gather resources on the smartphone such as computing power and energy to process the computing-intensive personal health information (PHI) in case of an m-Healthcare emergency with minimal privacy disclosure. To balance between the hazard of PHI privacy disclosure and the necessity of PHI processing and transmission in m-Healthcare emergency, in their SPOC framework, Lu et al. introduced an efficient user-centric privacy access control system which they built on the basis of an attribute-based access control mechanism and a new privacy-preserving scalar product computation (PPSPC) technique. However, we found out that Lu et al.’s protocol still has some secure flaws such as user anonymity and mutual authentication. To fix those problems and further enhance the computation efficiency of Lu et al.’s protocol, in this article, the authors will present an improved mobile-Healthcare emergency system based on extended chaotic maps. The new system is capable of not only providing flawless user anonymity and mutual authentication but also reducing the computation cost.

Toward a secure batch verification with group testing for VANET

Vehicular Ad-Hoc Network (VANET) is an application of Ad-Hoc Network, which can significantly improve the efficiency of transportation systems. The authentication of information is particularly important in the VANET system, because of its significant impact, and the transportation systems may be paralyzed as a result of receiving the wrong traffic information. Hence, a lot of schemes have been proposed to verify the information of VANET. However, most of currently known schemes verify the information on a one by one basis. In real situation, the large amount of traffic flow will generate a lot of information at the same time. If the authentication method is authenticating one by one, it is bound to lead to information delays, and the system will have difficulty to achieve real-time performance. Therefore, we shall propose an improved authentication of the batch scheme based on bilinear pairing to make VANET more secure, efficient, and more suitable for practical use.

A New Ticket-Based Authentication Mechanism for Fast Handover in Mesh Network

Due to the ever-growing popularity mobile devices of various kinds have received worldwide, the demands on large-scale wireless network infrastructure development and enhancement have been rapidly swelling in recent years. A mobile device holder can get online at a wireless network access point, which covers a limited area. When the client leaves the access point, there will be a temporary disconnection until he/she enters the coverage of another access point. Even when the coverages of two neighboring access points overlap, there is still work to do to make the wireless connection smoothly continue. The action of one wireless network access point passing a client to another access point is referred to as the handover. During handover, for security concerns, the client and the new access point should perform mutual authentication before any Internet access service is practically gained/provided. If the handover protocol is inefficient, in some cases discontinued Internet service will happen. In 2013, Li et al. proposed a fast handover authentication mechanism for wireless mesh network (WMN) based on tickets. Unfortunately, Li et al.’s work came with some weaknesses. For one thing, some sensitive information such as the time and date of expiration is sent in plaintext, which increases security risks. For another, Li et al.’s protocol includes the use of high-quality tamper-proof devices (TPDs), and this unreasonably high equipment requirement limits its applicability. In this paper, we shall propose a new efficient handover authentication mechanism. The new mechanism offers a higher level of security on a more scalable ground with the client’s privacy better preserved. The results of our performance analysis suggest that our new mechanism is superior to some similar mechanisms in terms of authentication delay.

Advanced Secure Anonymous Authentication Scheme for Roaming Service in Global Mobility Networks

Recently, user authentication schemes for mobile devices have become increasingly critical. Because of wide use, numerous services for mobile devices are provided, and will continue to be required in the future. Occasionally, users must log on to a server to obtain services, and the server must authenticate that user. Because device resources, such as batteries, are always limited, the authentication scheme must be effective and secure. Recently, Mun et al. proposed their protocol to address this concern, claiming that their more effective scheme overcomes the weaknesses of previously proposed schemes. However, we determined that Mun et al.’s scheme is still sensitive to a masquerade attack and a man-in-the-middle attack, and fails to realize anonymity and prefect forward secrecy. In this field, we propose a novel scheme, which only uses one-way hash functions and exclusive-OR operations to implement user authentication for roaming services. The proposed scheme both solves the problems of Mun et al.’s scheme and be more effective.

An Efficient Multiple Session Key Establishment Scheme for VANET Group Integration

VANET (vehicular ad hoc network) is used to create communication networks for vehicles or other roadside devices so that they can quickly share and receive messages. However, VANET belongs to a family of wireless networks, which means that its functions are unsafe. To provide safe communication channels, key-agreements technology can be introduced to VANET communication. Traditional key-agreement schemes, however, are inefficient and consume too many resources, especially when handling large or combined groups of users. To improve efficiency, the Chinese remainder theorem is used to build a batch key-agreement protocol. The improved key for VANET environments is a safer and quicker way to establish communication channels.

Toward A Secure Single Sign-On Mechanism for Distributed Computer Networks

user to access resources offered by other service providers. The other leak allows an outside attacker to forge a credential and use the forged credential to sign-on to the legal servers. Unfortunately, Wang et al. have not offered any suggestions as to how to mend the leaks. In this paper, we shall point out the third leak of the Chang–Lee scheme and propose a solution to remedy all three of these leaks. The solution will upgrade not only the security level but also the performance efficiency of the Chang–Lee scheme.

Cryptanalysis of a simple key assignment for access control based on polynomial

In 2013, Lo et al. proposed a simple key assignment based on polynomial for access control. Access control in a large leaf class hierarchy let a superior can get the data of his/her subordinates without the approval of the subordinates. The scheme can reduce the computation of leaf classs key generation. It is more efficient and secure than the others. However, we will show an attack in Lo et al.s scheme in this article. The attack is a compromising attack about how to use the changed polynomial to derive the members secret key, and then the attacker can access information in the hierarchy.

Cryptanalysis of Dimitriou's Key Evolving RFID Systems

In the last decade, the technology of Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) has boomed in the wireless communication environment. Applications of RFID have matured and reached far into various fields such as smart building, healthcare, supply chain management, etc. However, along with the rapid advancement of RFID systems have come many security issues, among which stands the transfer of ownership. Generally speaking, RFID tags can be reused multiple times, and the identity of the owner of a tag can vary in different scenarios. Recently, Tassos Dimitriou published a study that presented several key evolving schemes and discussed the issue of how the ownership of RFID tags could be properly transferred with some security requirements met. Unfortunately, Dimitrious systems have some security vulnerabilities. In this paper, the authors shall point out some weak-nesses of Dimitrious RFID systems including the mutual authentication part of the basic authentication scheme, the backward privacy problem of the key update scheme, as well as backward privacy for controlled delegation and authorization recovery.

A Biometric-Based Authentication and Anonymity Scheme for Digital Rights Management System

Due to the rapid development of computer technologies, many traditional contents have been digitized, adding to the immensity of digital contents. Through the Internet, various digital contents can be accessed and spread all over the world within the snap of a finger. However, such amazing swiftness and convenience have also brought various kinds of data security, privacy and copyright protection issues. Digital rights management (DRM) systems are access control technologies used to restrict the use, modification, and distribution of protected digital contents. The success of a DRM system relies heavily on a good user authentication mechanism, and user identity verification through biometric information check is a great idea in that the biological characteristics are unique to each user and that such a mechanism releases the user of the trouble of keeping the login info safe from being stolen or mistaken or forgotten. On the other hand, in response to modern people’s prevalent use of mobile devices, DRM systems should also support mobile digital content access . In this paper, we shall propose a novel biometric-based authentication and anonymity scheme for DRM system. To develop our new scheme, we have carefully studied Jung et al.s scheme, a biometric-based protocol whose architecture is similar to that of a DRM system but not quite the same, and modified it to fit the requirements of a DRM system environment. Our correctness check, security analysis, and performance evaluation have proved the superiority of our new scheme over related schemes. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5755/j01.itc.47.2.18506

An efficient multiple session key establishment scheme for VANET group integration

VANET (Vehicular Ad-hoc Network) is the one mainly utilized to create communication networks for vehicles or other roadside devices so that they can quickly share and receive messages. Nevertheless, VANET belongs to the family of wireless networks, which means VANET functions are unsafe. In order to provide safe communication channels, we introduce the key agreements technology to VANET communication. Traditional key agreement schemes, however, are inefficient and would consume too much of the resources especially when they are handling large groups of users or when groups are to be combined. To improve the efficiency, we use the Chinese remainder theorem to build a batch key agreement protocol instead. The improved key for VANET environments is a safer and quicker way to establish communication channels.