A Strong Authentication Scheme with User Privacy for Wireless Sensor Networks

Wireless sensor networks (WSNs) are used for many real‐time applications. User authentication is an important security service for WSNs to ensure only legitimate users can access the sensor data within the network. In 2012, Yoo and others proposed a security‐performance‐balanced user authentication scheme for WSNs, which is an enhancement of existing schemes. In this paper, we show that Yoo and others' scheme has security flaws, and it is not efficient for real WSNs. In addition, this paper proposes a new strong authentication scheme with user privacy for WSNs. The proposed scheme not only achieves end‐party mutual authentication (that is, between the user and the sensor node) but also establishes a dynamic session key. The proposed scheme preserves the security features of Yoo and others' scheme and other existing schemes and provides more practical security services. Additionally, the efficiency of the proposed scheme is more appropriate for real‐world WSNs applications.     

无线传感器网络中的“双重”身份验证

如今,无线传感器网络是一种新的和有前途的下一代实时无线监控应用的解决方案。如果在考虑部署传感器网络之前没有适当的安全考虑,可以成为一个威胁。但是,如果有任何安全漏洞,即可能向攻击者敞开了大门并且危害应用。因此,用户身份验证的核心要求之一,以防止未经授权的无线传感器网络的数据访问用户。在这方面提出一个有效的双重身份验证的无线传感器网络,它是基于密码和智能卡（双重）。计划提供了相互认证,使用户能够选择和频繁地改变自己密码。再者,通过合理计算成本,提供强大的保护防止不同类型的攻击。     

A secure and effective biometric‐based user authentication scheme for wireless sensor networks using smart card and fuzzy extractor

User authentication is a prominent security requirement in wireless sensor networks (WSNs) for accessing the real‐time data from the sensors directly by a legitimate user (external party). Several user authentication schemes are proposed in the literature. However, most of them are either vulnerable to different known attacks or they are inefficient. Recently, Althobaiti et al. presented a biometric‐based user authentication scheme for WSNs. Although their scheme is efficient in computation, in this paper, we first show that their scheme has several security pitfalls such as (i) it is not resilient against node capture attack; (ii) it is insecure against impersonation attack; and (iii) it is insecure against man‐in‐the‐middle attack. We then aim to propose a novel biometric‐based user authentication scheme suitable for WSNs in order to withstand the security pitfalls found in Althobaiti et al. scheme. We show through the rigorous security analysis that our scheme is secure and satisfies the desirable security requirements. Furthermore, the simulation results for the formal security verification using the most widely used and accepted Automated Validation of Internet Security Protocols and Applications tool indicate that our scheme is secure. Our scheme is also efficient compared with existing related schemes. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

A Robust User Authentication Scheme Using Dynamic Identity in Wireless Sensor Networks

In modern, wireless sensor networks (WSNs) stand for the next evolutionary and innovative development step in utilities, industrial, building, home, shipboard, and transportation systems automation. The feature of WSNs is easy to deploy and has wide range of applications. Therefore, in distributed and unattended locations, WSNs are deployed to allow a legitimated user to login to the network and access data. Consequently, the authentication between users and sensor nodes has become one of the important security issues. In 2009, M. L. Das proposed a two-factor authentication for WSNs. Based on one-way hash function and exclusive-OR operation, the scheme is well-suited for resource constrained environments. Later, Khan and Algahathbar pointed out the flaws and vulnerabilities of Das’s scheme and proposed an alternative scheme. However, Vaidya et al. found that both Das’s and Khan–Algahathbar’s schemes are vulnerable to various attacks including stolen smart card attacks. Further, Vaidya et al. proposed an improved two-factor user authentication to overcome the security weakness of both schemes. In this paper, we show that Vaidya et al.’s scheme still exposes to a malicious insider attack that seriously threatens the security of WSNs. Furthermore, we propose an improve scheme that mends those vulnerabilities.     

A Robust Mutual Authentication Protocol for Wireless Sensor Networks

Authentication is an important service in wireless sensor networks (WSNs) for an unattended environment. Recently, Das proposed a hash‐based authentication protocol for WSNs, which provides more security against the masquerade, stolen‐verifier, replay, and guessing attacks and avoids the threat which comes with having many logged‐in users with the same login‐id. In this paper, we point out one security weakness of Das' protocol in mutual authentication for WSN's preservation between users, gateway‐node, and sensor nodes. To remedy the problem, this paper provides a secrecy improvement over Das' protocol to ensure that a legal user can exercise a WSN in an insecure environment. Furthermore, by presenting the comparisons of security, computation and communication costs, and performances with the related protocols, the proposed protocol is shown to be suitable for higher security WSNs.     

WSNs中基于秘密共享的身份认证协议

身份认证是无线传感器网络安全的第一道屏障。针对现有无线传感器网络中的身份认证协议的效率和安全问题,基于Shamir门限秘密共享方案提出一种低功耗的身份认证协议。在不降低网络安全性的前提下,通过多个已认证节点对新节点进行身份认证,能够有效的降低认证过程中的计算量。认证过程中使用单向散列函数对通信数据进行加密并且运用时间戳机制抵御重放攻击。分析结果表明协议具有低功耗的特点,并且能够抵御窃听攻击、重放攻击以及少数节点被俘虏的攻击。     

A New Lightweight User Authentication and Key Agreement Scheme for WSN

The Internet of Things (IoT) is one of the most up-to-date and newest technologies that allows remote control of heterogeneous networks and has a good outlook for industrial applications. Wireless sensor networks (or in brief WSNs) have a key role on the Internet of industrial objects. Due to the limited resources of the sensor nodes, designing a balanced authentication scheme to provide security in reasonable performance in wireless sensor networks is a major challenge in these applications. So far, several security schemes have been presented in this context, but unfortunately, none of these schemes have provided desired security in reasonable cost. In 2017, Khemissa et al. proposed a security protocol for mutual authentication between sensor node and user in WSNs, however, in this paper we show that this protocol is not safe enough in the confrontation of desynchronization, user impersonation and gateway impersonation attacks. The proposed attacks succeed with the probability of one and to be realized only require an execution of the protocol. Given merits of the Khemissa et al.’s protocol, we also improved their protocol in such a way that provides suitable level of security, and also we prove its security using two formal ways, i.e. BAN logic and also the Scyther tool. We also argue informally about the improved protocol’s security.

     

A provably secure biometrics and ECC‐based authentication and key agreement scheme for WSNs

Wireless sensor networks (WSNs) underpin many applications of the Internet of Things (IoT), ranging from smart cities to unmanned surveillance and others. Efficient user authentication in WSNs, particularly in settings with diverse IoT device configurations and specifications (eg, resource‐constrained IoT devices) and difficult physical conditions (eg, physical disaster area and adversarial environment such as battlefields), remains challenging, both in research and in practice. Here, we put forth a user anonymous authentication scheme, relying on both biometrics and elliptic curve cryptography, to establish desired security features like forward and backward secrecy. We then make use of the Random‐or‐Real (RoR) model to prove the security of our scheme. We have implemented the proposed scheme in an environment compatible with WSNs. We show after conducting the comparison of the proposed scheme with some recent and related existent schemes that it satisfies various essential and desirable security attributes of a WSN environment. We conclude that the proposed scheme is suitable for the WSN scenario demanding high security.     

Security and key management in IoT‐based wireless sensor networks: An authentication protocol using symmetric key

Wireless sensor networks (WSN) consist of hundreds of miniature sensor nodes to sense various events in the surrounding environment and report back to the base station. Sensor networks are at the base of internet of things (IoT) and smart computing applications where a function is performed as a result of sensed event or information. However, in resource‐limited WSN authenticating a remote user is a vital security concern. Recently, researchers put forth various authentication protocols to address different security issues. Gope et al presented a protocol claiming resistance against known attacks. A thorough analysis of their protocol shows that it is vulnerable to user traceability, stolen verifier, and denial of service (DoS) attacks. In this article, an enhanced symmetric key‐based authentication protocol for IoT‐based WSN has been presented. The proposed protocol has the ability to counter user traceability, stolen verifier, and DoS attacks. Furthermore, the proposed protocol has been simulated and verified using Proverif and BAN logic. The proposed protocol has the same communication cost as the baseline protocol; however, in computation cost, it has 52.63% efficiency as compared with the baseline protocol.     

Simple,secure, and lightweight mechanism for mutual authentication of nodes in tiny wireless sensor networks

Wireless sensor networks (WSNs) are widely used in large areas of applications; due to advancements in technology, very tiny sensors are readily available, and their usage reduces the cost. The mechanisms designed for wireless networks cannot be implied on networks with tiny nodes due to battery and computational constraints. Understanding the significance of security in WSNs and resource constraintness of tiny WSNs, we propose a node authentication mechanism for nodes in wireless sensor networks to avoid security attacks and establish secure communication between them. In the proposed mechanism, a base station (BS) generates a secret value and random value for each sensor node and stores at the node. The sensor node authenticates using secret value and random number. Random nonce ensures freshness, efficiency, and robustness. The proposed mechanism is lightweight cryptographic, hence requires very less computational, communication, and storage resources. Security analysis of the proposed mechanism could not detect any security attack on it, and the mechanism was found to incur less storage, communication, and computation overheads. Hence, the proposed mechanism is best suitable for wireless sensor networks with tiny nodes.     

无线传感器网络节点复制攻击和女巫攻击防御机制研究

在无线传感器网络(WSNs)中,节点复制攻击和女巫攻击可扰乱数据融合和阈值选举等网络操作.发起这两种攻击需先通过邻居发现认证过程.考虑到在WSNs中发起邻居认证是不频繁的,提出了一种基于单向密钥链的ID认证防御机制(OKCIDA),降低攻击者在任何时间段发起这两种攻击的可能性.然后基于椭圆曲线离散对数问题,构造对称参数,并组合OKCIDA和利用节点邻居关系,提出了一种无需位置的邻居认证协议(LFNA),以阻止复制节点和女巫节点成功加入网络.最后给出了安全性证明和分析,并在安全和开销方面将LFNA与已有典型防御方案进行了比较,结果表明该方案具有一定的优势.     

Secure multi‐factor remote user authentication scheme for Internet of Things environments

Because of the exponential growth of Internet of Things (IoT), several services are being developed. These services can be accessed through smart gadgets by the user at any place, every time and anywhere. This makes security and privacy central to IoT environments. In this paper, we propose a lightweight, robust, and multi‐factor remote user authentication and key agreement scheme for IoT environments. Using this protocol, any authorized user can access and gather real‐time sensor data from the IoT nodes. Before gaining access to any IoT node, the user must first get authenticated by the gateway node as well as the IoT node. The proposed protocol is based on XOR and hash operations, and includes: (i) a 3‐factor authentication (ie, password, biometrics, and smart device); (ii) mutual authentication ; (iii) shared session key ; and (iv) key freshness . It satisfies desirable security attributes and maintains acceptable efficiency in terms of the computational overheads for resource constrained IoT environment. Further, the informal and formal security analysis using AVISPA proves security strength of the protocol and its robustness against all possible security threats. Simulation results also prove that the scheme is secure against attacks.     

A lightweight anonymous two‐factor authentication protocol for wireless sensor networks in Internet of Vehicles

Internet of Vehicles (IoV), as the next generation of transportation systems, tries to make highway and public transportation more secure than used to be. In this system, users use public channels for their communication so they can be the victims of passive or active attacks. Therefore, a secure authentication protocol is essential for IoV; consequently, many protocols are presented to provide secure authentication for IoV. In 2018, Yu et al proposed a secure authentication protocol for WSNs in vehicular communications and claimed that their protocol could satisfy all crucial security features of a secure authentication protocol. Unfortunately, we found that their protocol is susceptible to sensor capture attack, user traceability attack, user impersonation attack, and offline sink node's secret key guessing attack. In this paper, we propose a new authentication protocol for IoV which can solve the weaknesses of Yu et al's protocol. Our protocol not only provides anonymous user registration phase and revocation smart card phase but also uses the biometric template in place of the password. We use both Burrow‐Abadi‐Needham (BAN) logic and real‐or‐random (ROR) model to present the formal analysis of our protocol. Finally, we compare our protocol with other existing related protocols in terms of security features and computation overhead. The results prove that our protocol can provide more security features and it is usable for IoV system.     

LEDS: Providing Location-Aware End-to-End Data Security in Wireless Sensor Networks

Providing desirable data security, that is, confidentiality, authenticity, and availability, in wireless sensor networks (WSNs) is challenging, as a WSN usually consists of a large number of resource constraint sensor nodes that are generally deployed in unattended/hostile environments and, hence, are exposed to many types of severe insider attacks due to node compromise. Existing security designs mostly provide a hop-by-hop security paradigm and thus are vulnerable to such attacks. Furthermore, existing security designs are also vulnerable to many types of denial of service (DoS) attacks, such as report disruption attacks and selective forwarding attacks and thus put data availability at stake. In this paper, we seek to overcome these vulnerabilities for large-scale static WSNs. We come up with a location-aware end-to-end security framework in which secret keys are bound to geographic locations and each node stores a few keys based on its own location. This location-aware property effectively limits the impact of compromised nodes only to their vicinity without affecting end-to-end data security. The proposed multifunctional key management framework assures both node-to-sink and node-to-node authentication along the report forwarding routes. Moreover, the proposed data delivery approach guarantees efficient en-route bogus data filtering and is highly robust against DoS attacks. The evaluation demonstrates that the proposed design is highly resilient against an increasing number of compromised nodes and effective in energy savings.     

A simple and efficient authentication scheme for mobile satellite communication systems

In this article, the authors shall propose a simple and efficient authentication scheme for mobile satellite communication systems. The proposed scheme can achieve the following security requirements: (S1) withstand impersonation attacks; (S2) withstand denial server attacks; (S3) withstand smart card loss attacks; (S4) withstand replay attacks; and (S5) withstand stolen‐verifier attacks, and achieve the following functionality requirements: (F1) freely choose identity; (F2) provide mutual authentication; (F3) provide session key agreement; (F4) provide user anonymity; and (F5) provide perfect forward secrecy. In additional, the proposed scheme does not use the high complex computation, such as public key cryptosystem or secret key cryptosystem, for the mobile users' side. The proposed scheme is only based on hash functions and exclusive‐OR operations. Compared with other schemes, the proposed scheme has a lower computation cost. It is more simple and efficient scheme. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Accelerating signature-based broadcast authentication for wireless sensor networks

In wireless sensor networks (WSNs), broadcast authentication is a crucial security mechanism that allows a multitude of legitimate users to join in and disseminate messages into the networks in a dynamic and authenticated way. During the past few years, several public-key based multi-user broadcast authentication schemes have been proposed to achieve immediate authentication and to address the security vulnerability intrinsic to μTESLA-like schemes. Unfortunately, the relatively slow signature verification in signature-based broadcast authentication has also incurred a series of problems such as high energy consumption and long verification delay. In this contribution, we propose an efficient technique to accelerate the signature verification in WSNs through the cooperation among sensor nodes. By allowing some sensor nodes to release the intermediate computation results to their neighbors during the signature verification, a large number of sensor nodes can accelerate their signature verification process significantly. When applying our faster signature verification technique to the broadcast authentication in a 4 × 4 grid-based WSN, a quantitative performance analysis shows that our scheme needs 17.7-34.5% less energy and runs about 50% faster than the traditional signature verification method. The efficiency of the proposed technique has been tested through an experimental study on a network of MICAz motes.     

ID-Based User Authentication Scheme for Cloud Computing

In cloud computing environments, user authentication is an important security mechanism because it provides the fundamentals of authentication, authorization, and accounting (AAA). In 2009, Wang et al. proposed an identity-based (ID-based) authentication scheme to deal with the user login problem for cloud computing. However, Wang et al.'s scheme is insecure against message alteration and impersonation attacks. Besides, their scheme has large computation costs for cloud users. Therefore, we propose a novel ID-based user authentication scheme to solve the above mentioned problems. The proposed scheme provides anonymity and security for the user who accesses different cloud servers. Compared with the related schemes, the proposed scheme has less computation cost so it is very efficient for cloud computing in practice.     

A Secure Key Predistribution Scheme for WSN Using Elliptic Curve Cryptography

Security in wireless sensor networks (WSNs) is an upcoming research field which is quite different from traditional network security mechanisms. Many applications are dependent on the secure operation of a WSN, and have serious effects if the network is disrupted. Therefore, it is necessary to protect communication between sensor nodes. Key management plays an essential role in achieving security in WSNs. To achieve security, various key predistribution schemes have been proposed in the literature. A secure key management technique in WSN is a real challenging task. In this paper, a novel approach to the above problem by making use of elliptic curve cryptography (ECC) is presented. In the proposed scheme, a seed key, which is a distinct point in an elliptic curve, is assigned to each sensor node prior to its deployment. The private key ring for each sensor node is generated using the point doubling mathematical operation over the seed key. When two nodes share a common private key, then a link is established between these two nodes. By suitably choosing the value of the prime field and key ring size, the probability of two nodes sharing the same private key could be increased. The performance is evaluated in terms of connectivity and resilience against node capture. The results show that the performance is better for the proposed scheme with ECC compared to the other basic schemes.     

A dynamic TDMA based scheme for securing query processing in WSN

Nodes in a wireless sensor network (WSN) are generally deployed in unattended environments making the nodes susceptible to attacks. Therefore, the need of defending such attacks becomes a big challenge. We propose a scheme to build a security mechanism in a query-processing paradigm within WSN. The scheme is capable of protecting replay attack while preserving essential properties of security such as authentication, data integrity and data freshness. The solution is made lightweight using symmetric key cryptography with very short-length key. Further, the key used in our scheme is neither pre-deployed nor is transmitted directly. The key information is established among nodes through an efficient use of one variant of dynamic TDMA mechanism which ensures security of key. Another variant of dynamic TDMA is used to make the scheme bandwidth saving, an essential quality of WSN. Performance of the scheme is analyzed in terms of storage, computation and communication overhead. Finally the analytical results are compared with two of the existing schemes including the previous version of the present scheme that show significant reduction of all such overheads thereby proving the suitability of the proposed scheme for a resource-constrained network like WSN.     

Secure user authentication scheme with novel server mutual verification for multiserver environments

The fast growth of mobile services and devices has made the conventional single‐server architecture ineffective from the point of its functional requirements. To extend the scalability and availability of mobile services to various applications, it is required to deploy multiserver architecture. In 2016, Moon et al insisted that Lu et al's scheme is weak to insiders and impersonation attack, then they proposed a biometric‐based scheme for authentication and key agreement of users in multiserver environments. Unfortunately, we analyze Moon et al's scheme and demonstrate that their scheme does not withstand various attacks from a malicious registered server. We propose a user authentication scheme with server mutual verification to overcome these security drawbacks. The proposed scheme withstands an attack from malicious insiders in multiserver environments. We use a threshold cryptography to strengthen the process of server authorization and to provide better security functionalities. We then prove the authentication and session key of the proposed scheme using Burrows‐Abadi‐Needham (BAN) logic and show that our proposed scheme is secure against various attacks.