A lightweight and flexible mutual authentication and key agreement protocol for wearable sensing devices in WBAN

Purpose A wireless body area network (WBAN) is a collection of sensing devices attached to a person’s body that is typically used during health care to track their physical state. This paper aims to study the security challenges and various attacks that occurred while transferring a person’s sensitive medical diagnosis information in WBAN. Design/methodology/approach This technology has significantly gained prominence in the medical field. These wearable sensors are transferring information to doctors, and there are numerous possibilities for an intruder to pose as a doctor and obtain information about the patient’s vital information. As a result, mutual authentication and session key negotiations are critical security challenges for wearable sensing devices in WBAN. This work proposes an improved mutual authentication and key agreement protocol for wearable sensing devices in WBAN. The existing related schemes require more computational and storage requirements, but the proposed method provides a flexible solution with less complexity. Findings As sensor devices are resource-constrained, proposed approach only makes use of cryptographic hash-functions and bit-wise XOR operations, hence it is lightweight and flexible. The protocol’s security is validated using the AVISPA tool, and it will withstand various security attacks. The proposed protocol’s simulation and performance analysis are compared to current relevant schemes and show that it produces efficient outcomes. Originality/value This technology has significantly gained prominence in the medical sector. These sensing devises transmit information to doctors, and there are possibilities for an intruder to pose as a doctor and obtain information about the patient’s vital information. Hence, this paper proposes a lightweight and flexible protocol for mutual authentication and key agreement for wearable sensing devices in WBAN only makes use of cryptographic hash-functions and bit-wise XOR operations. The proposed protocol is simulated using AVISPA tool and its performance is better compared to the existing methods. This paper proposes a novel improved mutual authentication and key-agreement protocol for wearable sensing devices in WBAN.

Hash Algorithm In Verification Of Certificate Data Integrity And Security

The hash function is the most important cryptographic primitive function and is an integral part of the blockchain data structure. Hashes are often used in cryptographic protocols, information security applications such as Digital Signatures and message authentication codes (MACs). In the current development of certificate data security, there are 2 (two) types of hashes that are widely applied, namely, MD and SHA. However, when it comes to efficiency, in this study the hash type SHA-256 is used because it can be calculated faster with a better level of security. In the hypothesis, the Merkle-Damgård construction method is also proposed to support data integrity verification. Moreover, a cryptographic hash function is a one-way function that converts input data of arbitrary length and produces output of a fixed length so that it can be used to securely authenticate users without storing passwords locally. Since basically, cryptographic hash functions have many different uses in various situations, this research resulted in the use of hash algorithms in verifying the integrity and authenticity of certificate information.

HORSIC+: An Efficient Post-Quantum Few-Time Signature Scheme

It is well known that conventional digital signature algorithms such as RSA and ECDSA are vulnerable to quantum computing attacks. Hash-based signature schemes are attractive as post-quantum signature schemes in that it is possible to calculate the quantitative security level and the security is proven. SPHINCS is a stateless hash-based signature scheme and introduces HORST few-time signature scheme which is an improvement of HORS. However, HORST as well as HORS suffers from pretty large signature sizes. HORSIC is proposed to reduce the signature size, yet does not provide in-depth security analysis. In this paper, we propose HORSIC+, which is an improvement of HORSIC. HORSIC+ differs from HORSIC in that HORSIC+ does not apply f as a plain function to the signature key, but uses a member of a function family. In addition, HORSIC+ uses the chaining function similar to W-OTS+. These enable the strict security proof without the need for the used function family to be a permutation or collision resistant. HORSIC+ is existentially unforgeable under chosen message attacks, assuming a second-preimage resistant family of undetectable one-way functions and cryptographic hash functions in the random oracle model. HORSIC+ reduces the signature size by as much as 37.5% or 18.75% compared to HORS and by as much as 61.5% or 45.8% compared to HORST for the same security level.

Example of internal function for Sponge scheme built on the basis of the generalized AES design methodology

The purpose of this article is to construct an internal function underlying the “Sponge” scheme for constructing cryptographic hash functions. An internal function in the “Sponge” scheme is a fixed-length transformation or permutation that operates on a fixed number of bits that make up the internal state of the function. There are various constructive approaches to functiondesign. The most common approach is to use a permutation based on a symmetric block encryption algorithm with constants as the key. This article builds an internal function using the generalized AES design methodology. This methodology makes it easy to design block ciphers to encrypt large blocks of plaintext with small components, representing the processed data as multidimensional arrays. The internal function is a block cipher that processes 2048 bits, represented as a 9-dimensional array of 512 4-bit elements with size 2 × 2 × 2 × 2 × 2 × 2 × 2 × 2 × 2. Each round of encryption consists of three transformations (S-blocks, linear transformation, and permutation), similar to the three round transformations of AES SubBytes, MixColumns, and ShiftRows. The constructed function can be used as an internal function in the modified “Sponge” schemefor constructing cryptographic hash functions.

Cryptographic hash functions for image processing

In this paper, a novel algorithm based on hash function for image cryptography is proposed. In this algorithm, the key idea is to encrypt half of the image using data from the second half of the image and then apply it to each other. This scheme can achieve high sensitivity, high complexity, and high security. The sole purpose is to improve the image entropy.

Cryptographic hash functions for image processing

In this paper, a novel algorithm based on hash function for image cryptography is proposed. In this algorithm, the key idea is to encrypt half of the image using data from the second half of the image and then apply it to each other. This scheme can achieve high sensitivity, high complexity, and high security. The sole purpose is to improve the image entropy.

Performance Analysis of Cryptographic Hash Functions Suitable for Use in Blockchain

A blockchain, or in other words a chain of transaction blocks, is a distributed database that maintains an ordered chain of blocks that reliably connect the information contained in them. Copies of chain blocks are usually stored on multiple computers and synchronized in accordance with the rules of building a chain of blocks, which provides secure and change-resistant storage of information. To build linked lists of blocks hashing is used. Hashing is a special cryptographic primitive that provides one-way, resistance to collisions and search for prototypes computation of hash value (hash or message digest). In this paper a comparative analysis of the performance of hashing algorithms that can be used in modern decentralized blockchain networks are conducted. Specifically, the hash performance on different desktop systems, the number of cycles per byte (Cycles/byte), the amount of hashed message per second (MB/s) and the hash rate (KHash/s) are investigated. The comparative analysis of different hashing algorithms allows us to choose the most suitable candidates for building decentralized systems type of blockchain.