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RFID is a system that uses the radio waves to scrutinize and capture data pertained to a tag for an object attached to it. In spite of RFID's wide application in industries, it poses a severe security issue. There is high susceptibility that RFID might be attacked with future attacks to invade the privacy and data in the system. To protect the RFID system against such attacks, the Pad-generation (Pad-Gen) function is used. This paper presents a mutual authentication scheme Tag Reader Mutual Authentication (TRMA) that is implemented using two approaches, the XOR operation and the MOD operation by modifying the Pad-Gen function. The proposed framework is executed on low-cost Artix7 FPGA XC7A100T-3CSG324, and its hardware verification is done on chip scope pro tool.

Internet of Drones (IoD), designed to coordinate the access of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), is a specific application of the Internet of Things (IoT). Drones are used to control airspace and offer services such as rescue, traffic surveillance, environmental monitoring, delivery and so on. However, IoD continues to suffer from privacy and security issues. Firstly, messages are transmitted over public channels in IoD environments, which compromises data security. Further, sensitive data can also be extracted from stolen mobile devices of remote users. Moreover, drones are susceptible to physical capture and manipulation by adversaries, which are called drone capture attacks. Thus, the development of a secure and lightweight authentication scheme is essential to overcoming these security vulnerabilities, even on resource-constrained drones. In 2021, Akram et al. proposed a secure and lightweight user–drone authentication scheme for drone networks. However, we discovered that Akram et al.’s scheme is susceptible to user and drone impersonation, verification table leakage, and denial of service (DoS) attacks. Furthermore, their scheme cannot provide perfect forward secrecy. To overcome the aforementioned security vulnerabilities, we propose a secure mutual authentication and key agreement scheme between user and drone pairs. The proposed scheme utilizes physical unclonable function (PUF) to give drones uniqueness and resistance against drone stolen attacks. Moreover, the proposed scheme uses a fuzzy extractor to utilize the biometrics of users as secret parameters. We analyze the security of the proposed scheme using informal security analysis, Burrows–Abadi–Needham (BAN) logic, a Real-or-Random (RoR) model, and Automated Verification of Internet Security Protocols and Applications (AVISPA) simulation. We also compared the security features and performance of the proposed scheme and the existing related schemes. Therefore, we demonstrate that the proposed scheme is suitable for IoD environments that can provide users with secure and convenient wireless communications.

Wireless sensor networks (WSN) are widely used to provide users with convenient services such as health-care, and smart home. To provide convenient services, sensor nodes in WSN environments collect and send the sensing data to the gateway. However, it can suffer from serious security issues because susceptible messages are exchanged through an insecure channel. Therefore, secure authentication protocols are necessary to prevent security flaws in WSN. In 2020, Moghadam et al. suggested an efficient authentication and key agreement scheme in WSN. Unfortunately, we discover that Moghadam et al.’s scheme cannot prevent insider and session-specific random number leakage attacks. We also prove that Moghadam et al.’s scheme does not ensure perfect forward secrecy. To prevent security vulnerabilities of Moghadam et al.’s scheme, we propose a secure and lightweight mutual authentication protocol for WSNs (WSN-SLAP). WSN-SLAP has the resistance from various security drawbacks, and provides perfect forward secrecy and mutual authentication. We prove the security of WSN-SLAP by using Burrows-Abadi-Needham (BAN) logic, Real-or-Random (ROR) model, and Automated Verification of Internet Security Protocols and Applications (AVISPA) simulation. In addition, we evaluate the performance of WSN-SLAP compared with existing related protocols. We demonstrate that WSN-SLAP is more secure and suitable than previous protocols for WSN environments.

The Internet of Things (IoT), which can be regarded as an enhanced version of machine-to-machine communication technology, was proposed to realize intelligent thing-to-thing communications by utilizing the Internet connectivity. In the IoT, “things” are generally heterogeneous and resource constrained. In addition, such things are connected to each other over low-power and lossy networks. In this paper, we propose an inter-device authentication and session-key distribution system for devices with only encryption modules. In the proposed system, unlike existing sensor-network environments where the key distribution center distributes the key, each sensor node is involved with the generation of session keys. In addition, in the proposed scheme, the performance is improved so that the authenticated device can calculate the session key in advance. The proposed mutual authentication and session-key distribution system can withstand replay attacks, man-in-the-middle attacks, and wiretapped secret-key attacks.

Authentication is considered one of the most critical technologies for the next generation of the Internet of Medical Things (IoMT) due to its ability to significantly improve the security of sensors. However, higher frequency cyber-attacks and more intrusion methods significantly increase the security risks of IoMT sensor devices, resulting in more and more patients’ privacy being threatened. Different from traditional IoT devices, sensors are generally considered to be based on low-cost hardware designs with limited storage resources; thus, authentication techniques for IoMT scenarios might not be applicable anymore. In this paper, we propose an efficient three-factor cluster-based user authentication protocol (3ECAP). Specifically, we establish the security association between the user and the sensor cluster through fine-grained access control based on Merkle, which perfectly achieves the segmentation of permission. We then demonstrate that 3ECAP can address the privilege escalation attack caused by permission segmentation. Moreover, we further analyze the security performance and communication cost using formal and non-formal security analysis, Proverif, and NS3. Simulation results demonstrated the robustness of 3ECAP against various cyber-attacks and its applicability in an IoMT environment with limited storage resources.

A wireless medical sensor network (WMSN) can sense humans’ physiological signs without sacrificing patient comfort and transmit patient vital signs to health professionals’ hand-held devices. The patient physiological data are highly sensitive and WMSNs are extremely vulnerable to many attacks. Therefore, it must be ensured that patients’ medical signs are not exposed to unauthorized users. Consequently, strong user authentication is the main concern for the success and large scale deployment of WMSNs. In this regard, this paper presents an efficient, strong authentication protocol, named E-SAP, for healthcare application using WMSNs. The proposed E-SAP includes: (1) a two-factor (i.e., password and smartcard) professional authentication; (2) mutual authentication between the professional and the medical sensor; (3) symmetric encryption/decryption for providing message confidentiality; (4) establishment of a secure session key at the end of authentication; and (5) professionals can change their password. Further, the proposed protocol requires three message exchanges between the professional, medical sensor node and gateway node, and achieves efficiency (i.e., low computation and communication cost). Through the formal analysis, security analysis and performance analysis, we demonstrate that E-SAP is more secure against many practical attacks, and allows a tradeoff between the security and the performance cost for healthcare application using WMSNs.

The Internet of Drones (IoD) brings an unprecedented prospect for massive aerial data acquisition; on the other hand, it meets severe hindrances in how to accomplish robust, secure, and economic identity authentication with the limited resources available. In this paper, ChebIoD (Chebyshev polynomial-based mutual authentication and session key generation) is proposed as a new mutual authentication and session key agreement protocol for IoD environments. ChebIoD differs from the existing methods of blockchain, PUF, and ECC in that it consolidates three elaborate mechanisms: (a) post-quantum-oriented design methodology; (b) a dynamic solution for key update/revocation scheme; and (c) formal verification using BAN logic, Real-Or-Random (ROR) model, and AVISPA. The principal difference is that we are able to assign a precise definition of security for key privacy; namely, the protocol achieves both forward and backward secrecy along with performance gains for lightweight polynomial computations without requiring exponential hard assumptions. An Enhanced Security Assessment covers side-channel threats as well as the robustness of the Trusted Authority. We also show an updated performance comparison to the IoD-specific AKE protocols and state-of-the-art schemes in recent works on Blockchain-, Physical Unclonable Function (PUF)-, Elliptic Curve Cryptography (ECC)-, and Chebyshev-based approaches. In identical simulation settings, ChebIoD decreases computation time by up to 63.5%, reduces communication overhead by up to 62.4%, and lowers energy consumption by up to 66.7%, compared to state-of-the-art solutions. These improvements are consistent across multiple baselines, though the exact gains vary depending on the compared protocol. The practical utility is showcased by actual IoD projects for disaster response, precision agriculture, and urban air mobility solutions. Overall, ChebIoD demonstrates efficient and scalable authentication for IoD under simulation.

The rising number of Internet of Things devices across public networks bring speed, accuracy, and responsibility. The complexity of Internet of Things communications and different resource capacities make end-to-end security hard to achieve. Despite The authentication of the identities of individual nodes is a critical component in making the Internet of Things safe to use. A blockchain-based identification strategy has been proposed for heterogeneous IoT nodes. To begin, the primary goal of this blockchain model is to improve the level of compatibility between the blockchain and the Internet of Things ecosystem. After that, the purpose of the method for selecting the proxy node is to construct a connection among the typical IoT node and the blockchain. This bridge is constructed by determining the confidence value among each pair of nodes. In findings, the node authentication technique of the concept and the proxy node selection process build a safe channel for communication between nodes. This is built on the modified blockchain. Considerations like the storage overhead and cost of communication imposed by the provided integrated authentication technique are utilized to determine the total efficacy of the approach.

Vehicle Ad-hoc Networks (VANETs) have experienced significant development in recent years, playing a crucial role in enhancing the driving experience by enabling safer and more efficient inter-vehicle interactions through information exchange. Vehicle-to-Vehicle (V2V) communication is particularly vital as it not only helps to prevent collisions and improve traffic efficiency but also provides essential situational awareness to drivers or autonomous driving systems. Communication is typically supported by roadside units (RSUs); however, in practical applications, vehicles may exceed the communication range of RSUs, thus exposing them to various malicious attacks. Additionally, considering the limited computational resources of onboard units (OBUs) in vehicles, there is a high demand for designing lightweight security protocols that support V2V communication. To address this issue, this paper proposes an efficient anonymous V2V identity-authentication protocol tailored for scenarios that lack RSU support. The proposed protocol was formally assessed using the Scyther tool, demonstrating its capability to withstand major typical malicious attacks. Performance evaluations indicate that the proposed protocol is efficient in terms of communication and computational overhead, making it a viable solution for V2V communication.

Internet of Things (IoT) environments such as smart homes, smart factories, and smart buildings have become a part of our lives. The services of IoT environments are provided through wireless networks to legal users. However, the wireless network is an open channel, which is insecure to attacks from adversaries such as replay attacks, impersonation attacks, and invasions of privacy. To provide secure IoT services to users, mutual authentication protocols have attracted much attention as consequential security issues, and numerous protocols have been studied. In 2017, Bae et al. presented a smartcard-based two-factor authentication protocol for multi-gateway IoT environments. However, we point out that Bae et al.’s protocol is vulnerable to user impersonation attacks, gateway spoofing attacks, and session key disclosure, and cannot provide a mutual authentication. In addition, we propose a three-factor mutual authentication protocol for multi-gateway IoT environments to resolve these security weaknesses. Then, we use Burrows–Abadi–Needham (BAN) logic to prove that the proposed protocol achieves secure mutual authentication, and we use the Automated Validation of Internet Security Protocols and Applications (AVISPA) tool to analyze a formal security verification. In conclusion, our proposed protocol is secure and applicable in multi-gateway IoT environments.