Abstract

Existing wireless infrastructure and networks are unable to meet the diverse Quality of Service (QoS) demands inherent in a wide range of consumer healthcare applications (CHAs). In this context, the adoption of fifth generation of wireless cellular technology (5G)/Beyond fifth-generation (B5G)-based network slicing technology has become pivotal for CHAs. It facilitates the creation of multiple virtual networks on a shared physical infrastructure by catering to distinct QoS requirements, where digital twins (DTs) are providing a virtual representation and management framework for healthcare smart devices, services, and applications within network slices. This allows different services and applications to coexist. However, network slicing has to address various security concerns, including securing slice access, enabling secure inter-slice communication, ensuring slice isolation within the shared physical network with DTs, and authenticating end users. To address these challenges, we propose a security mechanism that is specifically designed to safeguard network slice access and isolation in CHAs empowered by DTs, where only legitimate devices with corresponding digital twins and matching attributes are granted access. The proposed model incorporates the use of digital certificates for authenticating both slice access and devices by providing enhanced slice isolation to mitigate unauthorized access. Through a detailed comparative assessment, we demonstrate that the proposed scheme offers superior security and improved functionality attributes, while maintaining low communication costs as compared to those for other similar existing schemes. Furthermore, we validate the feasibility of our scheme through testbed

Abstract

Unmanned Aerial Vehicle(UAV)-assisted mobile edge computing(MEC) ensures continuous MEC services by promptly restoring overloaded or disabled MEC infrastructure. Equipped with sufficient computing resources, UAVs deploy to areas needing MEC, such as task offloading and entertainment services. However, in areas with paralyzed edge nodes, vehicle users are unable to verify the legitimacy of UAVs as they cannot access to the trusted authority(TA). Furthermore, the integrity of UAV-assisted MEC environments can be compromised by malicious attackers, as all network participants rely on wireless communication for their interactions. Many authentication schemes have been proposed for UAV environments. However, these schemes encounter a problem of having to communicate through TA for authentication with vehicle users, which makes them difficult to apply to UAV-assisted MEC environments. Therefore, we propose a new broadcast authentication protocol, which can recover MEC services using MEC-equipped UAVs. The proposed protocol can provide UAVs and vehicle users with high reliability via a self-certified public-key cryptosystem, which can verify the legitimacy of the communication partner without the TA. Moreover, we guarantee the user privacy and preserve sensitive information using biohash technology. We verify the security robustness of the proposed protocol using various simulation tool, informal, and formal analyses. We also estimate the practical deployment of the proposed protocol using “Network Simulator-3”. Moreover, we estimate the computation and communication overheads and compare with other existing protocols. The results show that the proposed protocol is feasible and provides users with convenient and seamless intelligent transportation services in UAV-assisted MEC environments.

Abstract

The Internet of Medical Things (IoMT) is a compelling networking paradigm integrating wireless communications sensors, connected devices, and embedded computing technologies. The IoMT involves the collection of real-time health data using sophisticated medical sensors. In recent years, the IoMT has become increasingly significant within the broader context of the Internet of Things (IoT). It provides accessibility for health monitoring and poses security obstacles to safeguarding the confidentiality and privacy of patient data. Therefore, this article presents a blockchain-integrated quantum authentication scheme in sensor-assisted IoMT networks. The proposed concept utilizes blockchain technology to achieve efficient patient authentication without the need for third-party entities. In addition, a secure quantum authentication scheme is designed not to require patients to authenticate themselves when communicating with multiple doctors simultaneously. This protocol explicitly addresses how clinicians can misuse their professional roles toward patients in IoMT networks. An evaluation analysis assesses the proposed technique’s efficacy compared to existing authentication schemes. The performance analyses demonstrate that the proposed protocol is resilient against various security attacks. Also, the practical usability of the quantum authentication scheme proved its importance as a significant improvement in communication security for IoMT networks.

Abstract

The increase in popularity of vehicles encourages the development of smart cities. With this advancement, vehicular ad-hoc networks, or VANETs, are now frequently utilized for inter-vehicular communication to gather data regarding traffic congestion, vehicle location, speed, and road conditions. Such a public network is open to various security risks. Overall, protecting personal information on VANET is a vital responsibility. The integration of fog computing and VANETs has gained significant importance in recent years, driven by advancements in cloud computing, Internet of Things (IoT) technologies, and intelligent transportation systems. However, ensuring secure communication in fog-based VANETs remains a major challenge. To overcome this challenge, we introduce a novel authenticated key agreement protocol that achieves mutual authentication, generates a secure session key for secret communication, and provides privacy protection without the use of bilinear pairing. We rigorously prove the security of our proposed protocol, which is designed specifically for fog-based VANETs, and has been shown to meet their stringent security requirements. Moreover, we performed formal and informal analysis that shows our proposed protocol is highly efficient,our protocol’s computational and communication overhead are lower than those of other relevant protocols by 45.570% and 29.432%, respectively. Finally we use NS-3 simulation to prove that our proposed algorithm is a practical and scalable solution for secure communication in fog-based VANETs.

Abstract

The relentless advancements in Cyber-Physical Systems (CPS) and Wireless Sensor Networks (WSN) have paved the way for various practical applications across networking, public safety, smart transportation, and industrial sectors. The Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) integrates these technologies into complex, interconnected environments where vast amounts of data are transmitted between devices and systems. However, the inherent openness of communication channels in IIoT systems introduces distinctive security and privacy vulnerabilities, where malevolent entities can effortlessly intercept, forge, or delete communication messages. These vulnerabilities are exacerbated by the critical nature of industrial applications, where breaches can lead to significant operational disruptions or safety hazards To address these challenges, several authentication protocols have been proposed. Nevertheless, many of these protocols remain susceptible to various security attacks. To ensure privacy and security in IIoT environments, we introduce a robust and efficient authentication protocol for a WSN-based IIoT environment. This protocol preserves the privacy of information transmitted among all entities and provides an effective solution for securing this sensitive information. Additionally, we present a detailed security analysis of the proposed protocol to formally and informally demonstrate its security strength. The performance analysis is carried out to compare the proposed protocol against existing related protocols, with results unequivocally demonstrating that our protocol offers enhanced privacy and security with reduced costs.

Abstract

— Multi-domain vehicle to grid (V2G) is a network environment in which numerous service providers offer charging and discharging services to EV users. This can enhance energy management and traffic flow for efficient intelligent transportation systems (ITS). However, the combination of multiple domains can suffer from various security vulnerabilities, highlighting the need for robust countermeasures. Moreover, existing multidomain V2G protocols utilized a central trusted authority (TA) which can create a single point of failure (SPOF), or required high computational resources. In this paper, we propose a multi-domain authentication protocol for secure and efficient V2G services using consortium blockchain. The proposed protocol provides lightweight intra-domain authentication using hash functions and XOR operators. Furthermore, the proposed protocol ensures secure cross-domain authentication by integrating elliptic curve cryptography (ECC) and physical unclonable function (PUF). Therefore, the proposed protocol can establish trust, enable efficient communications, and prevent congestion at charging stations. To validate security robustness, comprehensive evaluations are conducted using “Real-Or-Random (ROR) model”, “Scyther tool”, and informal analyses. Comparative computational overheads of the proposed and related protocols are measured using “Multiprecision Integer and Rational Arithmetic Cryptographic Library (MIRACL)” testbed experiments. Additionally, a simulation of the practical deployment is conducted using “Network Simulator-3 (NS-3)”. Results indicate that the proposed protocol can improve ITS by providing secure and efficient services for multi-domain V2G environments

Abstract

Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) integrated with the internet of things (IoT) guarantee useful advantages such as facilitating ground communications in regions where the availability of connectivity is restricted owing to physical obstacles. However, the data transmitted by sensors and IoT embedded in UAVs are facing new security issues and privacy challenges with the known security attacks over time. To address these security attacks and threats and meet lightweight UAV communication requirements, a secure and lightweight authentication and key agreement (AKA) scheme is essential. Recently, researchers have designed a lightweight blockchain-enabled AKA scheme with privacy-preserving for UAVs to provide useful and reliable services. However, we prove that the existing scheme is fragile to various security attacks and does not ensure mutual authentication. Thus, we propose a robust and lightweight blockchain-based AKA scheme for PUF-enabled UAVs, called RLBA-UAV to enhance the security problems of the existing scheme. We demonstrate the security of RLBA-UAV by using informal/formal security analyses such as the ROR oracle model and AVISPA simulation. Moreover, we demonstrate the performance comparison analysis between RLBA-UAV and related schemes for UAVs. We demonstrate an implementation of a network simulator (NS) 3 compliant with IEEE 802.11p standards to show its validation and feasibility that RLBA-UAV is appropriate for practical UAVs. Thus, RLBA-UAV offers enhanced security and operational efficiency compared to related schemes and can be applied to practical blockchain-based AKA systems for UAVs.

Abstract

In this work, we study the natural monotone analogues of various equivalent definitions of : a well studied class (Poizat 2008, Koiran & Perifel 2009, Malod 2011, Mahajan & Rao 2013) that is believed to be larger than . We observe that these monotone analogues are not equivalent unlike their non-monotone counterparts, and propose monotone ( ) to be defined as the monotone analogue of Poizat's definition. With this definition, turns out to be exponentially stronger than and also satisfies several desirable closure properties that the other analogues may not. Our initial goal was to understand the monotone complexity of transparent polynomials, a concept that was recently introduced by Hrubeš & Yehudayoff (2021). In that context, we show that transparent polynomials with large support are hard for the monotone analogues of all the known definitions of , except for the one due to Poizat.

Abstract

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Abstract

Reconfiguring two shortest paths in a graph means modifying one shortest path to the other by changing one vertex at a time so that all the intermediate paths are also shortest paths. This problem has several natural applications, namely: (a) repaving road networks, (b) rerouting data packets in a synchronous multiprocessing setting, (c) the shipping container stowage problem, and (d) the train marshalling problem. When modelled as graph problems, (a) is the most general case while (b), (c), (d) are restrictions to different graph classes. We show that (a) does not admit polynomial-time algorithms (assuming ), even for relaxed variants of the problem (assuming ). For (b), (c), (d), we present polynomial-time algorithms to solve the respective problems. We also generalize the problem to when at most k (for a fixed integer ) contiguous vertices on a shortest path can be changed at a time.