Abstract

An understanding of the determinants of the thermal stability of thermostable proteins is expected to enable design of enzymes that can be employed in industrial biocatalytic processes carried out at high temperatures. A major factor that has been proposed to stabilize thermostable proteins is the high occurrence of salt bridges. The current study employs free energy calculations to elucidate the thermodynamics of the formation of salt bridge interactions and the temperature dependence, using acetate and methylguanidium ions as model systems. Three different orientations of the methylguanidinium approaching the carboxylate group have been considered for obtaining the free energy profiles. The association of the two ions becomes more favorable with an increase in temperature. The desolvation penalty corresponding to the association of the ion pair is the lowest at high temperatures. The occurrence of …

Abstract

Predictability of river water temperature is a big argument for many environmental applications, hydrology and ecology research. River water temperature mainly depends on several parameters of water bodies such as streamflow, Dissolved Oxygen (DO), oxidation reduction potential, pollutant temperature, thermal effluent discharges, ground water interactions and its surrounding atmosphere. Commonly, the river water temperature always has been correlated with air temperature as a substitute due to the ease of applicability for rivers with some limitations over detailed meteorological and thermal data. In addition to air temperature the most influencing component of water body is streamflow which is having strong response towards the water temperature. An evaluation of integrated river water temperature and streamflow fluctuations is proposed to evidence biological activity, chemical specimen, oxygen solubility, self-purification capacity of a river system and variation of flows due to hydro-climatic changes. Prediction of river water temperature at various locations over a river basin is vital for the water quality management. The present study aims to estimate the river water temperature (RWT) under air temperature changes and local to regional anthropogenic activities of streamflow over Krishna river basin, India. A standardized multi-linear regression model is developed for predicting river water temperature over various discharge locations of the Krishna river basin. The performance of the model was tested mainly for 8 stations using historical daily data of river temperature, air temperature and river discharges from 1991 to 2005. The attainment of a model is carried out for these stations with air temperature, stream flows are predictors whereas water temperature as predictability component through training, testing. In this study the correlation coefficients between air minimum, maximum and average temperature with river water temperature are determined for selecting the possible air temperature variable to be considered in the analysis. The correlation coefficients are obtained with air minimum temperature (r = 0.541-0.772), air maximum temperature (r= 0.267-0.613) and air average temperature (r = 0.463-0.715) for all stations and it is observed that air minimum has the highest correlation coefficient value and it could be suitable for modeling. The performance of the multi-linear regression model for training and testing was obtained in terms of Root Mean Square Error (RMSE = 0.934 to 4.556), Correlation of determination (R = 0.984 and 0.986).

Abstract

This document describes a web security model to analyse cross origin requests and block them using CORP, a browser security policy proposed for mitigating Cross Origin Request Attacks (CORA) such as CSRF, Clickjacking, Web application timing, etc. CORP is configured by website administrators and sent as an HTTP response header to the browser. A browser which is CORP-enabled will interpret the policy and enforce it on all cross-origin HTTP requests originating from other tabs of the browser, thus preventing malicious crossorigin requests. In this document we use Alloy, a finite state model finder, to formalize a web security model to analyse malicious cross-origin attacks and verify that CORP can be used to mitigate such attacks.

Abstract

On March 27, 2015, Github witnessed a massive DDoS attack, the largest in Github's history till date. In this incident, browsers and users were used as vectors to launch the attack. In this paper, we analyse such browser-based DDoS attacks and simulate them in a lab environment. Existing browser security policies like Same Origin Policy (SOP), Content Security Policy (CSP) do not mitigate these attacks by design. In this paper we observe that CORP (Cross Origin Request Policy), a browser security policy, can be used to mitigate these attacks. CORP enables a server to control cross-origin interactions initiated by a browser. The browser intercepts the cross-origin requests and blocks unwanted requests by the server. This takes the load off the server to mitigate the attack.

Abstract

Internet of Things (IoT) is a network of all devices that can be accessed through the Internet. These devices can be remotely accessed and controlled using existing network infrastructure, thus allowing a direct integration of computing systems with the physical world. This also reduces human involvement along with improving accuracy and efficiency, resulting in economic benefit. The devices in IoT facilitate the day-to-day life of people. However, the IoT has an enormous threat to security and privacy due to its heterogeneous and dynamic nature. Authentication is one of the most challenging security requirements in the IoT environment, where a user (external party) can directly access information from the devices, provided the mutual authentication between user and devices happens. In this paper, we present a new signature-based authenticated key establishment scheme for the IoT environment. The proposed scheme is tested for security with the help of the widely used Burrows-Abadi-Needham logic, informal security analysis, and also the formal security verification using the broadly accepted automated validation of Internet security protocols and applications tool. The proposed scheme is also implemented using the widely accepted NS2 simulator, and the simulation results demonstrate the practicability of the scheme. Finally, the proposed scheme provides more functionality features, and its computational and communication costs are also comparable with other existing approaches.

Abstract

In the wearable communication environment, wearable devices are used for various applications including fitbit flex tracks steps, sleep cycles, workout stats, and recording health-related sensitive information. The decreasing costs and increasing performance of Information Communication Technologies (ICTs) have made wearable devices more cost effective. Different types of wearable devices are being used today by citizens to improve their health and lifestyle. However, the data (such as health-related or movement data) generated from the user’s daily activities is often private and therefore, ensuring the security and privacy of this data is important. First, we present some emerging trends of wearable devices followed by a discussion of the main security and functionality requirements along with the threats to the wearable communication environment. We then present a review of some of the recently proposed lightweight authentication protocols for wearable devices based on performance metrics such as computation cost and communication cost. We also compare these authentication protocols in terms of various security features they support. Finally, we discuss some future challenges in the area of security protocols for wearable devices that need to be addressed in the future.

Abstract

In global mobility networks, a mobile user can access roaming services using a mobile device at anytime and anywhere. However, mobile users can be vulnerable to various attacks by adversaries, because the roaming services are provided through public network. Therefore, an anonymous mobile user authentication for roaming services is an essential security issue in global mobility networks. Recently, Lee et al. pointed out the security weaknesses of a previous scheme and proposed an advanced secure anonymous authentication scheme for roaming services in global mobility networks. However, we found that the scheme proposed by Lee et al. is vulnerable to password guessing and user impersonation attacks, and that it cannot provide perfect forward secrecy and secure password altered phase. In this paper, to overcome the security weaknesses of the scheme proposed by Lee et al., we propose an improved secure anonymous authentication scheme using shared secret keys between home agent and foreign agent. In addition, we analyze the security of our proposed scheme against various attacks and prove that it provides secure mutual authentication using Burrows–Abadi–Needham logic. In addition, the formal security analysis using the broadly-accepted real-or-random (ROR) random oracle model and the formal security verification using the widely accepted automated validation of the Internet security protocols and applications tool show that the proposed scheme provides the session key security and protection against replay as well as man-in-themiddle attacks, respectively. Finally, we compare the performance of the proposed scheme with the related schemes, and the results show that the proposed scheme provides better security and comparable efficiency as compared with those for the existing schemes.

Abstract

In recent years, the research in generic Internet of Things (IoT) attracts a lot of practical applications including smart home, smart city, smart grid, industrial Internet, connected healthcare, smart retail, smart supply chain and smart farming. The hierarchical IoT network (HIoTN) is a special kind of the generic IoT network, which is composed of the different nodes, such as the gateway node, cluster head nodes, and sensing nodes organized in a hierarchy. In HIoTN, there is a need, where a user can directly access the real-time data from the sensing nodes for a particular application in generic IoT networking environment. This paper emphasizes on the design of a new secure lightweight three-factor remote user authentication scheme for HIoTNs, called the user authenticated key management protocol (UAKMP). The three factors used in UAKMP are the user smart card, password, and personal biometrics. The security of the scheme is thoroughly analyzed under the formal security in the widely accepted real-or-random model, the informal security as well as the formal security verification using the widely accepted automated validation of Internet security protocols and applications tool. UAKMP offers several functionality features including offline sensing node registration, freely password and biometric update facility, user anonymity, and sensing node anonymity compared to other related existing schemes. In addition, UAKMP is also comparable in computation and communication costs as compared to other existing schemes.

Abstract

In wireless sensor networks (WSNs), there are many critical applications (for example, healthcare, vehicle tracking, and battlefield), where the online streaming data generated from different sensor nodes need to be analyzed with respect to quick control decisions. However, as the data generated by these sensor nodes usually flow through open channel, so there are higher chances of various types of attacks either on the nodes or on to the data captured by these nodes. In this paper, we aim to design a new elliptic curve cryptography–based user authenticated key agreement protocol in a hierarchical WSN so that a legal user can only access the streaming data from generated from different sensor nodes. The proposed scheme is based upon 3‐factor authentication, as it applies smart card, password, and personal biometrics of a user (for ticket generation). The proposed scheme maintains low computation cost for resource‐constrained sensor nodes, as it uses efficient 1‐way cryptographic hash function and bitwise exclusive‐OR operations for secure key establishment between different sensor nodes. The security analysis using the broadly accepted Burrows‐Abadi‐Needham logic, formal security verification using the popular simulation tool (automated validation of Internet security protocols and applications), and informal security show that the proposed scheme is resilient against several well‐known attacks needed for a user authentication scheme in WSNs. The comparison of security and functionality requirements, communication and computation costs of the proposed scheme, and other related existing user authentication schemes shows the superior performance of the proposed scheme.

Abstract

Three-factor mutually authenticated key agreement protocols for multi-server environments have gained momentum in recent times due to advancements in wireless technologies and associated constraints. Several authors have put forward various authentication protocols for multi-server environment during the past decade. Wang et al. recently proposed a biometric-based authentication with key agreement protocol for multi-server environment and claimed that their protocol is efficient and resistant to prominent security attacks. The careful investigation of this paper shows that Wang et al. protocol's users are sharing personal identifiable information with the application servers during the registration and authentication process. This nature of disclosing credentials leads to severe threats particularly insider attacks, user impersonation attacks, and server impersonation attacks. As a remedy of the aforementioned problems, this paper proposes a novel biometric-based mutually authenticated key agreement protocols for multi-server architecture based on elliptic curve cryptography. We prove that the proposed protocol achieves secure mutual authentication property using the broadly used Burrows-Abadi-Needham logic. The formal security of the proposed protocol is verified using the widely accepted automated validation of Internet security protocols and applications tool to show that our protocol can withstand active and passive attacks including the replay and man-in-the-middle attacks. The proposed protocol is robust and efficient compared with the existing related protocols.