Abstract

Smart devices in an Internet of Things (IoT) gen- erate a massive amount of big data through sensors. The data is used to build intelligent applications through machine learn- ing (ML). To build these applications, the data is collected from devices into data centers for training ML models. Usually, the training of models is performed on central server, but this approach requires the transfer of data from devices to central server. This centralized training approach is not efficient because the users are much less likely to share data to the centralized data centers due to privacy issues and bandwidth limitations. To mitigate these issues, we propose an efficient hybrid secure fed- erated learning approach with the blockchain to securely train the model locally on devices and then to store the model and its parameters into the blockchain for traceability and immutabil- ity. A detailed security and performance analysis is presented to show the efficacy of the proposed approach in terms of security, resilience against many security attacks, and cost effectiveness in computation and communication as compared to other existing competing schemes. Index Terms—Authentication, big data analytics, blockchain, Internet of Things (IoT), key agreement, security.

Abstract

Precision farming has a positive potential in the agricultural industry regarding water conservation, increased productivity, better development of rural areas, and increased income. Blockchain technology is a better alternative for storing and sharing farm data as it is reliable, transparent, immutable, and decentralized. Remote monitoring of an agricultural field requires security systems to ensure that any sensitive infor- mation is exchanged only among authenticated entities in the network. To this end, we design an efficient blockchain-enabled authenticated key agreement scheme for mobile vehicles-assisted precision agricultural Internet of Things (IoT) networks called Agr oM obi Bl ock. The limited existing work on authentication in agricultural networks shows passive usage of blockchains with very high costs. Agr oM obi Bl ock proposes a novel idea using the elliptic curve operations on an active hybrid blockchain over mobile farming vehicles with low computation and communica- tion costs. Formal and informal security analysis along with the formal security verification using the Automated Validation of Internet Security Protocols and Applications (AVISPA) software tool have shown the robustness of Agr oM obi Bl ock against man-in-the-middle, impersonation, replay, physical capture, and ephemeral secret leakage attacks among other potential attacks. The blockchain-based simulation on large-scale nodes shows the computational time for an increase in the network and block size

Abstract

Vehicular ad-hoc networks (VANETs) are increasingly commonplace, partly due to the popularity of electric vehicles and the digitalization of cities. Data collected and shared in VANETs include traffic-related information, such as those relating to real-time traffic situations and road works. In recent times, there has been a trend of moving away from a centralized approach to a decentralized approach, for example, using Blockchain to facilitate secure data sharing and traceability of critical information. Hence, in this paper, we comprehensively survey the existing literature on blockchain-based VANET systems, focusing on the application of different blockchain technologies in different contexts, as well as the associated challenges and research opportunities.

Abstract

The recent surge in development of smart homes and smart cities can be observed in many developed countries. While the idea to control devices that are in home (embedded with the Internet of Things (IoT) smart devices) by the user who is outside the home might sound fancy, but it comes with a lot of potential threats. There can be many attackers who will be trying to take advantage of this. So, there is a need for designing a secure scheme which will be able to distinguish among genuine/authorized users of the system and attackers. And knowing about the details of when and what IoT devices are used by the user, the attacker can trace the daily activities of user and can plan an attack accordingly. Thus, the designed security scheme should guarantee confidentiality, anonymity and un-traceability. Most of the schemes proposed in the literature are either non-blockchain based which involves inherent problems of storing data in a single-server or assuming weaker attack models. In this work, we propose a novel scheme based on blockchain technology, assuming a stronger Canetti and Krawczyk (CK)-threat model. Through the formal and informal security, and comparative analysis, we show that the proposed scheme provides a superior security and more functionality features, with less communication cost and comparable computational cost as compared to other competent schemes. Moreover, the blockchain based simulation study on the proposed scheme has been conducted to show its feasibility in real-life application. Keywords: Internet of things (IoT); smart home; ubiquitous computing; blockchain; security

Abstract

Blockchain technology has a significant application in smart farming due to its immutability, decentralization and transparency properties. Data exchanged in an Internet of Things (IoT)-based smart agriculture can be used to remotely monitor the fields and regulate the crop needs for optimal productivity. However, such data is sensitive to several attacks, such as man-in- the-middle attack, replay attack, ephemeral secret leakage attack, impersonation attack and denial of service (DoS) attack. The existing solutions to counter these attacks are either costly or lack significant security features. To mitigate these issues, we design a novel lightweight blockchain based authentication scheme based on a fully decentralized and distributed architecture. The designed scheme is subjected to a rigorous security analysis and also a formal security verification using the widely-used Auto- mated Validation of Internet Security Protocols and Applications (AVISPA) tool, and it is shown that the scheme is robust and secure against various passive and active attacks. A detailed comparative analysis shows that the proposed scheme has the low communication cost and significantly lower computation cost while satisfying all the security and functionality features as compared to those for other existing relevant schemes. Index Terms—Smart agriculture, authentication, blockchain technology, Internet of Things (IoT), security.

Abstract

Smart transportation or Internet of Vehicles (IoV)-enabled transportation extends the vehicle-to-vehicle (V2V) communication network. Smart transportation is a real-time application that helps enhance driving aids with the help of vehicle’s Artificial Intelligence (AI), awareness of other vehicles, and their actions giving out the best on-road experience. Smart transportation also protects life and saves cost by avoiding life-threatening instances like collisions, accidents, and thefts on the road. Since the communication among various entities involved in the IoV environment is via an open channel (e.g., vehicles, pedestrians, fleet management systems, and roadside infrastructure), it allows a passive/active adversary to intercept, modify, delete, or even insert fake information during communication. It is then a severe concern for the vehicles

Abstract

Over the last few years, with the massive growth of smartphone technology and mobile Internet, the use of vari- ous online social networks (OSNs) have increased rapidly. This ever-growing use of social networks leverages cyber-attackers to exploit various phishing schemes, spoofed accounts, and other threats to steal users’ credentials. Phishing is an online crime that employs both technical subterfuge and social engineering to steal consumers’ personal identity, financial account credentials, and other sensitive information. In general, a phishing attack is carried out by the exercise of sending fraudulent communications (like a fake email with harmful uniform resource locators), that pretends to come from a reputable source. The problem of designing user authentication protocol for mitigating phishing attacks in OSNs is a challenging research problem. In this article, we propose a secure and lightweight cryptography-based authentication scheme, called authentication scheme for phishing attack (ASPA)-mobile online social network (mOSN), that provides resistance to phishing and other related attacks in OSNs. The security of the proposed scheme is explained using both informal security analysis and formal security analysis through the widely recognized real-or- random model and ProVerif simulation tool. Finally, we compare the security, functionality, computation, and communication costs of the proposed ASPA-mOSN with related schemes. The compar- ison results show that ASPA-mOSN outperforms other existing competing schemes. Index Terms—Authentication, mobile online social networks (mOSN), phishing attacks, random oracle, security

Abstract

The Internet of Medical Things (IoMT) is a unification of smart healthcare devices, tools, and software, which connect various patients and other users to the healthcare information system through the networking technology. It further reduces unnecessary hospital visits and the burden on healthcare systems by connecting the patients to their healthcare experts (i.e., doctors) and allows secure transmission of healthcare data over an insecure channel (e.g., the Internet). Since Artificial Intelligence (AI) has a great impact on the performance and usability of an information system, it is important to include its modules in a healthcare information system, which will be very helpful for the prediction of some phenomena, such as chances of getting a heart attack and possibility of a tumor, from the collected and analysed healthcare data. To mitigate these issues, in this paper, a new AI-enabled lightweight, secure communication scheme for an IoMT environment has been designed and named as ASCP-IoMT, in short. The security analysis of ASCP-IoMT is performed in different ways, such as an informal way and a formal way (through the random oracle model). ASCP-IoMT performs better than other similar schemes and provides superior security with extra functionality features as compared those for the existing state of art solutions. A practical implementation of ASCP-IoMT is also performed in order to measure its impact on various network performance parameters. The end to end delay values of ASCP-IoMT are 0.01587, 0.07440 and 0.17097 seconds and the throughput values of ASCP-IoMT are 5.05, 10.88 and 16.41 bits per second (bps) under the different considered cases, respectively. For AI-based Big data analytics phase, the values of computation time (seconds) for decision tree, support vector machine (SVM), and logistic regression are measured as 0.19, 0.23, and 0.27, respectively. Moreover, the different values of accuracy for decision tree, SVM and logistic regression are 84.24%, 87.57%, and 85.20%, respectively. From these values, it is clear that decision tree method requires less time than the other considered techniques, whereas accuracy is high in case of SVM.

Abstract

Fog computing-based Internet of Things (IoT) architecture is useful for various types of delay efficient net- work communications and services, like digital healthcare. However, there are privacy and security issues with the fog computing-based healthcare systems, which can further increase the risk of leakage of sensitive healthcare data. Therefore, a secu- rity mechanism, such as access control for fog computing-based healthcare systems, is needed to protect its data against various potential attacks. Moreover, the blockchain technology can be used to solve the digital healthcare’s data integrity related problems. The use of Artificial Intelligence (AI) further makes the system more effective in case of prediction of health related diseases. In this paper, an AI-enabled secure communication mechanism in fog computing-based healthcare system (in short, AISCM-FH) has been proposed. The security analysis of the proposed AISCM-FH is provided using the standard random oracle model and also with the heuristic (non-mathematical) security analysis. A pragmatic study determines the impact of the proposed AISCM-FH on key performance indicators. Moreover, we include a detailed performance comparison of AISCM-FH with other relevant existing schemes to show that it has low communication and computation costs, and provides superior security and extra functionality attributes as compared to those for other competing existing approaches.

Abstract

Sustainable smart healthcare applications are those in which health services can be provided to remotely located patients through the Internet without placing extra burden on environmental resources. They should be operated with minimum power consumption using biodegradable, recyclable, and environmentally friendly healthcare equipment and products. In an Internet of Medical Things (IoMT)-enabled sustainable smart healthcare environment, all the health services are capable of producing informative data whenever some raw information is provided as the input or are capable of performing work on their own with less intervention from humans. As a result, they provide great advantages over the traditional healthcare system. As sustainable smart healthcare devices are operated through the Internet, it is possible that they could be attacked by various hackers. To mitigate these issues, in this paper, we propose a new access control along with a key-establishment mechanism for a sustainable smart healthcare system. The results of the security analysis showed that the proposed scheme was highly robust against a variety of passive and active attacks. In comparison to existing competing schemes, the proposed scheme is lightweight, as well as delivers high security and additional functionality. Finally, a practical demonstration of the proposed scheme is provided to show its impact on the key network performance parameters. Keywords: sustainability; smart healthcare; Internet of Medical Things (IoMT); authentication; security