Abstract

Water crisis is a major issue across various cities in the world. In recent times, a considerable amount of work has been done on remote monitoring using water flow sensors. In almost all these applications either GSM/GPRS or Zig-Bee has been used for communication. In this work, we propose a resilient water monitoring system using a low power Wi-Fi module. The goal is achieved in three stages: calibration of flow sensor, design of robust IoT node with embedded power management and packaging of the complete system. The aim of calibration is to enhance the linearity range by choosing a suitable meter constant K for the turbine flow sensor. It helps to make the system adaptive to variations in pressure and flow rate. The sensor data is processed and sent to the cloud using power efficient ESP8266 Wi-Fi SoC chip. The packaging of the complete system is done to make it watertight and suitable for usage in …

Abstract

This paper utilizes RF Sensing to develop a facile methodology for the determination of Critical Micelle Concentration (CMC) of surfactants. The study is undertaken with the help of an Interdigitated Capacitor based RF Sensor. Due to change in permittivity, the sensor yields distinct resonant frequencies when introduced to solutions of varying concentration of Sodium Dodecyl Sulphate as the electrolyte. As the surfactant approaches micellization, the resonant frequency shift drastically alters, and this sudden transition is used to determine the value of CMC. The proposed technique estimates the CMC of SDS to be 6.5 x10 -3 M The introduced method is effective and less cumbersome as compared to traditional techniques.

Abstract

Research has proven that accomplishing security properties while improving performance of an authentication protocol is a challenging task. Numerous authentication protocols proposed in the recent times are still behind in achieving the concrete objectives. Qi et al. and Lu et al. recently proposed two-factor authenticated key-agreement protocols for client–server architecture. This paper revisits their protocols and analyzes the shortcomings of such approaches. We also propose an improved authenticated key agreement protocol for client–server environment to defeat mentioned weaknesses of existing protocols that are discussed in related works. The rigorous security analysis using Burrows–Abadi–Needham logic, formal security verification using Real-OR-Random model, simulations using the Automated Validation of Internet Security Protocols and Applications tool, and the informal security analysis shows that the proposed protocol is secure. Additionally, we summarize the results to ensure that the proposed protocol is efficient compared to the existing related protocols.

Abstract

The purpose of this research is to explore the possibilities and mechanisms to be followed in order to extend the QoS in the backbone networks. This paper extends the ideas discussed in my previous paper: A Novel Architecture to Enhance Quality of Service in IP Networks [1] explaining the consequences of the proposal and building a model network. Simulated an SDN network using mininet and presented the packet captures depicting the extension of QoS outside the access networks.

Abstract

Authentication schemes are widely used mechanisms to thwart unauthorized access of resources over insecure networks.Several smart card based password authentication schemes have been proposed in the literature. In this paper, we demonstrate the security limitations of a recently proposed password based authentication scheme, and show that their scheme is still vulnerable to forgery and offline password guessing attacks and it is also unable to provide user anonymity, forward secrecy and mutual authentication. With the intention of fixing the weaknesses of that scheme, we present a secure authentication scheme. We show that the proposed scheme is invulnerable to various attacks together with attacks observed in the analyzed scheme through both rigorous formal and informal security analysis. Furthermore, the security analysis using the widely-accepted Real-Or-Random (ROR) model ensures that the proposed scheme provides the session key (SK) security. Finally,we carry out the performance evaluation of the proposed scheme and other related schemes, and the result favors that the proposed scheme provides better trade-off among security and performance as compared to other existing related schemes.

Abstract

In a synchronous distributed network of n nodes, the goal of a Secure Message Transmission (SMT) protocol is to securely deliver the sender’s message at the receiver’s end in the presence of a computationally unbounded adversary that can partially control the network by corrupting some of its nodes (except the sender and the receiver). In a network modelled as a directed graph, to achieve unconditional security tolerating tb Byzantine faults, it is known that: (1) if all the paths are one-way connected from the sender to the receiver – called as forward channels – then 2tb + 1 vertex-disjoint forward channels are necessary and sufficient (2) for 1 ≤ u ≤ tb, if there exist 2tb + 1 − u vertex-disjoint forward channels then u vertex-disjoint paths from the receiver to the sender – known as feedback channels – are necessary and sufficient. Moreover, similar characterization exists for tolerating mixed faults – up to t f fail-stop faults in addition to tp passive faults. We notice that these results characterized the networks by studying the required number of extra vertex-disjoint feedback channels, conditioned on the existence of a certain number of forward channels. In this work, we give a generic characterization without attaching any such if condition. Specifically, we answer the following questions. In a given directed graph, that is abstracted as a collection of strong paths from S to R and R to S, under what conditions is SMT (im)possible tolerating: (1) up to tp passive faults?, (2) mixed faults – up to t f fail-stop faults in addition to tp passive faults?, and (3) up to tb Byzantine faults? Also, for each of these three problems, we explicitly show that there are networks in which SMT protocols exist whereas the existing results do not characterize such networks.

Abstract

With the increasing use of mobile devices, a secure communication and key exchange become the significant security issues in mobile environments. However, because of open network envi-ronments, mobile user can be vulnerable to various attacks. Therefore, the numerous authentication and key exchange schemes have been proposed to provide the secure communication and key exchange.Recently, Qi and Chen proposed an efficient two-party authentication key exchange protocol for mobile environments in order to overcome the security weaknesses of the previous authentication and key exchange schemes. However, we demonstrate that Qi and Chen’s scheme is vulnerable to various attacks such as impersonation, offline password guessing, password change, and privileged insider attacks. We also show that Qi and Chen’s scheme does not provide anonymity, efficient password change mechanism, and secure mutual authentication. In this paper, to overcome the outlined above mentioned security vulnerabilities,we propose a secure and efficient two-party authentication key exchange protocol, called 2PAKEP, that hides user’s real identity from an adversary using a secret parameter. 2PAKEP also withstands various attacks, guarantees anonymity, and provides efficient password change mechanism and secure mutual authentication. In addition, we prove that 2PAKEP provides the secure mutual authentication using the broadly accepted Burrows–Abadi–Needham logic and the session key security using the formal security analysis under the widely accepted real-or-random model. Moreover, the formal security verification using the popular simulated software tool, Automated Validation of Internet Security Protocols and Applications,on 2PAKEP shows that the replay and man-in-the-middle attacks are protected. In addition, we also analyze the performance and security and functionality properties of 2PAKEP and compare these with the related existing schemes. Overall, 2PAKEP provides better security and functionality features, and also the communication and computational overheads are comparable with the related schemes. Therefore, 2PAKEPis applicable to mobile environment efficiently.

Abstract

Steerability is a characteristic non-local trait of quantum states lying in between entanglement and Bell non-locality. A given quantum state is considered to be steerable if it violates a suitably chosen steering inequality. A quantum state which otherwise satisfies a certain inequality can violate the inequality under a global change of basis, i.e., if the state is transformed by a non-local unitary operation. Intriguingly, there are states which preserve their non-violation (pertaining to the said inequality) under any global unitary operation. The present work explores the effect of global unitary operations on the steering ability of a quantum state which lives in two qubits. We characterize such states in terms of a necessary and sufficient condition on their spectrum. Such states are also characterized in terms of some analytic characteristics of the set to which they belong. Looking back at steerability the present work also provides a relation between steerability and quantum teleportation together with the derivation of a result related to the optimal violation of steering inequality. An analytic estimation of the size of such non-violating states in terms of purity is also obtained. Interestingly, the estimation in terms of purity also gives a necessary and sufficient condition in terms of Bloch parameters of the state. Illustrations from some signature class of quantum states further underscore our observations.

Abstract

The Internet of Things (IoT) is a system of physical as well as virtual objects (each with networking capabilities incorporated) that are interconnected to exchange and collect information locally or remotely over the Internet. Since the communication often takes place over the Internet, it is vulnerable to various security threats in an IoT environment. We first discuss essential security requirements that are needed to secure IoT environment. We also discuss the threat model and various attacks related to the IoT environment. We then present a taxonomy of security protocols for the IoT environment which includes important security services such as key management, user and device authentication, access control, privacy preservation, and identity management. We also present a comparative study of recently proposed IoT-related state-of-art security protocols in terms of various security and functionality features they support. Finally, we discuss some future challenges for IoT security protocols that need to be addressed in the future.

Abstract

In this work we introduce the randomness which is truly quantum mechanical in nature arising as an act of measurement. For a composite classical system we have the joint entropy to quantify the randomness present in the total system and that happens to be equal to the sum of the entropy of one subsystem and the conditional entropy of the other subsystem given we know the first system. The same analogy caries over to the quantum setting by replacing the Shannon entropy by the Von Neumann entropy. However, if we replace the conditional von Neumann entropy by the average conditional entropy due to measurement, we find that it is different from the joint entropy of the system. We call this difference Measurement Induced Randomness (MIR) and argue that this is unique of quantum mechanical systems and there is no classical counterpart to this. In other words the joint Von Neumann entropy gives only the total randomness that arises because of the heterogeneity of the mixture and we show that it is not the total randomness that can be generated in the composite system. We generalize this quantity for N-qubit systems and show that it reduces to quantum discord for two qubit systems. Further, we show that it is exactly equal to the change in the cost of quantum state merging that arises because of the measurement. We argue that for a quantum information processing tasks like state merging the change in the cost as a result of discarding prior information can also be viewed as a rise of randomness due to measurement.