Search

Message authentication, which refers to source authentication and message integrity, is an essential security service, especially in emerging networks such as peer-to-peer, Device-to-Device, LPWAN (such as NB-IoT, LTE-M or SigFox) and vehicle to vehicle. Traditionally, message authentication schemes handled at upper layers of the protocol stack. Such schemes require multiple rounds and multiple operations per round, which results in a considerable overhead in terms of latency and required resources. Recently, many research works have shifted towards investigating the design of new security solutions at the physical layer (PLS). Although data confidentiality and device authentication schemes have been introduced at the physical layer, yet, no PLS message authentication scheme has been presented. In this paper, we propose a dynamic message authentication algorithm (keyed hash function) that makes use of a secret session key in addition to the random characteristics of the physical channel. Moreover, the cryptographic primitives are dynamic and get updated in a lightweight manner for every input frame symbol. Security and performance analysis were conducted to validate the efficiency and robustness of the proposed scheme. The results confirmed that the proposed authentication scheme exhibits a high level of security with minimum overhead in terms of delay. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Multiple access technologies allow a network to connect to two or more communication networks efficiently, to enhance system performance. They are more robust and reliable than legacy technologies, which allow the connection to one network at a time. In this paper, a new and efficient dynamic and key-dependent cipher scheme is designed to secure multi-homed devices, in real-time, while preserving their main functionality and meeting the stringent Quality of Service requirements. The proposed scheme consists of a dynamic key derivation technique that mixes together a dynamic nonce and a secret key. The dynamic nonce is extracted from multiple channels, after establishing a new session. The proposed approach is based on simple operations such as substitution and permutation, to enhance the network robustness against different types of attacks. The dynamicity is based on the random nature of physical channels and as such, data confidentiality, integrity and source authentication are achieved with the least amount of resources, delay and computational complexity. The implementation of the proposed cipher scheme is appropriate for small and resource-constrained devices including IoT devices and mobile phones (battery-constrained devices). Theoretical and simulation results confirm that the cipher scheme has a better efficiency than other recent schemes, which require multiple rounds. In addition, a cryptanalysis discussion is provided towards proving that the proposed cipher is capable of resisting and preventing the different existing cryptanalysis and security attacks. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Multiple-Input Multiple-Output (MIMO) technology is one of the key enablers of the 5G system. This technology allows the concurrent transmission of data using multiple antennas, which increases the channel robustness, overall throughput and link capacity. The security of 5G systems is very critical and it has received serious attention from various research groups. To that end, physical layer security (PLS) has recently emerged as a promising candidate to enhance network security, and several PLS schemes have been proposed for MIMO systems. Most of these MIMO PLS solutions target data confidentiality, however, they suffer from a main limitation due to relying solely on the random parameters of the channel. To overcome this limitation, we propose a PLS cipher solution for D2D MIMO systems, which is based on the dynamic key structure and several other factors including a private key and a physical channel parameter. Both of these parameters are combined to produce a dynamic key, which is used to generate the cipher primitives that are used to encrypt or decrypt data frames. For every input frame, the cipher primitives are updated, and for each frame symbol, the selection cipher primitives are updated. The update process is designed to enhance the security level and to ensure the avalanche effect in a simple and lightweight manner. Consequently, the proposed technique achieves high immunity against existing attacks due to the dynamic property which complicates the attacker's tasks. A high efficiency level is also attained since a single round with simple cipher operations are employed. The proposed scheme decreases the required latency, resources and overhead in comparison to security schemes at upper layers of the D2D MIMO communication system. Finally, we conducted several security and performance tests to evaluate the proposed solution and to prove its robustness and efficiency. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Internet-of-Things (IoT), which refers to the interconnection of heterogeneous devices, has gained a lot of interest lately, and it witnessed a large growth in the number of IoT devices due to the importance of such systems in today's communication networks. On the other hand, the authentication of entities (devices) is a major concern and a main security challenge in IoT systems since any weakness in the identification or authentication process will allow a compromised entity to establish communication, inject false data and launch dangerous attacks leading to system malfunction. Currently, most IoT authentication mechanisms are based on single-factor cryptographic solutions. These techniques are not practical for IoT devices that have limited computational capabilities. In this paper, we propose a lightweight and secure multi-factor device authentication protocol for IoT devices. The scheme is based on two concepts, configurable physical unclonable functions (PUF) within IoT devices, and channel-based parameters. It uses few and simple cryptographic operations such as the bit-wise exclusive-OR operation and a one-way hash function. The unique PUF value serves as the mutual secret identifier between a pair of users, which frequently changes for every session. Moreover, the proposed protocol exploits the random channel characteristics to provide high robustness against different kinds of attacks, while maintaining low complexity. To the best of the authors' knowledge, this is the first work that combines physical layer security with PUFs to authenticate communicating devices, dynamically. Security and performance analysis prove the security and efficiency of the proposed protocol, which is designed with minimum overhead in terms of computations and communication costs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Physical layer security (PLS) has become an increasingly attractive topic since it promises current and future wireless systems both reliable and secure communication, without imposing any assumptions on the computational power of the eavesdroppers. PLS benefits from the randomness property of the wireless channel, which provides better immunity and prevents different attacks. On the other hand, the multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) system has emerged as a key technology to support high data rates and improved energy and spectral efficiency, in addition to overcoming the effect of shadowing and fading. Recently, MIMO-based PLS has been addressed in the literature due to its wide adoption and its essential role in wireless communication systems. In this paper, we provide a comprehensive overview of various MIMO-based PLS techniques that target all kinds of security services namely, key generation and distribution, data confidentiality, authentication, and availability. With this overview, readers will have a better understanding of the MIMO-based PLS techniques present in the literature, their current limitations, and challenges. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Physical Layer Security (PLS) has emerged as a promising solution for small and resource-limited wireless communications devices, to reduce the overhead associated with the required security resources and latency. In contrast to traditional security schemes, PLS relies on and benefits from the random nature of physical channels. However, the majority of PLS schemes in the literature lack the notion of secrecy and dynamicity, and employ static keys to generate fixed cipher primitives. In this paper, a dynamic key generation scheme that combines a pre-shared/stored secret key with a dynamic nonce extracted from channel information (for each new session) is proposed. The main advantage of this approach is that it achieves a high-security level with minimal overhead. Moreover, the obtained dynamic key can be changed frequently upon any change in channel parameters. Using the produced dynamic keys, cipher primitives are generated (permutation operations), which get updated for each frame symbol. This process ensures different and unique encryption layers for each new input frame and for each symbol in the input frame. Equally important, the proposed encryption algorithm operates at the modulation symbol level in order to attain performance by limiting the effect of error propagation and by realizing parallel encryption/decryption for each frame symbol. In addition, a preamble encryption scheme is also proposed to prevent unauthorized synchronization or channel estimation by illegitimate users. The security level of the proposed cipher scheme mainly depends on a secret key and the dynamicity of the channel to update the cipher primitives used for each frame symbol. Finally, security and performance analyses validate the efficiency and the robustness of the proposed approach. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recently, several attempts have been made to jointly secure end-to-end network communication systems against various malicious attacks, and enhance its performance level. Network coding, which is a step forward towards realizing these systems, promises many advantages such as increased throughput and enhanced reliability. However, several security concerns remain an open issue. A major limitation is the unreliable broadcast nature of network channels. One possible solution is to leverage MPTCP (Multi-Path Transmission Control Protocol), and to utilize a secure variant of the Network Coding (NC) technique to secure reliable data transmission over multiple paths. Such a system is possible when integrated in a Software Defined Networking (SDN) environment. In this paper, the conventional Random Linear Network Coding (RLNC) technique is modified and employed in a secure MPTCP-enabled end-to-end system. This variant is referred to as secret coding, where communicating entities multiply the transmitted data with invertible secret coding matrices to achieve data confidentiality and data availability, while maintaining the desired system performance. Each user will separately derive the coding coefficients of the secret coding matrices from the channel and a common secret, which significantly reduces the communication overhead. The proposed solution exhibits several properties such as high efficiency, flexibility, low error propagation and low execution time. In order to further improve the security and performance of the proposed scheme, the SDN controller is programmed to provide independent paths between the communicating MPTCP users. The obtained results prove that the proposed solution is able to achieve both the desired security level and performance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Non-Orthogonal Multiple Access (NOMA) has recently emerged as a promising multiple access technique for current and future mobile communication networks. Unlike conventional multiple access schemes, NOMA exploits the power domain to service a large number of users at different power levels, using the same time–frequency resources. However, this technology suffers from major security threats since users are able to decode the messages of other paired users utilizing the same resources. In this paper, we propose an efficient and lightweight cipher scheme for NOMA systems at the physical layer. Unlike previous schemes in the literature, the proposed solution combines cryptography and Physical Layer Security (PLS) to provide robust security at minimum cost by adopting a structure that requires a single round with a single operation. Moreover, it is generic in the sense that any simple cipher operation such as permutation, substitution, phase shuffling, or pseudo-random masking, can be utilized in order to secure the underlying NOMA frame symbols. Also, we propose a dynamic key derivation scheme that benefits from the dynamic properties of wireless channels. Simulation results and cryptanalysis show that the proposed solution achieves the desired security level and strikes a good balance between performance and security level. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• A lightweight binary Random Linear Network Coding security solution is proposed for multi-homed systems (end-to-end). • The proposed scheme uses dynamic cryptographic and update cryptographic primitives for each input message. • All required cryptographic and update cryptographic primitives are derived from the channel-based dynamic secret key. • The proposed solution achieves data confidentiality along with reliability, source authentication, and message integrity. Recently, multi-homing has received a lot of interest, since it enables devices which are currently equipped with multiple network interfaces to transmit data over multiple paths, simultaneously. However, with parallel transmission over heterogeneous links, issues and challenges related to security arise. In this paper, we propose a novel channel-based security solution to enhance the security of multi-homed systems. Unlike existing techniques in the literature, the proposed scheme utilizes simple cryptographic operations and Random Linear Network Coding (RNLC), to ensure better robustness against attacks, and improve the performance and reliability of transmitted messages, concurrently. In particular, channel-based parameters are combined with a master secret key, only known to communicating entities, to derive dynamic cipher primitives, which include substitution tables, permutation tables and binary RNLC matrices. The theoretical and experimental results showed that the proposed scheme is secure and efficient compared with many work in this field. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]