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Abstract

With the emergence of the 3G (third-generation) networks for mobile communications, data security becomes even more important. Designing cryptosystems that meet both the power contraints and computing constraints of mobile units is very challenging. The GH-PKC reduces the size of the modulus and speeds up the computations of the same degree of security as existing cryptosystems. Our research focus is on software implementation of the GH-PKC and analysis on its performance over the existing cryptosystems.

Abstract

Current authentication technologies are commonly based asymmetric encryption techniques such as digital signatures. To be able to employ these techniques requires a significant amount of computing resources, which are uncommon to many lightweight mobile devices such as cell phones and personal digital assistants (PDAs). It is therefore currently infeasible or uneconomical to implement mutual authentication services between these devices. A new protocol called “Controlled Proxy-Assisted Secure End-to-End Communication Protocol” was proposed by Professor Hung-Yu Lin to solve the problem. The goal of a Fourth Year Design Project at the University of Waterloo of Jimmy Choi, Kenneth Choi, Kenric Li, and Truman Ng supervised by Prof. Guang Gong, was to build a secure communication system that employs such proxy-assisted protocol as illustrated in figure four.

Abstract

We propose a new synchronous stream cipher, called WG (Welch-Gong) cipher. The cipher is based on WG transformations. The WG cipher has been designed to produce keystream with guaranteed randomness properties, i.e., balance, long period, large and exact linear complexity, three level additive autocorrelation, and ideal two level multiplicative autocorrelation. It is resistant to time/memory/data tradeoff attacks, algebraic attacks and correlation attacks. The cipher can be implemented with a small amount of hardware.

For details, please see the poster Sequences for Communication System (PDF).

Motivation

Recently many people in the media, industry, and academia are talking about ubiquitous computing and ad hoc networking, but it seems that everybody has a different understanding of the topic. Some people associate ad hoc networks with Personal Area Networks (PANs), as for instance wireless communications among PDA's, cellular phones, and laptops using the Bluetooth protocol, whereas others might imagine military applications, such as exploring enemy territory by the use of sensor networks. The number of applications are countless.

Introduction

Wireless sensor networks (WSNs) are innovative networks consisting of a large number of distributed, autonomous, low-power, low-cost, sensor nodes which cooperatively collect information through infrastructureless wireless networks, as illustrated in Figure one. There are numerous applications for wireless sensor networks, and security is vital for many of them. However, WSNs suffer from many constraints, including low computation capability, small memory, limited energy resources, susceptibility to physical capture, and the lack of infrastructure, all of which impose unique security challenges and make innovative approaches desirable.

The physical-layer security under the information-theoretic (perfect) security models can get exponentially close to perfect secrecy in theory. However, the information-theoretic security is an average-information measure. The system can be designed and tuned for a specific level of security¡ªe.g., with very high probability a block is secure, but it may not be able to guarantee security with probability one. So any deployment of a physical-layer security protocol in a classical system would be part of a ¡°layered security¡± solution where security is provided at a number of different layers, each with a specific goal in mind. The physical-layer security can provide an additional layer of security for wireless networks. We investigate a novel multiple input multiple output (MIMO) aided security scheme. By exploiting an extra dimension provided by MIMO systems for adding artificial noise to the transmission process, which let the attacker¡¯s signal be a degraded version of the legitimate receiver¡¯s signal, the physical-layer security is enhanced as a result. We also investigate a novel framework for Physical layer Assisted message Authentication (PAA) under public key infrastructure (PKI) in wireless communication networks.

Introduction

Radio frequency identification (RFID) is a technology for the automated identification of physical entities using radio frequency transmissions. Typically, RFID systems consist of RFID devices or so called tags, RFID readers or interrogators, and backend networks. An RFID tag is a simple and low-cost electronic device (transponder) that is attached to a physical object for wireless data transmission. It transmits data over the air in response to interrogation by an RFID reader. An RFID reader is a more powerful device (transceiver) that can queue data stored in tags. Multiple readers can then connect to a network that acts as a data processing subsystem and database. In the past ten years, RFID systems have gained popularity in many applications, such as supply chain management, library systems, e-passports, contactless cards (e.g., proximity cards, automated toll-payment transponders, and payment tokens), identification systems, and human implantation (such as medical-record indexing, and physical access control). Future applications could include smart appliances, shopping, and medication compliance monitoring. RFID is one of the most promising technologies in the field of ubiquitous and pervasive computing. Many new applications can be created by embedding an object with RFID tags. However, the rapid development of RFID systems raises serious privacy and security concerns that could prevent the benefits of RFID technology from being fully utilized.