The proliferation of Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) networks and their numerous benefits in critical scenarios, UAV become crucial for Internet of Drones (IoD) operations. However, due to their communication methods, such as the micro-air-vehicle communication (MAVlink) protocol, wireless connections, and potentially insecure Internet channels, UAV networks are highly vulnerable to potentially lethal attacks. To overcome such issues, public key cryptographic techniques relying on integer factorization problem (IFP) and discrete logarithm problems (DLP) have been used form decades. However, with the significant advancements in quantum computing and adaptation of Shor's algorithm such cryptographic techniques based on IFP and DLP become insecure today and vulnerable to quantum attacks, which demand new ways of thinking about security. In this paper, we propose a quantum-secure access control protocol for UAV-based IoD applications, and its primary focus is on preserving user anonymity. A comprehensive security analysis validates the accuracy, security, and resilience against various active and passive attacks in both classical and quantum scenarios. A thorough formal security verification using the Scyther automated software validation tool to showcases the robustness of the proposed scheme. Furthermore, a real-time testbed experiment on Raspberry Pi 4 devices to assess the computational overhead of various cryptographic primitives demonstrates its practicality. Lastly, a detailed comparative performance evaluation, including authentication accuracy, performance under unknown attacks with existing related schemes illustrates its scalability and efficiency in real-world applications.

Communication in the green Internet of Vehicles (IoV) demands significant energy, encompassing both communication and computation costs, along with fuel and electricity for vehicle operation. The rise of quantum computing threatens the security of existing IoV frameworks, particularly those relying on conventional public-key cryptosystems (PKC) like integer factorization and elliptic curve cryptography, which are vulnerable to quantum attacks. This paper proposes a lightweight, postquantum security protocol for electric vehicles (EVs) in IoV, aimed at reducing computation and communication costs while enhancing energy efficiency. We conduct a comprehensive security analysis and compare our protocol with existing solutions, demonstrating its superior security, scalability, and practical effectiveness. Network simulations using NS3 further validate the robustness and efficiency of the proposed scheme for green IoV applications.

Multi-signature protocols allow a group of signers to collectively generate a single signature for a shared message. In the context of a decentralized blockchain, multi-signature schemes play a pivotal role in reducing the signature size. Recently, several multi-signature methods have emerged in the literature, some operating in discrete-log settings and others in lattice settings. However, many of the existing lattice-based multi-signature schemes incur high computation costs and online round complexity. Traditional public key-based multi-signature schemes are susceptible to quantum threats, and they are computationally intensive as well. A lattice-based multi-signature can provide robust security, which often falls short in terms of efficiency when it comes to round complexity. In this article, we aim to introduce a single-round lattice-based multi-signature scheme specifically designed for decentralized public blockchains. What sets the proposed scheme apart is its ability to function without the need for trapdoor commitments or sample pre-images, which are common features in existing lattice-based signature methods. Furthermore, we explore some potential applications in a generic Internet of Things (IoT) environment and their integration of the proposed scheme with the blockchain technology. The security of the proposed scheme is based on lattice-hard problems, like Ring-SIS (Shortest Integer Solution) and Ring-LWE (Learning with Errors).

Existing wireless infrastructure and networks are unable to meet the diverse Quality of Service (QoS) demands inherent in a wide range of consumer healthcare applications (CHAs). In this context, the adoption of fifth generation of wireless cellular technology (5G)/Beyond fifth-generation (B5G)-based network slicing technology has become pivotal for CHAs. It facilitates the creation of multiple virtual networks on a shared physical infrastructure by catering to distinct QoS requirements, where digital twins (DTs) are providing a virtual representation and management framework for healthcare smart devices, services, and applications within network slices. This allows different services and applications to coexist. However, network slicing has to address various security concerns, including securing slice access, enabling secure inter-slice communication, ensuring slice isolation within the shared physical network with DTs, and authenticating end users. To address these challenges, we propose a security mechanism that is specifically designed to safeguard network slice access and isolation in CHAs empowered by DTs, where only legitimate devices with corresponding digital twins and matching attributes are granted access. The proposed model incorporates the use of digital certificates for authenticating both slice access and devices by providing enhanced slice isolation to mitigate unauthorized access. Through a detailed comparative assessment, we demonstrate that the proposed scheme offers superior security and improved functionality attributes, while maintaining low communication costs as compared to those for other similar existing schemes. Furthermore, we validate the feasibility of our scheme through testbed simulations.

Surveillance drones, called as unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), are aircrafts that are utilized to collect video recordings, still images, or live video of the targets, such as vehicles, people or specific areas. Particularly in battlefield surveillance, there is high possibility of eavesdropping, inserting, modifying or deleting the messages during communications among the deployed drones and ground station server (GSS). This leads to launch several potential attacks by an adversary, such as main-in-middle, impersonation, drones hijacking, replay attacks, etc. Moreover, anonymity and untraceability are two crucial security properties that need to be maintained in battlefield surveillance communication environment. To deal with such a crucial security problem, we propose a new access control protocol for battlefield surveillance in drone-assisted Internet of Things (IoT) environment, called ACPBS-IoT. Through the detailed security analysis using formal and informal (nonmathematical), and also the formal security verification under automated software simulation tool, we show that the proposed ACPBS-IoT can resist several potential attacks needed in a battlefield surveillance scenario. Furthermore, the testbed experiments for various cryptographic primitives have been performed for measuring the execution time. Finally, a detailed comparative study on communication and computational overheads, and security, as well as functionality features, reveals that the proposed ACPBS-IoT provides superior security and more functionality features, and better or comparable overheads than other existing competing access control schemes.

Emerging next-generation Internet yields proper administration of a wide-ranging dynamic network to assist rapid ubiquitous resource accessibility, whilst providing higher channel bandwidth. Since its inception, the traditional static network infrastructure-based solutions involve manual configuration and proprietary controls of networked devices. It then leads to improper utilization of the overall resources, and hence experiences various security threats. Although transport layer security (TLS)-based solution is presently advocated in the said framework, it is vulnerable to many security threats like man-in-the-middle, replay, spoofing, privileged insider, impersonation, and denial-of-service attacks. Moreover, the current settings of the said tool do not facilitate any secure and reliable mechanisms for data forwarding, application flow routing, new configuration deployment, and network event management. Also, it suffers from the single point of controller failure issue. In this article, we propose a new private blockchain-enabled fine-grained access control mechanism for the SDN environment. In this regard, attribute-based encryption (ABE) and certificate-based access control protocol are incorporated. This proposed solution can resist several well-known security threats, and alleviate different system-level inconveniences. The formal and informal security inspections and performancewise comparative study of the proposed scheme endorse better qualifying scores as compared to the other existing competing state-of-the-art schemes. Besides, the experimental testbed implementation and blockchain simulation show the implementation feasibility of the proposed mechanism.

This article proposes a new blockchain-envisioned key management protocol for artificial intelligence (AI)-enabled industrial cyber–physical systems (ICPSs). The designed key management protocol enables key establishment among the Internet of Things (IoT)-enabled smart devices and their respective gateway nodes. The blocks partially constructed with secure data from smart devices by fog servers are provided to cloud servers that are responsible for completing blocks, and then mining those blocks for verification and addition in the blockchain. The most important application of the private blockchain construction is to apply AI algorithms for accurate predictions in Big data analytics. A detailed security analysis along with formal security verification show that the proposed scheme resists various potential attacks in an ICPS environment. Moreover, practical testbed experiments have been conducted using the multiprecision integer and rational arithmetic cryptographic library (MIRACL). Furthermore, a detailed comparative analysis shows superiority of the proposed scheme over recent relevant schemes. In addition, the practical implementation using the blockchain for the proposed scheme demonstrates the total computational costs when the number of transactions per block and also the number of blocks mined in the blockchain are varied.

Smart vehicles-enabled intelligent transportation system (ITS) supports a wide range of applications, such as, but not limited to, traffic planning and management, collision avoidance alert system, automated road speed enforcement, electronic toll collection, and real-time parking management, to name a few. However, it suffers from various types of security and privacy issues due to insecure communication among the entities over public channels. Therefore, an efficient and lightweight security mechanism is essential to protect the data that is both at rest as well as in transit. To this direction, we propose a public blockchain-envisioned secure communication framework for ITS (PBSCF-ITS). The proposed PBSCF-ITS guarantees access control and key management among the vehicle to vehicle, vehicle to roadside unit, and roadside unit to cloud server. We analyze the security of PBSCF-ITS to prove its resilience against various types of possible attacks. Furthermore, the performance of PBSCF-ITS with other related competing schemes has been compared. The obtained results illustrate that PBSCF-ITS outperforms the existing ones. Additionally, the pragmatic study of PBSCF-ITS is conducted to check its influence on various network-related performance parameters, like the number of mined blocks and transactions per block.

We design a new blockchain-based access control protocol in IoT-enabled smart-grid system, called DBACP-IoTSG. Through the proposed DBACP-IoTSG, the data is securely brought to the service providers from their respective smart meters (SMs). The peer-to-peer (P2P) network is formed by the participating service providers, where the peer nodes are responsible for creating the blocks from the gathered data securely from their corresponding SMs and adding them into the blockchain after validation of the blocks using the voting-based consensus algorithm. In our work, the blockchain is considered as private because the data collected from the consumers of the SMs are private and confidential. By the formal security analysis under the random oracle model, nonmathematical security analysis and software-based formal security verification, DBACP-IoTSG is shown to be resistant against various attacks. We carry out the experimental results of various cryptographic primitives that are needed for comparative analysis using the widely used multiprecision integer and rational arithmetic cryptographic library (MIRACL). A detailed comparative study reveals that DBACP-IoTSG supports more functionality features and provides better security apart from its low communication and computation costs as compared to recently proposed relevant schemes. In addition, the blockchain implementation of DBACP-IoTSG has been performed to measure computational time needed for the varied number of blocks addition and also the varied number of transactions per block in the blockchain.

User access control is a crucial requirement in any Internet of Things (IoT) deployment, as it allows one to provide authorization, authentication, and revocation of a registered legitimate user to access real-time information and/or service directly from the IoT devices. To complement the existing literature, we design a new three-factor certificateless-signcryption-based user access control for the IoT environment (CSUAC-IoT). Specifically, in our scheme, a user U's password, personal biometrics, and mobile device are used as the three authentication factors. By executing the login and access control phase of CSUAC-IoT, a registered user (U) and a designated smart device (Si) can authorize and authenticate mutually via the trusted gateway node (GN) in a particular cell of the IoT environment. In our setting, the environment is partitioned into disjoint cells, and each cell will contain a certain number of IoT devices along with a GN. With the established session key between U and Si, both entities can then communicate securely. In addition, CSUAC-IoT supports new IoT devices deployment, user revocation, and password/biometric update functionality features. We prove the security of CSUAC-IoT under the real-or-random (ROR) model, and demonstrate that it can resist several common attacks found in a typical IoT environment using the AVISPA tool. A comparative analysis also reveals that CSUAC-IoT achieves better tradeoff for security and functionality, and computational and communication costs, in comparison to five other competing approaches.