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A microgrid is a flexible and localized grid that can disconnect from the main grid and operate independently on the traditional and/or renewable resource. It also can work with the main grid, and even provide power to the main grid when it has excess power to help relieve the pressure of energy. The flow of power between main grid and microgrid is monitored by smart meter, which kept the end user’s privacy information and his/her energy usage in real time. Hence, ensuring the privacy and security of these information is a considerable challenge. In this paper, we investigate the relationship between microgrids and the main grid, and design a quantum-resistant lightweight authentication and key agreement (AKA) protocol based on fog computing. The proposed protocol provides the mutual authentication and generates a session key between a smart meter and a fog node. More importantly, it can resist against quantum computing attacks, as the security of our scheme relies on the hardness of the learning parity with noise (LPN) problem, an NP-complete problem. Finally, we evaluate the performance of our proposed protocol and prove that our protocol is more lightweight and efficient.

Key Encapsulation Mechanism (KEM) is a foundational cryptography primitive, which can provide secure symmetric cryptographic key material for transmission by using public key algorithms. Until now, many Chosen-Ciphertext (IND-CCA) secure KEM schemes are constructed from Chosen-Plaintext (IND-CPA) or One-Way (OW-CPA) secure PKE via the generic Fujisaki-Okamoto (FO) transformations (TCC 2017). However, the security relies on the Random Oracle Model (ROM). To the best of our knowledge, there are no IND-CCA secure KEM schemes based on Learning Parity with Noise (LPN) assumption that can against post quantum attacks in the standard model. In this work, we propose the first direct construction of LPN-based KEM, which is secure in the standard model. In particular, we use double-trapdoor technique to answer adversary's decryption queries correctly and a Target Collision Resistant (TCR) hash function to check the validity of the ciphertext. The encapsulated key is determined by a special LPN problem (with no random oracle required). The scheme is IND-CCA secure against post-quantum attacks under the low-noise LPN assumptions by a series of games and the security reduction is tight. Compared with previous schemes on 128-bit security level, our CCA-secure scheme only holds 50.78MB public keys, 62.50MB secret keys and 4.54KB ciphertexts, which is more efficient than the schemes of Döttling et al. (ASIACRYPT 2012), Kiltz et al. (PKC 2014) and Yu et al. (CRYPTO 2016) ((7.27GB, 7.24GB, 7.03KB), (80.89MB, 46.23MB, 6.80KB) and (70.95MB, 70.65MB, 86.50KB) respectively).

The prognosis of malignant gliomas remains poor, with median survival fewer than 20 months and a 5-year survival rate merely 5%. Their primary location in the central nervous system (CNS) and its immunosuppressive environment with little T cell infiltration has rendered cancer therapies mostly ineffective, and breakthrough therapies such as immune checkpoint inhibitors (ICIs) have shown limited benefit. However, tumor immunotherapy is developing rapidly and can help overcome these obstacles. But for now, malignant gliomas remain fatal with short survival and limited therapeutic options. Oncolytic virotherapy (OVT) is a unique antitumor immunotherapy wherein viruses selectively or preferentially kill tumor cells, replicate and spread through tumors while inducing antitumor immune responses. OVTs can also recondition the tumor microenvironment and improve the efficacy of other immunotherapies by escalating the infiltration of immune cells into tumors. Some OVTs can penetrate the blood-brain barrier (BBB) and possess tropism for the CNS, enabling intravenous delivery. Despite the therapeutic potential displayed by oncolytic viruses (OVs), optimizing OVT has proved challenging in clinical development, and marketing approvals for OVTs have been rare. In June 2021 however, as a genetically engineered OV based on herpes simplex virus-1 (G47Δ), teserpaturev got conditional and time-limited approval for the treatment of malignant gliomas in Japan. In this review, we summarize the current state of OVT, the synergistic effect of OVT in combination with other immunotherapies as well as the hurdles to successful clinical use. We also provide some suggestions to overcome the challenges in treating of gliomas.

Rationale: An imbalance between protein synthesis and degradation is one of the mechanisms of cardiac hypertrophy. Increased transcription in cardiomyocytes can lead to excessive protein synthesis and cardiac hypertrophy. Maf1 is an RNA polymerase III (RNA pol III) inhibitor that plays a pivotal role in regulating transcription. However, whether Maf1 regulates of cardiac hypertrophy remains unclear. Methods: Cardiac hypertrophy was induced in vivo by thoracic aortic banding (AB) surgery. Both the in vivo and in vitro gain- and loss-of-function experiments by Maf1 knockout (KO) mice and adenoviral transfection were used to verify the role of Maf1 in cardiac hypertrophy. RNA pol III and ERK1/2 inhibitor were utilized to identify the effects of RNA pol III and ERK1/2. The possible interaction between Maf1 and ERK1/2 was clarified by immunoprecipitation (IP) analysis. Results: Four weeks after surgery, Maf1 KO mice exhibited significantly exacerbated AB-induced cardiac hypertrophy characterized by increased heart size, cardiomyocyte surface area, and atrial natriuretic peptide (ANP) expression and by exacerbated pulmonary edema. Also, the deficiency of Maf1 causes more severe cardiac dilation and dysfunction than wild type (WT) mice after pressure overload. In contrast, compared with adenoviral-GFP injected mice, mice injected with adenoviral-Maf1 showed significantly ameliorated AB-induced cardiac hypertrophy. In vitro study has demonstrated that Maf1 could significantly block phenylephrine (PE)-induced cardiomyocyte hypertrophy by inhibiting RNA pol III transcription. However, application of an RNA pol III inhibitor markedly improved Maf1 knockdown-promoted cardiac hypertrophy. Moreover, ERK1/2 was identified as a regulator of RNA pol III, and ERK1/2 inhibition by U0126 significantly repressed Maf1 knockdown-promoted cardiac hypertrophy accompanied by suppressed RNA pol III transcription. Additionally, IP analysis demonstrated that Maf1 could directly bind ERK1/2, suggesting Maf1 could interact with ERK1/2 and then inhibit RNA pol III transcription so as to attenuate the development of cardiac hypertrophy. Conclusions: Maf1 ameliorates PE- and AB-induced cardiac hypertrophy by inhibiting RNA pol III transcription via ERK1/2 signaling suppression.

Rotation symmetric Boolean functions (RSBFs) have attracted widespread attention due to their good cryptographic properties. We present a new construction of RSBFs with optimal algebraic immunity on odd number of variables. The nonlinearity of the new function is much higher than other best known RSBFs with optimal algebraic immunity. The algebraic degree of the constructed n-variable RSBF can achieve the upper bound n-1 when n/2 is odd or when n/2 is a power of 2 for n-11. In addition, the constructed function can possess almost perfect immunity to fast algebraic attacks for n=11, 13, 15

In complex Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) application systems, there may exist a variety of functional sub-systems which provide divergent services to the users and the relationship among these services could be strong, which is evidently very common in practice. As one such IoT application, the smart city is designed to use intelligent services in an environment where transport, environment, energy, living, governance, and civic components are integrated to operate the city in a smart and efficient manner. Surprisingly, however, the current state-of-the-art on blockchain does not show the progress on diversified services of the complex IIoT applications. This paper tends to fill the gap and presents a scalable block graph platform and consensus protocol for the complex IIoT applications by adopting the limited resources of IIoT devices. The platform and consensus protocol are generic in the sense that they can support any practical service. The directed acyclic graph represents a significant exhibition in improving the scalability of blockchains and supports our proposed consensus protocol in substance; moreover, the detailed syntax of the block graph is defined. The consensus protocol is showed to be secure against disloyal voting, sybil attack, and 51% attack. The real use case of smart city demonstrates the effectiveness of the proposal.

Connected vehicles are generally equipped with many (dozens of, or even hundreds of) electronic and intelligent devices so that drivers can gain a more comfortable driving experience. Despite their numerous benefits, these technological developments have also created serious safety/security concerns. This article recapitulates the diversified attack surfaces of connected vehicles related to the technological developments from the perspective of the in-vehicle network. For each of the attacks, we discuss the rationale and the concrete methods presented in the literature. In particular, we illustrate how to launch successful attacks through the controlled area network (CAN) bus, electronic control units (ECUs), and in-vehicle infotainment system. The article also suggests some feasible solutions to the attacks demonstrated by the community. Considering the fact that vehicles are safety- critical, more practical and effective steps should be taken within the connected vehicle network toward securing connected vehicles and protecting drivers and passengers. Introduction

Password-based authentication is the current dominant technology for online service providers to confirm the (claimed) identities of legitimate users. Semantic patterns reflect how people choose their passwords, and understanding the patterns is useful in developing policies, guidelines and good practices to secure the password-based mechanism. Semantic patterns are hard to recognize in general and they may vary for people of different spoken languages, cultures, and ethnicity groups, etc. However, it is possible to investigate them in a specific context. In this paper, we manage to characterize the Pinyin semantics of passwords from the Chinese Netizens (up to 591 million), thanks to the well-defined structures of the Pinyin phonetic system.We perform a comprehensive analysis on the (publicly available) compromised password datasets from several leading Chinese sites for social networking, (micro)blogging, Internet forums, gaming, dating, and various other online service providers in China. The number of passwords in total sums to over 141 million, of which the largest site leaks more than 30 million on its own. Our findings show that over 4% of passwords from our datasets represent Pinyin (including names), another nearly 5% of passwords represent concatenations of Pinyin and date (i.e., Pinyin with a date prefix/suffix), and the next 17% of passwords are combinations of Pinyin and numeric (non-date) prefix/suffix. A majority (over 93%) of pure Pinyin passwords are transcribed from only 24 Chinese characters. The pure numeric pattern and the pattern containing special symbols are also studied. Over 76% of the passwords can be covered by the patterns of pure numeric and concatenation of Pinyin and digits. Special symbols appear in only 2.66% of the passwords, and they are most likely (with a percentage of 82.85%) in the middle. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first large scale study of its kind, and might yield other interesting insights into the semantic role Pinyin plays (either as good practice guidance on strengthening password security, or for improving password guessing attack). HighlightsSemantic patterns are hard to recognize in general.The work manages to characterize the Pinyin semantics of passwords from the Chinese Netizens (up to 591 million).The number of passwords in total sums to over 141 million.This is the first large scale study of its kind, and might yield other interesting insights into the semantic role Pinyin plays.

Several factors (e.g., balancedness, good correlation immunity) are considered as important properties of Boolean functions for using in cryptographic primitives. A Boolean function is perfect algebraic immune if it is with perfect immunity against algebraic and fast algebraic attacks. There is an increasing interest in construction of Boolean function that is perfect algebraic immune combined with other characteristics, like resiliency. A resilient function is a balanced correlation-immune function. This paper uses bivariate representation of Boolean function and theory of finite field to construct a generalized and new class of Boolean functions on even variables by extending the Carlet-Feng functions. We show that the functions generated by this construction support cryptographic properties of 1-resiliency and (sub)optimal algebraic immunity and further propose the sufficient condition of achieving optimal algebraic immunity. Compared experimentally with Carlet-Feng functions and the functions constructed by the method of first-order concatenation existing in the literature on even (from 6 to 16) variables, these functions have better immunity against fast algebraic attacks. Implementation results also show that they are almost perfect algebraic immune functions.

Outsourcing computation with verifiability is a merging notion in cloud computing, which enables lightweight clients to outsource costly computation tasks to the cloud and efficiently check the correctness of the result in the end. This advanced notion is more important in marine mobile computing since the oceangoing vessels are usually constrained with less storage and computation resources. In such a scenario, vessels always firstly outsource data set and perform a function computing over them or at first outsource computing functions and input data set into them. However, vessels may choose which delegation computation type to outsource, which generally depends on the actual circumstances. Hence, we propose a scalable verifiable outsourcing computation protocol (SV-OC) in marine cloud computing at first and extract a single-mode version of it (SM-SV-OC), where both protocols allow anyone who holds verification tokens to efficiently verify the computed result returned from cloud. In this way, the introduced “scalable” property lets vessels adjust the protocol to cope with different delegation situations in practice. We additionally prove both SV-OC and SM-SV-OC achieving selective soundness in the random oracle model and evaluate their performance in the end.

Dual receiver encryption (DRE) allows two independent receivers to decrypt a ciphertext into a same plaintext. Aiming at solving the dilemma of DRE in the traditional PKE settings, this paper gives an identity‐based variant version of DRE: identity‐based dual receiver encryption (ID‐DRE). Based on Waters' IBE, two concrete ID‐DRE constructions are given in the standard model. Moreover, adopting a random walk‐like methodology also results in better security tightness for Waters' IBE, which is consistent with Hofheinz and Kiltz's result (Crypto'08).

Rainbow is an effective multivariate digital signature scheme proposed by Ding and Schmidt. However, a lot of attacks against it have been proposed. To resist all these attacks, designer should be very careful with its choice of parameters. In this study, the authors will propose a new approach to build a secure variant of Rainbow. According to our security analysis, it could resist all the existing attacks against Rainbow and save some memory in the meantime.

We revisit the problem of basing signcryption SC tag key encapsulation mechanism KEM on standard assumptions and standard model and present direct constructions of SC-KEM/tag-KEM, which satisfy confidentiality and unforgeability with respect to adversarially chosen keys where the adversary is given more advantageous attack environment than existing models in the literature;are based on the standard decisional bilinear Diffie-Hellman and computational Diffie-Hellman assumptions without random oracle;do not use strongly unforgeable signature schemes as building blocks; andprovide comparable performance to existing SC-KEM/tag-KEM schemes.

We revisit the problem of basing pseudorandom generators on regular one-way functions, and present the following constructions:For any known-regular one-way function (on n-bit inputs) that is known to be e-hard to invert, we give a neat (and tighter) proof for the folklore construction of pseudorandom generator of seed length ? ( n ) by making a single call to the underlying one-way function.For any unknown-regular one-way function with known e-hardness, we give a new construction with seed length ? ( n ) and O ( n / log ? ( 1 / e ) ) calls. Here the number of calls is also optimal by matching the lower bounds of Holenstein and Sinha (2012) [6]. Both constructions require the knowledge about e, but the dependency can be removed while keeping nearly the same parameters. In the latter case, we get a construction of pseudo-random generator from any unknown-regular one-way function using seed length O ? ( n ) and O ? ( n / log ? n ) calls, where O ? omits a factor that can be made arbitrarily close to constant (e.g. log ? log ? log ? n or even less). This improves the randomized iterate approach by Haitner et al. (2006) [4] which requires seed length O ( n ? log ? n ) and O ( n / log ? n ) calls.

Zhang et al. proposed recently a group-oriented multisigncryption scheme with threshold designcryption and affirmed that their scheme is secure under standard complexity assumptions. However, the note elaborates concrete attacks on its indistinguishability and unforgeability under their security models. We also provide the impossibility result of public ciphertext authenticity for the scheme.

The paper proposes a type of secret sharing schemes called ramp assignment schemes (RAS's) to realize general access structures (AS's). In such a scheme, each participant is assigned a subset of primitive shares of an optimal $$(k,L,m)$$ ( k , L , m ) -ramp scheme in such a way that the number of primitive shares assigned to each qualified subset is not less than $$k$$ k whereas the one corresponding to any forbidden subset is not greater than $$k-L$$ k - L . RAS's can be viewed as a generalization of multiple assignment schemes (MAS's). For a same AS, the minimum information rate achieved by MAS's can not be less than that achieved by RAS's. With our method, one can find efficient suitable decompositions for general AS's. And it provides a possibility to refine an existing $$(\lambda ,\omega )$$ ( ? , ? ) -decomposition. We show that a RAS with minimal worst or/and average information rate can be obtained by linear programming (LP), which is in the complexity class P and much easier than the NP-hard integer programming (IP) applied to constructing optimal MAS's. Several well-designed algorithms are further presented to cut down the size of the LP/IP problems for optimal RAS's/MAS's. Other contributions of the paper include: (1) the current best upper bounds of information rates of two graph AS's on six participants are improved; (2) some specific AS's are recognized so that one can obtain the corresponding optimal RAS's directly, i.e., even without the need of solving LP problems; and (3) we characterize the AS's of ideal RAS's and of ideal MAS's.

In designing cryptographic Boolean functions, it is challenging to achieve at the same time the desirable features of algebraic immunity, balancedness, nonlinearity, and algebraic degree for necessary resistance against algebraic attack, correlation attack, Berlekamp–Massey attack, etc. This paper constructs balanced rotation symmetric Boolean functions on n variables where n = 2 p and p is an odd prime. We prove the construction has an optimal algebraic immunity and is of high nonlinearity. We check that, at least for those primes p which are not of the form of a power of two plus one, the algebraic degree of the construction achieves in fact the upper bound n − 1 .

In password-based or two-factor password and smart card authentications, password changing is one of common techniques used to improve the security of the systems protected by the password. However, the password-changing operations in existing password authentications either depend on the login phase or violate the common practice that an old password should not be valid for subsequent login after being updated. On the other hand, password mistyping is very common in reality, which may be random or be skewed by the adversary via technical means or social engineering manipulation [i.e., a kind of denial-of-service DoS attack]. In human-centric authentication mechanisms, password changing and DoS resilience are not marginal issues. The paper addresses the requirements of robust password changing in authentication and presents SPCA, a password authentication scheme with robust password changing, DoS resilience, and card-compromise security. Thus, the proposal can be viewed as a suitable candidate instantiation for authentication services of human-centric security, by embedding in the computer and software systems. SPCA also achieves other appealing features, such as self-healing ability and strong privacy protection, which may be useful for human-centric applications. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Key-insulated cryptography is an important technique to protect private keys in identity-based (IB) cryptosytems. Despite the flurry of recent results on IB key-insulated encryption (IBKIE) and signature (IBKIS), a problem regarding the security and efficiency of practicing IBKIE and IBKIS as a joint IB key-insulated signature/encryption scheme with a common set of parameters and keys remains open. To deal with the above question, we propose an identity-based key-insulated signcryption (IBKISC) scheme. Compared with the Sign-then-Encrypt (StE) and Encrypt-then-Sign (EtS) using IBKIE and IBKIS in the standard model, our proposed IBKISC scheme is the fastest with the shortest ciphertext size.

Multisignature scheme allows a group of signers to generate a compact signature on a common document that certifies they endorsed the message. However, the existing state of the art multisignatures often suffers from the following problems: impractical key setup assumptions, loose security reductions and inefficient signature verification. In this paper, we propose a non-interactive multisignature scheme with tight security reduction in the random oracle model. Our proposed multisignatures address the above three problems by achieving: provable security in the plain public key model; tight security reduction under the standard Computational Diffie–Hellman (CDH) assumption and O(1) computational time for signature verification through pre-computation. Hence, our non-interactive multisignatures are of great use in routing authentication of networks.

Certificateless signcryption is a useful primitive which simultaneously provides the functionalities of certificateless encryption and certificateless signature. Recently, Liu et al. [15] proposed a new certificateless signcryption scheme, and claimed that their scheme is provably secure without random oracles in a strengthened security model, where the malicious-but-passive KGC attack is considered. Unfortunately, by giving concrete attacks, we indicate that Liu et al. certificateless signcryption scheme is not secure in this strengthened security model.

By exploiting a smart card, this paper presents a robust and efficient password-authenticated key agreement scheme. This paper strengthens the security of the scheme by addressing untraceability property such that any third party over the communication channel cannot tell whether or not he has seen the same (unknown) smart card twice through the authentication sessions. The proposed remedy also prevents a kind of denial of service attack found in the original scheme. High performance and other good functionalities are preserved.

Recently, democratic group signatures (DGSs) particularly catch our attention due to their great functionalities, i.e., no group manager, anonymity, and individual traceability. In existing DGS schemes, individual traceability says that any member in the group can reveal the actual signer's identity from a given signature. In this paper, we strengthen the security notions of DGS by taking insider attack against anonymity into account, and present a concrete DGS construction with collective traceability. The idea behind collective traceability is that a sender can first choose (ad-hoc) a set of n members (including himself), and then sign a message by using the public keys of all the members, in such a way that his identity would be recovered, in case of disputes, if and only if all n members collectively cooperate. The security properties of our scheme are formally proved under reasonable assumptions.

We analyze the relationship between the notion of certificateless public key cryptography (CL-PKC) and identity-based schemes without a trusted private key generator (PKG), formally define the security of certificateless threshold signatures, and propose a concrete implementation based on bilinear pairings. To exhibit the security of our proposal, we develop the theory of simulatability and relationship between the certificateless threshold signatures and the underlying (non-threshold) ID-based signatures. We show that the proposed scheme is robust and existentially unforgeable against adaptively chosen message attacks under CDH assumption in the random oracle model.

An enterovirus 71 (EV71) strain Query was isolated from a patient specimen in 2015. In order to known about its genetic evolution, this study amplified gene fragment of the isolated stain by RT-PCT and carried out sequencing of the total genome. The homology and genetic evolution of the gene sequence of the virus strain in the study were analyzed. The results showed that the isolated EV71 strain in this study had higher homology of nucleotide sequence and amino acid sequence with other virus strains, which was 80%-97% and 88% to 92%, respectively, but it had lower homology with Cox.A16 (homology of nucleotide sequence and amino acid sequence of Cox.A16 was 81% and 79%, respectively). Compare of homologous sequence at the encoding region VP1 demonstrated that the experimental isolated strain EV71 had higher homology of amino acid sequence at VP1 region with other virus strains. Genetic evolution of nucleotide sequence at VP1 region of the identified strain and other EV71 strains was analyzed, and the results demonstrated gene sequence at VP1 region and 5’UTR region of the isolated strain and SDLY017 strain was at the same branch, both of which belonged to C4a, a subtype of type C4.

Recently, Zhang et al. proposed two encryption schemes using an elliptic curve combined public key. We show, via the trick of using a linear equation system, that both proposals are vulnerable to key recovery attack, and thus in the present form must be considered as insecure. We simulate our trick on a common personal laptop and always get the results at a sub-second level.

We revisit “the randomized iterate” technique that was originally used by Goldreich, Krawczyk, and Luby (SICOMP 1993) and refined by Haitner, Harnik and Reingold (CRYPTO 2006) in constructing pseudorandom generators (PRGs) from regular one-way functions (OWFs). We abstract out a technical lemma (which is folklore in leakage resilient cryptography), and use it to provide a simpler and more modular proof for the Haitner-Harnik-Reingold PRGs from regular OWFs.

Keyword search on encrypted data enables one to search keyword ciphertexts without compromising keyword security. We further investigate this problem and propose a novel variant, dubbed certificateless keyword search on encrypted data (CLKS). CLKS not only supports keyword search on encrypted data, but also brings promising features due to the certificateless cryptography. In contrast to the certificated-based keyword search, CLKS requires no validation on the trustworthy of the public key before encrypting keywords; in contrast to the identity-based keyword search, CLKS prevents the key issuer (e.g., key generator center) from penetrating any information on keyword ciphertexts by leveraging the capability of accessing all data users’ (partial) private keys. Specifically, we rigorously define the syntax and security definitions for CLKS, and present the construction that is provably secure in the standard model under the Decisional Linear assumption. We implemented the proposed CLKS scheme and evaluated its performance. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first attempt to integrate certificateless cryptography with keyword search on encrypted data.

We revisit the problem of basing pseudorandom generators on regular one-way functions, and present the following constructions

Linkable ring signatures can simultaneously provide the properties of anonymity, spontaneity as well as linkability. Linear feedback shift register (LFSR) sequence can be used to shorten the representation of elements in a field. This paper proposes an LFSR-based linkable ring signature scheme, whose main computation operations are performed in base field GF(q) whereas security properties are under the state based discrete logarithm assumption (S-DLA) (and a new state based computational assumption weaker than state based decisional Diffie-Hellman assumption). The latter potentially says that the scheme is secure in the extension field GF(qd)(d the stage of the LFSR). All these make our scheme a flexible primitive for ubiquitous computing in which information processing has been thoroughly integrated into everyday objects and activities.