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Edge–cloud coordination offers the chance to mitigate the enormous storage and processing load brought on by a massive increase in traffic at the network’s edge. Though this paradigm has benefits on a large scale, outsourcing the sensitive data from the smart devices deployed in an Internet of Things (IoT) application may lead to privacy leakage. With an attribute-based keyword search (ABKS), the search over ciphertext can be achieved; this reduces the risk of sensitive data explosion. However, ABKS has several issues, like huge computational overhead to perform multi-keyword searches and tracing malicious users. To address these issues and enhance the performance of ABKS, we propose a novel traceable and lightweight attribute-based keyword search technique in an Edge–cloud-assisted IoT, named TL-ABKS, using edge–cloud coordination. With TL-ABKS, it is possible to do effective multi-keyword searches and implement fine-grained access control. Further, TL-ABKS outsources the encryption and decryption computation to edge nodes to enable its usage to resource-limited IoT smart devices. In addition, TL-ABKS achieves tracing user identity who misuse their secret keys. TL-ABKS is secure against modified secret keys, chosen plaintext, and chosen keyword attacks. By comparing the proposed TL-ABKS with the current state-of-the-art schemes, and conducting a theoretical and experimental evaluation of its performance and credibility, TL-ABKS is efficient.

Background Epinephrine (EPI) or norepinephrine (NOR) is widely used to treat cardiovascular collapse during lipid emulsion (LE) resuscitation for drug toxicity. However, the effect of LE on the vasoconstriction caused by EPI or NOR remains unknown. The purpose of this study was to examine the effect of an LE (Intralipid) on the vasoconstriction caused by EPI and NOR in isolated rat aorta. Methods The effect of LE on the vasoconstriction caused by EPI or NOR in isolated rat aorta was examined. Additionally, the effect of LE on the calcium increase caused by EPI or NOR was investigated. The distribution constant (KD: lipid to aqueous phase) of EPI or NOR between a LE (1%) and an aqueous phase was determined. Results LE (1 and 2%) did not significantly alter vasoconstriction caused by EPI or NOR in isolated endothelium-intact aorta. Moreover, the LE did not significantly alter the increased calcium level caused by EPI or NOR. The log KD of EPI in the LE (1%) was −0.71, −0.99, and −1.00 at 20, 50, and 100 mM ionic strength, respectively. The log KD of NOR in the LE (1%) was −1.22, −1.25, and −0.96 at 20, 50, and 100 mM ionic strength, respectively. Conclusions Taken together, the Intralipid emulsion did not alter vasoconstriction induced by EPI or NOR that seems to be due to the hydrophilicity of EPI or NOR, leading to sustained hemodynamic support produced by EPI or NOR used during LE resuscitation.

The sixth generation (6G) is the next generation of wireless communication technology, is not limited to cellular networks but can be used to provide better services in all areas of wireless communication, including vehicles, drones, and smart homes. However, these advancements in 6G technology require further security considerations. In earlier networks, authentication schemes were designed to rely on a secure channel between the core network and access points. The 6G network is an open, distributed network that integrates multiple domains and entities and cannot guarantee secure channels in the network. The 6G network requires a new security authentication scheme that applies the zero-trust model. Therefore, this study proposes a zero-trust authentication scheme with access control for 6G-enabled Internet of Things environments. The scheme uses blockchain technology for mutual authentication in a distributed environment and lightweight attribute-based encryption to ensure dynamic access control and network efficiency. This study compares the proposed authentication method with existing methods and demonstrates that this scheme has better performance and security. To the best of our knowledge, this paper is the first to propose a specific authentication protocol with access control considering the zero-trust model in a 6G environment.

Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) promotes the fundamental tracking procedure of the Internet of Things (IoT) network due to its autonomous data collection as well as transfer incurring low costs. To overcome the insecure exchange of tracking data and to prevent unauthorized access, parallel dependency RFID grouping-proof protocol is applied by the reader to authenticate tags simultaneously. However, conventional grouping-proof authentication schemes are not sufficient for the memory constraint RFID tags due to the recurrent utilization of a 128-bit PRNG (Pseudo Random Number Generator) function. Alternatively, the existing parallel-dependency grouping-proof schemes are not able to overcome numerous limitations regarding session establishment, efficient key management, and multicast message communication within the specified group. In this research, a lightweight, secure, and efficient communication protocol is proposed to overcome the aforementioned limitations using Elliptic Curve Cryptography (ECC) and Zero-Knowledge property to establish a session key among the participated tags, reader, and remote server. The proposed scheme can work in offline mode. The proposed ECC-based parallel dependency grouping-proof scheme is referred to as ECC-PDGPP which abides by the rules of the EPC class-1 gen-2 (C1 G2) standard of RFID tags. Finally, the proposed protocol is analyzed using a formal random oracle model and simulated using a well-known AVISPA simulation tool that shows the proposed scheme is well protected against all potential security threats.

Quantum cryptography has the potential to secure the infrastructures that are vulnerable to various attacks, like classical attacks, including quantum-related attacks. Therefore, quantum cryptography seems to be a promising technology for the future secure online infrastructures and applications, like blockchain-based frameworks. In this article, we propose a generic quantum blockchain-envisioned security framework for an Internet of Things (IoT) environment. We then discuss some potential applications of the proposed framework. We also highlight the security advantages of quantum cryptography-based systems. We explain the working of blockchain, applications of blockchain, types of blockchain, the structure of blockchain, the structure of blockchain in a classical blockchain, and the structure of a block in a quantum blockchain context. Next, the adverse effects of quantum computing on the security of blockchain-based frameworks are highlighted. Furthermore, the comparisons of quantum cryptography-based security schemes, like quantum key distribution, quantum digital signature, and quantum hashing schemes, are provided. Finally, some future research directions related to the designed generic quantum blockchain-envisioned security framework for IoT are provided.

Traditional voting systems mainly comprise of paper polling, electronic ballot system (EVM), mechanical devices, etc., and demand the physical presence of the voters. In the new age of digitization, the electronic voting system has come up with a unique facility to cast votes from any discreet place. However, the e-voting system has to face several challenges regarding security and privacy. To overcome such obstructions, blockchain is introduced in e-voting applications that preserve anonymity, security, and consistency of voter-related information with the help of Merkle tree and hash digest. Hence, any discrepancy can immediately be detected whenever the hash values of the respective block have been modified and consequently, the whole block is discarded. In this research, a novel e-voting scheme is proposed following the decentralized service-oriented architecture of Exonum private blockchain, hybrid consensus algorithm, and Elliptic Curve Diffie-Helmen (ECDH) protocol to agree upon a secure session key among different participants. Moreover, the proposed scheme (ECC-EXONUM-eVOTING) employs a zero-knowledge protocol and is customized to work over idemix technologies with a blind signature scheme. Numerous well-known cryptographic attacks are analyzed formally using the probabilistic random oracle model and informally for validating the security strength of ECC-EXONUM-eVOTING. As a result, it is found that the proposed scheme is well-defended against all potential security concerns. Furthermore, the scheme is simulated using both Automated Validation of Internet Security Protocols and Applications (AVISPA) and Scyther tools to demonstrate the proposed scheme is not prone to any security attacks. Finally, it is concluded that the proposed scheme is well-suited for secure e-voting applications.

Edge intelligence is a technology that integrates edge computing and artificial intelligence to achieve real-time and localized model generation. Thus, users can receive more precise and personalized services in vehicular ad hoc networks (VANETs) using edge intelligence. However, privacy and security challenges still exist, because sensitive data of the vehicle user is necessary for generating a high-accuracy AI model. In this paper, we propose an authentication scheme to preserve the privacy of user data in edge intelligence-enabled VANETs. The proposed scheme can establish a secure communication channel using fuzzy extractor, elliptic curve cryptography (ECC), and physical unclonable function (PUF) technology. The proposed data upload process can provide privacy of the data using local differential privacy and symmetric key encryption. We validate the security robustness of the proposed scheme using informal analysis, the Real-Or-Random (ROR) model, and the Scyther tool. Moreover, we evaluate the computation and communication efficiency of the proposed and related schemes using Multiprecision Integer and Rational Arithmetic Cryptographic Library (MIRACL) software development kit (SDK). We simulate the practical deployment of the proposed scheme using network simulator 3 (NS-3). Our results show that the proposed scheme has a performance improvement of 10∼48% compared to the state-of-the-art research. Thus, we can demonstrate that the proposed scheme provides comprehensive and secure communication for data management in edge intelligence-enabled VANET environments.

Medical data sharing is pivotal in enhancing accessibility and collaboration among healthcare providers, researchers, and institutions, ultimately leading to enhanced patient outcomes and more efficient healthcare delivery. However, due to the sensitive nature of medical information, ensuring both privacy and confidentiality is paramount. Access control-based data sharing methods have been explored to address these issues, but data privacy concerns still remain. Therefore, this paper proposes a secure and privacy-preserving data sharing scheme that achieves an equilibrium between data confidentiality and privacy. By leveraging key aggregate encryption and private set intersection techniques, our scheme ensures secure data sharing while protecting against the exposure of sensitive information related to data. We conduct informal and formal security analyses, including Burrow–Abadi–Needham logic and Scyther, to demonstrate its resilience against potential adversarial attacks. We also implement the execution time for cryptographic operations using multiprecision integer and a rational arithmetic cryptographic library and perform comparative analysis with existing related schemes in terms of security, computational cost, and time complexity. Our findings demonstrate a high level of security and efficiency, demonstrating that the proposed scheme contributes to the field by providing a solution that protects data privacy while enabling secure and flexible sharing of medical data.

As the usage of electric vehicles (EVs) expands, various energy management technologies, including battery energy storage systems, are being developed to efficiently charge EVs using various energy sources. In recent years, many blockchain-based energy trading schemes have been proposed for secure energy trading. However, existing schemes cannot fully solve privacy issues and security problems during energy trading. In this paper, we propose a reliable and privacy-preserving vehicular energy trading scheme utilizing decentralized identifier technology. In the proposed scheme, identity information and trading result information are not revealed publicly; this is due to the use of decentralized identifiers and verifiable credential technologies. Additionally, only parties who have successfully conducted energy trading can manage complete transaction information. We also demonstrate our method’s security and ensure privacy preservation by performing informal and formal security analyses. Furthermore, we analyze the performance and security features of the proposed scheme and related works and show that the proposed scheme has competitive performance.

The Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) is able to connect machines, analytics and people with IoT smart devices, gateway nodes and edge devices to create powerful intuitivenesses to drive smarter, faster and effective business agreements. IIoT having interconnected machines along with devices can monitor, gather, exchange, and analyze information. Since the communication among the entities in IIoT environment takes place insecurely (for instance, wireless communications and Internet), an intruder can easily tamper with the data. Moreover, physical theft of IoT smart devices provides an intruder to mount impersonation and other attacks. To handle such critical issues, in this work, we design a new private blockchain-envisioned access control scheme for Pervasive Edge Computing (PEC) in IIoT environment, called PBACS-PECIIoT. We consider the private blockchain consisting of the transactions and registration credentials of the entities related to IIoT, because the information is strictly confidential and private. The security of PBACS-PECIIoT is significantly improved due to usage of blockchain as immutability, transparency and decentralization along with protection of various potential attacks. A meticulous comparative analysis exhibits that PBACS-PECIIoT achieves greater security and more functionality features, and requires low costs for communication and computational as compared to other pertinent schemes.

In a rapidly evolving metaverse, where the physical and virtual realms naturally merge, users are actively participating in interactive experiences, content creation, and content trading, transcending spatial and temporal constraints. However, with the spread of the metaverse, security concerns have been raised about privacy and the integrity of digital transactions. Several studies have thus focused on enhancing the security and privacy in metaverse. However, there is still a lack of security research on content trading between metaverse platforms. Therefore, this paper proposes a secure content trading system for cross-platform interactions within the metaverse. Leveraging the blockchain technology, the proposed system delivers an ecosystem that ensures secure content management, data integrity, and verifiable transactions. We use smart contracts that enable reliable and automated purchase methods, empowering users and building their trust. In addition, we incorporate searchable encryption to further enhance the user experience within the metaverse by allowing avatars to seamlessly search for and obtain the desired content across different metaverse platforms. The security of the proposed scheme is comprehensively assessed via vulnerability analyses, including BAN logic and Scyther, to identify potential threats and vulnerabilities in various content trading scenarios. The security and performance of the proposed system are compared with those of the related schemes. Result reveals that the proposed scheme is robust and can be applied to content trading systems in dynamic and ever-expanding metaverse environments.

Secure storage and sharing of Personal Health Records (PHRs) in Internet of Medical Things (IoMT) is one of the significant challenges in the healthcare ecosystem. Due to the high value of personal health information, PHRs are one of the favourite targets of cyber attackers worldwide. Over the years, many solutions have been proposed; however, most solutions are inefficient for practical applications. For instance, several existing schemes rely on the bilinear pairings, which incur high computational costs. To mitigate these issues, we propose a novel PHR-sharing scheme that is dynamic, efficient, and practical. Specifically, we combine searchable symmetric encryption, blockchain technology and a decentralized storage system, known as Inter-Planetary File System (IPFS) to guarantee confidentiality of PHRs, verifiability of search results, and forward security. Moreover, we provide formal security proofs for the proposed scheme. Finally, we have conducted extensive test-bed experiments and the results demonstrate that the proposed scheme can be used in practical scenarios related to IoMT environment.

Unmanned-aerial-vehicle (UAV)-enabled intelligent transportation system (ITS) is an advanced technology that can provide various services including autonomous driving, real-time creation of high-definition maps, and car sharing. In particular, a UAV-enabled ITS can be realized through the combination of traditional vehicular ad hoc networks (VANETs) and UAVs that can act as flying roadside units (RSUs) at the outskirts and monitor road conditions from predefined locations to spot car accidents and any law violations. Notably, to realize these services, real-time communication between UAVs and RSUs must be guaranteed. However, UAVs have limited computing powers, and if extensive computation is required during communication, the provision of real-time ITS services may be hindered. Furthermore, UAVs and RSUs communicate via public channels that are prone to various attacks, such as replay, impersonation, trace, and session key disclosure attacks. Thus, in this article, a secure and lightweight authentication scheme is proposed for UAVs and RSUs using the blockchain technology. The proposed scheme is analyzed using informal and formal methods including Burrows–Abadi–Nikoogadam (BAN) logic, automated validation of internet security protocols and applications (AVISPA) simulation tool, and real–or–random (RoR) model, and its performance is compared with that of related schemes. The results reveal that the proposed scheme is more efficient and secure as compared to the other competing schemes.

In V2X (vehicle-to-everything) communication, there is a two-way communication among the vehicle(s) and other Internet of Things (IoT)-enabled smart devices around it that may change how we need to drive. Due to the advancement of Information and Communications Technology (ICT) and the rapid development of IoT in transportation, traditional applications are converted to intelligent applications. In V2X communications, the collected information from the IoT smart devices and other sources passes through low-latency, high-bandwidth, high-reliability links. With the future adoption of the 5th generation mobile network (5G) and beyond networks, V2X continues to produce a huge volume of data. However, collecting and storing data securely in blockchain-based storage are extremely needed for immutability and transparency. In this survey article, the convergence of IoT, V2X and blockchain technologies, and various security challenges and their countermeasures are discussed. Next, we discuss various V2X applications and their respective services. Moreover, IoT-V2X architecture and its enabling technologies are discussed in this article. In addition, we also provide a comprehensive analysis of various security mechanisms. Finally, we provide some important challenges and issues of Blockchain for Intelligent Transportation System (BITS).

Recently, the Digital Twin (DT) technology has procured a lot of attention because of its applicability in the manufacturing and space industries. The DT environment involves the formation of a clone of the tangible object to perform simulations in the virtual space. The combination of conceptual development, predictive maintenance, real-time monitoring, and simulation characteristics of DT has increased the utilization of DT in different scenarios, such as medical environments, healthcare, manufacturing industries, aerospace, etc. However, these utilizations have also brought serious security pitfalls in DT deployment. Towards this, several authentication protocols with different security and privacy features for DT environments have been proposed. In this article, we first review a recently proposed two-factor authentication protocol for DT environments that utilizes the blockchain technology. However, the analyzed scheme is unable to offer the desirable security and cannot withstand various security attacks like offline password-guessing attack, smart card stolen attack, anonymity property, and known session-specific temporary information attack. We also demonstrate that an attacker can impersonate the analyzed protocol’s legal user, owner, and cloud server. To mitigate these security loopholes, we devise an effective three-factor privacy-preserving authentication scheme for DT environments. The proposed work is demonstrated to be secure by performing the informal security analysis, the formal security analysis using the widely recognized Burrows-Abadi-Needham (BAN) logic, and the Real-or-Random (ROR) model. A detailed comparative study on existing competing schemes including the analyzed scheme demonstrates that the devised framework furnishes better security features while also having lower computation costs and comparable communication costs than the existing schemes.

Machine learning (ML) is a subset of Artificial Intelligence (AI), which focuses on the implementation of some systems that can learn from the historical data, identify patterns and make logical decisions with little to no human interventions. Cyber security is the practice of protecting digital systems, such as computers, servers, mobile devices, networks and associated data from malicious attacks. Uniting cyber security and ML has two major aspects, namely accounting for cyber security where the machine learning is applied, and the use of machine learning for enabling cyber security. This uniting can help us in various ways, like it provides enhanced security to the machine learning models, improves the performance of the cyber security methods, and supports effective detection of zero day attacks with less human intervention. In this survey paper, we discuss about two different concepts by uniting cyber security and ML. We also discuss the advantages, issues and challenges of uniting cyber security and ML. Furthermore, we discuss the various attacks and provide a comprehensive comparative study of various techniques in two different considered categories. Finally, we provide some future research directions.

The adoption of renewable energies such as solar power, heat pumps, and wind power is on the rise, and individuals have started generating energy using their own solar panels. In recent years, many blockchain-based energy trading schemes have been proposed. However, existing schemes cannot fully address privacy issues and dependency on energy brokers during energy trading. In this paper, we propose a privacy-preserving authentication scheme for blockchain-based energy traders. An energy user encrypts a request message through lightweight attribute-based encryption, and only energy sellers who have proper attribute keys can decrypt and conduct further processes with the energy user. We analyze the proposed scheme using both informal and formal methods, such as the BAN logic, AVISPA simulation tool, and RoR model. Furthermore, we compare the computational and communication costs of our scheme with related schemes and show that the proposed scheme has competitive performance.

Healthcare 5.0 is a system that can be deployed to provide various healthcare services. It does these services by utilising a new generation of information technologies, such as Internet of Things (IoT), Artificial Intelligence (AI), Big data analytics, blockchain and cloud computing. Due to the introduction of healthcare 5.0, the paradigm has been now changed. It is disease-centered to patient-centered care where it provides healthcare services and supports to the people. However, there are several security issues and challenges in healthcare 5.0 which may cause the leakage or alteration of sensitive healthcare data. This demands that we need a robust framework in order to secure the data of healthcare 5.0, which can facilitate different security related procedures like authentication, access control, key management and intrusion detection. Therefore, in this review article, we propose the design of a secure generalized healthcare 5.0 framework. The details of various applications of healthcare 5.0 along with the security requirements and threat model of healthcare 5.0 are provided. Next, we discuss about the existing security mechanisms in healthcare 5.0 along with their performance comparison. Some future research directions are finally discussed for the researchers working in healthcare 5.0 domain.

Digital twin technology is recently in the spotlight because of its potential applicability in business and industry. In digital twin environments, data generated from physical assets are transmitted to a remote server, which performs simulations through digital twins in a virtual space. Then, the simulation results can be shared with the data owner or other users. However, several challenges exist in the application of digital twin technology in the real world. One of the main challenges involves determining how to share real-time data for the simulation and how to share the simulation data securely. The data generated from physical assets may include sensitive information from data owners, and the leakage of data to an adversary can cause serious privacy problems. Moreover, the sharing of data with other data users should also be considered to maximize the availability of digital twin data. To resolve these issues, we propose a system model for the secure sharing of digital twin data. The proposed system model uses cloud computing for efficient data sharing and blockchain for data verifiability. We also propose communication schemes for the proposed model to guarantee privacy preservation and data security in wireless channels. We analyze the security of the proposed protocol using informal methods and formal methods such as BAN logic and the AVISPA simulation tool. Furthermore, we compare the proposed protocol with related protocols and demonstrate that the proposed scheme is applicable to digital twin environments.

In electronic governance (e-governance) system, citizens can access government services such as transportation, licensing and immigration remotely over the Internet. With the development of information and communication technology, usage of the e-governance system has been increased. To efficiently provide citizens with various e-governance services, multi-server environments can be applied to the e-governance system. However, messages can be inserted, deleted, and modified by a malicious adversary since these are transmitted through a public channel. Therefore, many researchers have suggested mutual authentication protocols for secure communication in multi-server environments. In 2020, Sudhakar et al. proposed a smart card based lightweight authentication protocol for multi-server environments. We analyze Sudhakar et al.’s protocol to propose a secure mutual authentication protocol in the e-governance system based on multi-server environments. However, we disclosure that their protocol is not resistant to smart card stolen, insider, man-in-the-middle, user impersonation, and session key disclosure attacks. Moreover, Sudhakar et al.’s protocol does not provide mutual authentication. To improve these security problems, we suggest a secure three-factor mutual authentication protocol for the e-governance system based on multi-server environments. We prove our protocol’s security using informal security analysis, Burrows-Abadi-Needham (BAN) logic, and Real-or-Random (ROR) model. We also simulate our protocol utilizing Automated Validation of Internet Security Protocols and Applications (AVISPA) tool. We estimate the proposed protocol’s security functionalities, computation costs, and communication overheads compared with existing related protocols. Consequently, we demonstrate that our protocol is secure and suitable for the e-governance system.

With the introduction of 5G technology in the intelligent transportation system (ITS), data bandwidth over communication channel is significantly increased. In the existing cloud-based ITS, a large-scale data is collected, stored, and analyzed to provide precise services to vehicle user, which creates a burden on the cloud service provider that can cause service delays or the inability to provide complex services. Multi-access edge computing (MEC) technology, which extends cloud capabilities to edge servers, is attracting attention in order to reduce the constraint of the cloud-based infrastructure. However, in ITS constructed on MEC, since vehicles exchange information through a wireless communication channel. It is vulnerable to various security attacks. This paper proposes a secure batch authentication scheme for multi-access edge computing in 5G-enabled ITS. The proposed scheme withstands common security attacks including impersonation, replay, man-in-the-middle, physical capture, offline password guessing attacks, and provides secure batch authentication, anonymity and confidentiality. We also consider the vehicle can cross the boundary between MEC servers for continuity of service. We analyze the security of the proposed scheme to show that the proposed scheme is secure against various security attacks, and performance analysis. Lastly, we conduct comparison with other related works.

Urban air mobility (UAM) is a future air transportation system to solve the air pollution and movement efficiency problems of the traditional mobility system. In UAM environments, unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV) are used to transport passengers and goods providing various convenient services such as package delivery, air bus, and air taxi. However, UAVs communicate with ground infrastructures through open channels that can be exposed to various security attacks. Therefore, a secure mutual authentication scheme is necessary for UAM environments. Moreover, a handover authentication is also necessary to ensure seamless communication when the service location is changed. In this paper, we design a secure and efficient handover authentication scheme for UAM environments considering various security vulnerabilities and efficiency using elliptic curve cryptography (ECC). We utilize informal security analysis, Real-or-Random (RoR), Burrows–Abadi–Needham (BAN) logic, and Automated Validation of Internet Security Protocols and Applications (AVISPA) to prove the security of the proposed scheme. Furthermore, we compare the computation and communication cost comparisons of the proposed scheme with the other related schemes. The results show that the proposed scheme is secure and efficient for UAM environments.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, engagement in various remote activities such as online education and meetings has increased. However, since the conventional online environments typically provide simple streaming services using cameras and microphones, there have limitations in terms of physical expression and experiencing real-world activities such as cultural and economic activities. Recently, metaverse environments, three-dimensional virtual reality that use avatars, have attracted increasing attention as a means to solve these problems. Thus, many metaverse platforms such as Roblox, Minecraft, and Fortnite have been emerging to provide various services to users. However, such metaverse environments are potentially vulnerable to various security threats because the users and platform servers communicate through public channels. In addition, sensitive user data such as identity, password, and biometric information are managed by each platform server. In this paper, we design a system model that can guarantee secure communication and transparently manage user identification data in metaverse environments using blockchain technology. We also propose a mutual authentication scheme using biometric information and Elliptic Curve Cryptography (ECC) to provide secure communication between users and platform servers and secure avatar interactions between avatars and avatars. To demonstrate the security of the proposed mutual authentication scheme, we perform informal security analysis, Burrows–Abadi–Needham (BAN) logic, Real-or-Random (ROR) model, and Automated Validation of Internet Security Protocols and Applications (AVISPA). In addition, we compare the computation costs, communication costs, and security features of the proposed scheme with existing schemes in similar environments. The results demonstrate that the proposed scheme has lower computation and communication costs and can provide a wider range of security features than existing schemes. Thus, our proposed scheme can be used to provide secure metaverse environments.

In the recent COVID-19 situation, Telecare Medical Information System (TMIS) is attracting attention. TMIS is one of the technologies used in Wireless Body Area Network (WBAN) and can provide patients with a variety of remote healthcare services. In TMIS environments, sensitive data of patients are communicated via an open channel. An adversary may attempt various security attacks including impersonation, replay, and forgery attacks. Therefore, numberous authentication schemes have been suggested to provide secure communication for TMIS. Sahoo et al. proposed a mutual authentication scheme based on biometrics and Elliptic Curve Cryptography (ECC) in 2020. However, we find out that Sahoo et al.’s scheme cannot resist insider and privileged insider attacks and cannot guarantee patient anonymity. In this paper, we propose a secure ECC-based three-factor mutual authentication protocol that guarantees the privacy of patients for TMIS. We conduct informal security analysis to prove that our protocol is secure from various security attacks. In addition, we perform formal security analyses using the Automated Validation of Internet Security Protocols and Applications (AVISPA), Burrows-Abadi-Needham (BAN) logic, and the Real-Or-Random (ROR) model. Furthermore, we assess our protocol’s performance and compare it to other protocols. As a result, our protocol has lower communication costs, and better security features compared to related existing protocols. Therefore, our protocol is more appropriate for TMIS environments than other related protocols.

With the continuous development of Internet of Things (IoT) technology, research on smart home environments is being conducted by many researchers. In smart home environments, home users can remotely access and control a variety of home devices such as smart curtains, lights, and speakers placed throughout the house. Despite providing convenient services, including home monitoring, temperature management, and daily work assistance, smart homes can be vulnerable to malicious attacks because all messages are transmitted over insecure channels. Moreover, home devices can be a target for device capture attacks since they are placed in physically accessible locations. Therefore, a secure authentication and key agreement scheme is required to prevent such security problems. In 2021, Zou et al. proposed a two-factor-based authentication and key agreement scheme using elliptic curve cryptography (ECC) in smart home environments. They claimed that their scheme provides user anonymity and forward secrecy. However, we prove that their scheme suffers from forgery, ephemeral secret leakage, and session key disclosure attacks. To overcome the security vulnerabilities of Zou et al.’s scheme and provide home users with secure communication in smart home environments, we propose a secure user authentication scheme using physical unclonable functions (PUF). We utilize Real-or-Random (ROR) model and Burrows-Abadi-Needham (BAN) logic to verify the session key security and mutual authentication of the proposed scheme, respectively. Furthermore, we use the Automated Validation of Internet Security Protocols and Applications (AVISPA) tool to simulate the resistance of our scheme to security attacks. After that, we analyze and compare the communication costs, computational consumption, and security functionalities along with related schemes.

Background MUC5B variant rs35705950 is the common and most significant risk variant for rheumatoid arthritis-interstitial lung disease (RA-ILD) in Western populations. However, little is known about its significant association with RA-ILD in Asian populations. We here investigate the association of rs35705950 with Korean patients with RA-ILD.Methods In this cross-sectional study, we genotyped rs35705950 in 2444 patients with RA. Among them, 683 patients with RA who have chest CT were divided into RA-ILD and RA-noILD. RA-ILD was classified as usual interstitial pneumonia (UIP) and other than UIP. The associations of rs35705950 with RA-ILD and its subtype were analysed using multivariable regression adjusted for age at RA diagnosis. Meta-analysis of a previously reported Japanese dataset and Korean dataset obtained for this study was conducted.Results The minor allele (T) frequency of rs35705950 was 0.37%, 1.43% and 2.38% in 2444 patients with RA, 105 patients with RA-ILD and 63 patients with UIP, respectively. Genotypic association of rs35705950 with RA-ILD was insignificant (OR 2.49, 95% CI 0.64 to 9.69, p=0.187), but showed significant association with UIP (OR 4.90, 95% CI 1.23 to 19.59, p=0.024) compared with RA-noILD. In meta-analysis (123 UIP and 878 RA-noILD) combining our data with previously reported Japanese data, this variant was found to be significantly associated with UIP (OR 3.51, 95% CI 1.19 to 10.37, p=0.023).Conclusion MUC5B variant rs35705950 is a rare but significant risk factor for Asian patients with RA-ILD with UIP, suggesting a sharing of the genetic background between Asian and Western populations.

Wearable computing has garnered a lot of attention due to its various advantages, including automatic recognition and categorization of human actions from sensor data. However, wearable computing environments can be fragile to cyber security attacks since adversaries attempt to block, delete, or intercept the exchanged information via insecure communication channels. In addition to cyber security attacks, wearable sensor devices cannot resist physical threats since they are batched in unattended circumstances. Furthermore, existing schemes are not suited for resource-constrained wearable sensor devices with regard to communication and computational costs and are inefficient regarding the verification of multiple sensor devices simultaneously. Thus, we designed an efficient and robust authentication and group–proof scheme using physical unclonable functions (PUFs) for wearable computing, denoted as AGPS-PUFs, to provide high-security and cost-effective efficiency compared to the previous schemes. We evaluated the security of the AGPS-PUF using a formal security analysis, including the ROR Oracle model and AVISPA. We carried out the testbed experiments using MIRACL on Raspberry PI4 and then presented a comparative analysis of the performance between the AGPS-PUF scheme and the previous schemes. Consequently, the AGPS-PUF offers superior security and efficiency than existing schemes and can be applied to practical wearable computing environments.

Recently, with the increasing application of the Internet of Things (IoT), various IoT environments such as smart factories, smart homes, and smart grids are being generated. In the IoT environment, a lot of data are generated in real time, and the generated IoT data can be used as source data for various services such as artificial intelligence, remote medical care, and finance, and can also be used for purposes such as electricity bill generation. Therefore, data access control is required to grant access rights to various data users in the IoT environment who need such IoT data. In addition, IoT data contain sensitive information such as personal information, so privacy protection is also essential. Ciphertext-policy attribute-based encryption (CP-ABE) technology has been utilized to address these requirements. Furthermore, system structures applying blockchains with CP-ABE are being studied to prevent bottlenecks and single failures of cloud servers, as well as to support data auditing. However, these systems do not stipulate authentication and key agreement to ensure the security of the data transmission process and data outsourcing. Accordingly, we propose a data access control and key agreement scheme using CP-ABE to ensure data security in a blockchain-based system. In addition, we propose a system that can provide data nonrepudiation, data accountability, and data verification functions by utilizing blockchains. Both formal and informal security verifications are performed to demonstrate the security of the proposed system. We also compare the security, functional aspects, and computational and communication costs of previous systems. Furthermore, we perform cryptographic calculations to analyze the system in practical terms. As a result, our proposed protocol is safer against attacks such as guessing attacks and tracing attacks than other protocols, and can provide mutual authentication and key agreement functions. In addition, the proposed protocol is more efficient than other protocols, so it can be applied to practical IoT environments.

A secure authentication protocol plays a crucial role in securing communications over wireless and mobile networks. Due to resource-limitations and the nature of the wireless channel, the global mobile networks are highly susceptible to various attacks. Recently, an efficient authentication system for global roaming has been proposed in the literature. In this article, we first show that the analyzed authentication system is vulnerable man-in-the-middle attack, replay attack and Denial-of-Service (DoS) attack, and it does not ensure untraceability and local password-verification process to identify wrong passwords. To fix these security flaws, we propose a more efficient and robust authentication system for roaming in mobility networks. We use the formal verification tools like ProVerif, Automated Validation of Internet Security Protocols and Applications (AVISPA) and Burrows-Abadi-Needham (BAN) logic to check the regularity of the authentication protocol. Moreover, we prove the secrecy of a session key through the formal security using the random oracle model, known as Real-Or-Random (ROR) model. Finally, a detailed performance evaluation proves that the security protocol not only provides a security strength, but also preserves the low computational overhead. Thus, the proposed authentication protocol is secure and computationally efficient as compared to other relevant schemes.

Car-sharing systems can solve various urban problems by providing shared vehicles to people and reducing the operation of personal vehicles. With the development of the Internet of Things, people can easily use a shared car through simple operations on their mobile devices. However, the car-sharing system has security problems. Sensitive information, such as the user’s identity, location information, and access code, is transmitted through a public channel for car-sharing. Hence, an attacker can access this information for illegal purposes, making the establishment of a secure authentication protocol essential. Furthermore, the traditional car-sharing system is established on the centralized structure, so there is a single point of failure. Thus, the design of a decentralized car-sharing scheme is vital for solving the centralized problem. This study designed a decentralized car-sharing scheme using blockchain. Specifically, blockchain technology was used to provide a decentralization car-sharing service and ensure data integrity. The participant entities of the proposed system can be authenticated anonymously. The proposed car-sharing system can be secured against various attacks and provide mutual authentication using informal analysis, automated validation of internet security protocols and applications (AVISPA) simulation, and BAN logic analysis. The computation costs and communication costs of the proposed scheme were also analyzed.

Smart home is intended to be able to enhance home automation systems and achieves goals such as reducing operational costs and increasing comfort while providing security to mobile users. However, an attacker may attempt security attacks in smart home environments because he/she can inject, insert, intercept, delete, and modify transmitted messages over an insecure channel. Secure and lightweight authentication protocols are essential to ensure useful services in smart home environments. In 2020, Iqbal et al. presented an anonymous lightweight authentication protocol for software-defined networking (SDN) enabled smart home, called ALAM. They claimed that ALAM protocol could resist security threats, and also provide secure mutual authentication and user anonymity. This comment demonstrates that ALAM protocol is fragile to various attacks, including session key disclosure, impersonation, and man-in-the-middle attacks, and also their scheme cannot provide user anonymity and mutual authentication. We propose the essential security guidelines to overcome the security flaws of ALAM protocol.

Due to wide-spread use of the Information and Communications Technology (ICT) and Internet of Things (IoT) enabled smart devices, called unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) (popularly known as drones), a lot of potential applications of Internet of Drones (IoD) are available ranging from the military to civilian applications. Access control mechanism is an important potential security service that is needed to secure communication among the drones in their respective flying zones, and also among the drones and the Ground Service Station (GSS). In 2021, Chaudhry et al. proposed a certificate based generic access control scheme for IoD environment, called GCACS-IoD. Their claims about the possible security attacks resistant of GCACS-IoD is not justified. In fact, we first prove that GCACS-IoD is unable to protect the disclosure of the private key $r_{CR}$ of the trusted control room $(CR)$ , which is extremely unfortunate careless design flaw and it leads to compromise the entire network. Using the disclosed private key $r_{CR}$ , we further show that GCACS-IoD is completely insecure against other serious attacks, such as malicious drones deployment attack, drone/GSS impersonation attacks and Ephemeral Secret Leakage (ESL) attack, which lead to compromise the session key between any two drones communicating in a particular flying zone. We thus feel that there is a strong need to remedy such serious weaknesses found in Chaudhry et al.’s GCACS-IoD. An improved certificate-enabled generic access control scheme for IoD deployment, called as $i$ GCACS-IoD, has been suggested, which overcomes the weaknesses found in the previous GCACS-IoD. The practical demonstration of $i$ GCACS-IoD has been done through formal security verification and also through NS2 simulation study.

Smart homes are an emerging paradigm of Internet of Things (IoT) in which users can remotely control various home devices via the internet anytime and anywhere. However, smart home environments are vulnerable to security attacks because an attacker can inject, insert, intercept, delete, and modify transmitted messages over an insecure channel. Thus, secure and lightweight authentication protocols are essential to ensure useful services in smart home environments. In 2021, Kaur and Kumar presented a two-factor based user authentication protocol for smart homes using elliptic curve cryptosystems (ECC). Unfortunately, we demonstrate that their scheme cannot resist security attacks such as impersonation and session key disclosure attacks, and also ensure secure user authentication. Moreover, their scheme is not suitable in smart home environments because it utilizes public-key cryptosystems such as ECC. Hence, we design a secure and lightweight three-factor based privacy-preserving authentication scheme for IoT-enabled smart home environments to overcome the security problems of Kaur and Kumar’s protocol. We prove the security of the proposed scheme by using informal and formal security analyses such as the ROR model and AVISPA simulation. In addition, we compare the performance and security features between the proposed scheme and related schemes. The proposed scheme better provides security and efficiency compared with the previous schemes and is more suitable than previous schemes for IoT-enabled smart home environments.

In recent years, the Internet of things (IoT) has become an encouraging communication paradigm that has numerous applications including smart city, smart home and intelligent transportation system. The information sensed by several IoT smart devices can be security stored at the (cloud) servers. An external user, being a client, can access the services from a server for the sensing information, provided that a mutual authentication happens among them. Using the established session key among the user and the server, encrypted information with the help of session key can be delivered to the user by the server securely. Recently, Rana et al. proposed a smart-card based remote user authentication scheme using user password. In this comment paper, we carefully analyzed the scheme of Rana et al. and tracked down that their scheme is insecure against serious attacks, including stolen smart card attack, privileged-insider attack, user impersonation attack, password change attack and Ephemeral Secret Leakage (ESL) attack. Furthermore, their scheme does not preserve untraceability feature. To remedy these security pitfalls, we also provide some remedies that can help in building more secure and effective user authentication scheme to apply in securing next generation IoT infrastructure.

Internet of Vehicles (IoV) is treated as an extension of Vehicle-to-Vehicle (V2V) communication network. IoV helps in enhancing driving aids with the help of vehicle Artificial Intelligence (AI) awareness of other vehicles and their actions. IoV is connected in an adhoc networking environment which utilizes each vehicle in the network as a node, called Vehicular Ad Hoc Network (VANET), where the vehicles may be also connected to the public Internet. It is specifically important for the autonomous vehicles because they can instantaneously communicate with other vehicles surrounding them. In addition, safely avoiding accident prone zones is crucial in order to continue secure and smart transportation. Since the communication among various entities involved in the IoV environment is via open channel, it gives an opportunity to a passive/active adversary to intercept, modify, delete or even insert fake information during communication. It is then a serious concern for the vehicles users to determine whether the received information is genuine. In this survey paper, various security aspects, threats and attacks, network and threat models related to the IoV environment are discussed. Next, a taxonomy of security protocols is given that is essential to provide IoV data security. In particular, focus on various authentication protocols is given that is needed for mutual authentication among the involved entities in the IoV environment for secure communication. A detailed comparative analysis among various state-of-art authentication protocols proposed in the related IoV environment is provided to show their effectiveness as well as security and functionality features. Moreover, some testbeds are described that were designed and implemented for the IoV environment. In addition, some future challenges for IoV security protocols are also highlighted that are necessary to address in the future.

Wireless body area networks (WBANs) and wireless sensor networks (WSNs) are important concepts for the Internet of Things (IoT). They have been applied to various healthcare services to ensure that users can access convenient medical services by exchanging physiological data between user and medical server. User physiological data is collected by sensor nodes and sent to medical service providers, doctors, etc. using public channels. However, these channels are vulnerable to various potential attacks, and hence, it is essential to design provably secure and lightweight mutual authentication (MA) schemes for medical IoT to protect user privacy and achieve secure communication. A lightweight mutual authentication and key agreement (MAKA) scheme was designed in 2019 to guarantee user privacy, but we found that the scheme does not withstand impersonation, stolen senor node and leaking verification table attacks, and it does not also ensure anonymity, untraceability and secure mutual authentication. This paper proposes a provably secure and lightweight MAKA scheme for medical IoT, called LAKS Non-verification table (NVT), that does not require a server verification table. We assess LAKS-NVT's security against various potential attacks and demonstrate that it achieves secure MA between sensor node and server using Burrows-Abadi-Needham logic. We employ the well-known Real-Or-Random which is random oracle model to prove that LAKS-NVT provides a session key security. In addition, the formal security verification using the widely-accepted Automated Validation of Internet Security Protocols and Applications (AVISPA) software tool has been performed and the results show that LAKS-NVT is also secure. We compare LAKS-NVT's performance against contemporary authentication schemes, and verify that it achieves better security and comparable efficiency. The practical perspective of LAKS-NVT is also carried out via the Network Simulator 2 (NS2) simulation study.

The Internet of Medical Things (IoMT) is a kind of connected infrastructure of smart medical devices along with software applications, health systems and services. These medical devices and applications are connected to healthcare systems through the Internet. The Wi-Fi enabled devices facilitate machine-to-machine communication and link to the cloud platforms for data storage. IoMT has the ability to make accurate diagnoses, with fewer mistakes and lower costs of care. IoMT with smartphone applications permits the patients to exchange their health related confidential and private information to the healthcare experts (i.e., doctors) for the better control of diseases, and also for tracking and preventing chronic illnesses. Due to insecure communication among the entities involved in IoMT, an attacker can tamper with the confidential and private health related information for example an attacker can not only intercept the messages, but can also modify, delete or insert malicious messages during communication. To deal this sensitive issue, we design a novel blockchain enabled authentication key agreement protocol for IoMT environment, called BAKMP-IoMT. BAKMP-IoMT provides secure key management between implantable medical devices and personal servers and between personal servers and cloud servers. The legitimate users can also access the healthcare data from the cloud servers in a secure way. The entire healthcare data is stored in a blockchain maintained by the cloud servers. A detailed formal security including the security verification of BAKMP-IoMT using the widely-accepted Automated Validation of Internet Security Protocols and Applications (AVISPA) tool is performed to demonstrate its resilience against the different types of possible attack. The comparison of BAKMP-IoMT with relevant existing schemes is conducted which identifies that the proposed system furnishes better security and functionality, and also needs low communication and computational costs as compared to other schemes. Finally, the simulation of BAKMP-IoMT is conducted to demonstrate its impact on the performance parameters.

The Internet of Thing (IoT) is useful for connecting and collecting variable data of objects through the Internet, which makes to generate useful data for humanity. An indispensable enabler of IoT is the wireless sensor networks (WSNs). Many environments, such as smart healthcare, smart transportation and smart grid, have adopted WSN. Nonetheless, WSNs remain vulnerable to variety of attacks because they send and receive data over public channels. Moreover, the performance of IoT enabled sensor devices has limitations since the sensors are lightweight devices and are resource constrained. To overcome these problems, many security authentication protocols for WSNs have been proposed. However, many researchers have pointed out that preventing smartcard stolen and off-line guessing attacks is an important security issue, and guessing identity and password at the same time is still possible. To address these weaknesses, this paper presents a secure and efficient authentication protocol based on three-factor authentication by taking advantage of biometrics. Meanwhile, the proposed protocol uses a honey_list technique to protect against brute force and stolen smartcard attacks. By using the honey_list technique and three factors, the proposed protocol can provide security even if two of the three factors are compromised. Considering the limited performance of the sensors, we propose an efficient protocol using only hash functions excluding the public key based elliptic curve cryptography. For security evaluation of the proposed authentication protocol, we perform informal security analysis, and Real-Or-Random (ROR) model-based and Burrows Abadi Needham (BAN) logic based formal security analysis. We also perform the formal verification using the widely-used Automated Validation of Internet Security Protocols and Applications (AVISPA) simulation software. Besides, compared to previous researches, we demonstrate that our proposed authentication protocol for WSNs systems is more suitable and secure than others.

Telecare medical information system (TMIS) implemented in wireless body area network (WBAN) is convenient and time-saving for patients and doctors. TMIS is realized using wearable devices worn by a patient, and wearable devices generate patient health data and transmit them to a server through a public channel. Unfortunately, a malicious attacker can attempt performing various attacks through such a channel. Therefore, establishing a secure authentication process between a patient and a server is essential. Moreover, wearable devices have limited storage power. Cloud computing can be considered to resolve this problem by providing a storage service in the TMIS environment. In this environment, access control of the patient health data is essential for the quality of healthcare. Furthermore, the database of the cloud server is a major target for an attacker. The attacker can try to modify, forge, or delete the stored data. To resolve these problems, we propose a secure authentication protocol for a cloud-assisted TMIS with access control using blockchain. We employ ciphertext-policy attribute-based encryption (CP-ABE) to establish access control for health data stored in the cloud server, and apply blockchain to guarantee data integrity. To prove robustness of the proposed protocol, we conduct informal analysis and Burrows-Adabi-Needham (BAN) logic analysis, and we formally validate the proposed protocol using automated validation of internet security protocols and applications (AVISPA). Consequently, we show that the proposed protocol provides more security and has better efficiency compared to related protocols. Therefore, the proposed protocol is proper for a practical TMIS environment.

With the emergence of the concept of smart city and the increasing demands for a range of vehicles, Internet of Vehicles (IoV) has achieved a lot of attention by providing multiple benefits, including vehicle emergence, accidents, levels of pollution, and traffic congestion. Moreover, IoV provides various services by combining vehicular ad-hoc networks (VANET) with the Internet of Things (IoT) in smart cities. However, the communication among vehicles is susceptible to various security threats because the sensitive message is transmitted via a insecure channel in the IoV-based smart city environment. Thus, a secure message authentication protocol is indispensable to ensure various services for IoV in a smart city environment. In 2020, a secure message authentication protocol for IoV communication in smart cities has been proposed. However, we discover that the analyzed scheme suffers from various potential attacks such as impersonation, secret key disclosure, and off-line guessing attacks, and also does not ensure authentication. To solve the security threats of the analyzed scheme, we design a secure and efficient message authentication protocol for IoV in a smart city environment, called IoV-SMAP. The proposed IoV-SMAP can resist security drawbacks and provide user anonymity, and mutual authentication. We demonstrate the security of IoV-SMAP by performing informal and formal analyses such as the Real-or-Random (ROR) model, and Automated Validation of Internet Security Protocols and Application (AVISPA) simulations. In addition, we compare the performance of IoV-SMAP with related existing competing authentication schemes. We demonstrate that IoV-SMAP provides better security along with efficiency than related competing schemes and is suitable for the IoV-based smart city environment.

Multi-server technology is widely utilized due to its enormous applicability in fields such as telecare medicine information system (TMIS), online shopping, remote surveillance, online banking, etc. However, a malicious attacker can perform various security attacks in the multi-server environments because he/she can easily modify, insert, inject, delete, and intercept exchanged messages over a public channel. Thus, secure authentication and key agreement (AKA) schemes are indispensable to provide useful services in multi-server environments. In 2020, Ali et al. presented a three-factor symmetric key based secure AKA scheme for privacy and security in multi-server environments. Ali et al. claimed that their scheme can prevent various security attacks, and also ensure secure authentication. However, this comment shows that Ali et al.'s scheme suffers from many drawbacks, including session key exposure, man-in-the-middle (MITM), and masquerade attacks. Moreover, their scheme fails to ensure mutual authentication. Thus, we suggest the necessary security guidelines to resolve the security threats of Ali et al.'s scheme.

As we all know that the technology is projected to be next to humans very soon because of its holistic growth. Now-a-days, we see a lot of applications that are making our lives comfortable such as smart cars, smart homes, smart traffic management, smart offices, smart medical consultation, smart cities, etc. All such facilities are in the reach of a common man because of the advancement in Information and Communications Technology (ICT). Because of this advancement, new computing and communication environment such as Internet of Things (IoT) came into picture. Lot of research work is in progress in IoT domain which helps for the overall development of the society and makes the lives easy and comfortable. But in the resource constrained environment of Wireless Sensor Network (WSN) and IoT, it is almost inconceivable to establish a fully secure system. As we are moving forward very fast, technology is becoming more and more vulnerable to the security threats. In future, the number of Internet connected people will be less than the smart objects so we need to prepare a robust system for keeping the above mentioned environments safe and standardized it for the smooth conduction of communication among IoT objects. In this survey paper, we provide the details of threat model applicable for the security of WSN and IoT based communications. We also discuss the security requirements and various attacks possible in WSN and IoT based communication environments. The emerging projects of WSNs integrated to IoT are also briefed. We then provide the details of different architectures of WSN and IoT based communication environments. Next, we discuss the current issues and challenges related to WSN and IoT. We also provide a critical literature survey of recent intrusion detection protocols for IoT and WSN environments along with their comparative analysis. A taxonomy of security and privacy-preservation protocols in WSN and IoT is also highlighted. Finally, we discuss some research challenges which need to be addressed in the coming future.

Internet of Drones (IoD), designed to coordinate the access of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), is a specific application of the Internet of Things (IoT). Drones are used to control airspace and offer services such as rescue, traffic surveillance, environmental monitoring, delivery and so on. However, IoD continues to suffer from privacy and security issues. Firstly, messages are transmitted over public channels in IoD environments, which compromises data security. Further, sensitive data can also be extracted from stolen mobile devices of remote users. Moreover, drones are susceptible to physical capture and manipulation by adversaries, which are called drone capture attacks. Thus, the development of a secure and lightweight authentication scheme is essential to overcoming these security vulnerabilities, even on resource-constrained drones. In 2021, Akram et al. proposed a secure and lightweight user–drone authentication scheme for drone networks. However, we discovered that Akram et al.’s scheme is susceptible to user and drone impersonation, verification table leakage, and denial of service (DoS) attacks. Furthermore, their scheme cannot provide perfect forward secrecy. To overcome the aforementioned security vulnerabilities, we propose a secure mutual authentication and key agreement scheme between user and drone pairs. The proposed scheme utilizes physical unclonable function (PUF) to give drones uniqueness and resistance against drone stolen attacks. Moreover, the proposed scheme uses a fuzzy extractor to utilize the biometrics of users as secret parameters. We analyze the security of the proposed scheme using informal security analysis, Burrows–Abadi–Needham (BAN) logic, a Real-or-Random (RoR) model, and Automated Verification of Internet Security Protocols and Applications (AVISPA) simulation. We also compared the security features and performance of the proposed scheme and the existing related schemes. Therefore, we demonstrate that the proposed scheme is suitable for IoD environments that can provide users with secure and convenient wireless communications.

In IoT-based environments, smart services can be provided to users under various environments, such as smart homes, smart factories, smart cities, smart transportation, and healthcare, by utilizing sensing devices. Nevertheless, a series of security problems may arise because of the nature of the wireless channel in the Wireless Sensor Network (WSN) for utilizing IoT services. Authentication and key agreements are essential elements for providing secure services in WSNs. Accordingly, two-factor and three-factor-based authentication protocol research is being actively conducted. However, IoT service users can be vulnerable to ID/password pair guessing attacks by setting easy-to-remember identities and passwords. In addition, sensors and sensing devices deployed in IoT environments are vulnerable to capture attacks. To address this issue, in this paper, we analyze the protocols of Chunka et al., Amintoosi et al., and Hajian et al. and describe their security vulnerabilities. Moreover, this paper introduces PUF and honey list techniques with three-factor authentication to design protocols resistant to ID/password pair guessing, brute-force, and capture attacks. Accordingly, we introduce PUFTAP-IoT, which can provide secure services in the IoT environment. To prove the security of PUFTAP-IoT, we perform formal analyses through Burrows Abadi Needham (BAN) logic, Real-Or-Random (ROR) model, and scyther simulation tools. In addition, we demonstrate the efficiency of the protocol compared with other authentication protocols in terms of security, computational cost, and communication cost, showing that it can provide secure services in IoT environments.

Abstract Background Structural variations such as copy number variations (CNVs) have a functional impact on various human traits. This study profiled genome-wide CNVs in Korean patients with rheumatoid arthritis (RA) to investigate the efficacy of treatment with TNF-α blockers. Methods A total of 357 Korean patients with RA were examined for the efficacy of TNF-α blocker treatment. Disease activity indexes were measured at baseline and 6 months after the treatment. The patients were classified as responders and non-responders based on the change in disease activity indexes according to the EULAR response criteria. CNVs in the same patients were profiled using fluorescence signal intensity data generated by a genome-wide SNP array. The association of CNVs with response to TNF-α blockers was analyzed by multivariate logistic regression accounting for genetic background and clinical factors including body mass index, gender, baseline disease activity, TNF-α blocker used, and methotrexate treatment. Results The study subjects varied in their responses to TNF-α blockers and had 286 common CNVs in autosomes. We identified that the 3.8-kb deletion at 2q14.3 in 5% of the subjects was associated with response to TNF-α blockers (1.37 × 10− 5 ≤ P ≤ 4.07 × 10− 4) at a false discovery rate threshold of 5%. The deletion in the identified CNV was significantly more frequent in the non-responders than in the responders, indicating worse response to TNF-α blockers in the deletion carriers. The 3.8-kb deletion at 2q14.3 is located in an intergenic region with the binding sites of two transcription factors, MAFF and MAFK. Conclusions This study obtained the CNV landscape of Korean patients with RA and identified the common regional deletion associated with poor response to treatment with TNF-α blockers.

For secure communication between any two neighboring sensing devices on the Internet of Things (IoT) environment, it is essential to design a secure device access control and key agreement protocol, in which the two phases, namely, “node authentication” and “key agreement” are involved. While the node authentication allows two sensing devices to authenticate each other using their own pre-loaded secret credentials in memory, the key agreement phase permits to establish a secret key between them if the mutual authentication is successful. In this paper, we propose a new certificate-based “lightweight access control and key agreement protocol in the IoT environment, called LACKA-IoT,” that utilizes the elliptic curve cryptography (ECC) along with the “collision-resistant one-way cryptographic hash function.” Through a detailed security analysis using the formal security under the “Real-Or-Random (ROR) model,” informal (non-mathematical) security analysis, and formal security verification using the broadly used “Automated Validation of Internet Security Protocols and Applications (AVISPA)” tool, we show that the LACKA-IoT can protect various known attacks that are needed for a secure device access control mechanism in the IoT. Furthermore, through a comparative study of the LACKA-IoT and other relevant schemes, we show that there is a better tradeoff among the security and functionality features and communication and computational costs of the LACKA-IoT as compared to other schemes. Finally, the “practical demonstration using the NS2 simulation” has been carried out on the LACKA-IoT to measure various network parameters.

With the smart grid (SG) and the social Internet of Things (SIoT), an electric vehicle operator can use reliable, flexible, and efficient charging service with vehicle-to-grid (V2G). However, open channels can be vulnerable to various attacks by a malicious adversary. Therefore, secure mutual authentication for V2G has become essential, and numerous related protocols have been proposed. In 2018, Shen et al. proposed a privacy-preserving and lightweight key agreement protocol for V2G in SIoT to ensure security. However, we demonstrate that their protocol does not withstand impersonation, privileged-insider, and offline password guessing attacks, and it does not also guarantee secure mutual authentication, session key security, and perfect forward secrecy. Therefore, this paper proposes a dynamic privacy-preserving and lightweight key agreement protocol for V2G in SIoT to resolve the security weaknesses of Shen et al.'s protocol. The proposed protocol resists several attacks including impersonation, offline password guessing, man-in-the-middle, replay, and trace attacks, ensures anonymity, perfect forward secrecy, session key security, and secure mutual authentication. We evaluate the security of the proposed protocol using formal security analysis under the broadly-accepted real-or-random (ROR) model, secure mutual authentication proof using the widely-accepted Burrows-Abadi-Needham (BAN) logic, informal (non-mathematical) security analysis, and also the formal security verification using the broadly-accepted automated validation of Internet security protocols and applications (AVISPA) tool. We then compare computation costs, and security and functionality features of the proposed protocol with related protocols. Overall, the proposed protocol provides superior security, and it can be efficiently deployed to practical SIoT-based V2G environment.

The Internet of Things (IoT) acts as an umbrella for the Internet-enabled devices for various applications, such as smart home, smart city, smart grid, and smart healthcare. The emergence of the immense economic potential necessitates a robust authentication mechanism that needs to be lightweight and suitable for real-time applications. Moreover, the physical integrity of these devices cannot be assumed as these are designed to be deployed in an unattended environment with minimum human supervision. A user authentication mechanism for the IoT, in addition to guaranteeing user anonymity and un-traceability functionality requirements, must also be resistant to device physical capture and related misuses. In this paper, we present a novel lightweight anonymous user authentication protocol for the IoT environment by utilizing “cryptographic one-way hash function”, “physically unclonable function (PUF)” and “bitwise exclusive-OR (XOR)” operations. The broadly accepted Real-Or-Random (ROR) model-based formal security analysis, formal security verification using the automated software verification tool, namely “automated validation of internet security protocols and applications (AVISPA)” and also non-mathematical (informal) security analysis have been carried out on the proposed scheme. It is shown that the proposed scheme has the ability to resist various well-known attacks that are crucial for securing the IoT environment. Through a detailed comparative study, we show that the proposed scheme outperforms other existing related schemes in terms of computation and communication costs, and also security & functionality features. Finally, a practical demonstration of the proposed scheme using the NS3 simulation has been provided for measuring various network performance parameters.

The advancement in Information and Communications Technology (ICT) has changed the entire paradigm of computing. Because of such advancement, we have new types of computing and communication environments, for example, Internet of Things (IoT) that is a collection of smart IoT devices. The Internet of Medical Things (IoMT) is a specific type of IoT communication environment which deals with communication through the smart healthcare (medical) devices. Though IoT communication environment facilitates and supports our day-to-day activities, but at the same time it has also certain drawbacks as it suffers from several security and privacy issues, such as replay, man-in-the-middle, impersonation, privileged-insider, remote hijacking, password guessing and denial of service (DoS) attacks, and malware attacks. Among these attacks, the attacks which are performed through the malware botnet (i.e., Mirai) are the malignant attacks. The existence of malware botnets leads to attacks on confidentiality, integrity, authenticity and availability of the data and other resources of the system. In presence of such attacks, the sensitive data of IoT communication may be disclosed, altered or even may not be available to the authorized users. Therefore, it becomes essential to protect the IoT/IoMT environment from malware attacks. In this review paper, we first perform the study of various types of malware attacks, and their symptoms. We also discuss some architectures of IoT environment along with their applications. Next, a taxonomy of security protocols in IoT environment is provided. Moreover, we conduct a comparative study on various existing schemes for malware detection and prevention in IoT environment. Finally, some future research challenges and directions of malware detection in IoT/IoMT environment are highlighted.

The Internet of Things (IoT) with cloud services are important functionalities in the latest IoT systems for providing various convenient services. These cloud-enabled IoT environments collect, analyze, and monitor surrounding data, resulting in the most effective handling of large amounts of heterogeneous data. In these environments, secure authentication with a key agreement mechanism is essential to ensure user and data privacy when transmitting data between the cloud server and IoT nodes. In this study, we prove that the previous scheme contains various security threats, and hence cannot guarantee essential security requirements. To overcome these security threats, we propose an improved authentication and key agreement scheme for cloud-enabled IoT using PUF. Furthermore, we evaluate its security by performing informal, formal (mathematical), and simulation analyses using the AVISPA tool and ROR model. The performance and security properties of our scheme are subsequently compared with those of other related schemes. The comparison confirms that our scheme is suitable for a practical cloud-enabled IoT environment because it provides a superior security level and is more efficient than contemporary schemes.