Biblio
Modern Internet TCP uses Secure Sockets Layers (SSL)/Transport Layer Security (TLS) for secure communication, which relies on Public Key Infrastructure (PKIs) to authenticate public keys. Conventional PKI is done by Certification Authorities (CAs), issuing and storing Digital Certificates, which are public keys of users with the users identity. This leads to centralization of authority with the CAs and the storage of CAs being vulnerable and imposes a security concern. There have been instances in the past where CAs have issued rogue certificates or the CAs have been hacked to issue malicious certificates. Motivated from these facts, in this paper, we propose a method (named as Trustful), which aims to build a decentralized PKI using blockchain. Blockchains provide immutable storage in a decentralized manner and allows us to write smart contracts. Ethereum blockchain can be used to build a web of trust model where users can publish attributes, validate attributes about other users by signing them and creating a trust store of users that they trust. Trustful works on the Web-of-Trust (WoT) model and allows for any entity on the network to verify attributes about any other entity through a trusted network. This provides an alternative to the conventional CA-based identity verification model. The proposed model has been implemented and tested for efficacy and known major security attacks.
Managing identity across an ever-growing digital services landscape has become one of the most challenging tasks for security experts. Over the years, several Identity Management (IDM) systems were introduced and adopted to tackle with the growing demand of an identity. In this series, a recently emerging IDM system is Self-Sovereign Identity (SSI) which offers greater control and access to users regarding their identity. This distinctive feature of the SSI IDM system represents a major development towards the availability of sovereign identity to users. uPort is an emerging open-source identity management system providing sovereign identity to users, organisations, and other entities. As an emerging identity management system, it requires meticulous analysis of its architecture, working, operational services, efficiency, advantages and limitations. Therefore, this paper contributes towards achieving all of these objectives. Firstly, it presents the architecture and working of the uPort identity management system. Secondly, it develops a Decentralized Application (DApp) to demonstrate and evaluate its operational services and efficiency. Finally, based on the developed DApp and experimental analysis, it presents the advantages and limitations of the uPort identity management system.
The Center for Strategic and International Studies estimates the annual cost from cyber crime to be more than \$400 billion. Most notable is the recent digital identity thefts that compromised millions of accounts. These attacks emphasize the security problems of using clonable static information. One possible solution is the use of a physical device known as a Physically Unclonable Function (PUF). PUFs can be used to create encryption keys, generate random numbers, or authenticate devices. While the concept shows promise, current PUF implementations are inherently problematic: inconsistent behavior, expensive, susceptible to modeling attacks, and permanent. Therefore, we propose a new solution by which an unclonable, dynamic digital identity is created between two communication endpoints such as mobile devices. This Physically Unclonable Digital ID (PUDID) is created by injecting a data scrambling PUF device at the data origin point that corresponds to a unique and matching descrambler/hardware authentication at the receiving end. This device is designed using macroscopic, intentional anomalies, making them inexpensive to produce. PUDID is resistant to cryptanalysis due to the separation of the challenge response pair and a series of hash functions. PUDID is also unique in that by combining the PUF device identity with a dynamic human identity, we can create true two-factor authentication. We also propose an alternative solution that eliminates the need for a PUF mechanism altogether by combining tamper resistant capabilities with a series of hash functions. This tamper resistant device, referred to as a Quasi-PUDID (Q-PUDID), modifies input data, using a black-box mechanism, in an unpredictable way. By mimicking PUF attributes, Q-PUDID is able to avoid traditional PUF challenges thereby providing high-performing physical identity assurance with or without a low performing PUF mechanism. Three different application scenarios with mobile devices for PUDID and Q-PUDI- have been analyzed to show their unique advantages over traditional PUFs and outline the potential for placement in a host of applications.
Cloud computing is an emerging paradigm shifting the shape of computing models from being a technology to a utility. However, security, privacy and trust are amongst the issues that can subvert the benefits and hence wide deployment of cloud computing. With the introduction of omnipresent mobile-based clients, the ubiquity of the model increases, suggesting a still higher integration in life. Nonetheless, the security issues rise to a higher degree as well. The constrained input methods for credentials and the vulnerable wireless communication links are among factors giving rise to serious security issues. To strengthen the access control of cloud resources, organizations now commonly acquire Identity Management Systems (IdM). This paper presents that the most popular IdM, namely OAuth, working in scope of Mobile Cloud Computing has many weaknesses in authorization architecture. In particular, authors find two major issues in current IdM. First, if the IdM System is compromised through malicious code, it allows a hacker to get authorization of all the protected resources hosted on a cloud. Second, all the communication links among client, cloud and IdM carries complete authorization token, that can allow hacker, through traffic interception at any communication link, an illegitimate access of protected resources. We also suggest a solution to the reported problems, and justify our arguments with experimentation and mathematical modeling.
In the future Internet of Things, it is envisioned that things are collaborating to serve people. Unfortunately, this vision could not be realised without relations between things and people. To solve the problem this paper proposes a user centric identity management system that incorporates user identity, device identity and the relations between them. The proposed IDM system is user centric and allows device authentication and authorization based on the user identity. A typical compelling use case of the proposed solution is also given.
Identity management system has gained significance for any organization today for not only storing details of its employees but securing its sensitive information and safely managing access to its resources. This system being an enterprise based application has time taking deployment process, involving many complex and error prone steps. Also being globally used, its continuous running on servers lead to large carbon emissions. This paper proposes a novel architecture that integrates the Identity management system together with virtual appliance technology to reduce the overall deployment time of the system. It provides an Identity management system as pre-installed, pre-configured and ready to go solution that can be easily deployed even by a common user. The proposed architecture is implemented and the results have shown that there is decrease in deployment time and decrease in number of steps required in previous architecture. The hardware required by the application is also reduced as its deployed on virtual machine monitor platform, which can be installed on already used servers. This contributes to the green computing practices and gives costs benefits for enterprises. Also there is ease of migration of system from one server to another and the enterprises which do not want to depend on third party cloud for security and cost reasons, can easily deploy their identity management system in their own premises.