The Internet of vehicles (IoV) is increasingly being used to realize the vision of intelligent transportation systems with the rapid development of computation and communication technologies. However, numerous IoV applications rely on a central unit for storing and processing information and mediators for wireless transmission. This can lead to the leakage of sensitive data and high costs and delays. To address these issues and improve the efficiency of data storage, processing, and sharing in the IoV, we propose a vehicle-based secure blockchain consensus (VBSBC) algorithm. Our VBSBC algorithm overcomes the limitations and drawbacks of state-of-the-art approaches by leveraging blockchain technology and a consensus algorithm to ensure secure communication between vehicles. In addition, the algorithm includes an authentication process and a key distributing and request process, illustrated during vehicles' movement between different zones. In simulation results, our proposed VBSBC algorithm demonstrated high performance compared to existing approaches in terms of authentication delay, key processing time, attack detection rate, throughput, and packet loss rate.

The next-generation Internet of vehicles (IoVs) seamlessly connects humans, vehicles, roadside units (RSUs), and service platforms, to improve road safety, enhance transit efficiency, and deliver comfort while conserving the environment. Currently, numerous entities communicate in the IoVs environment via insecure public channels that are susceptible to a variety of security assaults and threats. To address these security challenges, we design an anonymous authenticated key exchange mechanism for the IoVs in smart transportation supported by blockchain, referred to as AAKE-BIVT. AAKE-BIVT securely transmits traffic information to a cluster head, before heading to a nearby RSU utilizing the established secret session keys via mutual authentication and key agreement. A cloud server (CS) then securely aggregates data from related RSUs and generates transactions. The CS combines the transactions into blocks in a peer-to-peer network of CSs, and the blocks are confirmed and added to the blockchain via a voting-based consensus method. By means of rigorous informal security studies and formal security analysis through the random oracle model, we reveal that the proposed AAKE-BIVT is resistant to a broad range of potential security assaults in the IoVs environment. Furthermore, a comparative study reveals that AAKE-BIVT outperforms existing state-of-the-art techniques, in terms of security and functionality while being more efficient in terms of communication and computation. Additionally, the blockchain simulation validates the implementation viability of our proposed AAKE-BIVT.

The use of Internet of Drones (IoD) technology has surged across various domains such as logistics, surveying, industrial inspections, emergency response, security, infrastructure monitoring, crop management, and more. However, real-time communication with drones or Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) in the IoD environment occurs over an insecure open channel, making it susceptible to various security and privacy vulnerabilities, including unauthorized access, data interception, denial of service attacks, and privacy concerns. Due to their unique characteristics, including long transmission distances, unstable communication environments, resource limitations, and the highly dynamic nature of UAVs, ensuring the security and privacy of IoD systems is of paramount importance for the success of IoD-based applications. Furthermore, drones are resource-constrained devices, and employing expensive security solutions is impractical, as it would significantly reduce the operational capacity of drones. In this paper, we present the design of an ultralightweight, secure, and robust user-authenticated key agreement framework for the IoD environment, named USAF-IoD. The proposed USAF-IoD is developed by incorporating authenticated encryption (ASCON), cryptographic hashing, XOR operations, and the use of physical unclonable functions (PUFs). PUFs are employed to enhance resistance against physical tampering attacks. The security analysis reveals that the proposed USAF-IoD meets the essential security requirements of the IoD environment. The comparative analysis further highlights the effectiveness of the proposed USAF-IoD, notably excelling in terms of security and functionality characteristics when compared to existing benchmark schemes, and showcasing competitive performance in computation, communication, and energy overheads.

Wearable computing has shown tremendous potential to revolutionize and uplift the standard of our lives. However, researchers and field experts have often noted several privacy and security vulnerabilities in the field of wearable computing. In order to tackle these problems, various schemes have been proposed in the literature to improve the efficiency of authentication and key establishment procedure. However, the existing schemes have relatively high computation and communication overheads and are not resilient to various potential security attacks, which reduces their significance for applicability in constrained wearable devices. In this work, we propose an efficient and anonymous authenticated key exchange scheme for wearable computing (EAKE-WC), which performs mutual authentication between the user and the wearable device, and between the cloud server and the user. It also establishes secret session keys for each session to secure communication among the communicating entities. Additionally, the proposed EAKE-WC scheme is designed using authenticated encryption with associated data (AEAD) primitives like ASCON, bitwise XOR, and hash functions. Our results from the security analysis depict compliance of the proposed EAKE-WC with wearable computing's security criteria. In addition, we also demonstrate through a comprehensive comparative analysis that the proposed scheme, EAKE-WC, outperforms the existing benchmark schemes in various key performance areas, including lower communication and computational overheads, enhanced security, and added functionality.

Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS) supported by smart vehicles have revolutionized modern transportation, offering a wide range of applications and services, such as electronic toll collection, collision avoidance alarms, real-time parking management, and traffic planning. However, the open communication channels among various entities, including smart vehicles, roadside infrastructure, and fleet management systems, introduce security and privacy vulnerabilities. To address these concerns, we propose a novel security framework, named blockchain-assisted lightweight authenticated key agreement security framework for smart vehicles-enabled ITS (BASF-ITS), which ensures data protection both during transit and while stored on cloud servers. BASF-ITS employs a combination of efficient cryptographic primitives, including hash functions, XOR operator, ASCON, elliptic curve cryptography, and physical unclonable functions (PUF), to design authenticated key agreement schemes. The inclusion of PUF significantly enhances the system’s resistance to physical attacks, preventing tampering attempts. To ensure data integrity when stored on the cloud, our framework incorporates blockchain technology. By leveraging the immutability and decentralization of the blockchain, BASF-ITS effectively safeguards data at rest, providing an additional layer of security. We rigorously analyze the security of BASF-ITS and demonstrate its strong resistance against potential security ass aults, making it a robust and reliable solution for smart vehicle-enabled ITS. In a comparative analysis with contemporary competing schemes, BASF-ITS emerges as a promising approach, offering superior functionality traits, enhanced security features, and reduced computation, communication, and storage costs. Furthermore, we present a practical implementation of BASF-ITS using blockchain technology, showcasing the computational time versus the “transactions per block” and the “number of mined blocks”, confirming its efficiency and viability in real-world scenarios. Note to Practitioners —This article is motivated by designing an efficient, lightweight, and anonymous blockchain-enabled authenticated security framework that can fix the security and privacy concerns in insecure environments for ITS applications, such as automated road speed enforcement, collision avoidance alarm systems, and traffic planning and management, etc. Authenticated key agreement schemes are extensively used to secure communications in the ITS environment. However, the existing state-of-the-art schemes are not efficient in terms of performance, are not resilient against potential security attacks, and do not support anonymity, untraceability, and unlinkability. Therefore, we propose the authenticated security framework to secure communication among the participating entities in the ITS environment. It utilizes efficient cryptographic primitives, such as hash function, XOR-operator, ASCON, elliptic curve cryptography, and PUF. It is shown that the proposed framework can be deployed as a robust tool to address the ITS security problems efficiently. Moreover, the proposed framework is lightweight and efficient and can be easily deployed in various ITS applications and other resource-constrained environments. However, the participating entities, such as vehicles and roadside units, must be PUF-enabled to deploy the proposed framework.

Smart manufacturing is transforming the manufacturing industry by enhancing productivity and quality, driving growth in the global economy. The Internet of Things (IoT) has played a crucial role in realizing Industry 4.0, where machines can communicate and interact in real-time. Despite these advancements, security remains a major challenge in developing and deploying smart manufacturing. As cyber-attacks become more prevalent, researchers are making security a top priority. Although IoT and Industrial IoT (IIoT) are used to establish smart industries, these systems remain vulnerable to various types of attacks. To address these security issues, numerous authentication methods have been proposed. However, many of these methods are vulnerable to known attacks, such as physical security, privileged-insider, and impersonation attacks, or have high computational and communication costs, making them unsuitable for resource-limited IoT devices. Therefore, in this paper, we present a new approach to mutual authentication between the flexible manufacturing system unit, the user, and the server. It enables secure communication in an IIoT-enabled system, which represents the smart manufacturing industry. This security is achieved through the establishment of session keys. The security analysis shows the effectiveness of the proposed solution in resisting various types of attacks. Additionally, a comparison with other existing schemes reveals that our proposal outperforms them in terms of performance.