The security, privacy, and operation efficiency of radio frequency identification (RFID) must be fully measured in practical use. A few RFID authentication schemes based on elliptic curve cryptography (ECC) have been proposed, but most of them cannot resist the existing attacks. The scheme presented by Qian et al. could not resist impersonation attack according to our security analysis. Then, we propose a novel lightweight RFID authentication scheme, which is proved that it can resist server spoofing attack, tag masquerade attack, and provide other security properties of a RFID authentication scheme. Comparisons of computation and communication cost demonstrate that the proposed scheme is more suitable for the resource-constrained RFID authentication.

Most image encryption methods based on Rubik’s cube scrambling adopt the idea of cyclic shift or map the image pixels to the cube surface, not fully considering the cube’s three-dimensional (3D) properties. In response to this defect, we propose a mixed chaotic color image encryption method based on parallel rotation scrambling in 3D Rubik’s cube space. First, a seven-dimensional hyperchaotic system is introduced to generate chaotic pseudo-random integer sequences. Then, a proven lemma is applied to preprocess the red (R), green (G), and blue (B) channels of the plain image to realize the first diffusion. Next, the chaotic integer sequence is employed to control Arnold transformation, and the scrambled two-dimensional (2D) pixel matrix is converted into a 3D matrix. Then, the 3D cube is scrambled by dynamically selecting the rotating axis, layer number, and angle through the chaotic integer sequence. The scrambled 3D matrix is converted into a 2D matrix, realizing the second diffusion via exclusive OR with the chaotic matrix generated by logistic mapping. Finally, the matrices of the R, G, and B channels are combined into an encrypted image. By performing the encryption algorithm in reverse, the encrypted image can be decrypted into the plain image. A simulation analysis shows that the proposed method has a larger key space and exhibits stronger key sensitivity than some existing methods.

In the current 5G vehicle network system, there are security issues such as wireless intrusion, privacy leakage, and remote control. To address these challenges, an improved lightweight anonymous authentication key negotiation scheme based on certificate-less aggregate signatures is proposed and its security and efficiency are analyzed. The result shows that the scheme can offer security attributes including anonymity, traceability, and revocability, as well as effective identity authentication, and it can resist forgery attacks, man-in-the-middle attacks, tampering attacks, and smart card loss attacks. Moreover, compared with similar schemes, it possesses superior security and more efficient computational efficiency and less communication overhead, thereby being more appropriate for high-speed, large-capacity, low-latency, and resource-constrained 5G vehicle network application scenarios.

Senior netizens play a unique role in crowdsourcing information obtaining, but the traditional crowdsourcing information obtaining scheme based on intermediary platform cannot satisfy the senior netizens strong reliability on anonymity. Malicious intermediary platform may leak out the privacy information of both parties. Data stored in intermediary platform may be intercepted, tampered, and fraudulently used by attackers, so smooth crowdsourcing information transactions cannot be ensured. In order to achieve secure and reliable crowdsourcing information obtaining, blockchain technology with decentralization and nontampering was used to propose a crowdsourcing information obtaining scheme, which is independent on intermediary platform. During processes of requirements releasing, information submitting, and rewarding, privacy protection techniques were used to preserve the anonymity of participants and confidentiality of data. Compared with the existing protocols, the proposed scheme has obvious advantages in privacy protection.