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arXiv:1705.03430 · IEEE Transactions on Wireless Communications

Analysis of Channel-Based User Authentication by Key-Less and Key-Based Approaches

Stefano Tomasin

Published Jun 26, 2018• 33 citations
arXivHTMLPDF

Abstract

User authentication (UA) supports the receiver in deciding whether a message comes from either the claimed transmitter or an impersonating attacker. Information-theoretically secure authentication can be implemented by using either a secret (symmetric key) shared between both the legitimate users or the transmission medium over which the message is transmitted [physical-layer authentication (PLA)]. We analyze these solutions when the physical-layer channel is the unique randomness source for either generating the key or performing PLA. For the symmetric-key-based UA approach, we resort to a secret key agreement. Moreover, we also consider an asymmetric-key-based UA based on the public-key (proven to be semantically secure), where the channel is used as an entropy source at one device only. We define the secure authentication rate at which the probability that the UA attack succeeds goes to zero as the number of independent and identically distributed variables describing how the channel goes to infinity. Both passive and active attacks are considered, and by numerical results, we compare the various UA schemes.

DOI
10.1109/twc.2018.2848937

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User authentication (UA) supports the receiver in deciding whether a message comes from either the claimed transmitter or an impersonating attacker. Information-theoretically secure authentication can be implemented by using either a secret (symmetric key) shared between both the legitimate users or the transmission medium over which the message is transmitted [physical-layer authentication (PLA)]. We analyze these solutions when the physical-layer channel is the unique randomness source for either generating the key or performing PLA. For the symmetric-key-based UA approach, we resort to a secret key agreement. Moreover, we also consider an asymmetric-key-based UA based on the public-key (proven to be semantically secure), where the channel is used as an entropy source at one device only. We define the secure authentication rate at which the probability that the UA attack succeeds goes to zero as the number of independent and identically distributed variables describing how the channel goes to infinity. Both passive and active attacks are considered, and by numerical results, we compare the various UA schemes.
Physical layer security, also called information theoretic security, is an emerging field which exploits physical layer properties of communication channels to secure future generations of communication systems. The approach to generating the secret key at the physical layer is proposed in the source model by the pioneer works. Different from the key generation process in the source model, the legitimate users typically observe no sources in advance, but they can obtain the sources via estimating the channel gain. This chapter discusses the problem of key generation under active attacks. It first reviews the basic scenarios for key generation in the presence of a passive adversary. Then, it considers the scenario where the attacker attacks the public discussion, reviews the relationship between the key rate obtained from the case with an active attacker with the corresponding key rate obtained from the passive case and discusses the condition which decides this relationship.
Exploiting the inherent physical properties of wireless channels to complement or enhance the traditional security mechanisms has attracted prominent attention recently. However, the existing secret key generation schemes suffer from miscellaneous extracting procedure. Many PHY-layer authentication schemes assume that the knowledge of the shared key is preknown. In this paper, we propose PHY-layer secret key generation and authentication schemes for orthogonal frequency-division multiplexing (OFDM) systems. In the secret key generation scheme, to simplify the extracting procedure, only one legitimate party is chosen to probe the channel and quantize the measurements to obtain the preliminary key. The preliminary key is masked by the channel-phase after the mapping and before equalization and distributed to the other party. The final shared key is used for the PHY-layer authentication scheme in which random signals and the shared key masked by the channel-phase are exchanged at the PHY-layer. Then, a binary hypothesis test is formulated for authentication. Simulation results show that the proposed secret key generation scheme outperforms the existing schemes. For the PHY-layer authentication scheme, it is immune to various passive and active attacks and a high successful authentication rate is acquired even at low signal-to-noise ratio region.
The use of wireless networks for communication has grown significantly in recent times, and continues to develop further. The broadcast nature of wireless communications makes them susceptible to a wide variety of security attacks. Unlike traditional solutions, which usually handle security at the application layer, the primary concern of this dissertation is to analyse and develop solutions for secure communication using channel coding techniques at the physical-layer. \nThe topic of physical layer authenticated encryption using high rate key generation through shared randomness is investigated in this work. First, a physical layer secret key generation scheme is discussed exploiting channel reciprocity in wireless systems. In order to address the susceptibility of this family of schemes to active attacks, a novel physical layer authentication encryption protocol is presented along with its extension to multi-node networks in the presence of active adversaries. Unlike previous work in the area of generating secret keys through shared randomness, it is demonstrated that the proposed scheme is semantically secure with respect to chosen plaintext and chosen cipher text attacks. \nSecondly, in order to increase the rate in bits per seconds at which agreed cryptographic keys are been generated, a multi-level quantization algorithm with public feedback is discussed. It is demonstrated that the proposed scheme is superior to direct information distillation approaches and can substantially increase the key generation rates even at low and medium SNRs. Furthermore, the employment of this low-overhead feedback at the information distillation process can largely simplify the information reconciliation process. \nThe proposed secret key generation schemes are tested for randomness such as required for cryptographic keys. The validation test is perfomed with the aid of National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) statistical test suite. The P-values obtained in each of the test carried out indicates that the key sequence generated by our algorithm is random.
Abstract: Physical layer key generation, leveraging the reciprocity and randomness of wireless fading channels, has garnered significant research interest in recent years. While theoretical studies have demonstrated its potential to generate informationtheoretically secure keys, challenges remain in translating theory into practice. This paper provides an overview of the physical layer key generation process and discusses its practical challenges. Various passive and active attacks are analyzed and evaluated through numerical studies. A new key generation scheme using random probing signals and combining usergenerated randomness with channel randomness is introduced to counteract active attacks. Numerical results demonstrate that the proposed scheme achieves higher security strength than existing schemes using constant probing signals under active attacks. Secret-key generation relying on wireless channel reciprocity is an intriguing solution as it can be efficiently implemented at the physical layer of emerging wireless communication networks, while providing information-theoretic security guarantees. In this paper, we investigate and compare the secret-key capacity based on the sampling of the entire complex channel state information (CSI) or only its envelope, the received signal strength (RSS).
Due to the broadcast nature of wireless channels, wireless communication is vulnerable to eavesdropping, message modification, and node impersonation. Securing the wireless communication requires the shared secret keys between the communicating entities. Traditional security schemes rely on public key infrastructures and cryptographic algorithms to manage secret keys. Recently, many physical-layer-based methods have been proposed as alternative solutions for key generation in wireless networks. These methods exploit the inherent randomness of the wireless fading channel to generate secret keys while providing information-theoretical security without intensive cryptographic computations. This article provides an overview of the existing PHY-based key generation schemes exploiting the randomness of the wireless channels. Specifically, we first introduce the fundamental and general framework of the PHY-based key generation schemes and then categorize them into two classes: received-signal-strength-based and channel- phase-based protocols. Finally, we present a performance comparison of them in terms of key disagreement probability, key generation rate, key bit randomness, scalability, and implementation issues.
In this paper, the problem of key generation over an unauthenticated public channel in a network setup is considered. The considered model consists of four terminals: two legitimate terminals who need to share a key, a helper and an active adversary. The legitimate terminals and the helper are allowed to exchange messages over a public noiseless channel, to which the adversary has full access and may modify messages exchanged through this public channel. We investigate two types of keys: secret key (secure from the adversary only) and private key (secure from both the helper and the adversary). We characterize the relationship between the key rates in our model and the existing models with a passive adversary. We characterize conditions under which the generated key rates in this model are non-zero, and further provide an authentication scheme to show that key capacities, if are non-zero, are the same as those for the scenario with a passive adversary.