Special Issue "Privacy-Aware Authentication in a Sustainable Internet-of-Things Environment"

A special issue of Sustainability (ISSN 2071-1050).

Deadline for manuscript submissions: 28 February 2022.

Special Issue Editors

Dr. Marko Hölbl
E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
Faculty of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, University of Maribor, Maribor, Slovenia
Interests: cryptography; security and privacy in the Internet of Things; security protocols for wireless sensor networks; security protocols for body sensor networks; security protocols for the Internet of Things; quantum cryptography; privacy and security in computer systems
Dr. SK Hafizul Islam
E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
Department of Computer Science and Engineering, Indian Institute of Information Technology Kalyani, West Bengal, India
Interests: cryptography; network security; information security; blockchain security; cloud-assisted VANET security; lattice-based cryptography; security in WSNs and IoT
Prof. Dr. Marimuthu Karuppiah
E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
Department of Computer Science and Engineering, SRM University, Delhi-NCR, India
Interests: cryptography and wireless network security; authentication and encryption schemes
Prof. Dr. Chien-Ming Chen
E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
College of Computer Science and Engineering, Shandong University of Science and Technology, Qingdao, Shandong, China
Interests: network security; mobile internet; IoT; cryptography
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Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

The number of connected devices is growing exponentially, forming the so-called Internet of Things (IoT), a large network of networks connecting smart devices such as sensors and actuators. Such devices are adopted in various domains such as public health, smart grids, smart transportation, waste management, smart homes, smart cities, agriculture, and energy management. The benefits of these devices are even more evident for sustainable technological progress. Bear in mind that in such environments, tens and even hundreds of billions of devices will be connected. Such devices will have smart capabilities to collect, analyze, and even make decisions without any human interaction and will play an important role in a sustainable environment, economy, and overall paradigm. Security is a supreme requirement in such circumstances, and in particular, authentication is of high interest given the damage that could happen from a malicious unauthenticated device in an IoT system. Another important factor includes the privacy issues of authentication in light of hardware constraints, energy efficiency, and reliability. The efficiency of such devices will facilitate sustainable development and application. All these requirements make building a privacy-aware multilateral authentication for IoT challenging. The heterogeneous nature and specifics of the environment (e.g., the limited resources) merely magnify security threats and raise new privacy issues. Traditional security measures and approaches can only partly be applied to the new concepts and, in some cases, are yet to be adapted. The most highlighted issues with regard to security and privacy as new scenarios are the threats that have emerged due to the new sustainable environment and the application context.

This Special Issue of Sustainability, therefore, addresses the broader research field of privacy-aware authentication in the sustainable Internet of Things environment, with an emphasis on the challenges and open questions yet to be solved and answered related to authentication mechanisms maintaining the highest possible privacy level. Additionally, due to lower computation, communication, and/or storage requirements, such mechanisms will contribute to more sustainable solutions. We are searching for original, high-quality research articles and the latest advances in the theoretical or practical aspects of the field. The Special Issue will also accept and review articles that have a thorough methodology and results.

Dr. Marko Hölbl
Dr. SK Hafizul Islam
Prof. Dr. Marimuthu Karuppiah
Prof. Dr. Chien-Ming Chen
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All papers will be peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Sustainability is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 1900 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

Keywords

  • sustainable privacy-aware cloud/edge-enabled IoT models
  • sustainable privacy-aware authentication protocols
  • security analysis of existing authentication mechanisms and protocols in IoT with an emphasis on privacy aspects
  • sustainable models for facilitating privacy aspects of authentication mechanisms in IoT
  • integration of distributed ledger technologies to assure privacy in IoT authentication
  • privacy by design in IoT authentication
  • attacks on authentication for IoT devices
  • sustainable privacy-enhancing technologies for authentication in IoT
  • taxonomy of IoT authentication schemes
  • human aspects of authentication in IoT
  • evaluation metrics for authentication schemes in IoT
  • authentication for data aggregation on IoT devices

Published Papers (2 papers)

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Research

Article
A Traceable Online Insurance Claims System Based on Blockchain and Smart Contract Technology
Sustainability 2021, 13(16), 9386; https://doi.org/10.3390/su13169386 - 21 Aug 2021
Viewed by 276
Abstract
In the current medical insurance claims process, there are problems of low efficiency and complex services. When a patient applies for medical insurance claims, he/she must go to the hospital to apply for a diagnosis certificate and receipt and then send the relevant [...] Read more.
In the current medical insurance claims process, there are problems of low efficiency and complex services. When a patient applies for medical insurance claims, he/she must go to the hospital to apply for a diagnosis certificate and receipt and then send the relevant application documents to the insurance company. The patient will not receive compensation until the company completes the verification with the patient’s hospital. However, we can improve the current dilemma through blockchain technology. Blockchain technology can effectively open up the information channels of the insurance industry and medical institutions, promote industry integration, and enhance the ability of insurance companies to obtain information. In this research, we used blockchain and smart contract technology to make the following contributions to the development of Internet insurance. First, blockchain and smart contract technology can effectively solve the problem of online underwriting. Second, it is conducive to improving supervision. Third, it is conducive to solving risk control problems. Fourth, it is conducive to effective anti-money laundering. The proposed scheme fulfills the following security requirements: mutual authentication of identities, non-repudiation between each of two roles, and other major blockchain-based security requirements. In the event of a dispute, we also proposed an arbitration mechanism to divide responsibilities. Full article
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Article
A Secure, Lightweight, and Anonymous User Authentication Protocol for IoT Environments
Sustainability 2021, 13(16), 9241; https://doi.org/10.3390/su13169241 - 17 Aug 2021
Viewed by 378
Abstract
The Internet of Things (IoT) is being applied to various environments such as telecare systems, smart homes, and intelligent transportation systems. The information generated from IoT devices is stored at remote servers, and external users authenticate to the server for requesting access to [...] Read more.
The Internet of Things (IoT) is being applied to various environments such as telecare systems, smart homes, and intelligent transportation systems. The information generated from IoT devices is stored at remote servers, and external users authenticate to the server for requesting access to the stored data. In IoT environments, the authentication process is required to be conducted efficiently, and should be secure against various attacks and ensure user anonymity and untraceability to ensure sustainability of the network. However, many existing protocols proposed in IoT environments do not meet these requirements. Recently, Rajaram et al. proposed a paring-based user authentication scheme. We found that the Rajaram et al. scheme is vulnerable to various attacks such as offline password guessing, impersonation, privileged insider, and known session-specific temporary information attacks. Additionally, as their scheme uses bilinear pairing, it requires high computation and communication costs. In this study, we propose a novel authentication scheme that resolves these security problems. The proposed scheme uses only hash and exclusive-or operations to be applicable in IoT environments. We analyze the proposed protocol using informal analysis and formal analysis methods such as the BAN logic, real-or-random (ROR) model, and the AVISPA simulation, and we show that the proposed protocol has better security and performance compared with existing authentication protocols. Consequently, the proposed protocol is sustainable and suitable for real IoT environments. Full article
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