Robust RDH Technique using Sorting and IPVO-based Pairwise PEE for Secure Communication

Nowadays, Reversible Data Hiding (RDH) is used extensively in information sensitive communication domains to protect the integrity of hidden data and the cover medium. However, most of the recently proposed RDH methods lack robustness. Robust RDH methods are required to protect the hidden data from security attacks at the time of communication between the sender and receiver. In this paper, we propose a Robust RDH scheme using IPVO based pairwise embedding. The proposed scheme is designed to prevent unintentional modifications caused to the secret data by JPEG compression. The cover image is decomposed into two planes namely HSB plane and LSB plane. As JPEG compression most likely modifies the LSBs of the cover image during compression, it is best not to hide the secret data into LSB planes. So, the proposed method utilizes a pairwise embedding to embed secret data into HSB plane of the cover image. High fidelity improved pixel value ordering (IPVO) based pairwise embedding ensures that the embedding performance of the proposed method is improved.

Fortifying Vehicular Security through Low Overhead Physically Unclonable Functions

Within vehicles, the Controller Area Network (CAN) allows efficient communication between the electronic control units (ECUs) responsible for controlling the various subsystems. The CAN protocol was not designed to include much support for secure communication. The fact that so many critical systems can be accessed through an insecure communication network presents a major security concern. Adding security features to CAN is difficult due to the limited resources available to the individual ECUs and the costs that would be associated with adding the necessary hardware to support any additional security operations without overly degrading the performance of standard communication. Replacing the protocol is another option, but it is subject to many of the same problems. The lack of security becomes even more concerning as vehicles continue to adopt smart features. Smart vehicles have a multitude of communication interfaces an attacker could exploit to gain access to the networks. In this work, we propose a security framework that is based on physically unclonable functions (PUFs) and lightweight cryptography (LWC). The framework does not require any modification to the standard CAN protocol while also minimizing the amount of additional message overhead required for its operation. The improvements in our proposed framework result in major reduction in the number of CAN frames that must be sent during operation. For a system with 20 ECUs, for example, our proposed framework only requires 6.5% of the number of CAN frames that is required by the existing approach to successfully authenticate every ECU.

An Authentication and Secure Communication Scheme for In-Vehicle Networks Based on SOME/IP

The rapid development of intelligent networked vehicles (ICVs) has brought many positive effects. Unfortunately, connecting to the outside exposes ICVs to security threats. Using secure protocols is an important approach to protect ICVs from hacker attacks and has become a hot research area for vehicle security. However, most of the previous studies were carried out on V2X networks, while those on in-vehicle networks (IVNs) did not involve Ethernet. To this end, oriented to the new IVNs based on Ethernet, we designed an efficient secure scheme, including an authentication scheme using the Scalable Service-Oriented Middleware over IP (SOME/IP) protocol and a secure communication scheme modifying the payload field of the original SOME/IP data frame. The security analysis shows that the designed authentication scheme can provide mutual identity authentication for communicating parties and ensure the confidentiality of the issued temporary session key; the designed authentication and secure communication scheme can resist the common malicious attacks conjointly. The performance experiments based on embedded devices show that the additional overhead introduced by the secure scheme is very limited. The secure scheme proposed in this article can promote the popularization of the SOME/IP protocol in IVNs and contribute to the secure communication of IVNs.

Ciphered BCH Codes for PAPR Reduction in the OFDM in Underwater Acoustic Channels

We propose an effective, low complexity and multifaceted scheme for peak-to-average power ratio (PAPR) reduction in the orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) system for underwater acoustic (UWA) channels. In UWA OFDM systems, PAPR reduction is a challenging task due to low bandwidth availability along with computational and power limitations. The proposed scheme takes advantage of XOR ciphering and generates ciphered Bose–Chaudhuri–Hocquenghem (BCH) codes that have low PAPR. This scheme is based upon an algorithm that computes several keys offline, such that when the BCH codes are XOR-ciphered with these keys, it lowers the PAPR of BCH-encoded signals. The subsequent low PAPR modified BCH codes produced using the chosen keys are used in transmission. This technique is ideal for UWA systems as it does not require additional computational power at the transceiver during live transmission. The advantage of the proposed scheme is threefold. First, it reduces the PAPR; second, since it uses BCH codes, the bit error rate (BER) of the system improves; and third, a level of encryption is introduced via XOR ciphering, enabling secure communication. Simulations were performed in a realistic UWA channel, and the results demonstrated that the proposed scheme could indeed achieve all three objectives with minimum computational power.

Secure Communication Scheme for Brain-Computer Interface Systems Based on High-Dimensional Hyperbolic Sine Chaotic System

Brain-Computer Interface (BCI) is a direct communication pathway between the brain and the external environment without using peripheral nerves and muscles. This emerging topic is suffering from serious issues such as malicious tampering and privacy leakage. To address this issue, we propose a novel communication scheme for BCI Systems. In particular, this scheme first utilizes high-dimensional chaotic systems with hyperbolic sine nonlinearity as the random number generator, then decorrelation operation is used to remove the physical characteristics of the output sequences. Finally, each of the sequences is applied in differential chaos shift keying (DCSK). Since each output sequence corresponds to a unique electrode, the communication data of different electrodes will not interfere with each other. Compared with popular multi-user DSCK schemes using Walsh code sequences, this scheme does not require the channel data of all electrodes while decoding. Therefore, this scheme has higher efficiency. Experimental results on communication data indicate that the proposed scheme can provide a high level of security.

Multi-scroll fractional-order chaotic system and finite-time synchronization

The definition of fractional calculus is introduced into the 5D chaotic system, and the 5D fractional-order chaotic system is obtained. The new 5D fractional-order chaotic system has no equilibrium, multi-scroll hidden attractor and multi-stability. By analyzing the time-domain waveform, phase diagram, bifurcation diagram and complexity, it is found that the system has no equilibrium but is very sensitive to parameters and initial values. With the variation of different parameters, the system can produce attractors of different scroll types accompanied by bursting oscillation. Secondly, the multi-stability of the hidden attractor is studied. Different initial values lead to the coexistence of attractors of different scroll number, which shows the advantages of the system. The correctness and realizability of the fractional-order chaotic system are proved by analog circuit and physical implement. Finally, because of the high security of multi-scroll attractor and hidden attractor, finite-time synchronization based on the fractional-order chaotic system is studied, which has a good application prospect in the field of secure communication.

Discrete-Time Memristor Model for Enhancing Chaotic Complexity and Application in Secure Communication

The physical implementation of continuoustime memristor makes it widely used in chaotic circuits, whereas discrete-time memristor has not received much attention. In this paper, the backward-Euler method is used to discretize TiO2 memristor model, and the discretized model also meets the three fingerprinter characteristics of the generalized memristor. The short period phenomenon and uneven output distribution of one-dimensional chaotic systems affect their applications in some fields, so it is necessary to improve the dynamic characteristics of one-dimensional chaotic systems. In this paper, a two-dimensional discrete-time memristor model is obtained by linear coupling the proposed TiO2 memristor model and one-dimensional chaotic systems. Since the two-dimensional model has infinite fixed points, the stability of these fixed points depends on the coupling parameters and the initial state of the discrete TiO2 memristor model. Furthermore, the dynamic characteristics of one-dimensional chaotic systems can be enhanced by the proposed method. Finally, we apply the generated chaotic sequence to secure communication.