CAREER: Light-Weight and Fast Authentication for Internet of Things

物联网（IoT）是一个由相互关联的智能对象、传感器和执行器组成的异构系统。物联网系统有望最终在交通、能源和医疗保健等关键领域取得重大进展。由于物联网的普遍性和对网络物理世界的影响，确保其安全是一个至关重要的要求。特别是，身份验证是任何可行的物联网所需的最基本的安全服务之一，因为有必要在网络中建立信任并保护各方之间的通信。然而，尽管有其优点，绝大多数现有的身份验证技术可能无法完全满足物联网的需求，特别是当此类系统涉及资源有限设备的异构物联网或出于安全原因必须满足实时性要求时（例如，延迟敏感网络）。因此，迫切需要开发轻量级、快速和可扩展的身份验证技术，用于异构和延迟敏感的物联网。该项目的目标是建立一个综合的研究和教育计划，以开发实用的加密技术，以创建安全的物联网，并开发学术课程材料和推广活动，以教育和广泛传播所提议的技术。该项目的成功完成预计将提供新的机会，通过启用实用的身份验证技术来显着提高物联网的可信度，从而为物联网的广泛适应做出巨大贡献。该项目的研究活动将集中于创建一套轻量级和低延迟的数字签名。预期结果包括：(1)为资源有限和异构物联网提供一套新的高度轻量级数字签名。(2)一系列新的高性能、抗妥协和紧凑的数字签名。(3)一套新的低延迟数字签名，用于延迟敏感物联网。(4)对所提出的技术进行了全面的形式化安全分析、优化和硬件加速。(5)一个新的物联网测试平台，将用于评估、改进和培训所提出的技术。(6)工业安全物联网研究平台和开源加密框架，其中所提出的技术将与研究实验室合作，在现实物联网系统中进行部署和改进。教育目标是设计，实施和评估教育模块和外展活动，以教育不同层次（即高中，本科和研究生）的学生在物联网网络安全领域。这将通过新引入的课程模块来实现，这些课程模块侧重于在现实生活中的物联网平台上实践所提出的技术，以及针对中学生、女高中生和本科生设计的各种网络安全外展活动。

Internet of Things (IoT) is a heterogeneous system comprising interrelated smart-objects, sensors and actuators. IoT systems are expected to ultimately usher significant advances in critical domains such as transportation, energy, and healthcare. Due to IoTs' pervasiveness and impact on the cyber-physical world, it is a vital requirement to guarantee their security. In particular, authentication is one of the most fundamental security services required for any viable IoT, since it is necessary to establish trust and secure the communication among parties in a network. However, despite their merits, the vast majority of existing authentication techniques may not fully meet the needs of IoTs, especially when such systems involve heterogeneous IoTs with resource-limited devices or, must meet real-time requirements for safety reasons (e.g., delay-sensitive networks). Hence, there is a critical need for developing authentication techniques, which are lightweight, fast and scalable for heterogeneous and delay-sensitive IoTs. The objective of this project is to establish an integrated program of research and education to develop practical cryptographic techniques towards the creation of secure IoTs, as well as to develop academic course materials and outreach activities for the education and broad dissemination of the proposed techniques. The successful completion of this project is expected to provide new opportunities to significantly enhance the trustworthiness of IoTs by enabling practical authentication techniques, thereby greatly contributing towards a broad adaptation of IoT.The research activities in this project will be focused on the creation of a suite of lightweight and low-latency digital signatures. Expected outcomes include: (1) A new suite of highly lightweight digital signatures for resource-limited and heterogeneous IoTs. (2) A new series of high-performance, compromise-resilient and compact digital signatures. (3) A new suite of low-latency digital signatures for delay-sensitive IoTs. (4) A comprehensive formal security analysis, optimization and hardware-acceleration of the proposed techniques. (5) A new IoT testbed that will be used for the evaluation, improvement and education of the proposed techniques. (6) An industrial secure IoT research platform and open-source cryptographic framework, in which the proposed techniques will be deployed and improved on real-life IoT systems in collaboration with research laboratories. The educational objective is to design, implement and evaluate educational modules and outreach activities to educate students at various levels (i.e., high-school, undergraduate and graduate) in the field of cyber-security for IoT. This will be achieved via newly introduced course modules that focus on hands-on experience of the proposed techniques on real-life IoT platforms, and with various cyber-security outreach activities designed to target middle-school and female high-school and undergraduate students.