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。预计物联网系统最终将在交通、能源和医疗等关键领域取得重大进展。由于物联网的普及性和对网络物理世界的影响，保证其安全是至关重要的要求。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，因为它需要建立信任并确保网络各方之间的通信安全。然而，尽管有其优点，但绝大多数现有的认证技术可能不能完全满足物联网的需求，特别是当这种系统涉及具有资源有限设备的异构物联网，或者出于安全原因必须满足实时要求时(例如，对延迟敏感的网络)。因此，迫切需要开发轻量级、快速和可扩展的认证技术，用于异构物联网和延迟敏感物联网。该项目的目标是建立一个研究和教育的综合方案，以开发实用的密码技术，以创建安全的物联网，并为教育和广泛传播拟议的技术而开发学术课程材料和外联活动。该项目的成功完成预计将提供新的机会，通过启用实用的认证技术来显著提高物联网的可信度，从而极大地促进物联网的广泛适应。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。预期成果包括：(1)一套新的高度轻量级的数字签名，适用于资源有限和不同种类的物联网。(2)一系列新的高性能、抗攻击、紧凑的数字签名方案。(3)针对延迟敏感物联网的一套新的低延迟数字签名。(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)一个新的物联网试验台，将用于评估、改进和教育拟议的技术。(6)工业安全的物联网研究平台和开源密码框架，其中所提出的技术将与研究实验室合作部署和改进在现实生活中的物联网系统上。教育目标是设计、实施和评估教育模块和推广活动，以在物联网网络安全领域对各级学生(即高中、本科生和研究生)进行教育。这将通过新推出的课程模块来实现，这些模块侧重于在现实生活中的物联网平台上实践所提议的技术，并通过针对初中生、女高中生和本科生设计的各种网络安全外联活动来实现。

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.