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Elliptic Curve Cryptography Based Security Framework for Internet of Things

(IoT) Enabled Smart Card

Conference Paper · February 2017

DOI: 10.1109/WCCCT.2016.20

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 World
2016Congress
World Congress
on Computing
on Computing
and Communication
and Communication
Technologies
Technologies
(WCCCT)

Elliptic Curve Cryptography based Security Framework for Internet of Things

(IoT) Enabled Smart Card

T. Daisy Premila Bai, K. Michael Raj, S. Albert Rabara

Department of Computer Science
St. Joseph’s College
Tiruchirapalli, India
[email protected], [email protected], [email protected]

Abstract—Smart cards are adopted by people worldwide for domains. The various security requirements are mutual
different applications and they are only intra domain oriented authentication, confidentiality, integrity and non-
due to security concerns. The literature study reveals that repudiation. To enhance the security requirements of the IoT
research has been carried out all over the world to strengthen enabled Smart Card, Elliptic Curve Cryptography (ECC) is
the security requirements of the smart cards. But there is no adopted, recommended by NIST [6].
research proposal to report that one smart card to support all Elliptic curve cryptography is like RSA public key
application domains invariably. Hence, in this paper a novel cryptography. The security strength of ECC depends on the
Elliptic Curve Cryptography (ECC) based security framework
difficulty of Elliptic Curve Discrete Logarithm Problem
for Internet of Things (IoT) enabled Smart Card is proposed.
(ECDLP) [7]. ECC adopts scalar multiplication, which
This is a secured and novel one for the public to access
diversified smart applications with one Smart Card at
includes point doubling and adding operation which is
anywhere and anytime. The security analysis ensures that ECC computationally more efficient than RSA exponentiation.
provides strong security for Smart Card implementation. The complexity of ECC puts the attacker in difficulty to
understand the ECC and to break the security key. The
Keywords-internet of things; elliptic curve cryptography; security level given by RSA with 1024 bit key can be
security; integrity; confidentiality; smart card achieved with 160 bit key by ECC. It is well suited for
resource constraint devices like smart cards, mobile devices,
I. INTRODUCTION etc. [8]. Hence in this paper Elliptic Curve Cryptography
based security framework for IoT enabled Smart Card is
People around the world use Smart Cards for different proposed.
applications such as mobile communications, banking and This paper is organized as follows. Section II describes
financial services, passport, identity cards, transportation, the proposed work. Section III presents security analysis
health care services, education, remote working, etc [1]. and Section IV concludes the paper.
Different types of smart cards in use today are contact,
contactless, dual interface and hybrid cards. Contact Cards II. ELLIPTIC CURVE CRYPTOGRAPHY BASED SECURITY
are widely used for many applications currently. Contactless FRAMEWORK
Smart Card is a general purpose Internet of Things (IoT) The proposed ECC based security framework for IoT
enabled application device. enabled smart card involves ECC based encryption and
Internet of things is not a single technology, it is the decryption and digital signature creation and verification.
concept in which many of the new things are getting This section also briefs the IoT enabled smart card
networked and connected anytime, anyplace, with anything deployment environment where ECC is incorporated. The
and anyone ideally using any path or network and any various scenarios are as follows:
service in a heterogeneous environment [2].
European Research Cluster on the Internet of Things A. IoT enabled Smart Card
(IERC) states that “Internet of Things is a dynamic global IoT enabled Smart Card is designed as per the ISO/IEC
network infrastructure with self-configuring capabilities 14443/7816 standard [9]. This IoT enabled smart card is
based on standard and interoperable communication referred as User Adoptable Intelligent Smart Card (UAISC).
protocols where physical and virtual things have identities, It adopts Elliptic Curve Cryptography and facilitates to avail
physical attributes and virtual personalities and use secure smart services and applications distributed in cloud
intelligent interface and are seamlessly integrated into the environment and perform transactions anywhere, anytime in
information network”[3]. In a nutshell, IoT is characterized a smart environment over the Global Secure Management
by the real world of smart objects with limited storage and System (GSMS) with one twenty digit Unique Identification
processing power [4]. (UID) number per citizen with an end to end security
In this regard the research reveals that Contactless IoT through the IoT enabled intelligent systems [10]. The
enabled Smart Cards are very few in their design and still in scenario where UAISC is deployed in smart environment is
the infancy stage [5]. Security is one of the major concerns in presented in Fig.1.
implementing IoT enabled Smart Card to all application

978-1-5090-5573-9/17 $31.00 © 2017

978-1-5090-5573-9/16 2016 IEEE 43
DOI 10.1109/WCCCT.2016.20
 service. In this way, one UID for all applications and
transactions will be realized with the proposed framework.
ECC based security mechanisms are incorporated in this
framework to ensure the integrity of the information stored
on the UAISC, privacy of the UAISC holders and
confidentiality and authentication of the UAISC.
B. ECC based Encryption and Decryption
An Elliptic Curve E is described as y2=x3+ax+b. The
highest degree of this equation is 3. In order to perform
higher order encryption and decryption the equation should
satisfy the standards proposed by NIST. In the proposed
model ECC encrypts the plain text (M) into ciphertext (C)
and vice versa by using the finite set of points in the Elliptic
Curve over GF(p). The finite fields are usually called Galois
Fig. 1. UAISC in Smart Environment Fields and denoted as GF(pn ). When n=1, we have GF(p)
field. This field can be the set Zp, {0,1,2,3,…p-1}.
In this scenario, the service requester who wishes to The Elliptic Curve E: y2 = x3 + ax + b mod p is used to
access the services through the proposed system, registers at generate points. The Elliptic Curve domain parameters are p,
Global Secure Management System (GSMS) with the a, b, G, N, h, r where ‘p’ is a prime number, ‘a’ and ‘b’ are
required credentials such as name, date of birth and mobile coefficients, ‘G’ is a generator point, ‘N’ is the cryptographic
number along with users’ mobile device credentials. The prime factor, ‘h’ is the cofactor and ‘r’ is the random integer
Global Secure Management System (GSMS) verifies the less than ‘N’. According to NIST the prime p should be
user information, generates Unique Identification (UID) greater than 2160. Hence the equation is y2 = x3 + ax + b mod
number, creates Biometric Templates for the users, places p (p>2160). For illustration, the finite field Elliptic Curve with
them on the Smart Card along with the required information modulo 997 is chosen. The points on the Elliptic Curve are
and issues the Smart Card to the users. The service providers generated by selecting an Elliptic Curve with modulo p
who offer the services through the proposed system where p is assigned 997, ‘a’ is assigned (-3) which is very
registered themselves in the Global Secure Management much applicable and recommended by NIST for smart cards
System (GSMS) through the website by sending their and the resource constrained devices and ‘b’ is assigned ‘1’.
credentials such as Service Identification (SID) Number and Hence, the equation for generating point is y2 = x3 +(-3)x+1
Digital Certificate. mod 997. The Elliptic Curve domain parameters over GF(p)
The user enters the service portal with User Adaptable are validated and the chosen Elliptic Curve satisfies the
Intelligent Smart Card (UAISC). The Intelligent Smart following conditions to ensure higher security:
Reader (ISR) activates the Smart Card and performs mutual • 4a3 + 27b2  0 (mod p)
authentication. Then the Intelligent Smart Reader (ISR) reads • yG2= xG2 + axG + b (modp)
the Unique Identification (UID) number from the UAISC
and sends the UID to the Global Secure Management System • ‘N’ is a prime number
(GSMS) for validation through Smart Gateway. If UID is
valid, user is authenticated with biometric match on card • h”4
process at Smart Gateway. The ‘success message’ of user • NG=0
authentication is sent to the Security Gateway. When the user
is authenticated, Global Secure Management System To generate the points on the defined elliptic curve, ‘x’
(GSMS) sends the verification code to the registered mobile coordinate takes the value from 0 to (p-1) and ‘y’ is
device followed by the welcome message. The user calculated by introducing a variable ‘d’ which takes the
activates the ‘Mobile App’ by entering the verification code. value from 0 to (p+1)/2. To simplify the notation ‘S’ is
When the ‘Mobile App’ is activated, list of registered chosen in the place of ‘y2’. Temporary variable ‘T’ is
services are loaded on to the users’ mobile device. User can introduced which is equivalent to d2 mod p. When ‘T’
choose the respective service and make the service request. becomes equivalent to S, ‘y’ value is generated as y1 = d and
The service request is forwarded to the security gateway y2 = p-d. If ‘T’ is not equivalent to S for particular value of
through smart gateway and IPMPLS core. Security Gateway ‘x’ then it is considered that it does not have any
verifies the credentials of the user and the service providers corresponding ‘y’ coefficient. Hence there is no point on the
and forwards the service request to the corresponding service curve with the specified ‘x’. Then the ‘x’ value will be
provider in cloud platform. Security Gateway receives the incremented.
service response from the service provider and sends the The above steps are stated as
service response to the user’s mobile device in a secure S = x3 + ax + b mod p
manner followed by One Time Password (OTP) verification. T = d2 mod P
This process is applicable for all the services since the UIDs When T = S
of the registered users are linked with SIDs of the registered y1 = d and y2 = p-d

44
 When T  S, d will be incremented up to (p+1)/2
The points on the curve is (x,y1), (x,y2). When the points
are generated for the defined Elliptic Curve, the generator
point ‘G’ and ‘N’ which is the next largest prime for ‘p’ are
chosen. For the defined Elliptic Curve the chosen N is 979
and the generator point is (17,427). When N is multiplied by
the point generator ‘G’ it produces zero and is capable of
reproducing all the points generated with the defined curve.
The generated points over the proposed Elliptic Curve (Ep
(a, b)) are given in Fig. 2.
From the generated points, eighty points are randomly
chosen for character assignment and those points are used to
carry out the message encryption and decryption. The sample Fig. 2. Generated Points
assignment is given in Table 1. Then plain text (M) is
encoded into a point P(M) from the finite set of points a = (-3), b=3, Y2 = (-3)3+1 (mod 997)
generated in the elliptic curve Ep (a, b). When the points are G = (17,427), r = Random Number = 7
generated, selecting a generator point ‘G’ is the important Pr = Private Key = 11, Pu = Public Key = (706, 620)
factor, where G ‫ א‬Ep (a, b). The generator point and the Cipher Text (CT)
Ep(a, b) will be made public. In the proposed model, the CT= (r*G), T+ r*(G.Pr)
generator point is (17, 427). Sender and Receiver can select a = (542, 665), (960,832) = D, 2
private key (Pr) and calculate the public key Pu = Pr*G. The Cipher text for ‘Q” is ‘D’, ‘2’
simple method of ECC based encryption and decryption is The reverse process is adopted to decrypt the plain
given below. text.1st point of the cipher text is multiplied by the private
key i.e (‘a’ * ‘pr’). This answer will be added with the
TABLE I. CHARACTER ASSIGNMENT TO THE ELLIPTIC
CURVE POINTS inverse of the 2nd point. Hence, Plain Text (PT) is as
follows:
PT = b - (‘a’ * ‘pr’)
‘a’ * ‘pr’ = (542,665)*11 = (482,299)
b – (‘a’ * ‘pr’) = (960,832) – (482,299)
Adding the inverse we get
PT = (960,832) + (482,299) = (4,433) = ‘Q’
To do this cryptography point addition, point doubling
and point multiplication are employed. To make encryption
and decryption more feasible both sender and the receiver
should know and agree upon the table defined with the
chosen Elliptic Curve. It is rather difficult for any attacker to
break or hack the information during transaction since it
adopts Elliptic Curve Cryptography.
C. Mutual Authentication
To encrypt the message random integer ‘r’ is chosen. ‘r’ To initiate any communication IoT enabled Smart Card
is multiplied with the generator point ‘G’ which is the first should be mutually authenticated with the Intelligent Smart
point and then public key of the receiver is multiplied with Reader (ISR) to ensure its identity and authenticity. This
‘r’ and with the plain text which is the second point. Hence process involves ECC based encryption and decryption and
the encrypted message CT is [(r.G), (M+r. Pu)]. To decrypt digital signature creation and verification. This is depicted in
the message, multiply the first point of the ciphertext pair Fig.3. After mutual authentication, the authenticated
(r.G) with the private key (Pr). Add this result to the second messages are transmitted in an encrypted form for effective
point of the ciphertext pair. Hence the decrypted message PT and secure communication. It prevents an adversary to
is (M+r.Pu)-(Pr(r.G))=(M+r.PrG) - (Pr(r.G)). perform malicious activities and enhances confidentiality.
To do this cryptography point addition, point doubling
and point multiplication are employed. To make encryption III. SECURITY ANALYSIS
and decryption more feasible both sender and the receiver The Security Framework for UAISC involves mutual
should know and agree upon the table defined with the authentication and UAISC authentication. During mutual
chosen Elliptic Curve. It is rather difficult for any attacker to authentication, the communicating devices UAISC and the
break or hack the information during transaction since it Card Reader authenticate mutually to ensure that the UAISC
adopts Elliptic Curve Cryptography. The example for is an authenticated one. Since the information stored on the
encryption and decryption using ECC is presented. card encrypted and digitally signed using ECC privacy and
Pain text taken is “Q” = (4,433) integrity are achieved.
Y2 = X3-aX+b (mod 997)

45
 The values given in Table 2 and Fig. 4 prove that ECC
can provide same security level of RSA with shorter key
length and cost effectiveness. The advantage of ECC over
RSA is very obvious.
IV. CONCLUSION
The proposed Elliptic Curve Cryptography based
Security framework for IoT enabled smart card is a unique
one to avail any applications and any services anywhere,
anytime with an end to end security. Implementing this
security framework will help every citizen to have secure
access for any applications with one IoT enabled smart card
in a smart environment. This IoT enabled smart card can
connect people and enable secure automatic machine to
Fig. 3. Mutual Authentication machine communication. The message encryption and the
authentication ensure unique authentication, integrity,
confidentiality and privacy of the information and smart
A. Comparison of Public Key Cryptosystems card. The security analysis presented proves the efficiency of
The comparison of public key cryptosystems has been the Elliptic Curve Cryptography to be implemented for IoT
carried out with bouncy castle package. The performance of enabled Smart Card.
ECC depends on the efficient computation of scalar
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