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This article presents a novel network protocol that incorporates a quantum photonic channel for symmetric key distribution, a Dilithium signature to replace factor-based public key cryptography for enhanced authentication, security, and privacy. The protocol uses strong hash functions to hash original messages and verify heightened data integrity at the destination. This Quantum good authentication protocol (QGP) provides high-level security provided by the theory of quantum mechanics. QGP also has the advantage of quantum-resistant data protection that prevents current digital computer and future quantum computer attacks. QGP transforms the transmission control protocol/internet protocol (TCP/IP) by adding a quantum layer at the bottom of the Open Systems Interconnection (OSI) model (layer 0) and modifying the top layer (layer 7) with Dilithium signatures, thus improving the security of the original OSI model. In addition, QGP incorporates strong encryption, hardware-based quantum channels, post-quantum signatures, and secure hash algorithms over a platform of decryptors, switches, routers, and network controllers to form a testbed of the next-generation, secure quantum internet. The experiments presented here show that QGP provides secure authentication and improved security and privacy and can be adopted as a new protocol for the next-generation quantum internet.
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Fast and Post-Quantum Authentication for Real-time Next Generation Networks with Bloom Filter
Large-scale next-generation networked systems like smart grids and vehicular networks facilitate extensive automation and autonomy through real-time communication of sensitive messages. Digital signatures are vital for such applications since they offer scalable broadcast authentication with non-repudiation. Yet, even conventional secure signatures (e.g., ECDSA, RSA) introduce significant cryptographic delays that can disrupt the safety of such delay-aware systems. With the rise of quantum computers breaking conventional intractability problems, these traditional cryptosystems must be replaced with post-quantum (PQ) secure ones. However, PQ-secure signatures are significantly costlier than their conventional counterparts, vastly exacerbating delay hurdles for real-time applications. We propose a new signature called Time Valid Probabilistic Data Structure HORS (TVPD-HORS) that achieves significantly lower end-to-end delay with a tunable PQ-security for real-time applications. We harness special probabilistic data structures as an efficient one-way function at the heart of our novelty, thereby vastly fastening HORS as a primitive for NIST PQ cryptography standards. TVPD-HORS permits tunable and fast processing for varying input sizes via One-hash Bloom Filter, excelling in time-valid cases, wherein authentication with shorter security parameters is used for short-lived yet safety-critical messages. We show that TVPD-HORS verification is 2.7× and 5× faster than HORS in high-security and time-valid settings, respectively. TVPD-HORS key generation is also faster, with a similar signing speed to HORS. Moreover, TVPD-HORS can increase the speed of HORS variants over a magnitude of time. These features make TVPD-HORS an ideal primitive to raise high-speed time-valid versions of PQ-safe standards like XMSS and SPHINCS+, paving the way for real-time authentication of next-generation networks.
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- Award ID(s):
- 2350213
- PAR ID:
- 10593192
- Publisher / Repository:
- IEEE
- Date Published:
- ISBN:
- 979-8-3503-8674-5
- Page Range / eLocation ID:
- 381 to 388
- Subject(s) / Keyword(s):
- Internet of Things post-quantum security digital signature next-generation networks Bloom filter
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Location:
- Washington, DC, USA
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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- Free Publicly Accessible Full Text
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Accepted Manuscript1.0
- Conference Paper:
- https://doi.org/10.1109/TPS-ISA62245.2024.00050
