Open AccessCryptanalysis and improvement of an elliptic curve based signcryption scheme for firewalls
Author(s) -
Malik Zia,
Rashid Ali
Publication year - 2018
Publication title -
plos one
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.99
H-Index - 332
ISSN - 1932-6203
DOI - 10.1371/journal.pone.0208857
Subject(s) - signcryption , firewall (physics) , computer science , communication source , cryptanalysis , computer security , computer network , internet security , network security , security analysis , stateful firewall , application firewall , scheme (mathematics) , cryptography , public key cryptography , information security , mathematics , encryption , physics , entropy (arrow of time) , security service , network packet , mathematical analysis , extremal black hole , quantum mechanics , charged black hole
In network security, firewall is a security system that observes and controls the network traffic based on some predefined rules. A firewall sets up a barrier between internal network and another outside unsecured network, such as the Internet. A number of signcryption schemes for firewall are proposed over the years, many of them are proved to have security flaws. In this paper, an elliptic curve based signcryption scheme for firewalls is analyzed. It is observed that the scheme is not secure and has many security flaws. Anyone who knows the public parameters, can modify the message without the knowledge of sender and receiver. The claimed security attributes of non-repudiation, unforgeability, integrity and authentication are compromised. After successful cryptanalysis of this scheme, we proposed a modified version of the scheme.