Mohammad Reza Aref

Mohammad Ali Jamshidi, Hadi Veisi, Mohammad Mahdi Mojahedian et al.

Inference centers need more data to have a more comprehensive and beneficial learning model, and for this purpose, they need to collect data from data providers. On the other hand, data providers are cautious about delivering their datasets to inference centers in terms of privacy considerations. In this paper, by modifying the structure of the autoencoder, we present a method that manages the utility-privacy trade-off well. To be more precise, the data is first compressed using the encoder, then confidential and non-confidential features are separated and uncorrelated using the classifier. The confidential feature is appropriately combined with noise, and the non-confidential feature is enhanced, and at the end, data with the original data format is produced by the decoder. The proposed architecture also allows data providers to set the level of privacy required for confidential features. The proposed method has been examined for both image and categorical databases, and the results show a significant performance improvement compared to previous methods.

Mohammad Reza Rahmani, Mohammad Hossein Yassaee, Mohammad Reza Aref

Estimating high-dimensional covariance matrices is a key task across many fields. This paper explores the theoretical limits of distributed covariance estimation in a feature-split setting, where communication between agents is constrained. Specifically, we study a scenario in which multiple agents each observe different components of i.i.d. samples drawn from a sub-Gaussian random vector. A central server seeks to estimate the complete covariance matrix using a limited number of bits communicated by each agent. We obtain a nearly tight minimax lower bound for covariance matrix estimation under operator norm and Frobenius norm. Our main technical tool is a novel generalization of the strong data processing inequality (SDPI), termed the Conditional Strong Data Processing Inequality (C-SDPI) coefficient, introduced in this work. The C-SDPI coefficient shares key properties such as tensorization with the conventional SDPI. Crucially, it quantifies the average contraction in a state-dependent channel and can be significantly lower than the worst-case SDPI coefficient over the state input. Utilizing the doubling trick of Geng-Nair and an operator Jensen inequality, we compute this coefficient for Gaussian mixture channels. We then employ it to establish minimax lower bounds on estimation error, capturing the trade-offs among sample size, communication cost, and data dimensionality. Building on this, we present a nearly optimal estimation protocol whose sample and communication requirements match the lower bounds up to logarithmic factors. Unlike much of the existing literature, our framework does not assume infinite samples or Gaussian distributions, making it broadly applicable. Finally, we extend our analysis to interactive protocols, showing interaction can significantly reduce communication requirements compared to non-interactive schemes.

Sajad Meisami, Mohammad Beheshti-Atashgah, Mohammad Reza Aref

With the advent of the Internet of Things (IoT), e-health has become one of the main topics of research. Due to the sensitivity of patient information, patient privacy seems challenging. Nowadays, patient data is usually stored in the cloud in healthcare programs, making it difficult for users to have enough control over their data. The recent increment in announced cases of security and surveillance breaches compromising patients' privacy call into question the conventional model, in which third-parties gather and control immense amounts of patients' Healthcare data. In this work, we try to resolve the issues mentioned above by using blockchain technology. We propose a blockchain-based protocol suitable for e-health applications that does not require trust in a third party and provides an efficient privacy-preserving access control mechanism. Transactions in our proposed system, unlike Bitcoin, are not entirely financial, and we do not use conventional methods for consensus operations in blockchain like Proof of Work (PoW). It is not suitable for IoT applications because IoT devices have resources-constraints. Usage of appropriate consensus method helps us to increase network security and efficiency, as well as reducing network cost, i.e., bandwidth and processor usage. Finally, we provide security and privacy analysis of our proposed protocol.

Mostafa Chegenizadeh, Mohammad Ali, Javad Mohajeri et al.

Attribute-based encryption (ABE) is a promising cryptographic mechanism for providing confidentiality and fine-grained access control in the cloud-based area. However, due to high computational overhead, common ABE schemes are not suitable for resource-constrained devices. Moreover, data owners should be able to update their defined access policies efficiently, and in some cases, applying hidden access policies is required to preserve the privacy of clients and data. In this paper, we propose a ciphertext-policy attribute-based access control scheme which for the first time provides online/offline encryption, hidden access policy, and access policy update simultaneously. In our scheme, resource-constrained devices are equipped with online/offline encryption reducing the encryption overhead significantly. Furthermore, attributes of access policies are hidden such that the attribute sets satisfying an access policy cannot be guessed by other parties. Moreover, data owners can update their defined access policies while outsourcing a major part of the updating process to the cloud service provider. In particular, we introduce blind access policies that enable the cloud service provider to update the data owners' access policies without receiving a new re-encryption key. Besides, our scheme supports fast decryption such that the decryption algorithm consists of a constant number of bilinear pairing operations. The proposed scheme is proven to be secure in the random oracle model and under the hardness of Decisional Bilinear Diffie-Hellman (DBDH) and Decision Linear (D-Linear) assumptions. Also, performance analysis results demonstrate that the proposed scheme is efficient and practical.

Seyed Reza Hoseini Najarkolaei, Mohammad Ali Maddah-Ali, Mohammad Reza Aref

In this work, we consider the problem of secure multi-party computation (MPC), consisting of $Γ$ sources, each has access to a large private matrix, $N$ processing nodes or workers, and one data collector or master. The master is interested in the result of a polynomial function of the input matrices. Each source sends a randomized functions of its matrix, called as its share, to each worker. The workers process their shares in interaction with each other, and send some results to the master such that it can derive the final result. There are several constraints: (1) each worker can store a function of each input matrix, with the size of $\frac{1}{m}$ fraction of that input matrix, (2) up to $t$ of the workers, for some integer $t$, are adversary and may collude to gain information about the private inputs or can do malicious actions to make the final result incorrect. The objective is to design an MPC scheme with the minimum number the workers, called the recovery threshold, such that the final result is correct, workers learn no information about the input matrices, and the master learns nothing beyond the final result. In this paper, we propose an MPC scheme that achieves the recovery threshold of $3t+2m-1$ workers, which is order-wise less than the recovery threshold of the conventional methods. The challenge in dealing with this set up is that when nodes interact with each other, the malicious messages that adversarial nodes generate propagate through the system, and can mislead the honest nodes. To deal with this challenge, we design some subroutines that can detect erroneous messages, and correct or drop them.

Reza Hooshmand, Masoumeh Koochak Shooshtari, Mohammad Reza Aref

Polar codes are novel and efficient error correcting codes with low encoding and decoding complexities. These codes have a channel dependent generator matrix which is determined by the code dimension, code length and transmission channel parameters. This paper studies a variant of the McEliece public key cryptosystem based on polar codes, called "PKC-PC". Due to the fact that the structure of polar codes' generator matrix depends on the parameters of channel, we used an efficient approach to conceal their generator matrix. Then, by the help of the characteristics of polar codes and also introducing an efficient approach, we reduced the public and private key sizes of the PKC-PC and increased its information rate compared to the McEliece cryptosystem. It was shown that polar codes are able to yield an increased security level against conventional attacks and possible vulnerabilities on the code-based public key cryptosystems. Moreover, it is indicated that the security of the PKC-PC is reduced to solve NP-complete problems. Compared to other post-quantum public key schemes, we believe that the PKC-PC is a promising candidate for NIST post-quantum crypto standardization.

Hamzeh Ghasemzadeh, Ali Payandeh, Mohammad Reza Aref

Due to hostile environment and wireless communication channel, security mechanisms are essential for wireless sensor networks (WSNs). Existence of a pair of shared key is a prerequisite for many of these security mechanisms; a task that key management system addresses. Recently, an energy efficient method based on public key cryptography (PKC) was proposed. We analyze this protocol and show that it is vulnerable to denial of service (DOS) attacks and adversary can exhaust memory and battery of nodes. Then, we analyze this protocol and show that using a more knowledgeable BS this vulnerability can be solved very efficiently. Based on this observation we propose a modified version of the protocol that achieves immediate authentication and can prevent DOS attacks. We show that the improved protocol achieves immediate authentication at the expense of 1.82 mj extra energy consumption while retaining other desirable characteristics of the basic method.

Nematollah Zarmehi, Mohammad Reza Aref

This paper investigates the multiplicative spread spectrum watermarking method for the image. The information bit is spreaded into middle-frequency Discrete Cosine Transform (DCT) coefficients of each block of an image using a generated pseudo-random sequence. Unlike the conventional signal modeling, we suppose that both signal and noise are distributed with Laplacian distribution because the sample loss of digital media can be better modeled with this distribution than the Gaussian one. We derive the optimum decoder for the proposed embedding method thanks to the maximum likelihood decoding scheme. We also analyze our watermarking system in the presence of noise and provide analytical evaluations and several simulations. The results show that it has the suitable performance and transparency required for watermarking applications.

Hamzeh Ghasemzadeh, Ali Payandeh, Mohammad Reza Aref

Security is a critical and vital task in wireless sensor networks, therefore different key management systems have been proposed, many of which are based on symmetric cryptography. Such systems are very energy efficient, but they lack some other desirable characteristics. On the other hand, systems based on public key cryptography have those desirable characteristics, but they consume more energy. Recently based on authenticated messages from base station a new PKC based key agreement protocol was proposed. We show this method is susceptible to a form of denial of service attack where resources of the network can be exhausted with bogus messages. Then, we propose two different improvements to solve this vulnerability. Simulation results show that these new protocols retain desirable characteristics of the basic method and solve its deficiencies.

Amir Hossein Hadavi, Narges Kazempour, Mahtab Mirmohseni et al.

In this paper, an extended large wireless network under the secrecy constraint is considered. In contrast to works which use idealized assumptions, a more realistic network situation with unknown eavesdroppers locations is investigated: the legitimate users only know their own Channel State Information (CSI), not the eavesdroppers CSI. Also, the network is analyzed by taking in to account the effects of both fading and path loss. Under these assumptions, a power efficient cooperative scheme, named \emph{stochastic virtual beamforming}, is proposed. Applying this scheme, an unbounded secure rate with any desired outage level is achieved, provided that the density of the legitimate users tends to infinity. In addition, by tending the legitimate users density to the infinity, the tolerable density of eavesdroppers will become unbounded too.

Reza Hooshmand, Masoumeh Koochak Shooshtari, Mohammad Reza Aref

This paper proposes an efficient secret key cryptosystem based on polar codes over Binary Erasure Channel. We introduce a method, for the first time to our knowledge, to hide the generator matrix of the polar codes from an attacker. In fact, our main goal is to achieve secure and reliable communication using finite-length polar codes. The proposed cryptosystem has a significant security advantage against chosen plaintext attacks in comparison with the Rao-Nam cryptosystem. Also, the key length is decreased after applying a new compression algorithm. Moreover, this scheme benefits from high code rate and proper error performance for reliable communication.

Mohsen Bahrami, Ali Bereyhi, Sadaf Salehkalaibar et al.

In this paper, we consider the problem of secret key agreement in state-dependent 3-receiver broadcast channels. In the proposed model, there are two legitimate receivers, an eavesdropper and a transmitter where the channel state information is non-causally available at the transmitter. We consider two setups. In the first setup, the transmitter tries to agree on a common key with the legitimate receivers while keeping it concealed from the eavesdropper. Simultaneously, the transmitter agrees on a private key with each of the legitimate receivers that needs to be kept secret from the other legitimate receiver and the eavesdropper. For this setup, we derive inner and outer bounds on the secret key capacity region. In the second setup, we assume that a backward public channel is available among the receivers and the transmitter. Each legitimate receiver wishes to share a private key with the transmitter. For this setup, an inner bound on the private key capacity region is found. Furthermore, the capacity region of the secret key in the state-dependent wiretap channel can be deduced from our inner and outer bounds.

Mohsen Bahrami, Ali Bereyhi, Mahtab Mirmohseni et al.

In this paper, the problem of secret key agreement in state-dependent multiple access channels with an eavesdropper is studied. For this model, the channel state information is non-causally available at the transmitters; furthermore, a legitimate receiver observes a degraded version of the channel state information. The transmitters can partially cooperate with each other using a conferencing link with a limited rate. In addition, a backward public channel is assumed between the terminals. The problem of secret key sharing consists of two rounds. In the first round, the transmitters wish to share a common key with the legitimate receiver. Lower and upper bounds on the common key capacity are established. In a special case, the capacity of the common key is obtained. In the second round, the legitimate receiver agrees on two independent private keys with the corresponding transmitters using the public channel. Inner and outer bounds on the private key capacity region are characterized. In a special case, the inner bound coincides with the outer bound. We provide some examples to illustrate our results.