Abstract:
Military operations heavily depend on wireless radio communication, which is valued for its mobility, resilience, interoperability, and security advantages. In military wireless communications, Perfect Forward Secrecy (PFS) is crucial, as PFS prevents the decryption of future messages even with compromised keys. PFS acts as an additional security layer through protecting sensitive military information from unauthorized accesses, and prevent- ing retroactive decryption of intercepted communications, thereby maintaining confidentiality and safeguarding operational integrity. The adoption of PFS enhances the security of mil- itary wireless communication systems, minimizing the risks of information compromise and providing a strategic advantage in the ever-changing threat landscape.
In this study, we presented a new approach, accompanied by a hardware experiment, that eliminated the necessity of key exchange during data transmission. Here, we first efficiently transformed analog wireless waves into digital signals and then applied encryption using customized algorithms to ensure PFS. To support our investigation, we developed the necessary software to enhance the hardware’s operational efficiency for achieving the objective of ensuring PFS. The outcome of this research can benefit organizations utilizing legacy wireless radio equipment, handling sensitive data, and seeking advanced communication security. Our study also empowered aging analog wireless transmitters to convert, encrypt, and transmit data using a distinctive encryption technique, preventing the obsolescence of old devices and reducing costs.
In this study, we introduced a biometric authentication method that employed finger- print matching in a wireless communication system. This process utilized a pre-established database containing information from authorized users’ fingerprints, combined with system time and preset organizational knowledge (organizational secret), to generate a unique en- cryption key for every data transfer session. Notably, our approach ensured that keys, whether private or public, were not exchanged during data transfer sessions. Rather, each commu- nicating party independently computed its own key for each session, ensuring genuine ran- domness and thereby providing PFS. This methodology enhanced security by eliminating key exchange related vulnerabilities, making it a robust solution for safeguarding data in wireless communication scenarios by ensuring PFS.