Biblio

Filters: Author is Du, Xin  [Clear All Filters]
2023-06-22
Barlas, Efe, Du, Xin, Davis, James C..  2022.  Exploiting Input Sanitization for Regex Denial of Service. 2022 IEEE/ACM 44th International Conference on Software Engineering (ICSE). :883–895.
Web services use server-side input sanitization to guard against harmful input. Some web services publish their sanitization logic to make their client interface more usable, e.g., allowing clients to debug invalid requests locally. However, this usability practice poses a security risk. Specifically, services may share the regexes they use to sanitize input strings - and regex-based denial of service (ReDoS) is an emerging threat. Although prominent service outages caused by ReDoS have spurred interest in this topic, we know little about the degree to which live web services are vulnerable to ReDoS. In this paper, we conduct the first black-box study measuring the extent of ReDoS vulnerabilities in live web services. We apply the Consistent Sanitization Assumption: that client-side sanitization logic, including regexes, is consistent with the sanitization logic on the server-side. We identify a service's regex-based input sanitization in its HTML forms or its API, find vulnerable regexes among these regexes, craft ReDoS probes, and pinpoint vulnerabilities. We analyzed the HTML forms of 1,000 services and the APIs of 475 services. Of these, 355 services publish regexes; 17 services publish unsafe regexes; and 6 services are vulnerable to ReDoS through their APIs (6 domains; 15 subdomains). Both Microsoft and Amazon Web Services patched their web services as a result of our disclosure. Since these vulnerabilities were from API specifications, not HTML forms, we proposed a ReDoS defense for a popular API validation library, and our patch has been merged. To summarize: in client-visible sanitization logic, some web services advertise Re-DoS vulnerabilities in plain sight. Our results motivate short-term patches and long-term fundamental solutions. “Make measurable what cannot be measured.” -Galileo Galilei
ISSN: 1558-1225
2022-05-05
Wang, Qibing, Du, Xin, Zhang, Kai, Pan, Junjun, Yu, Weiguo, Gao, Xiaoquan, Lin, Rihong.  2021.  Reliability Test Method of Power Grid Security Control System Based on BP Neural Network and Dynamic Group Simulation. 2021 IEEE/IAS Industrial and Commercial Power System Asia (I CPS Asia). :680—685.

Aiming at the problems of imperfect dynamic verification of power grid security and stability control strategy and high test cost, a reliability test method of power grid security control system based on BP neural network and dynamic group simulation is proposed. Firstly, the fault simulation results of real-time digital simulation system (RTDS) software are taken as the data source, and the dynamic test data are obtained with the help of the existing dispatching data network, wireless virtual private network, global positioning system and other communication resources; Secondly, the important test items are selected through the minimum redundancy maximum correlation algorithm, and the test items are used to form a feature set, and then the BP neural network model is used to predict the test results. Finally, the dynamic remote test platform is tested by the dynamic whole group simulation of the security and stability control system. Compared with the traditional test methods, the proposed method reduces the test cost by more than 50%. Experimental results show that the proposed method can effectively complete the reliability test of power grid security control system based on dynamic group simulation, and reduce the test cost.

2021-09-16
Du, Xin, Tang, Songtao, Lu, Zhihui, Wet, Jie, Gai, Keke, Hung, Patrick C.K..  2020.  A Novel Data Placement Strategy for Data-Sharing Scientific Workflows in Heterogeneous Edge-Cloud Computing Environments. 2020 IEEE International Conference on Web Services (ICWS). :498–507.
The deployment of datasets in the heterogeneous edge-cloud computing paradigm has received increasing attention in state-of-the-art research. However, due to their large sizes and the existence of private scientific datasets, finding an optimal data placement strategy that can minimize data transmission as well as improve performance, remains a persistent problem. In this study, the advantages of both edge and cloud computing are combined to construct a data placement model that works for multiple scientific workflows. Apparently, the most difficult research challenge is to provide a data placement strategy to consider shared datasets, both within individual and among multiple workflows, across various geographically distributed environments. According to the constructed model, not only the storage capacity of edge micro-datacenters, but also the data transfer between multiple clouds across regions must be considered. To address this issue, we considered the characteristics of this model and identified the factors that are causing the transmission delay. The authors propose using a discrete particle swarm optimization algorithm with differential evolution (DE-DPSO) to distribute dataset during workflow execution. Based on this, a new data placement strategy named DE-DPSO-DPS is proposed. DE-DPSO-DPS is evaluated using several experiments designed in simulated heterogeneous edge-cloud computing environments. The results demonstrate that our data placement strategy can effectively reduce the data transmission time and achieve superior performance as compared to traditional strategies for data-sharing scientific workflows.