Biblio

Connected devices are being deployed at a steady rate, providing services like data collection. Pervasive applications rely on those edge devices to seamlessly provide services to users. To connect applications and edge devices, using a middleware has been a popular approach. The research is active on the subject as there are many open challenges. The secure management of the edge devices and the security of the middleware are two of them. As security is a crucial requirement for pervasive environment, we propose a middleware architecture easing the secure use of edge devices for pervasive applications, while supporting the heterogeneity of communication protocols and the dynamism of devices. Because of the heterogeneity in protocols and security features, not all edge devices are equally secure. To allow the pervasive applications to gain control over this heterogeneous security, we propose a model to describe edge devices security. This model is accessible by the applications through our middleware. To validate our work, we developed a demonstrator of our middleware and we tested it in a concrete scenario.

The analysis shows how important Power Network Measuring and Characterization (PSMC) is to the plan. Networks planning and oversight for the transmission of electrical energy is becoming increasingly frequent. In reaction to the current contest of assimilating trying to cut charging in the crate, estimation, information sharing, but rather govern into PSMC reasonable quantities, Electrical Transmit Monitoring and Management provides a thorough outline of founding principles together with smart sensors for domestic spying, security precautions, and control of developed broadening power systems.Electricity supply control must depend increasingly heavily on telecommunications infrastructure to manage and run their processes because of the fluctuation in transmission and distribution of electricity. A wider attack surface will also be available to threat hackers as a result of the more communications. Large-scale blackout have occurred in the past as a consequence of cyberattacks on electrical networks. In order to pinpoint the key issues influencing power grid computer networks, we looked at the network infrastructure supporting electricity grids in this research.

Open set recognition (OSR) problem has been a challenge in many machine learning (ML) applications, such as security. As new/unknown malware families occur regularly, it is difficult to exhaust samples that cover all the classes for the training process in ML systems. An advanced malware classification system should classify the known classes correctly while sensitive to the unknown class. In this paper, we introduce a self-supervised pre-training approach for the OSR problem in malware classification. We propose two transformations for the function call graph (FCG) based malware representations to facilitate the pretext task. Also, we present a statistical thresholding approach to find the optimal threshold for the unknown class. Moreover, the experiment results indicate that our proposed pre-training process can improve different performances of different downstream loss functions for the OSR problem.

At present, the black-start mode of the large power grid is mostly limited to relying on the black-start power supply inside the system, or only to the recovery mode that regards the transmission power of tie lines between systems as the black-start power supply. The starting power supply involved in the situation of the large power outage is incomplete and it is difficult to give full play to the respective advantages of internal and external power sources. In this paper, a method of coordinated black-start of large power grid internal and external power sources is proposed by combining the two modes. Firstly, the black-start capability evaluation system is built to screen out the internal black-start power supply, and the external black-start power supply is determined by analyzing the connection relationship between the systems. Then, based on the specific implementation principles, the black-start power supply coordination strategy is formulated by using the Dijkstra shortest path algorithm. Based on the condensation idea, the black-start zoning and path optimization method applicable to this strategy is proposed. Finally, the black-start security verification and corresponding control measures are adopted to obtain a scheme of black-start cooperation between internal and external power sources in the large power grid. The above method is applied in a real large power grid and compared with the conventional restoration strategy to verify the feasibility and efficiency of this method.

Artificial intelligence creation comes into fashion and has brought unprecedented challenges to intellectual property law. In order to study the viewpoints of AI creation copyright ownership from professionals in different institutions, taking the papers of AI creation on CNKI from 2016 to 2021, we applied orthogonal design and analysis of variance method to construct the dataset. A kernel-SVM classifier with different kernel methods in addition to some shallow machine learning classifiers are selected in analyzing and predicting the copyright ownership of AI creation. Support vector machine (svm) is widely used in statistics and the performance of SVM method is closely related to the choice of the kernel function. SVM with RBF kernel surpasses the other seven kernel-SVM classifiers and five shallow classifier, although the accuracy provided by all of them was not satisfactory. Various performance metrics such as accuracy, F1-score are used to evaluate the performance of KSVM and other classifiers. The purpose of this study is to explore the overall viewpoints of AI creation copyright ownership, investigate the influence of different features on the final copyright ownership and predict the most likely viewpoint in the future. And it will encourage investors, researchers and promote intellectual property protection in China.

In the field of airport passenger security, a new type of security inspection equipment called intelligent passenger security equipment is applied widely, which can significantly improve the efficiency of airport security screening and passenger satisfaction. This paper establishes a security check channel model based on intelligent passenger security check equipment, and studies the factors affecting the efficiency of airport security screening, such as the number of baggage unloading points, baggage loading points, secondary inspection points, etc. A simulation model of security check channel is established based on data from existing intelligent passenger security check equipment and data collected from Beijing Daxing Airport. Equipment utilization and queue length data is obtained by running the simulation model. According to the data, the bottleneck is that the manual inspection process takes too long, and the utilization rate of the baggage unloading point is too low. For the bottleneck link, an optimization scheme is proposed. With more manual check points and secondary inspection points and less baggage unloading points, the efficiency of airport security screening significantly increases by running simulation model. Based on the optimized model, the effect of baggage unloading point and baggage loading point on efficiency is further studied. The optimal parameter configuration scheme under the expected efficiency is obtained. This research can assist engineers to find appropriate equipment configuration quickly and instruct the airport to optimize the arrangement of security staff, which can effectively improve the efficiency of airport security screening and reduce the operating costs of airport.

Covert channels are data transmission methods that bypass the detection of security mechanisms and pose a serious threat to critical infrastructure. Meanwhile, it is also an effective way to ensure the secure transmission of private data. Therefore, research on covert channels helps us to quickly detect attacks and protect the security of data transmission. This paper proposes covert channels based on the timestamp of the Internet Control Message Protocol echo reply packet in the Linux system. By considering the concealment, we improve our proposed covert channels, ensuring that changing trends in the timestamp of modified consecutive packets are consistent with consecutive regular packets. Besides, we design an Iptables rule based on the current system time to analyze the performance of the proposed covert channels. Finally, it is shown through experiments that the channels complete the private data transmission in the industrial control network. Furthermore, the results demonstrate that the improved covert channels offer better performance in concealment, time cost, and the firewall test.

Securing cloud configurations is an elusive task, which is left up to system administrators who have to base their decisions on "trial and error" experimentations or by observing good practices (e.g., CIS Benchmarks). We propose a knowledge, AND/OR, graphs approach to model cloud deployment security objects and vulnerabilities. In this way, we can capture relationships between configurations, permissions (e.g., CAP\_SYS\_ADMIN), and security profiles (e.g., AppArmor and SecComp). Such an approach allows us to suggest alternative and safer configurations, support administrators in the study of what-if scenarios, and scale the analysis to large scale deployments. We present an initial validation and illustrate the approach with three real vulnerabilities from known sources.

Current intrusion detection techniques cannot keep up with the increasing amount and complexity of cyber attacks. In fact, most of the traffic is encrypted and does not allow to apply deep packet inspection approaches. In recent years, Machine Learning techniques have been proposed for post-mortem detection of network attacks, and many datasets have been shared by research groups and organizations for training and validation. Differently from the vast related literature, in this paper we propose an early classification approach conducted on CSE-CIC-IDS2018 dataset, which contains both benign and malicious traffic, for the detection of malicious attacks before they could damage an organization. To this aim, we investigated a different set of features, and the sensitivity of performance of five classification algorithms to the number of observed packets. Results show that ML approaches relying on ten packets provide satisfactory results.

Recently, a mechanism that randomly shuffles the data sent and allows securing the communication without the need to encrypt all the information has been proposed. This proposal is ideal for IoT systems with low computational capacity. In this work, we analyze the strength of this proposal from a brute-force attack approach to obtain the original message without knowledge of the applied disordering. It is demonstrated that for a set of 10x10 16-bit data, the processing time and the required memory are unfeasible with current technology. Therefore, it is safe.

Increasing connectivity and automation in vehicles leads to a greater potential attack surface. Such vulnerabilities within vehicles can also be used for auto-theft, increasing the potential for attackers to disable anti-theft mechanisms implemented by vehicle manufacturers. We utilize patterns derived from Controller Area Network (CAN) bus traffic to verify driver “behavior”, as a basis to prevent vehicle theft. Our proposed model uses semi-supervised learning that continuously profiles a driver, using features extracted from CAN bus traffic. We have selected 15 key features and obtained an accuracy of 99% using a dataset comprising a total of 51 features across 10 different drivers. We use a number of data analysis algorithms, such as J48, Random Forest, JRip and clustering, using 94K records. Our results show that J48 is the best performing algorithm in terms of training and testing (1.95 seconds and 0.44 seconds recorded, respectively). We also analyze the effect of using a sliding window on algorithm performance, altering the size of the window to identify the impact on prediction accuracy.

Vehicular networks are vulnerable to large scale attacks. Blockchain, implemented upon application layer, is recommended as one of the effective security and privacy solutions for vehicular networks. However, due to an increasing complexity of connected nodes, heterogeneous environment and rising threats, a robust security solution across multiple layers is required. Motivated by the Physical Layer Security (PLS) which utilizes physical layer characteristics such as channel fading to ensure reliable and confidential transmission, in this paper we analyze the impact of PLS on a blockchain-enabled vehicular network with two types of physical layer attacks, i.e., jamming and eavesdropping. Throughout the analysis, a Full Duplex Non-Orthogonal Multiple Access (FD-NOMA) based vehicle-to-everything (V2X) is considered to reduce interference caused by jamming and meet 5G communication requirements. Simulation results show enhanced goodput of a blockckchain enabled vehicular network integrated with PLS as compared to the same solution without PLS.

Due to the rise of the internet a business model known as online advertising has seen unprecedented success. However, it has also become a prime method through which criminals can scam people. Often times even legitimate websites contain advertisements that are linked to scam websites since they are not verified by the website’s owners. Scammers have become quite creative with their attacks, using various unorthodox and inconspicuous methods such as I-frames, Favicons, Proxy servers, Domains, etc. Many modern Anti-viruses are paid services and hence not a feasible option for most users in 3rd world countries. Often people don’t possess devices that have enough RAM to even run such software efficiently leaving them without any options. This project aims to create a Browser extension that will be able to distinguish between safe and unsafe websites by utilizing Machine Learning algorithms. This system is lightweight and free thus fulfilling the needs of most people looking for a cheap and reliable security solution and allowing people to surf the internet easily and safely. The system will scan all the intermittent URL clicks as well, not just the main website thus providing an even greater degree of security.

In recent years, blockchain technology has become one of the key technical innovation fields in the world. From the simple Bitcoin that can only be transferred at first to the blockchain application ecology that is now blooming, blockchain is gradually building a credible internet of value. However, with the continuous development and application of blockchain, even the blockchain based on cryptography is facing a series of network security problems and has caused great property losses to participants. Therefore, studying blockchain security and accelerating standardization of blockchain security have become the top priority to ensure the orderly and healthy development of blockchain technology. This paper briefly introduces the scope of blockchain security from the perspective of network security, sorts out some existing standards related to blockchain security, and gives some suggestions to promote the development and application of blockchain security standardization.

Operating systems have various components that produce artifacts. These artifacts are the outcome of a user’s interaction with an application or program and the operating system’s logging capabilities. Thus, these artifacts have great importance in digital forensics investigations. For example, these artifacts can be utilized in a court of law to prove the existence of compromising computer system behaviors. One such component of the Microsoft Windows operating system is Shellbag, which is an enticing source of digital evidence of high forensics interest. The presence of a Shellbag entry means a specific user has visited a particular folder and done some customizations such as accessing, sorting, resizing the window, etc. In this work, we forensically analyze Shellbag as we talk about its purpose, types, and specificity with the latest version of the Windows 11 operating system and uncover the registry hives that contain Shellbag customization information. We also conduct in-depth forensics examinations on Shellbag entries using three tools of three different types, i.e., open-source, freeware, and proprietary tools. Lastly, we compared the capabilities of tools utilized in Shellbag forensics investigations.

Safety-critical systems require resiliency against both cyberattacks and environmental faults. Researches have shown that microkernels can isolate components and limit the capabilities of would-be attackers by confining the attack in the component that it is initiated in. This limits the propagation of faults to sensitive components in the system. Nonetheless, the isolation mechanism in microkernels is not fully investigated for its resiliency against hardware faults. This paper investigates whether microkernels provide protection against hardware faults and, if so, to what extent quantitatively. This work is part of an effort in establishing an overlap between security and reliability with the goal of maximizing both while minimizing their impact on performance. In this work, transient faults are emulated on the seL4 microkernel and Linux kernel using debugger-induced bit flips across random timestamps in benchmark applications. Results show differences in the frequency and final outcome of fault to error manifestation in the seL4 environment compared to the Linux environment, including a reduction in silent data corruptions.

Fractional repetition (FR) codes are a special family of regenerating codes with the repair-by-transfer property. The constructions of FR codes are naturally related to combinatorial designs, graphs, and hypergraphs. Given the file size of an FR code, it is desirable to determine the minimum number of storage nodes needed. The problem is related to an extremal graph theory problem, which asks for the minimum number of vertices of an α-regular graph such that any subgraph with k vertices has at most δ edges. In this paper, we present a class of regular graphs for this problem to give the bounds for the minimum number of storage nodes for the FR codes.

In this paper, we investigate the conditions for the existence of dynamically undetectable attacks and perfectly undetectable attacks. Then we provide a quantitative measure on the security for discrete-time linear time-invariant (LTI) systems under both actuator and sensor attacks based on undetectability. Finally, the computation of proposed security index is reduced to a min-cut problem for the structured systems by graph theory. Numerical examples are provided to illustrate the theoretical results.

Microcontroller-based embedded systems have become ubiquitous with the emergence of IoT technology. Given its critical roles in many applications, its security is becoming increasingly important. Unfortunately, MCU devices are especially vulnerable. Code reuse attacks are particularly noteworthy since the memory address of firmware code is static. This work seeks to combat code reuse attacks, including ROP and more advanced JIT-ROP via continuous randomization. Previous proposals are geared towards full-fledged OSs with rich runtime environments, and therefore cannot be applied to MCUs. We propose the first solution for ARM-based MCUs. Our system, named HARM, comprises a secure runtime and a binary analysis tool with rewriting module. The secure runtime, protected inside the secure world, proactively triggers and performs non-bypassable randomization to the firmware running in a sandbox in the normal world. Our system does not rely on any firmware feature, and therefore is generally applicable to both bare-metal and RTOS-powered firmware. We have implemented a prototype on a development board. Our evaluation results indicate that HARM can effectively thaw code reuse attacks while keeping the performance and energy overhead low.

Worldwide, societies are rapidly becoming more connected, owing primarily to the growing number of intelligent things and smart applications (e.g, smart automobiles, smart wearable devices, etc.) These have occurred in tandem with the Internet Of Things, a new method of connecting the physical and virtual worlds. It is a new promising paradigm whereby every ‘thing’ can connect to anything via the Internet. However, with IoT systems being deployed even on large-scale, security concerns arise amongst other challenges. Hence the need to allocate appropriate protection of resources. The realization of secure IoT systems could only be accomplished with a comprehensive understanding of the particular needs of a specific system. How-ever, this paradigm lacks a proper and exhaustive classification of security requirements. This paper presents an approach towards understanding and classifying the security requirements of IoT devices. This effort is expected to play a role in designing cost-efficient and purposefully secured future IoT systems. During the coming up with and the classification of the requirements, We present a variety of set-ups and define possible attacks and threats within the scope of IoT. Considering the nature of IoT and security weaknesses as manifestations of unrealized security requirements, We put together possible attacks and threats in categories, assessed the existent IoT security requirements as seen in literature, added more in accordance with the applied domain of the IoT and then classified the security requirements. An IoT system can be secure, scalable, and flexible by following the proposed security requirement classification.

The ubiquitous nature of the Internet of Things (IoT) devices and their wide-scale deployment have remarkably attracted hackers to exploit weakly-configured and vulnerable devices, allowing them to form large IoT botnets and launch unprecedented attacks. Modeling the behavior of IoT botnets leads to a better understanding of their spreading mechanisms and the state of the network at different levels of the attack. In this paper, we propose a generic model to capture the behavior of IoT botnets. The proposed model uses Markov Chains to study the botnet behavior. Discrete Event System Specifications environment is used to simulate the proposed model.

We study semantic security for classical-quantum channels. Our security functions are functional forms of mosaics of combinatorial designs. We extend methods in [25] from classical channels to classical-quantum channels to demonstrate that mosaics of designs ensure semantic security for classical-quantum channels, and are also capacity achieving coding schemes. An advantage of these modular wiretap codes is that we provide explicit code constructions that can be implemented in practice for every channel, given an arbitrary public code.

A new framework is presented in this paper for proving coding theorems for linear codes, where the systematic bits and the corresponding parity-check bits play different roles. Precisely, the noisy systematic bits are used to limit the list size of typical codewords, while the noisy parity-check bits are used to select from the list the maximum likelihood codeword. This new framework for linear codes allows that the systematic bits and the parity-check bits are transmitted in different ways and over different channels. In particular, this new framework unifies the source coding theorems and the channel coding theorems. With this framework, we prove that the Bernoulli generator matrix codes (BGMCs) are capacity-achieving over binary-input output symmetric (BIOS) channels and also entropy-achieving for Bernoulli sources.

Security attacks on sensor data can deceive a control system and force the physical plant to reach an unwanted and potentially dangerous state. Therefore, attack detection mechanisms are employed in cyber-physical control systems to detect ongoing attacks, the most prominent one being a threshold-based anomaly detection method called CUSUM. Literature defines the maximum impact of stealth attacks as the maximum deviation in the plant’s state that an undetectable attack can introduce, and formulates it as an optimization problem. This paper proposes an optimization-based attack with different saturation models, and it investigates how the attack duration significantly affects the impact of the attack on the state of the plant. We show that more dangerous attacks can be discovered when allowing saturation of the control system actuators. The proposed approach is compared with the geometric attack, showing how longer attack durations can lead to a greater impact of the attack while keeping the attack stealthy.

Mobile devices are an inseparable part of our lives. They have made it possible to access all the information and services anywhere at any time. Almost all of the organizations try to provide a mobile device-based solution to its users. However, this convenience has arisen the risk of losing personal information and has increased the threat to security. It has been observed recently that some of the mobile device manufacturers and mobile apps developers have lost the private information of their users to hackers. It has risen a great concern among mobile device users about their personal information. Android and iOS are the major operating systems for mobile devices and share over 99% of the mobile device market. This research aims to conduct a comparative analysis of the security of the components in the Android and iOS operating systems. It analyses the security from several perspectives such as memory randomization, application sandboxing, isolation, encryption, built-in antivirus, and data storage. From the analysis, it is evident that iOS is more secure than Android operating system. However, this security comes with a cost of losing the freedom.