Biblio

Cyber-physical systems (CPS) consist of sensors, actuators, and controllers all communicating over a network; if any subset becomes compromised, an attacker could cause significant damage. With access to data logs and a model of the CPS, the physical effects of an attack could potentially be detected before any damage is done. Manually building a model that is accurate enough in practice, however, is extremely difficult. In this paper, we propose a novel approach for constructing models of CPS automatically, by applying supervised machine learning to data traces obtained after systematically seeding their software components with faults ("mutants"). We demonstrate the efficacy of this approach on the simulator of a real-world water purification plant, presenting a framework that automatically generates mutants, collects data traces, and learns an SVM-based model. Using cross-validation and statistical model checking, we show that the learnt model characterises an invariant physical property of the system. Furthermore, we demonstrate the usefulness of the invariant by subjecting the system to 55 network and code-modification attacks, and showing that it can detect 85% of them from the data logs generated at runtime.

The security level is very important in Bluetooth, because the network or devices using secure communication, are susceptible to many attacks against the transmitted data received through eavesdropping. The cryptosystem designers needs to know the complexity of the designed Bluetooth E0. And what the advantages given by any development performed on any known Bluetooth E0Encryption method. The most important criteria can be used in evaluation method is considered as an important aspect. This paper introduce a proposed fuzzy logic technique to evaluate the complexity of Bluetooth E0Encryption system by choosing two parameters, which are entropy and correlation rate, as inputs to proposed fuzzy logic based Evaluator, which can be applied with MATLAB system.

This paper presents a review on how to benefit from software-defined networking (SDN) to enhance smart grid security. For this purpose, the attacks threatening traditional smart grid systems are classified according to availability, integrity, and confidentiality, which are the main cyber-security objectives. The traditional smart grid architecture is redefined with SDN and a conceptual model for SDN-based smart grid systems is proposed. SDN based solutions to the mentioned security threats are also classified and evaluated. Our conclusions suggest that SDN helps to improve smart grid security by providing real-time monitoring, programmability, wide-area security management, fast recovery from failures, distributed security and smart decision making based on big data analytics.

Although anti-virus software has significantly evolved over the last decade, classic signature matching based on byte patterns is still a prevalent concept for identifying security threats. Anti-virus signatures are a simple and fast detection mechanism that can complement more sophisticated analysis strategies. However, if signatures are not designed with care, they can turn from a defensive mechanism into an instrument of attack. In this paper, we present a novel method for automatically deriving signatures from anti-virus software and discuss how the extracted signatures can be used to attack sensible data with the aid of the virus scanner itself. To this end, we study the practicability of our approach using four commercial products and exemplary demonstrate anti-virus assisted attacks in three different scenarios.

Attacks on web services are major concerns and can expose organizations valuable information resources. Despite there are increasing awareness in secure programming, we still find vulnerabilities in web services. To protect deployed web services, it is important to have defense techniques. Signaturebased Intrusion Detection Systems (IDS) have gained popularity to protect applications against attacks. However, signature IDSs have limited number of attack signatures. In this paper, we propose a Genetic Algorithm (GA)-based attack signature generation approach and show its application for web services. GA algorithm has the capability of generating new member from a set of initial population. We leverage this by generating new attack signatures at SOAP message level to overcome the challenge of limited number of attack signatures. The key contributions include defining chromosomes and fitness functions. The initial results show that the GA-based IDS can generate new signatures and complement the limitation of existing web security testing tools. The approach can generate new attack signatures for injection, privilege escalation, denial of service and information leakage.

Local-area networks comprising the Internet of Things (IoT) consist mainly of devices that have limited processing capabilities and face energy constraints. This has an implication on developing security mechanisms, as they require significant computing resources. In this paper, we design a trust-based routing solution with IoT devices in mind. Specifically, we propose a trust-based approach for managing the reputation of every node of an IoT network. The approach is based on the emerging Routing Protocol for Low power and Lossy networks (RPL). The proposed solution is simulated for its routing resilience and compared with two other variants of RPL.

Accurate, precise, and unambiguous definitions of software weaknesses (bugs) and clear descriptions of software vulnerabilities are vital for building the foundations of cybersecurity. The Bugs Framework (BF) comprises rigorous definitions and (static) attributes of bug classes, along with their related dynamic properties, such as proximate, secondary and tertiary causes, consequences, and sites. This paper presents an overview of previously developed BF classes and the new cryptography related classes: Encryption Bugs (ENC), Verification Bugs (VRF), and Key Management Bugs (KMN). We analyze corresponding vulnerabilities and provide their clear descriptions by applying the BF taxonomy. We also discuss the lessons learned and share our plans for expanding BF.

CAPTCHA is a type of challenge-response test to ensure that the response is only generated by humans and not by computerized robots. CAPTCHA are getting harder as because usage of latest advanced pattern recognition and machine learning algorithms are capable of solving simpler CAPTCHA. However, some enhancement procedures make the CAPTCHAs too difficult to be recognized by the human. This paper resolves the problem by next generation human-friendly mini game-CAPTCHA for quantifying the usability of CAPTCHAs.

Mobile Ad Hoc Network (MANET) technology provides intercommunication between different nodes where no infrastructure is available for communication. MANET is attracting many researcher attentions as it is cost effective and easy for implementation. Main challenging aspect in MANET is its vulnerability. In MANET nodes are very much vulnerable to attacks along with its data as well as data flowing through these nodes. One of the main reasons of these vulnerabilities is its communication policy which makes nodes interdependent for interaction and data flow. This mutual trust between nodes is exploited by attackers through injecting malicious node or replicating any legitimate node in MANET. One of these attacks is blackhole attack. In this study, the behavior of blackhole attack is discussed and have proposed a lightweight solution for blackhole attack which uses inbuilt functions.

The article issue is the enterprise information protection within the internet of things concept. The aim of research is to develop arrangements set to ensure secure enterprise IPv6 network operating. The object of research is the enterprise IPv6 network. The subject of research is modern switching equipment as a tool to ensure network protection. The research task is to prioritize functioning of switches in production and corporation enterprise networks, to develop a network host protection algorithm, to test the developed algorithm on the Cisco Packet Tracer 7 software emulator. The result of research is the proposed approach to IPv6-network security based on analysis of modern switches functionality, developed and tested enterprise network host protection algorithm under IPv6-protocol with an automated network SLAAC-configuration control, a set of arrangements for resisting default enterprise gateway attacks, using ACL, VLAN, SEND, RA Guard security technology, which allows creating sufficiently high level of networks security.

In the development of smart cities across the world VANET plays a vital role for optimized route between source and destination. The VANETs is based on infra-structure less network. It facilitates vehicles to give information about safety through vehicle to vehicle communication (V2V) or vehicle to infrastructure communication (V2I). In VANETs wireless communication between vehicles so attackers violate authenticity, confidentiality and privacy properties which further effect security. The VANET technology is encircled with security challenges these days. This paper presents overview on VANETs architecture, a related survey on VANET with major concern of the security issues. Further, prevention measures of those issues, and comparative analysis is done. From the survey, found out that encryption and authentication plays an important role in VANETS also some research direction defined for future work.

There are billions of Internet of things (IoT) devices connecting to the Internet and the number is increasing. As a still ongoing technology, IoT can be used in different fields, such as agriculture, healthcare, manufacturing, energy, retailing and logistics. IoT has been changing our world and the way we live and think. However, IoT has no uniform architecture and there are different kinds of attacks on the different layers of IoT, such as unauthorized access to tags, tag cloning, sybil attack, sinkhole attack, denial of service attack, malicious code injection, and man in middle attack. IoT devices are more vulnerable to attacks because it is simple and some security measures can not be implemented. We analyze the privacy and security challenges in the IoT and survey on the corresponding solutions to enhance the security of IoT architecture and protocol. We should focus more on the security and privacy on IoT and help to promote the development of IoT.

Today, we witness the emergence of smart environments, where devices are able to connect independently without human- intervention. Mobile ad hoc networks are an example of smart environments that are widely deployed in public spaces. They offer great services and features compared with wired systems. However, these networks are more sensitive to malicious attacks because of the lack of infrastructure and the self-organizing nature of devices. Thus, communication between nodes is much more exposed to various security risks, than other networks. In this paper, we will present a synthetic study on security concept for MANETs, and then we will introduce a contribution based on evaluating link quality, using ETX metric, to enhance network availability.

Today, we witness the emergence of smart environments, where devices are able to connect independently without human- intervention. Mobile ad hoc networks are an example of smart environments that are widely deployed in public spaces. They offer great services and features compared with wired systems. However, these networks are more sensitive to malicious attacks because of the lack of infrastructure and the self-organizing nature of devices. Thus, communication between nodes is much more exposed to various security risks, than other networks. In this paper, we will present a synthetic study on security concept for MANETs, and then we will introduce a contribution based on evaluating link quality, using ETX metric, to enhance network availability.

We address security and trust in the context of a commercial IP camera. We take a hands-on approach, as we not only define abstract vulnerabilities, but we actually implement the attacks on a real camera. We then discuss the nature of the attacks and the root cause; we propose a formal model of trust that can be used to address the vulnerabilities by explicitly constraining compositionality for trust relationships.

Kernel hardening has been an important topic since many applications and security mechanisms often consider the kernel as part of their Trusted Computing Base (TCB). Among various hardening techniques, Kernel Address Space Layout Randomization (KASLR) is the most effective and widely adopted defense mechanism that can practically mitigate various memory corruption vulnerabilities, such as buffer overflow and use-after-free. In principle, KASLR is secure as long as no memory leak vulnerability exists and high entropy is ensured. In this paper, we introduce a highly stable timing attack against KASLR, called DrK, that can precisely de-randomize the memory layout of the kernel without violating any such assumptions. DrK exploits a hardware feature called Intel Transactional Synchronization Extension (TSX) that is readily available in most modern commodity CPUs. One surprising behavior of TSX, which is essentially the root cause of this security loophole, is that it aborts a transaction without notifying the underlying kernel even when the transaction fails due to a critical error, such as a page fault or an access violation, which traditionally requires kernel intervention. DrK turned this property into a precise timing channel that can determine the mapping status (i.e., mapped versus unmapped) and execution status (i.e., executable versus non-executable) of the privileged kernel address space. In addition to its surprising accuracy and precision, DrK is universally applicable to all OSes, even in virtualized environments, and generates no visible footprint, making it difficult to detect in practice. We demonstrated that DrK can break the KASLR of all major OSes (i.e., Windows, Linux, and OS X) with near-perfect accuracy in under a second. Finally, we propose potential countermeasures that can effectively prevent or mitigate the DrK attack. We urge our community to be aware of the potential threat of having Intel TSX, which is present in most recent Intel CPUs – 100% in workstation and 60% in high-end Intel CPUs since Skylake – and is even available on Amazon EC2 (X1).

In this paper a model of secure wireless sensor network (WSN) was developed. This model is able to defend against most of known network attacks and don't significantly reduce the energy power of sensor nodes (SN). We propose clustering as a way of network organization, which allows reducing energy consumption. Network protection is based on the trust level calculation and the establishment of trusted relationships between trusted nodes. The primary purpose of the hierarchical trust management system (HTMS) is to protect the WSN from malicious actions of an attacker. The developed system should combine the properties of energy efficiency and reliability. To achieve this goal the following tasks are performed: detection of illegal actions of an intruder; blocking of malicious nodes; avoiding of malicious attacks; determining the authenticity of nodes; the establishment of trusted connections between authentic nodes; detection of defective nodes and the blocking of their work. The HTMS operation based on the use of Bayes' theorem and calculation of direct and centralized trust values.

Video surveillance, closed-circuit TV and IP-camera systems became virtually omnipresent and indispensable for many organizations, businesses, and users. Their main purpose is to provide physical security, increase safety, and prevent crime. They also became increasingly complex, comprising many communication means, embedded hardware and non-trivial firmware. However, most research to date focused mainly on the privacy aspects of such systems, and did not fully address their issues related to cyber-security in general, and visual layer (i.e., imagery semantics) attacks in particular. In this paper, we conduct a systematic review of existing and novel threats in video surveillance, closed-circuit TV and IP-camera systems based on publicly available data. The insights can then be used to better understand and identify the security and the privacy risks associated with the development, deployment and use of these systems. We study existing and novel threats, along with their existing or possible countermeasures, and summarize this knowledge into a comprehensive table that can be used in a practical way as a security checklist when assessing cyber-security level of existing or new CCTV designs and deployments. We also provide a set of recommendations and mitigations that can help improve the security and privacy levels provided by the hardware, the firmware, the network communications and the operation of video surveillance systems. We hope the findings in this paper will provide a valuable knowledge of the threat landscape that such systems are exposed to, as well as promote further research and widen the scope of this field beyond its current boundaries.

Riding on the success of SDN for enterprise and data center networks, recently researchers have shown much interest in applying SDN for critical infrastructures. A key concern, however, is the vulnerability of the SDN controller as a single point of failure. In this paper, we develop a cyber-physical simulation platform that interconnects Mininet (an SDN emulator), hardware SDN switches, and PowerWorld (a high-fidelity, industry-strength power grid simulator). We report initial experiments on how a number of representative controller faults may impact the delay of smart grid communications. We further evaluate how this delay may affect the performance of the underlying physical system, namely automatic gain control (AGC) as a fundamental closed-loop control that regulates the grid frequency to a critical nominal value. Our results show that when the fault-induced delay reaches seconds (e.g., more than four seconds in some of our experiments), degradation of the AGC becomes evident. Particularly, the AGC is most vulnerable when it is in a transient following say step changes in loading, because the significant state fluctuations will exacerbate the effects of using a stale system state in the control.

This work presents a systematic analysis of symmetric encryption modes for SSH that are in use on the Internet, providing deployment statistics, new attacks, and security proofs for widely used modes. We report deployment statistics based on two Internet-wide scans of SSH servers conducted in late 2015 and early 2016. Dropbear and OpenSSH implementations dominate in our scans. From our first scan, we found 130,980 OpenSSH servers that are still vulnerable to the CBC-mode-specific attack of Albrecht et al. (IEEE S&P 2009), while we found a further 20,000 OpenSSH servers that are vulnerable to a new attack on CBC-mode that bypasses the counter-measures introduced in OpenSSH 5.2 to defeat the attack of Albrecht et al. At the same time, 886,449 Dropbear servers in our first scan are vulnerable to a variant of the original CBC-mode attack. On the positive side, we provide formal security analyses for other popular SSH encryption modes, namely ChaCha20-Poly1305, generic Encrypt-then-MAC, and AES-GCM. Our proofs hold for detailed pseudo-code descriptions of these algorithms as implemented in OpenSSH. Our proofs use a corrected and extended version of the "fragmented decryption" security model that was specifically developed for the SSH setting by Boldyreva et al. (Eurocrypt 2012). These proofs provide strong confidentiality and integrity guarantees for these alternatives to CBC-mode encryption in SSH. However, we also show that these alternatives do not meet additional, desirable notions of security (boundary-hiding under passive and active attacks, and denial-of-service resistance) that were formalised by Boldyreva et al.

This work presents a systematic analysis of symmetric encryption modes for SSH that are in use on the Internet, providing deployment statistics, new attacks, and security proofs for widely used modes. We report deployment statistics based on two Internet-wide scans of SSH servers conducted in late 2015 and early 2016. Dropbear and OpenSSH implementations dominate in our scans. From our first scan, we found 130,980 OpenSSH servers that are still vulnerable to the CBC-mode-specific attack of Albrecht et al. (IEEE S&P 2009), while we found a further 20,000 OpenSSH servers that are vulnerable to a new attack on CBC-mode that bypasses the counter-measures introduced in OpenSSH 5.2 to defeat the attack of Albrecht et al. At the same time, 886,449 Dropbear servers in our first scan are vulnerable to a variant of the original CBC-mode attack. On the positive side, we provide formal security analyses for other popular SSH encryption modes, namely ChaCha20-Poly1305, generic Encrypt-then-MAC, and AES-GCM. Our proofs hold for detailed pseudo-code descriptions of these algorithms as implemented in OpenSSH. Our proofs use a corrected and extended version of the "fragmented decryption" security model that was specifically developed for the SSH setting by Boldyreva et al. (Eurocrypt 2012). These proofs provide strong confidentiality and integrity guarantees for these alternatives to CBC-mode encryption in SSH. However, we also show that these alternatives do not meet additional, desirable notions of security (boundary-hiding under passive and active attacks, and denial-of-service resistance) that were formalised by Boldyreva et al.

We give attacks on Feistel-based format-preserving encryption (FPE) schemes that succeed in message recovery (not merely distinguishing scheme outputs from random) when the message space is small. For \$4\$-bit messages, the attacks fully recover the target message using \$2textasciicircum1 examples for the FF3 NIST standard and \$2textasciicircum5 examples for the FF1 NIST standard. The examples include only three messages per tweak, which is what makes the attacks non-trivial even though the total number of examples exceeds the size of the domain. The attacks are rigorously analyzed in a new definitional framework of message-recovery security. The attacks are easily put out of reach by increasing the number of Feistel rounds in the standards.

Attacks on airport information network services in the form of Denial of Service (DoS), Distributed DoS (DDoS), and hijacking are the most effective schemes mostly explored by cyber terrorists in the aviation industry running Mission Critical Services (MCSs). This work presents a case for Airport Information Resource Management Systems (AIRMS) which is a cloud based platform proposed for the Nigerian aviation industry. Granting that AIRMS is susceptible to DoS attacks, there is need to develop a robust counter security network model aimed at pre-empting such attacks and subsequently mitigating the vulnerability in such networks. Existing works in literature regarding cyber security DoS and other schemes have not explored embedded Stateful Packet Inspection (SPI) based on OpenFlow Application Centric Infrastructure (OACI) for securing critical network assets. As such, SPI-OACI was proposed to address the challenge of Vulnerability Bandwidth Depletion DDoS Attacks (VBDDA). A characterization of the Cisco 9000 router firewall as an embedded network device with support for Virtual DDoS protection was carried out in the AIRMS threat mitigation design. Afterwards, the mitigation procedure and the initial phase of the design with Riverbed modeler software were realized. For the security Quality of Service (QoS) profiling, the system response metrics (i.e. SPI-OACI delay, throughput and utilization) in cloud based network were analyzed only for normal traffic flows. The work concludes by offering practical suggestion for securing similar enterprise management systems running on cloud infrastructure against cyber terrorists.

Commercial Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) can be accessed through sensor web portals. However, associated security implications and threats to the 1) users/subscribers 2) investors and 3) third party operators regarding sensor web portals are not seen in completeness, rather the contemporary work handles them in parts. In this paper, we discuss different kind of security attacks and vulnerabilities at different layers to the users, investors including Wireless Sensor Network Service Providers (WSNSPs) and WSN itself in relation with the two well-known documents i.e., “Department of Homeland Security” (DHS) and “Department of Defense (DOD)”, as these are standard security documents till date. Further we propose a comprehensive cross layer security solution in the light of guidelines given in the aforementioned documents that is minimalist in implementation and achieves the purported security goals.
 

Vehicular ad-hoc networks (VANETs) provides infrastructure less, rapidly deployable, self-configurable network connectivity. The network is the collection vehicles interlinked by wireless links and willing to store and forward data for their peers. As vehicles move freely and organize themselves arbitrarily, message routing is done dynamically based on network connectivity. Compared with other ad-hoc networks, VANETs are particularly challenging due to the part of the vehicles' high rate of mobility and the numerous signal-weakening barrier, such as buildings, in their environments. Due to their enormous potential, VANET have gained an increasing attention in both industry and academia. Research activities range from lower layer protocol design to applications and implementation issues. A secure VANET system, while exchanging information should protect the system against unauthorized message injection, message alteration, eavesdropping. The security of VANET is one of the most critical issues because their information transmission is propagated in open access (wireless) environments. A few years back VANET has received increased attention as the potential technology to enhance active and preventive safety on the road, as well as travel comfort Safekeeping and privacy are mandatory in vehicular communications for a grateful acceptance and use of such technology. This paper is an attempt to highlight the problems occurred in Vehicular Ad hoc Networks and security issues.