Biblio

This paper describes biometric-based cryptographic techniques for providing confidential communications and strong, mutual and multifactor authentication on the Internet of Things. The described security techniques support the goals of universal access when users are allowed to select from multiple choice alternatives to authenticate their identities. By using a Biometric Authenticated Key Exchange (BAKE) protocol, user credentials are protected against phishing and Man-in-the-Middle attacks. Forward secrecy is achieved using a Diffie-Hellman key establishment scheme with fresh random values each time the BAKE protocol is operated. Confidentiality is achieved using lightweight cryptographic algorithms that are well suited for implementation in resource constrained environments, those limited by processing speed, limited memory and power availability. Lightweight cryptography can offer strong confidentiality solutions that are practical to implement in Internet of Things systems, where efficient execution, and small memory requirements and code size are required.

Mobile Ad hoc Network has a wide range of applications in military and civilian domains. It is generally assumed that the nodes are trustworthy and cooperative in routing protocols of MANETs viz. AODV, DSR etc. This assumption makes wireless ad hoc network more prone to interception and manipulation which further open possibilities of various types of Denial of Service (DoS) attacks. In order to mitigate the effect of malicious nodes, a reputation based secure routing protocol is proposed in this paper. The basic idea of the proposed scheme is organize the network with 25 nodes which are deployed in a 5×5 grid structure. Each normal node in the network has a specific prime number, which acts as Node identity. A Backbone Network (BBN) is deployed in a 5×5 grid structure. The proposed scheme uses legitimacy value table and reputation level table maintained by backbone network in the network. These tables are used to provide best path selection after avoiding malicious nodes during path discovery. Based on the values collected in their legitimacy table & reputation level table backbone nodes separate and avoid the malicious nodes while making path between source and destination.

Steganography is the science of hiding information to send secret messages using the carrier object known as stego object. Steganographic technology is based on three principles including security, robustness and capacity. In this paper, we present a digital image hidden by using the compressive sensing technology to increase security of stego image based on human visual system features. The results represent which our proposed method provides higher security in comparison with the other presented methods. Bit Correction Rate between original secret message and extracted message is used to show the accuracy of this method.

Outsourcing services to third-party providers comes with a high security cost-to fully trust the providers. Using trusted hardware can help, but current trusted execution environments do not adequately support services that process very large scale datasets. We present LASTGT, a system that bridges this gap by supporting the execution of self-contained services over a large state, with a small and generic trusted computing base (TCB). LASTGT uses widely deployed trusted hardware to guarantee integrity and verifiability of the execution on a remote platform, and it securely supplies data to the service through simple techniques based on virtual memory. As a result, LASTGT is general and applicable to many scenarios such as computational genomics and databases, as we show in our experimental evaluation based on an implementation of LAST-GT on a secure hypervisor. We also describe a possible implementation on Intel SGX.

QR codes, intended for maximum accessibility are widely in use these days and can be scanned readily by mobile phones. Their ease of accessibility makes them vulnerable to attacks and tampering. Certain scenarios require a QR code to be accessed by a group of users only. This is done by making the QR code cryptographically secure with the help of a password (key) for encryption and decryption. Symmetric key algorithms like AES requires the sender and the receiver to have a shared secret key. However, the whole motive of security fails if the shared key is not secure enough. Therefore, in our design we secure the key, which is a grey image using RSA algorithm. In this paper, FPGA implementation of 1024 bit RSA encryption and decryption is presented. For encryption, computation of modular exponentiation for 1024 bit size with accuracy and efficiency is needed and it is carried out by repeated modular multiplication technique. For decryption, L-R binary approach is used which deploys modular multiplication module. Efficiency in our design is achieved in terms of throughput/area ratio as compared to existing implementations. QR codes security is demonstrated by deploying AES-RSA hybrid design in Xilinx System Generator(XSG). XSG helps in hardware co-simulation and reduces the difficulty in structural design. Further, to ensure efficient encryption of the shared key by RSA, histograms of the images of key before and after encryption are generated and analysed for strength of encryption.

The Internet of Things (IoT) increasingly demonstrates its role in smart services, such as smart home, smart grid, smart transportation, etc. However, due to lack of standards among different vendors, existing networked IoT devices (NoTs) can hardly provide enough security. Moreover, it is impractical to apply advanced cryptographic solutions to many NoTs due to limited computing capability and power supply. Inspired by recent advances in IoT demand, in this paper, we develop an IoT security architecture that can protect NoTs in different IoT scenarios. Specifically, the security architecture consists of an auditing module and two network-level security controllers. The auditing module is designed to have a stand-alone intrusion detection system for threat detection in a NoT network cluster. The two network-level security controllers are designed to provide security services from either network resource management or cryptographic schemes regardless of the NoT security capability. We also demonstrate the proposed IoT security architecture with a network based one-hop confidentiality scheme and a cryptography-based secure link mechanism.

We consider the problem of designing repair efficient distributed storage systems, which are information-theoretically secure against a passive eavesdropper that can gain access to a limited number of storage nodes. We present a framework that enables design of a broad range of secure storage codes through a joint construction of inner and outer codes. As case studies, we focus on two specific families of storage codes: (i) minimum storage regenerating (MSR) codes, and (ii) maximally recoverable (MR) codes, which are a class of locally repairable codes (LRCs). The main idea of this framework is to utilize the existing constructions of storage codes to jointly design an outer coset code and inner storage code. Finally, we present a construction of an outer coset code over small field size to secure locally repairable codes presented by Tamo and Barg for the special case of an eavesdropper that can observe any subset of nodes of maximum possible size.

Cloud computing offers many advantages as flexibility or resource efficiency and can significantly reduce costs. However, when sensitive data is outsourced to a cloud provider, classified records can leak. To protect data owners and application providers from a privacy breach data must be encrypted before it is uploaded. In this work, we present a distributed key management scheme that handles user-specific keys in a single-tenant scenario. The underlying database is encrypted and the secret key is split into parts and only reconstructed temporarily in memory. Our scheme distributes shares of the key to the different entities. We address bootstrapping, key recovery, the adversary model and the resulting security guarantees.

Distributed storage systems and caching systems are becoming widespread, and this motivates the increasing interest on assessing their achievable performance in terms of reliability for legitimate users and security against malicious users. While the assessment of reliability takes benefit of the availability of well established metrics and tools, assessing security is more challenging. The classical cryptographic approach aims at estimating the computational effort for an attacker to break the system, and ensuring that it is far above any feasible amount. This has the limitation of depending on attack algorithms and advances in computing power. The information-theoretic approach instead exploits capacity measures to achieve unconditional security against attackers, but often does not provide practical recipes to reach such a condition. We propose a mixed cryptographic/information-theoretic approach with a twofold goal: estimating the levels of information-theoretic security and defining a practical scheme able to achieve them. In order to find optimal choices of the parameters of the proposed scheme, we exploit an effective probabilistic model checker, which allows us to overcome several limitations of more conventional methods.

Today's major concern is not only maximizing the information rate through linear network coding scheme which is intelligent combination of information symbols at sending nodes but also secured transmission of information. Though cryptographic measure of security (computational security) gives secure transmission of information, it results system complexity and consequent reduction in efficiency of the communication system. This problem leads to alternative way of optimally secure and maximized information transmission. The alternative solution is secure network coding which is information theoretic approach. Depending up on applications, different security measures are needed during the transmission of information over wiretapped network with potential attack by the adversaries. In this research work, mathematical model for different security constraints with upper and lower boundaries were studied depending up on the randomness added to the source message and hence the security constraints on linear network code for randomized source messages depends both on randomness added and number of random source symbols. If the source generates large number random symbols, lesser number of random keys can give higher security to the information but information theoretic security bounds remain same. Hence maximizing randomness to the source is equivalent to adding security level.

SoCs implementing security modules should be both testable and secure. Oversights in a design's test structure could expose internal modules creating security vulnerabilities during test. In this paper, for the first time, we propose a novel automated security vulnerability analysis framework to identify violations of confidentiality, integrity, and availability policies caused by test structures and designer oversights during SoC integration. Results demonstrate existing information leakage vulnerabilities in implementations of various encryption algorithms and secure microprocessors. These can be exploited to obtain secret keys, control finite state machines, or gain unauthorized access to memory read/write functions.

Internet of Things (IoT) devices are getting increasingly popular, becoming a core element for the next generations of informational architectures: smart city, smart factory, smart home, smart health-care and many others. IoT systems are mainly comprised of embedded devices with limited computing capabilities while having a cloud component which processes the data and delivers it to the end-users. IoT devices access the user private data, thus requiring robust security solution which must address features like usability and scalability. In this paper we discuss about an IoT authentication service for smart-home devices using a smart-phone as security anchor, QR codes and attribute based cryptography (ABC). Regarding the fact that in an IoT ecosystem some of the IoT devices and the cloud components may be considered untrusted, we propose a privacy preserving attribute based access control protocol to handle the device authentication to the cloud service. For the smart-phone centric authentication to the cloud component, we employ the FIDO UAF protocol and we extend it, by adding an attributed based privacy preserving component.

Most security software tools try to detect malicious components by cryptographic hashes, signatures or based on their behavior. The former, is a widely adopted approach based on Integrity Measurement Architecture (IMA) enabling appraisal and attestation of system components. The latter, however, may induce a very long time until misbehavior of a component leads to a successful detection. Another approach is a Dynamic Runtime Attestation (DRA) based on the comparison of binary code loaded in the memory and well-known references. Since DRA is a complex approach, involving multiple related components and often complex attestation strategies, a flexible and extensible architecture is needed. In a cooperation project an architecture was designed and a Proof of Concept (PoC) successfully developed and evaluated. To achieve needed flexibility and extensibility, the implementation facilitates central components providing attestation strategies (guidelines). These guidelines define and implement the necessary steps for all relevant attestation operations, i.e. measurement, reference generation and verification.

Along with the growing popularisation of Cloud Computing. Cloud storage technology has been paid more and more attention as an emerging network storage technology which is extended and developed by cloud computing concepts. Cloud computing environment depends on user services such as high-speed storage and retrieval provided by cloud computing system. Meanwhile, data security is an important problem to solve urgently for cloud storage technology. In recent years, There are more and more malicious attacks on cloud storage systems, and cloud storage system of data leaking also frequently occurred. Cloud storage security concerns the user's data security. The purpose of this paper is to achieve data security of cloud storage and to formulate corresponding cloud storage security policy. Those were combined with the results of existing academic research by analyzing the security risks of user data in cloud storage and approach a subject of the relevant security technology, which based on the structural characteristics of cloud storage system.

Cloud Computing represents one of the most significant shifts in information technology and it enables to provide cloud-based security service such as Security-as-a-service (SECaaS). Improving of the cloud computing technologies, the traditional SIEM paradigm is able to shift to cloud-based security services. In this paper, we propose the SIEM architecture that can be deployed to the SECaaS platform which we have been developing for analyzing and recognizing intelligent cyber-threat based on virtualization technologies.

The trend in computing is towards the use of FPGAs to improve performance at reduced costs. An indication of this is the adoption of FPGAs for data centre and server application acceleration by notable technological giants like Microsoft, Amazon, and Baidu. The continued protection of Intellectual Properties (IPs) on the FPGA has thus become both more important and challenging. To facilitate IP security, FPGA vendors have provided bitstream authentication and encryption. However, advancements in FPGA programming technology have engendered a bitstream manipulation technique like partial bitstream relocation (PBR), which is promising in terms of reducing bitstream storage cost and facilitating adaptability. Meanwhile, encrypted bitstreams are not amenable to PBR. In this paper, we present three methods for performing encrypted PBR with varying overheads of resources and time. These methods ensure that PBR can be applied to bitstreams without losing the protection of IPs.

The importance of Networked Control Systems (NCS) is steadily increasing due to recent trends such as smart factories. Correct functionality of such NCS needs to be protected as malfunctioning systems could have severe consequences for the controlled process or even threaten human lives. However, with the increase in NCS, also attacks targeting these systems are becoming more frequent. To mitigate attacks that utilize captured sensor data in an NCS, transferred data needs to be protected. While using well-known methods such as Transport Layer Security (TLS) might be suitable to protect the data, resource constraint devices such as sensors often are not powerful enough to perform the necessary cryptographic operations. Also, as we will show in this paper, applying simple encryption in an NCS may enable easy Denial-of-Service (DoS) attacks by attacking single bits of the encrypted data. Therefore, in this paper, we present a hardware-based approach that enables sensors to perform the necessary encryption while being robust against (injected) bit failures.

Random number generator is an important building block for many cryptographic primitives and protocols. Random numbers are used to initialize key bits, nonces and initialization vectors and seed pseudo-random number generators. Physical Unclonable Functions (PUFs) are a popular security primitive in cryptographic systems used for authentication, secure key storage and so on. PUFs have nature properties of unpredictability and uniqueness which is very suitable to be served as a source of randomness. In this paper we propose a new design of a true random number generator based on ring oscillator PUFs. It utilizes a self-feedback mechanism between the response and challenge of PUFs and some simple operations, mainly addition, rotation and xor, on the output of PUFs to generate truly random bits. Our design is very simple and easy to be implemented while achieving good randomness. Experiment results verified the good quality of bits generated by our design.

We propose an approach to enforce security in disruption- and delay-tolerant networks (DTNs) where long delays, high packet drop rates, unavailability of central trusted entity etc. make traditional approaches unfeasible. We use trust model based on subjective logic to continuously evaluate trustworthiness of security credentials issued in distributed manner by network participants to deal with absence of centralised trusted authorities.

Delegated authorization protocols have become wide-spread to implement Web applications and services, where some popular providers managing people identity information and personal data allow their users to delegate third party Web services to access their data. In this paper, we analyze the risks related to untrusted providers not behaving correctly, and we solve this problem by proposing the first verifiable delegated authorization protocol that allows third party services to verify the correctness of users data returned by the provider. The contribution of the paper is twofold: we show how delegated authorization can be cryptographically enforced through authenticated data structures protocols, we extend the standard OAuth2 protocol by supporting efficient and verifiable delegated authorization including database updates and privileges revocation.

Side channel attacks have been used to extract critical data such as encryption keys and confidential user data in a variety of adversarial settings. In practice, this threat is addressed by adhering to a constant-time programming discipline, which imposes strict constraints on the way in which programs are written. This introduces an additional hurdle for programmers faced with the already difficult task of writing secure code, highlighting the need for solutions that give the same source-level guarantees while supporting more natural programming models. We propose a novel type system for verifying that programs correctly implement constant-resource behavior. Our type system extends recent work on automatic amortized resource analysis (AARA), a set of techniques that automatically derive provable upper bounds on the resource consumption of programs. We devise new techniques that build on the potential method to achieve compositionality, precision, and automation. A strict global requirement that a program always maintains constant resource usage is too restrictive for most practical applications. It is sufficient to require that the program's resource behavior remain constant with respect to an attacker who is only allowed to observe part of the program's state and behavior. To account for this, our type system incorporates information flow tracking into its resource analysis. This allows our system to certify programs that need to violate the constant-time requirement in certain cases, as long as doing so does not leak confidential information to attackers. We formalize this guarantee by defining a new notion of resource-aware noninterference, and prove that our system enforces it. Finally, we show how our type inference algorithm can be used to synthesize a constant-time implementation from one that cannot be verified as secure, effectively repairing insecure programs automatically. We also show how a second novel AARA system that computes lower bounds on reso- rce usage can be used to derive quantitative bounds on the amount of information that a program leaks through its resource use. We implemented each of these systems in Resource Aware ML, and show that it can be applied to verify constant-time behavior in a number of applications including encryption and decryption routines, database queries, and other resource-aware functionality.

Now a day, need for fast accessing of data is increasing with the exponential increase in the security field. QR codes have served as a useful tool for fast and convenient sharing of data. But with increased usage of QR Codes have become vulnerable to attacks such as phishing, pharming, manipulation and exploitation. These security flaws could pose a danger to an average user. In this paper we have proposed a way, called Secured QR (SQR) to fix all these issues. In this approach we secure a QR code with the help of a key in generator side and the same key is used to get the original information at scanner side. We have used AES algorithm for this purpose. SQR approach is applicable when we want to share/use sensitive information in the organization such as sharing of profile details, exchange of payment information, business cards, generation of electronic tickets etc.

Dynamic spectrum sharing techniques applied in the UHF TV band have been developed to allow secondary WiFi transmission in areas with active TV users. This technique of dynamically controlling the exclusion zone enables vastly increasing secondary spectrum re-use, compared to the "TV white space" model where TV transmitters determine the exclusion zone and only "idle" channels can be re-purposed. However, in current such dynamic spectrum sharing systems, the sensitive operation parameters of both primary TV users (PUs) and secondary users (SUs) need to be shared with the spectrum database controller (SDC) for the purpose of realizing efficient spectrum allocation. Since such SDC server is not necessarily operated by a trusted third party, those current systems might cause essential threatens to the privacy requirement from both PUs and SUs. To address this privacy issue, this paper proposes a privacy-preserving spectrum sharing system between PUs and SUs, which realizes the spectrum allocation decision process using efficient multi-party computation (MPC) technique. In this design, the SDC only performs secure computation over encrypted input from PUs and SUs such that none of the PU or SU operation parameters will be revealed to SDC. The evaluation of its performance illustrates that our proposed system based on efficient MPC techniques can perform dynamic spectrum allocation process between PUs and SUs efficiently while preserving users' privacy.

We propose $μ$Leech, a new embedded trusted platform module for next generation power scavenging devices. Such power scavenging devices are already widely deployed. For instance, the Square point-of-sale reader uses the microphone/speaker interface of a smartphone for communications and as power supply. While such devices are used as trusted devices in security critical applications in the wild, they have not been properly evaluated yet. $μ$Leech can securely store keys and provide cryptographic services to any connected smart phone. Our design also facilitates physical security analysis by providing interfaces to facilitate acquisition of power traces and clock manipulation attacks. Thus $μ$Leech empowers security researchers to analyze leakage in next generation embedded and IoT devices and to evaluate countermeasures before deployment.

Authentication and encryption within an embedded system environment using cameras, sensors, thermostats, autonomous vehicles, medical implants, RFID, etc. is becoming increasing important with ubiquitious wireless connectivity. Hardware-based authentication and encryption offer several advantages in these types of resource-constrained applications, including smaller footprints and lower energy consumption. Bitstring and key generation implemented with Physical Unclonable Functions or PUFs can further reduce resource utilization for authentication and encryption operations and reduce overall system cost by eliminating on-chip non-volatile-memory (NVM). In this paper, we propose a dynamic partial reconfiguration (DPR) strategy for implementing both authentication and encryption using a PUF for bitstring and key generation on FPGAs as a means of optimizing the utilization of the limited area resources. We show that the time and energy penalties associated with DPR are small in modern SoC-based architectures, such as the Xilinx Zynq SoC, and therefore, the overall approach is very attractive for emerging resource-constrained IoT applications.