Biblio

The complete digitization of telecommunications allows new attack scenarios, which have not been possible with legacy phone technologies before. The reason is that physical access to legacy phone technologies was necessary. Regarding internet-based communication like voice over the internet protocol (VoIP), which can be established between random nodes, eavesdropping can happen everywhere and much easier. Additionally, injection of undesirable communication like SPAM or SPIT in digital networks is simpler, too. Encryption is not sufficient because it is also necessary to know which participants are talking to each other. For that reason, the research project INTEGER has been started with the main goals of providing secure authentication and integrity of a VoIP communication by using a digital signature. The basis of this approach is the Trusted Platform Module (TPM) of the Trusted Computing Group (TCG) which works as a hardware-based trusted anchor. The TPM will be used inside of wireless IP devices with VoIP softphones. The question is if it is possible to fulfill the main goals of the project in wireless scenarios with Wi-Fi technologies. That is what this contribution aims to clarify.

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.