Biblio

Today's IP and content distribution networks are unable to fulfill all data distribution and security requirements. The named data network (NDN) has emerged as a promising candidate to cope with the Internet usage of the 21st century. Although the NDN has many built-in security features, this survey reviews several pressing security issues and open research areas.

The research in MANET has been carried out for the development of various techniques which will increase the competency of the network only. A plenty number of proposed routing protocols are magnificent in terms of efficiency. However, proposed protocols were generally fulfilling the set of trusted network and not considered for adversarial network setting, hence there is no security mechanism has been considered. MANET is widely used in sensitive fields like battlefield, police rescue operation and many more in such type of sensitive field an attacker may try to gather information about the conversation starting from the origin node to the terminal node. Secure route selection approach for route selection in adverse environment is discussed in this article. The results shows that proposed algorithm, will resolve the single & collaborative attack by increasing the computational & storage overhead and by improving the significant PDR, achieves a noticeable enhancement in the end to end delay.

Low power and lossy network (LLN) comprising of constrained devices like sensors and RFIDs, is a major component in the Internet of Things (IoT) environment as these devices provide global connectivity to physical devices or “Things”. LLNs are tied to the Internet or any High Performance Computing environment via an adaptation layer called 6LoWPAN (IPv6 over Low power Personal Area Network). The routing protocol used by 6LoWPAN is RPL (IPv6 Routing Protocol over LLN). Like many other routing protocols, RPL is susceptible to blackhole attacks which cause topological isolation for a subset of nodes in the LLN. A malicious node instigating the blackhole attack drops received packets from nodes in its subtree which it is supposed to forward. Thus, the malicious node successfully isolates nodes in its subtree from the rest of the network. In this paper, we propose an algorithm based on the concept of exponential smoothing to detect the topological isolation of nodes due to blackhole attack. Exponential smoothing is a technique for smoothing time series data using the exponential window function and is used for short, medium and long term forecasting. In our proposed algorithm, exponential smoothing is used to estimate the next arrival time of packets at the sink node from every other node in the LLN. Using this estimation, the algorithm is designed to identify the malicious nodes instigating blackhole attack in real time.

Lack of effective accountability mechanisms brings a series of security problems for Internet today. In Next Generation Internet based on IPv6, the system of identity authentication and IP verification is the key to accounting ability. Source Address Validation Improvement (SAVI) can protect IP source addresses from being faked. But without identity authentication mechanism and certain relationship between IP and accountable identity, the accountability is still unreliable. To solve this problem, most research focus on embedding accountable identity into IP address which need either changing DHCP client or twice DHCP request process due to the separate process of user authentication and address assignment. Different from previous research, this paper first analyzes the problems and requirements of combining Web Portal or 802.1X, two main identity authentication mechanism (AAA), with the accountable address assignment in SAVI frame-work. Then a novel Cooperative mechanism for Accountable IP address assignment (CAIP) is proposed based on 802.1X and SAVI, which takes into account the validation of IP address, the authenticity and accountability of identity at the same time. Finally, we build up prototype system for both Fat AP and Thin AP wireless scenarios and simulate the performance of CAIP through large-scale campus networks' data logs. The experiment result shows that the IP addresses and identities in CAIP are protective and accountable. Compared with other previous research, CAIP is not only transparent to the terminals and networks, but also low impact on network equipment, which makes CAIP easy deployment with high compatibility and low cost.

pubcrawl, Network on Chip Security, Scalability, resiliency, resilience, metrics, Vulnerabilities and design flaws in Network-on-Chip (NoC) routers can be exploited in order to spy, modify and constraint the sensitive communication inside the Multi-Processors Systems-on-Chip (MPSoCs). Although previous works address the NoC threat, finding secure and efficient solutions to verify the security is still a challenge. In this work, we propose for the first time a method to formally verify the correctness and the security properties of a NoC router in order to provide the proper communication functionality and to avoid NoC attacks. We present a generalized verification flow that proves a wide set of implementation-independent security-related properties to hold. We employ unbounded model checking techniques to account for the highly-sequential behaviour of the NoC systems. The evaluation results demonstrate the feasibility of our approach by presenting verification results of six different NoC routing architectures demonstrating the vulnerabilities of each design.

In this paper we investigate deceptive defense strategies for web servers. Web servers are widely exploited resources in the modern cyber threat landscape. Often these servers are exposed in the Internet and accessible for a broad range of valid as well as malicious users. Common security strategies like firewalls are not sufficient to protect web servers. Deception based Information Security enables a large set of counter measures to decrease the efficiency of intrusions. In this work we depict several techniques out of the reconnaissance process of an attacker. We match these with deceptive counter measures. All proposed measures are implemented in an experimental web server with deceptive counter measure abilities. We also conducted an experiment with honeytokens and evaluated delay strategies against automated scanner tools.

We consider a cloud based multiserver system consisting of a set of replica application servers behind a set of proxy (indirection) servers which interact directly with clients over the Internet. We study a proactive moving-target defense to thwart a DDoS attacker's reconnaissance phase and consequently reduce the attack's impact. The defense is effectively a moving-target (motag) technique in which the proxies dynamically change. The system is evaluated using an AWS prototype of HTTP redirection and by numerical evaluations of an “adversarial” coupon-collector mathematical model, the latter allowing larger-scale extrapolations.

Cyber reconnaissance is the process of gathering information about a target network for the purpose of compromising systems within that network. Network-based deception has emerged as a promising approach to disrupt attackers' reconnaissance efforts. However, limited work has been done so far on measuring the effectiveness of network-based deception. Furthermore, given that Software-Defined Networking (SDN) facilitates cyber deception by allowing network traffic to be modified and injected on-the-fly, understanding the effectiveness of employing different cyber deception strategies is critical. In this paper, we present a model to study the reconnaissance surface of a network and model the process of gathering information by attackers as interactions with a cyber defensive system that may use deception. To capture the evolution of the attackers' knowledge during reconnaissance, we design a belief system that is updated by using a Bayesian inference method. For the proposed model, we present two metrics based on KL-divergence to quantify the effectiveness of network deception. We tested the model and the two metrics by conducting experiments with a simulated attacker in an SDN-based deception system. The results of the experiments match our expectations, providing support for the model and proposed metrics.

Traditional address scanning attacks mainly rely on the naive 'brute forcing' approach, where the entire IPv4 address space is exhaustively searched by enumerating different possibilities. However, such an approach is inefficient for IPv6 due to its vast subnet size (i.e., 264). As a result, it is widely assumed that address scanning attacks are less feasible in IPv6 networks. In this paper, we evaluate new IPv6 reconnaissance techniques in real IPv6 networks and expose how to leverage the Domain Name System (DNS) for IPv6 network reconnaissance. We collected IPv6 addresses from 5 regions and 100,000 domains by exploiting DNS reverse zone and DNSSEC records. We propose a DNS Guard (DNSG) to efficiently detect DNS reconnaissance attacks in IPv6 networks. DNSG is a plug and play component that could be added to the existing infrastructure. We implement DNSG using Bro and Suricata. Our results demonstrate that DNSG could effectively block DNS reconnaissance attacks.

With the rapidly increasing number of Internet of Things (IoT) devices and their extensive integration into peoples' daily lives, the security of those devices is of primary importance. Nonetheless, many IoT devices suffer from the absence, or the bad application, of security concepts, which leads to severe vulnerabilities in those devices. To achieve early detection of potential vulnerabilities, network scanner tools are frequently used. However, most of those tools are highly specialized; thus, multiple tools and a meaningful correlation of their results are required to obtain an adequate listing of identified network vulnerabilities. To simplify this process, we propose a modular framework for automated network reconnaissance and vulnerability indication in IP-based networks. It allows integrating a diverse set of tools as either, scanning tools or analysis tools. Moreover, the framework enables result aggregation of different modules and allows information sharing between modules facilitating the development of advanced analysis modules. Additionally, intermediate scanning and analysis data is stored, enabling a historical view of derived information and also allowing users to retrace decision-making processes. We show the framework's modular capabilities by implementing one scanner module and three analysis modules. The automated process is then evaluated using an exemplary scenario with common IP-based IoT components.

Moving target defense (MTD) is a proactive defense mechanism of changing the attack surface to increase an attacker's confusion and/or uncertainty, which invalidates its intelligence gained through reconnaissance and/or network scanning attacks. In this work, we propose software-defined networking (SDN)-based MTD technique using the shuffling of IP addresses and port numbers aiming to obfuscate both network and transport layers' real identities of the host and the service for defending against the network reconnaissance and scanning attacks. We call our proposed MTD technique Random Host and Service Multiplexing, namely RHSM. RHSM allows each host to use random, multiple virtual IP addresses to be dynamically and periodically shuffled. In addition, it uses short-lived, multiple virtual port numbers for an active service running on the host. Our proposed RHSM is novel in that we employ multiplexing (or de-multiplexing) to dynamically change and remap from all the virtual IPs of the host to the real IP or the virtual ports of the services to the real port, respectively. Via extensive simulation experiments, we prove how effectively and efficiently RHSM outperforms a baseline counterpart (i.e., a static network without RHSM) in terms of the attack success probability and defense cost.

To gain strategic insight into defending against the network reconnaissance stage of advanced persistent threats, we recreate the escalating competition between scans and deceptive views on a Software Defined Network (SDN). Our threat model presumes the defense is a deceptive network view unique for each node on the network. It can be configured in terms of the number of honeypots and subnets, as well as how real nodes are distributed across the subnets. It assumes attacks are NMAP ping scans that can be configured in terms of how many IP addresses are scanned and how they are visited. Higher performing defenses detect the scanner quicker while leaking as little information as possible while higher performing attacks are better at evading detection and discovering real nodes. By using Artificial Intelligence in the form of a competitive coevolutionary genetic algorithm, we can analyze the configurations of high performing static defenses and attacks versus their evolving adversary as well as the optimized configuration of the adversary itself. When attacks and defenses both evolve, we can observe that the extent of evolution influences the best configurations.

With the rapid development of the Internet, flow-based approach has attracted more and more attention. To this end, this paper presents a new and efficient architecture to balance accountability and privacy based on network flows. A self-certifying identifier is proposed to efficiently identify a flow. In addition, a delegate-registry cooperation scheme and a multi-delegate mechanism are developed to ensure users' privacy. The effectiveness and overhead of the proposed architecture are evaluated by virtue of the real trace collected from an Internet service provider. The experimental results show that our architecture can achieve a better network performance in terms of lower resource consumption, lower response time, and higher stability.

Anomaly-based Detection Systems (ADSs) attempt to learn the features of behaviors and events of a system and/or users over a period to build a profile of normal behaviors. There has been a growing interest in ADSs and typically conceived as more powerful systems One of the important factors for ADSs is an ability to distinguish between normal and abnormal behaviors in a given period. However, it is getting complicated due to the dynamic network environment that changes every minute. It is dangerous to distinguish between normal and abnormal behaviors with a fixed threshold in a dynamic environment because it cannot guarantee the threshold is always an indication of normal behaviors. In this paper, we propose an adaptive threshold for a dynamic environment with a trust management scheme for efficiently managing the profiles of normal and abnormal behaviors. Based on the assumption of the statistical analysis-based ADS that normal data instances occur in high probability regions while malicious data instances occur in low probability regions of a stochastic model, we set two adaptive thresholds for normal and abnormal behaviors. The behaviors between the two thresholds are classified as suspicious behaviors, and they are efficiently evaluated with a trust management scheme.

This study aims to enhance the security of Moodle system environment during the Execution of online exams, Taking into consideration the most common problems facing online exams and working to solve them. This was handled by improving the security performance of Moodle Quiz tool, which is one of the most important tools in the learning Management system as general and in Moodle system as well. In this paper we include two enhancement aspects: The first aspect is solving the problem of losing the answers during sudden short disconnection of the network because of the server crash or any other reasons, the second aspect is Increasing the level of confidentiality of e-Quiz by preventing accessing the Quiz from more than one computer or browser at the same time. In order to verify the efficiency of the new quiz tool features, the upgraded tool have been tested using an experimental test Moodle site.

In this paper, a dynamic cybersecurity protection method based on software-defined networking (SDN) is proposed, according to the protection requirement analysis for industrial control systems (ICSs). This method can execute security response measures by SDN, such as isolation, redirection etc., based on the real-time intrusion detection results, forming a detecting-responding closed-loop security control. In addition, moving target defense (MTD) concept is introduced to the protection for ICSs, where topology transformation and IP/port hopping are realized by SDN, which can confuse and deceive the attackers and prevent attacks at the beginning, protection ICSs in an active manner. The simulation results verify the feasibility of the proposed method.

Flow-based network attack detection technology is able to identify many threats in network traffic. Existing techniques have several drawbacks: i) rule-based approaches are vulnerable because it needs all the signatures defined for the possible attacks, ii) anomaly-based approaches are not efficient because it is easy to find ways to launch attacks that bypass detection, and iii) both rule-based and anomaly-based approaches heavily rely on domain knowledge of networked system and cyber security. The major challenge to existing methods is to understand novel attack scenarios and design a model to detect novel and more serious attacks. In this paper, we investigate network attacks and unveil the key activities and the relationships between these activities. For that reason, we propose methods to understand the network security practices using theoretic concepts such as graph kernels. In addition, we integrate graph kernels over deep learning architecture to exploit the relationship expressiveness among network flows and combine ability of deep neural networks (DNNs) with deep architectures to learn hidden representations, based on the communication representation graph of each network flow in a specific time interval, then the flow-based network attack detection can be done effectively by measuring the similarity between the graphs to two flows. The proposed study provides the effectiveness to obtain insights about network attacks and detect network attacks. Using two real-world datasets which contain several new types of network attacks, we achieve significant improvements in accuracies over existing network attack detection tasks.

The operation and management of network is facing increasing complexities brought by the evolution of network protocols and the demands of rapid service delivery. In this paper, we propose a programmable network management architecture, which manages network based on NETCONF protocol and provides REST APIs to upper layer so that further programming can be done based on the APIs to implement flexible management. Functions of devices can be modeled based on YANG language, and the models can be translated into REST APIs. We apply it to the management of ADN (Address Driven Network), an innovative network architecture proposed by Tsinghua University to inhibit IP spoofing, improve network security and provide high service quality. We model the functions of ADN based on YANG language, and implement the network management functions based on the REST APIs. We deploy and evaluate it in a laboratory environment. Test result shows that the programmable network management architecture is flexible to implement management for new network services.

Multicast distribution employs the model of many-to-many so that it is a more efficient way of data delivery compared to traditional one-to-one unicast distribution, which can benefit many applications such as media streaming. However, the lack of security features in its nature makes multicast technology much less popular in an open environment such as the Internet. Internet Service Providers (ISPs) take advantage of IP multicast technology's high efficiency of data delivery to provide Internet Protocol Television (IPTV) to their users. But without the full control on their networks, ISPs cannot collect revenue for the services they provide. Secure Internet Group Management Protocol (SIGMP), an extension of Internet Group Management Protocol (IGMP), and Group Security Association Management Protocol (GSAM), have been proposed to enforce receiver access control at the network level of IP multicast. In this paper, we analyze operational details and issues of both SIGMP and GSAM. An examination of the performance of both protocols is also conducted.

Recently, data protection has become increasingly important in cloud environments. The cloud platform has global user information, rich storage resource allocation information, and a fuller understanding of data attributes. At the same time, there is an urgent need for data access control to provide data security, and software-defined network, as a ready-made facility, has a global network view, global network management capabilities, and programable network rules. In this paper, we present an approach, named High-Performance Software-Defined Data Access Network (HP-SDDAN), providing software-defined data access network architecture, global data attribute management and attribute-based data access network. HP-SDDAN combines the excellent features of cloud platform and software-defined network, and fully considers the performance to implement software-defined data access network. In evaluation, we verify the effectiveness and efficiency of HP-SDDAN implementation, with only 1.46% overhead to achieve attribute-based data access control of attribute-based differential privacy.

As the dynamics of cyber warfare continue to change, it is very important to be aware of the issues currently confronting cyberspace. One threat which continues to grow in the danger it poses to cyber security are botnets. Botnets can launch massive Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks against internet connected hosts anonymously, undertake intricate spam campaigns, launch mass financial fraud campaigns, and even manipulate public opinion via social media bots. The network topology and technology undergirding each botnet varies greatly, as do the motivations commonly behind such networks. Furthermore, as botnets have continued to evolve, many newer ones demonstrate increased levels of anonymity and sophistication, making it more difficult to effectively counter them. Increases in the production of vulnerable Internet of Things (IoT) devices has made it easier for malicious actors to quickly assemble sizable botnets. Because of this, the steps necessary to stop botnets also vary, and in some cases, it may be extremely difficult to effectively defeat a fully functional and sophisticated botnet. While in some cases, the infrastructure supporting the botnet can be targeted and remotely disabled, other cases require the physical assistance of law enforcement to shut down the botnet. In the latter case, it is often a significant challenge to cheaply end a botnet. On the other hand, there are many steps and mitigations that can be taken by end-users to prevent their own devices from becoming part of a botnet. Many of these solutions involve implementing basic cybersecurity practices like installing firewalls and changing default passwords. More sophisticated botnets may require similarly sophisticated intrusion detection systems, to detect and remove malicious infections. Much research has gone into such systems and in recent years many researchers have begun to implement machine learning techniques to defeat botnets. This paper is intended present a review on botnet evolution, trends and mitigations, and offer related examples and research to provide the reader with quick access to a broad understanding of the issues at hand.

Bitcoin is a cryptocurrency which acts as an application protocol that works on top of the IP protocol. This paper focuses on distinct Bitcoin security features, including security services, mechanisms, and algorithms. Further, we propose a well-defined security functional architecture to minimize security risks. The security features and requirements of Bitcoin have been structured in layers.

The botnet has been one of the most common threats to the network security since it exploits multiple malicious codes like worm, Trojans, Rootkit, etc. These botnets are used to perform the attacks, send phishing links, and/or provide malicious services. It is difficult to detect Peer-to-peer (P2P) botnets as compare to IRC (Internet Relay Chat), HTTP (HyperText Transfer Protocol) and other types of botnets because of having typical features of the centralization and distribution. To solve these problems, we propose an effective two-stage traffic classification method to detect P2P botnet traffic based on both non-P2P traffic filtering mechanism and machine learning techniques on conversation features. At the first stage, we filter non-P2P packages to reduce the amount of network traffic through well-known ports, DNS query, and flow counting. At the second stage, we extract conversation features based on data flow features and flow similarity. We detected P2P botnets successfully, by using Machine Learning Classifiers. Experimental evaluations show that our two-stage detection method has a higher accuracy than traditional P2P botnet detection methods.

WireGuard is a free and open source Virtual Private Network (VPN) that aims to replace IPsec and OpenVPN. It is based on a new cryptographic protocol derived from the Noise Protocol Framework. This paper presents the first mechanised cryptographic proof of the protocol underlying WireGuard, using the CryptoVerif proof assistant. We analyse the entire WireGuard protocol as it is, including transport data messages, in an ACCE-style model. We contribute proofs for correctness, message secrecy, forward secrecy, mutual authentication, session uniqueness, and resistance against key compromise impersonation, identity mis-binding, and replay attacks. We also discuss the strength of the identity hiding provided by WireGuard. Our work also provides novel theoretical contributions that are reusable beyond WireGuard. First, we extend CryptoVerif to account for the absence of public key validation in popular Diffie-Hellman groups like Curve25519, which is used in many modern protocols including WireGuard. To our knowledge, this is the first mechanised cryptographic proof for any protocol employing such a precise model. Second, we prove several indifferentiability lemmas that are useful to simplify the proofs for sequences of key derivations.

Load balancing and IP anycast are traffic routing algorithms used to speed up delivery of the Domain Name System. In case of a DDoS attack or an overload condition, the value of these protocols is critical, as they can provide intrinsic DDoS mitigation with the failover alternatives. In this paper, we present a methodology for predicting the next DNS response in the light of a potential redirection to less busy servers, in order to mitigate the size of the attack. Our experiments were conducted using data from the Nov. 2015 attack of the Root DNS servers and Logistic Regression, k-Nearest Neighbors, Support Vector Machines and Random Forest as our primary classifiers. The models were able to successfully predict up to 83% of responses for Root Letters that operated on a small number of sites and consequently suffered the most during the attacks. On the other hand, regarding DNS requests coming from more distributed Root servers, the models demonstrated lower accuracy. Our analysis showed a correlation between the True Positive Rate metric and the number of sites, as well as a clear need for intelligent management of traffic in load balancing practices.