Biblio

Nowadays, Internet of Things (IoT) has gained considerable significance and concern, consequently, and in particular with widespread usage and adoption of the IoT applications and projects in various industries, the consideration of the IoT Security has increased dramatically too. Therefore, this paper presents a concise and a precise review for the current state of the IoT security models and frameworks. The paper also proposes a new unified criteria and characteristics, namely Formal, Inclusive, Future, Agile, and Compliant with the standards (FIFAC), in order to assure modularity, reliability, and trust for future IoT security models, as well as, to provide an assortment of adaptable controls for protecting the data consistently across all IoT layers.

Semantic metadata is an important means to promote the integration of information and services and improve the level of search and discovery automation. Aiming at the problems that machine is difficult to handle service metadata description and lack of information metadata description in current SWIM information services, this paper analyzes the methods of metadata sematic empowerment and mainstream semantic metadata standards related to air traffic control system, constructs the SWIM information, and service sematic metadata model based on semantic expansion. The method of semantic metadata model mapping is given from two aspects of service and data, which can be used to improve the level of information sharing and intelligent processing.

Machine to Machine (M2M) a sub area of Internet of Things (IoT) will link billions of devices or things distributed around the world using the Internet. These devices when connected exchange information obtained from the environment such as temperature or humidity from industrial or residential control process. Information Security (IS) and Trust are one of the fundamental points for users and the industry to accept the use of these devices with Confidentiality, Integrity, Availability and Authenticity. The key reason is that most of these devices use wireless media especially in residential and smart city environments. The overall goal of this work is to implement a Middleware Security to improve Safety and Security between the control network devices used in IoT/M2M and the Internet for residential or industrial environments. This implementation has been tested with different protocols as CoAP and MQTT, a microcomputer with free Real-Time Operating System (RTOS) implemented in a Raspberry Pi Gateway Access Point (RGAP), Network Address Translator (NAT), IPTable firewall and encryption is part of this implementation for secure data transmission

With the emergence of smart grids as the primary means of distribution across wide areas, the importance of improving its resilience to faults and mishaps is increasing. The reliability of a distribution system depends upon its tolerance to attacks and the efficiency of restoration after an attack occurs. This paper proposes a unique approach to the restoration of smart grids under attack by impostors or due to natural calamities via optimal islanding of the grid with primary generators and distributed generators(DGs) into sub-grids minimizing the amount of load shed which needs to be incurred and at the same time minimizing the number of switching operations via graph theory. The minimum load which needs to be shed is computed in the first stage followed by selecting the nodes whose load needs to be shed to achieve such a configuration and then finally deriving the sequence of switching operations required to achieve the configuration. The proposed method is tested against standard IEEE 37-bus and a 1069-bus grid system and the minimum load shed along with the sequencing steps to optimal configuration and time to achieve such a configuration are presented which demonstrates the effectiveness of the method when compared to the existing methods in the field. Moreover, the proposed algorithm can be easily modified to incorporate any other constraints which might arise due to any operational configuration of the grid.

In this paper, an attribute-based encryption scheme with policy hidden and key tracing under multi-authority is proposed. In our scheme, the access structure is embedded into the ciphertext implicitly and the attacker cannot gain user's private information by access structure. The key traceability is realized under multi-authority and collusion is prevented. Finally, based on the DBDH security model, it is proved that this scheme can resist the plaintext attack under the standard model.

Ultra-Reliable Low Latency Communications (URLLC) has been always a vital component of many industrial applications. The paper proposes a new wireless URLLC solution called RETIS, which is suitable for factory automation and fast process control applications, where low latency, low jitter, and high data exchange rates are mandatory. In the paper, we describe the communication protocol as well as the hardware structure of the network nodes for implementing the required functionality. Many techniques enabling fast, reliable wireless transmissions are used - short Transmission Time Interval (TTI), TimeDivision Multiple Access (TDMA), MIMO, optional duplicated data transfer, Forward Error Correction (FEC), ACK mechanism. Preliminary tests show that reliable endto-end latency down to 350 μs and packet exchange rate up to 4 kHz can be reached (using quadruple MIMO and standard IEEE 802.15.4 PHY at 250 kbit/s).

Controller Area Network is the prominent communication protocol in automotive systems. Its salient features of arbitration, message filtering, error detection, data consistency and fault confinement provide robust and reliable architecture. Despite of this, it lacks security features and is vulnerable to many attacks. One of the common attacks over the CAN communication is the replay attack. It can happen even after the implementation of encryption or authentication. This paper proposes a methodology of supressing the replay attacks by implementing authenticated encryption embedded with timestamp and pre-shared initialisation vector as a primary key. The major advantage of this system is its flexibility and configurability nature where in each layer can be chosen with the help of cryptographic algorithms to up to the entire size of the keys.

In recent years, the integration of encryption schemes into cyber-physical systems (CPS) has attracted much attention to improve the confidentiality of sensor signals and control input signals sent over the network. However, in principle an adversary can still modify the sensor signals and the control input signals, even though he does not know the concrete values of the signals. In this paper, we shall first show that a standard encryption scheme can not prevent some sophisticated attacks such as covert attacks, which remain invisible in the CPS with encrypted communication and a conventional diagnosis system. To cope with this problem, an improved encryption scheme is proposed to mask the communication and to cancel the influence of the attack signal out of the system. The basic idea is to swap the plaintext and the generated random value in the somewhat homomorphic encryption scheme to prevent a direct access of the adversary to the transmitted plaintext. It will be shown that the CPS with the improved encryption scheme is resilient to covert attacks. The proposed encryption scheme and the CPS structure are finally illustrated through the well-established quadruple-tank process.

In this paper, we examine algebraic attacks on the O'zDSt 1105:2009. We begin with a brief review of the meaning of algebraic cryptanalysis, followed by an algebraic cryptanalysis of O'zDSt 1105:2009. Primarily O'zDSt 1105:2009 encryption algorithm is decomposed and each transformation in it is algebraic described separately. Then input and output of each transformation are expressed with other transformation, encryption key, plaintext and cipher text. Created equations, unknowns on it and degree of unknowns are analyzed, and then overall result is given. Based on experimental results, it is impossible to save all system of equations that describes all transformations in O'zDSt 1105:2009 standard. Because, this task requires 273 bytes for the second round. For this reason, it is advisable to evaluate the parameters of the system of algebraic equations, representing the O'zDSt 1105:2009 standard, theoretically.

The security of lattice-based cryptosystems that are secure for the post-quantum period is based on the difficulty of the shortest vector problem (SVP) and the closest vector problem (CVP). In the literature, many sieving algorithms are proposed to solve these hard problems. In this paper, efficient implementation of HashSieve sieving algorithm is discussed. A modular software library to have an efficient implementation of HashSieve algorithm is developed. Modular software library is used as an infrastructure in order for the HashSieve efficient implementation to be better than the sample in the literature (Laarhoven's standard HashSieve implementation). According to the experimental results, it is observed that HashSieve efficient implementation has a better running time than the example in the literature. It is concluded that both implementations are close to each other in terms of the memory space used.

Public key encryption with equality test (PKEET) enables the testing whether two ciphertexts encrypt the same message. Identity-based encryption with equality test (IBEET) simplify the certificate management of PKEET, which leads to many potential applications such as in smart city applications or Wireless Body Area Networks. Lee et al. (ePrint 2016) proposed a generic construction of IBEET scheme in the standard model utilising a 3-level hierachy IBE together with a one-time signature scheme, which can be instantiated in lattice setting. Duong et al. (ProvSec 2019) proposed the first direct construction of IBEET in standard model from lattices. However, their scheme achieve CPA security only. In this paper, we improve the Duong et al.'s construction by proposing an IBEET in standard model which achieves CCA2 security and with smaller ciphertext and public key size.

Nowadays, private corporations and public institutions are dealing with constant and sophisticated cyberthreats and cyberattacks. As a general warning, organizations must build and develop a cybersecurity culture and awareness in order to defend against cybercriminals. Information Technology (IT) and Information Security (InfoSec) audits that were efficient in the past, are trying to converge into cybersecurity audits to address cyber threats, cyber risks and cyberattacks that evolve in an aggressive cyber landscape. However, the increase in number and complexity of cyberattacks and the convoluted cyberthreat landscape is challenging the running cybersecurity audit models and putting in evidence the critical need for a new cybersecurity audit model. This article reviews the best practices and methodologies of global leaders in the cybersecurity assurance and audit arena. By means of the analysis of the current approaches and theoretical background, their real scope, strengths and weaknesses are highlighted looking forward a most efficient and cohesive synthesis. As a resut, this article presents an original and comprehensive cybersecurity audit model as a proposal to be utilized for conducting cybersecurity audits in organizations and Nation States. The CyberSecurity Audit Model (CSAM) evaluates and validates audit, preventive, forensic and detective controls for all organizational functional areas. CSAM has been tested, implemented and validated along with the Cybersecurity Awareness TRAining Model (CATRAM) in a Canadian higher education institution. A research case study is being conducted to validate both models and the findings will be published accordingly.

Implementation of Internet-of-Things (IoT) can take place in many applications, for instance, automobiles, and industrial automation. We generally view the role of an Electronic Control Unit (ECU) or industrial network node that is occupied and interconnected in many different configurations in a vehicle or a factory. This condition may raise the occurrence of problems related to security issues, such as unauthorized access to data or components in ECUs or industrial network nodes. In this paper, we propose a hardware (HW)/software (SW) framework having integrated security extensions complemented with various security-related features that later can be implemented directly from the framework to All Programmable Multiprocessor System-on-Chip (AP MPSoC)-based ECUs. The framework is a software-defined one that can be configured or reconfigured in a higher level of abstraction language, including High-Level Synthesis (HLS), and the output of the framework is hardware configuration in multiprocessor or reconfigurable components in the FPGA. The system comprises high-level requirements, covert and side-channel estimation, cryptography, optimization, artificial intelligence, and partial reconfiguration. With this framework, we may reduce the design & development time, and provide significant flexibility to configure/reconfigure our framework and its target platform equipped with security extensions.

As modern web browsers gain new and increasingly powerful features the importance of impact assessments of the new functionality becomes crucial. A web privacy impact assessment of a planned web browser feature, the Ambient Light Sensor API, indicated risks arising from the exposure of overly precise information about the lighting conditions in the user environment. The analysis led to the demonstration of direct risks of leaks of user data, such as the list of visited websites or exfiltration of sensitive content across distinct browser contexts. Our work contributed to the creation of web standards leading to decisions by browser vendors (i.e. obsolescence, non-implementation or modification to the operation of browser features). We highlight the need to consider broad risks when making reviews of new features. We offer practically-driven high-level observations lying on the intersection of web security and privacy risk engineering and modeling, and standardization. We structure our work as a case study from activities spanning over three years.

Adaptation of e-commerce in third world countries requires more secure computing facilities. Online data is vulnerable and susceptible to active attacks. Hundreds of security mechanisms and services have been proposed to curb this challenge. However, available security mechanisms, sufficiently strong, are heavy for the machines used. To secure online data where machines' processing power and memory are deficient, a Hybrid Encryption Standard (HES) is proposed. The HES is built on the Data Encryption Standard (DES) algorithm and its siblings. The component units of the DES are redesigned towards reduced demands for processing power and memory. Precisely, white box designs of IP tables, PC tables, Expansion tables, Rotation tables, S-boxes and P-boxes are proposed, all aimed at reducing the processing time and memory demands. Evaluation of the performance of the HES algorithm against the performance of the traditional DES algorithm reveal that the HES out-performs the DES with regards to speed, memory demands, and general acceptance by novice practitioners in the cryptography field. In addition, reproducibility and flexibility are attractive features of the HES over the DES.

The number of applications and services that are hosted on cloud platforms is constantly increasing. Nowadays, more and more applications are hosted as services on cloud platforms, co-existing with other services in a mutually untrusted environment. Facilities such as virtual machines, containers and encrypted communication channels aim to offer isolation between the various applications and protect sensitive user data. However, such techniques are not always able to provide a secure execution environment for sensitive applications nor they offer guarantees that data are not monitored by an honest but curious provider once they reach the cloud infrastructure. The recent advancements of trusted execution environments within commodity processors, such as Intel SGX, provide a secure reverse sandbox, where code and data are isolated even from the underlying operating system. Moreover, Intel SGX provides a remote attestation mechanism, allowing the communicating parties to verify their identity as well as prove that code is executed on hardware-assisted software enclaves. Many approaches try to ensure code and data integrity, as well as enforce channel encryption schemes such as TLS, however, these techniques are not enough to achieve complete isolation and secure communications without hardware assistance or are not efficient in terms of performance. In this work, we design and implement a practical attestation system that allows the service provider to offer a seamless attestation service between the hosted applications and the end clients. Furthermore, we implement a novel caching system that is capable to eliminate the latencies introduced by the remote attestation process. Our approach allows the parties to attest one another before each communication attempt, with improved performance when compared to a standard TLS handshake.

In an increasingly asymmetric context of both instability and permanent innovation, organizations demand new capacities and learning patterns. In this sense, supervisors have adopted the metaphor of the "sandbox" as a strategy that allows their regulated parties to experiment and test new proposals in order to study them and adjust to the established compliance frameworks. Therefore, the concept of the "sandbox" is of educational interest as a way to revindicate failure as a right in the learning process, allowing students to think, experiment, ask questions and propose ideas outside the known theories, and thus overcome the mechanistic formation rooted in many of the higher education institutions. Consequently, this article proposes the application of this concept for educational institutions as a way of resignifying what students have learned.

This paper presents a novel method, combining new formulations and sampling, to improve the scalability of sum-of-squares (SOS) programming-based system verification. Region-of-attraction approximation problems are considered for polynomial, polynomial with generalized Lur'e uncertainty, and rational trigonometric multi-rigid-body systems. Our method starts by identifying that Lagrange multipliers, traditionally heavily used for S-procedures, are a major culprit of creating bloated SOS programs. In light of this, we exploit inherent system properties-continuity, convexity, and implicit algebraic structure-and reformulate the problems as quotient-ring SOS programs, thereby eliminating all the multipliers. These new programs are smaller, sparser, less constrained, yet less conservative. Their computation is further improved by leveraging a recent result on sampling algebraic varieties. Remarkably, solution correctness is guaranteed with just a finite (in practice, very small) number of samples. Altogether, the proposed method can verify systems well beyond the reach of existing SOS-based approaches (32 states); on smaller problems where a baseline is available, it computes tighter solution 2-3 orders of magnitude faster.

Internet of Things devices and data sources areseeing increased use in various application areas. The pro-liferation of cheaper sensor hardware has allowed for widerscale data collection deployments. With increased numbers ofdeployed sensors and the use of heterogeneous sensor typesthere is increased scope for collecting erroneous, inaccurate orinconsistent data. This in turn may lead to inaccurate modelsbuilt from this data. It is important to evaluate this data asit is collected to determine its validity. This paper presents ananalysis of data quality as it is represented in Internet of Things(IoT) systems and some of the limitations of this representation. The paper discusses the use of trust as a heuristic to drive dataquality measurements. Trust is a well-established metric that hasbeen used to determine the validity of a piece or source of datain crowd sourced or other unreliable data collection techniques. The analysis extends to detail an appropriate framework forrepresenting data quality effectively within the big data modeland why a trust backed framework is important especially inheterogeneously sourced IoT data streams.

Session management is a fundamental component of web applications: despite the apparent simplicity, correctly implementing web sessions is extremely tricky, as witnessed by the large number of existing attacks. This motivated the design of formal methods to rigorously reason about web session security which, however, are not supported at present by suitable automated verification techniques. In this paper we introduce the first security type system that enforces session security on a core model of web applications, focusing in particular on server-side code. We showcase the expressiveness of our type system by analyzing the session management logic of HotCRP, Moodle, and phpMyAdmin, unveiling novel security flaws that have been acknowledged by software developers.

Increasing penetration of distributed energy resources (DERs) in distribution networks expands the cyberattack surface. Moreover, the widely used standard protocols for communicating DER inverters such as Modbus is more vulnerable to data-integrity attacks and denial of service (DoS) attacks because of its native clear-text packet format. This paper proposes a distributed intrusion detection system (D-IDS) architecture and algorithms for detecting anomalies on the DER Modbus communication. We devised a model-based approach to define physics-based threshold bands for analog data points and transaction-based threshold bands for both the analog and discrete data points. The proposed IDS algorithm uses the model- based approach to develop Modbus-specific IDS rule sets, which can enhance the detection accuracy of the anomalies either by data-integrity attacks or maloperation on cyber-physical DER Modbus devices. Further, the IDS algorithm autogenerates the Modbus-specific IDS rulesets in compliance with various open- source IDS rule syntax formats, such as Snort and Suricata, for seamless integration and mitigation of semantic/syntax errors in the development and production environment. We considered the IEEE 13-bus distribution grid, including DERs, as a case study. We conducted various DoS type attacks and data-integrity attacks on the hardware-in-the-loop (HIL) CPS DER testbed at ISU to evaluate the proposed D-IDS. Consequently, we computed the performance metrics such as IDS detection accuracy, IDS detection rate, and end-to-end latency. The results demonstrated that 100% detection accuracy, 100% detection rate for 60k DoS packets, 99.96% detection rate for 80k DoS packets, and 0.25 ms end-to-end latency between DERs to Control Center.

This article is focused on industrial networks and their security. An industrial network typically works with older devices that do not provide security at the level of today's requirements. Even protocols often do not support security at a sufficient level. It is necessary to deal with these security issues due to digitization. It is therefore required to provide other techniques that will help with security. For this reason, it is possible to deploy additional elements that will provide additional security and ensure the monitoring of the network, such as the Intrusion Detection System. These systems recognize identified signatures and anomalies. Methods of detecting security incidents by detecting anomalies in network traffic are described. The proposed methods are focused on detecting DoS attacks in the industrial Modbus protocol and operations performed outside the standard interval in the Distributed Network Protocol 3. The functionality of the performed methods is tested in the IDS system Zeek.

Managing identity across an ever-growing digital services landscape has become one of the most challenging tasks for security experts. Over the years, several Identity Management (IDM) systems were introduced and adopted to tackle with the growing demand of an identity. In this series, a recently emerging IDM system is Self-Sovereign Identity (SSI) which offers greater control and access to users regarding their identity. This distinctive feature of the SSI IDM system represents a major development towards the availability of sovereign identity to users. uPort is an emerging open-source identity management system providing sovereign identity to users, organisations, and other entities. As an emerging identity management system, it requires meticulous analysis of its architecture, working, operational services, efficiency, advantages and limitations. Therefore, this paper contributes towards achieving all of these objectives. Firstly, it presents the architecture and working of the uPort identity management system. Secondly, it develops a Decentralized Application (DApp) to demonstrate and evaluate its operational services and efficiency. Finally, based on the developed DApp and experimental analysis, it presents the advantages and limitations of the uPort identity management system.

A critical need exists for collaboration and action by government, industry, and academia to address cyber weaknesses or vulnerabilities inherent to embedded or cyber physical systems (CPS). These vulnerabilities are introduced as we leverage technologies, methods, products, and services from the global supply chain throughout a system's lifecycle. As adversaries are exploiting these weaknesses as access points for malicious purposes, solutions for system security and resilience become a priority call for action. The SAE G-32 Cyber Physical Systems Security Committee has been convened to address this complex challenge. The SAE G-32 will take a holistic systems engineering approach to integrate system security considerations to develop a Cyber Physical System Security Framework. This framework is intended to bring together multiple industries and develop a method and common language which will enable us to more effectively, efficiently, and consistently communicate a risk, cost, and performance trade space. The standard will allow System Integrators to make decisions utilizing a common framework and language to develop affordable, trustworthy, resilient, and secure systems.

The next generation of dependable embedded systems feature autonomy and higher levels of interconnection. Autonomy is commonly achieved with the support of artificial intelligence algorithms that pose high computing demands on the hardware platform, reaching a high performance scale. This involves a dramatic increase in software and hardware complexity, fact that together with the novelty of the technology, raises serious concerns regarding system dependability. Traditional approaches for certification require to demonstrate that the system will be acceptably safe to operate before it is deployed into service. The nature of autonomous systems, with potentially infinite scenarios, configurations and unanticipated interactions, makes it increasingly difficult to support such claim at design time. In this context, the extended networking technologies can be exploited to collect post-deployment evidence that serve to oversee whether safety assumptions are preserved during operation and to continuously improve the system through regular software updates. These software updates are not only convenient for critical bug fixing but also necessary for keeping the interconnected system resilient against security threats. However, such approach requires a recondition of the traditional certification practices.