Biblio

The Internet of Things is an emerging technology for recent marketplace. In IoT, the heterogeneous devices are connected through the medium of the Internet for seamless communication. The devices used in IoT are resource-constrained in terms of memory, power and processing. Due to that, IoT system is unable to implement hi-end security for malicious cyber-attacks. The recent era is all about connecting IoT devices in various domains like medical, agriculture, transport, power, manufacturing, supply chain, education, etc. and thus need to be prevented from attacks and analyzed after attacks for legal action. The legal analysis of IoT data, devices and communication is called IoT forensics which is highly indispensable for various types of attacks on IoT system. This paper will review types of IoT attacks and its preventive measures in cyber security. It will also help in ascertaining IoT forensics and its challenges in detail. This paper will conclude with the high requirement of cyber security in IoT domains with implementation of standard rules for IoT forensics.

This study explores the Critical Success Factors (CSFs) for Security Education, Training and Awareness (SETA) programmes. Data is gathered from 20 key informants (using semi-structured interviews) from various geographic locations including the Gulf nations, Middle East, USA, UK, and Ireland. The analysis of these key informant interviews produces eleven CSFs for SETA programmes. These CSFs are mapped along the phases of a SETA programme lifecycle (design, development, implementation, and evaluation).

Security is a critical aspect in the process of designing, developing, and testing software systems. Due to the increasing need for security-related skills within software systems, there is a growing demand for these skills to be taught in computer science. A series of security modules was developed not only to meet the demand but also to assess the impact of these modules on teaching critical cyber security topics in computer science courses. This full paper in the innovative practice category presents the outcomes of six security modules in a freshman-level course at two institutions. The study adopts a Model-Eliciting Activity (MEA) as a project for students to demonstrate an understanding of the security concepts. Two experimental studies were conducted: 1) Teaching effectiveness of implementing cyber security modules and MEA project, 2) Students’ experiences in conceptual modeling tasks in problem-solving. In measuring the effectiveness of teaching security concepts with the MEA project, students’ performance, attitudes, and interests as well as the instructor’s effectiveness were assessed. For the conceptual modeling tasks in problem-solving, the results of student outcomes were analyzed. After implementing the security modules with the MEA project, students showed a great understanding of cyber security concepts and an increased interest in broader computer science concepts. The instructor’s beliefs about teaching, learning, and assessment shifted from teacher-centered to student-centered during their experience with the security modules and MEA project. Although 64.29% of students’ solutions do not seem suitable for real-world implementation, 76.9% of the developed solutions showed a sufficient degree of creativity.

Large volumes of private data are gathered, processed, and stored on computers by governments, the military, organizations, financial institutions, colleges, and other enterprises. This data is then sent through networks to other computers. Urgent measures are required to safeguard sensitive personal and company data as well as national security due to the exponential development in number and complexity of cyber- attacks. The essay discusses the characteristics of the Internet and demonstrates how private and financial data can be transmitted over it while still being safeguarded. We show that robbery has spread throughout India and the rest of the world, endangering the global economy and security and giving rise to a variety of cyber-attacks.

In the 21st century, world-leading industries are under the accelerated development of digital transformation. Along with information and data resources becoming more transparent on the Internet, many new network technologies were introduced, but cyber-attack also became a severe problem in cyberspace. Over time, industrial control networks are also forced to join the nodes of the Internet. Therefore, cybersecurity is much more complicated than before, and suffering risk of browsing unknown websites also increases. To practice defenses against cyber-attack effectively, Cyber Range is the best platform to emulate all cyber-attacks and defenses. This article will use VMware virtual machine emulation technology, research cyber range systems under industrial control network architecture, and design and implement an industrial control cyber range system. Using the industrial cyber range to perform vulnerability analyses and exploits on web servers, web applications, and operating systems. The result demonstrates the consequences of the vulnerability attack and raises awareness of cyber security among government, enterprises, education, and other related fields, improving the practical ability to defend against cybersecurity threats.

At the end of the IT Security degree program a simulation game is conducted to repeat and consolidate the core skills of a Bachelor’s graduate. The focus is not on teaching content, but on the application of already learned skills. The scenario shows the students the risks of a completely networked world, which has come to a complete standstill due to a catastrophe. The participants occupy in groups the predefined companies, which are assigned with the reconstruction of the communication infrastructure (the internet). This paper describes the preparation, technical and organizational implementation of the. Also, the most important conclusions drawn by the authors.

There is a stark contrast between the state of cyber security of national infrastructure in Ireland and the efforts underway to support cyber security technologists to work in the country. Notable attacks have recently occurred against the national health service, universities, and various other state bodies, prompting an interest in changing the current situation. This paper presents an overview of the security projects, commercial establishments, and policy in Ireland.

This article analyzes the current situation of computer network security in colleges and universities, future development trends, and the relationship between software vulnerabilities and worm outbreaks. After analyzing a server model with buffer overflow vulnerabilities, a worm implementation model based on remote buffer overflow technology is proposed. Complex networks are the medium of worm propagation. By analyzing common complex network evolution models (rule network models, ER random graph model, WS small world network model, BA scale-free network model) and network node characteristics such as extraction degree distribution, single source shortest distance, network cluster coefficient, richness coefficient, and close center coefficient.

Malware created by the Advanced Persistent Threat (APT) groups do not typically carry out the attacks in a single stage. The “Cyber Kill Chain” framework developed by Lockheed Martin describes an APT through a seven stage life cycle [5] . APT groups are generally nation state actors [1] . They perform highly targeted attacks and do not stop until the goal is achieved [7] . Researchers are always working toward developing a system and a process to create an environment safe from APT type attacks [2] . In this paper, the threat considered is ransomware which are developed by APT groups. WannaCry is an example of a highly sophisticated ransomware created by the Lazurus group of North Korea and its level of sophistication is evident from the existence of a contingency plan of attack upon being discovered [3] [6] . The major contribution of this research is the analysis of APT type ransomware using game theory to present optimal strategies for the defender through the development of equilibrium solutions when faced with APT type ransomware attack. The goal of the equilibrium solutions is to help the defender in preparedness before the attack and in minimization of losses during and after the attack.

Information security construction is a social issue, and the most urgent task is to do an excellent job in information risk assessment. The bayesian neural network currently plays a vital role in enterprise information security risk assessment, which overcomes the subjective defects of traditional assessment results and operates efficiently. The risk quantification method based on fuzzy theory and Bayesian regularization BP neural network mainly uses fuzzy theory to process the original data and uses the processed data as the input value of the neural network, which can effectively reduce the ambiguity of language description. At the same time, special neural network training is carried out for the confusion that the neural network is easy to fall into the optimal local problem. Finally, the risk is verified and quantified through experimental simulation. This paper mainly discusses the problem of enterprise information security risk assessment based on a Bayesian neural network, hoping to provide strong technical support for enterprises and organizations to carry out risk rectification plans. Therefore, the above method provides a new information security risk assessment idea.

Cloud security has become a serious challenge due to increasing number of attacks day-by-day. Intrusion Detection System (IDS) requires an efficient security model for improving security in the cloud. This paper proposes a game theory based model, named as Game Theory Cloud Security Deep Neural Network (GT-CSDNN) for security in cloud. The proposed model works with the Deep Neural Network (DNN) for classification of attack and normal data. The performance of the proposed model is evaluated with CICIDS-2018 dataset. The dataset is normalized and optimal points about normal and attack data are evaluated based on the Improved Whale Algorithm (IWA). The simulation results show that the proposed model exhibits improved performance as compared with existing techniques in terms of accuracy, precision, F-score, area under the curve, False Positive Rate (FPR) and detection rate.

The digital transformation brought on by 5G is redefining current models of end-to-end (E2E) connectivity and service reliability to include security-by-design principles necessary to enable 5G to achieve its promise. 5G trustworthiness highlights the importance of embedding security capabilities from the very beginning while the 5G architecture is being defined and standardized. Security requirements need to overlay and permeate through the different layers of 5G systems (physical, network, and application) as well as different parts of an E2E 5G architecture within a risk-management framework that takes into account the evolving security-threats landscape. 5G presents a typical use-case of wireless communication and computer networking convergence, where 5G fundamental building blocks include components such as Software Defined Networks (SDN), Network Functions Virtualization (NFV) and the edge cloud. This convergence extends many of the security challenges and opportunities applicable to SDN/NFV and cloud to 5G networks. Thus, 5G security needs to consider additional security requirements (compared to previous generations) such as SDN controller security, hypervisor security, orchestrator security, cloud security, edge security, etc. At the same time, 5G networks offer security improvement opportunities that should be considered. Here, 5G architectural flexibility, programmability and complexity can be harnessed to improve resilience and reliability. The working group scope fundamentally addresses the following: •5G security considerations need to overlay and permeate through the different layers of the 5G systems (physical, network, and application) as well as different parts of an E2E 5G architecture including a risk management framework that takes into account the evolving security threats landscape. •5G exemplifies a use-case of heterogeneous access and computer networking convergence, which extends a unique set of security challenges and opportunities (e.g., related to SDN/NFV and edge cloud, etc.) to 5G networks. Similarly, 5G networks by design offer potential security benefits and opportunities through harnessing the architecture flexibility, programmability and complexity to improve its resilience and reliability. •The IEEE FNI security WG's roadmap framework follows a taxonomic structure, differentiating the 5G functional pillars and corresponding cybersecurity risks. As part of cross collaboration, the security working group will also look into the security issues associated with other roadmap working groups within the IEEE Future Network Initiative.

Online information security labs intended for training and facilitating hands-on learning for distance students at master’s level are not easy to develop and administer. This research focuses on analyzing the results of a DSR project for design, development, and implementation of an InfoSec lab. This research work contributes to the existing research by putting forth an initial outline of a generalized model for design theory for InfoSec labs aimed at hands-on education of students in the field of information security. The anatomy of design theory framework is used to analyze the necessary components of the anticipated design theory for InfoSec labs in future.

Aiming at the single hopping strategy in the terminal information hopping active defense technology, a variety of heterogeneous hopping modes are introduced into the terminal information hopping system, the definition of the terminal information is expanded, and the adaptive adjustment of the hopping strategy is given. A network adversarial training simulation system is researched and designed, and related subsystems are discussed from the perspective of key technologies and their implementation, including interactive adversarial training simulation system, adversarial training simulation support software system, adversarial training simulation evaluation system and adversarial training Mock Repository. The system can provide a good environment for network confrontation theory research and network confrontation training simulation, which is of great significance.

As the cyberspace structure becomes more and more complex, the problems of dynamic network space topology, complex composition structure, large spanning space scale, and a high degree of self-organization are becoming more and more important. In this paper, we model the cyberspace elements and their dependencies by combining the knowledge of graph theory. Layer adopts a network space modeling method combining virtual and real, and level adopts a spatial iteration method. Combining the layer-level models into one, this paper proposes a fast modeling method for cyberspace security structure model with network connection relationship, hierarchical relationship, and vulnerability information as input. This method can not only clearly express the individual vulnerability constraints in the network space, but also clearly express the hierarchical relationship of the complex dependencies of network individuals. For independent network elements or independent network element groups, it has flexibility and can greatly reduce the computational complexity in later applications.

This paper has a new network security evaluation method as an absorbing Markov chain-based assessment method. This method is different from other network security situation assessment methods based on graph theory. It effectively refinement issues such as poor objectivity of other methods, incomplete consideration of evaluation factors, and mismatching of evaluation results with the actual situation of the network. Firstly, this method collects the security elements in the network. Then, using graph theory combined with absorbing Markov chain, the threat values of vulnerable nodes are calculated and sorted. Finally, the maximum possible attack path is obtained by blending network asset information to determine the current network security status. The experimental results prove that the method fully considers the vulnerability and threat node ranking and the specific case of system network assets, which makes the evaluation result close to the actual network situation.

With the development of computer technology and information security technology, computer networks will increasingly become an important means of information exchange, permeating all areas of social life. Therefore, recognizing the vulnerabilities and potential threats of computer networks as well as various security problems that exist in reality, designing and researching computer quality architecture, and ensuring the security of network information are issues that need to be resolved urgently. The purpose of this article is to study the design and realization of information security technology and computer quality system structure. This article first summarizes the basic theory of information security technology, and then extends the core technology of information security. Combining the current status of computer quality system structure, analyzing the existing problems and deficiencies, and using information security technology to design and research the computer quality system structure on this basis. This article systematically expounds the function module data, interconnection structure and routing selection of the computer quality system structure. And use comparative method, observation method and other research methods to design and research the information security technology and computer quality system structure. Experimental research shows that when the load of the computer quality system structure studied this time is 0 or 100, the data loss rate of different lengths is 0, and the correct rate is 100, which shows extremely high feasibility.

IoT connects a large number of physical objects with the Internet that capture and exchange real-time information for service provisioning. Traditional network management schemes face challenges to manage vast amounts of network traffic generated by IoT services. Software-defined networking (SDN) and information-centric networking (ICN) are two complementary technologies that could be integrated to solve the challenges of different aspects of IoT service provisioning. ICN offers a clean-slate design to accommodate continuously increasing network traffic by considering content as a network primitive. It provides a novel solution for information propagation and delivery for large-scale IoT services. On the other hand, SDN allocates overall network management responsibilities to a central controller, where network elements act merely as traffic forwarding components. An SDN-enabled network supports ICN without deploying ICN-capable hardware. Therefore, the integration of SDN and ICN provides benefits for large-scale IoT services. This article provides a comprehensive survey on software-defined information-centric Internet of Things (SDIC-IoT) for IoT service provisioning. We present critical enabling technologies of SDIC-IoT, discuss its architecture, and describe its benefits for IoT service provisioning. We elaborate on key IoT service provisioning requirements and discuss how SDIC-IoT supports different aspects of IoT services. We define different taxonomies of SDIC-IoT literature based on various performance parameters. Furthermore, we extensively discuss different use cases, synergies, and advances to realize the SDIC-IoT concept. Finally, we present current challenges and future research directions of IoT service provisioning using SDIC-IoT.

Emerging safety-critical systems require high-performance data-parallel architectures and, problematically, ones that can guarantee tight and safe worst-case execution times. Given the complexity of existing architectures like GPUs, it is unlikely that sufficiently accurate models and algorithms for timing analysis will emerge in the foreseeable future. This motivates our work on Sim-D, a clean-slate approach to designing a real-time data-parallel architecture. Sim-D enforces a predictable execution model by isolating compute- and access resources in hardware. The DRAM controller uninterruptedly transfers tiles of data, requested by entire work-groups. This permits work-groups to be executed as a sequence of deterministic access- and compute phases, scheduling phases from up to two work-groups in parallel. Evaluation using a cycle-accurate timing model shows that Sim-D can achieve performance on par with an embedded-grade NVIDIA TK1 GPU under two conditions: applications refrain from using indirect DRAM transfers into large buffers, and Sim-D's scratchpads provide sufficient bandwidth. Sim-D's design facilitates derivation of safe WCET bounds that are tight within 12.7 percent on average, at an additional average performance penalty of \textbackslashsim∼9.2 percent caused by scheduling restrictions on phases.

Key challenges faced in the Internet today can be enumerated as follows: (1) complex route discovery mechanisms (2) latency and instability during link or device failure recovery (3) inadequacy in extending routing and addressing to limited domains, (4) complex interworking of multiple routing protocols at border routers. Routing table sizes increase with increasing number of networks indicating a scalability issue. One approach to address this spiraling complexity and performance challenges is to start fresh and re-think Internet routing and addressing. The Expedited Internet Bypass protocol (EIBP) is such a clean slate approach. In the interim, EIBP works in parallel with IP and has no dependency on layer 3 protocols. We demonstrated EIBP for routing and forwarding in an Autonomous system (AS) in our earlier work. In this article, we demonstrate EIBP for inter-AS routing. We compare EIBP's inter-AS operations and performance to Open Shortest Path First (OSPF) and Border Gateway Protocol (BGP) deployed in an intra-AS, inter-AS communications scenario with two AS.

Audit trails are critical components in enterprise business applications, typically used for storing, tracking, and auditing data. Entities in the audit trail applications have weak trust boundaries, which expose them to various security risks and attacks. To harden the security and develop secure by design applications, blockchain technology has been recently introduced in the audit trails. Blockchains take a consensus-driven clean slate approach to equip audit trails with secure and transparent data processing, without a trusted intermediary. On a downside, blockchains significantly increase the space-time complexity of the audit trails, leading to high storage costs and low transaction throughput. In this article, we introduce BlockTrail, a novel blockchain architecture that fragments the legacy blockchain systems into layers of codependent hierarchies, thereby reducing the space-time complexity and increasing the throughput. BlockTrail is prototyped on the “practical Byzantine fault tolerance” protocol with a custom-built blockchain. Experiments with BlockTrail show that compared to the conventional schemes, BlockTrail is secure and efficient, with low storage footprint.

Malicious software (malware) poses a significant threat to the security of our networks and users. In the ever-evolving malware landscape, Excel 4.0 Office macros (XL4) have recently become an important attack vector. These macros are often hidden within apparently legitimate documents and under several layers of obfuscation. As such, they are difficult to analyze using static analysis techniques. Moreover, the analysis in a dynamic analysis environment (a sandbox) is challenging because the macros execute correctly only under specific environmental conditions that are not always easy to create. This paper presents SYMBEXCEL, a novel solution that leverages symbolic execution to deobfuscate and analyze Excel 4.0 macros automatically. Our approach proceeds in three stages: (1) The malicious document is parsed and loaded in memory; (2) Our symbolic execution engine executes the XL4 formulas; and (3) Our Engine concretizes any symbolic values encountered during the symbolic exploration, therefore evaluating the execution of each macro under a broad range of (meaningful) environment configurations. SYMBEXCEL significantly outperforms existing deobfuscation tools, allowing us to reliably extract Indicators of Compromise (IoCs) and other critical forensics information. Our experiments demonstrate the effectiveness of our approach, especially in deobfuscating novel malicious documents that make heavy use of environment variables and are often not identified by commercial anti-virus software.

Emails are widely used as a form of communication and sharing files in an organization. However, email is widely used by cybercriminals to spread malware and carrying out cyber-attacks. We implemented an open-source email gateway in conjunction with a security sandbox for securing emails against malicious attachments. The email gateway scans all incoming and outgoing emails and stops emails containing suspicious files. An automated python script would then send the suspected email to the sandboxing element through sandbox API for further analysis, while the script is used also for the prevention of duplicate results. Moreover, the mail server administrator receives notifications from the email gateway about suspicious attachments. If detected attachment is a true positive based on the sandbox analysis result, email is deleted, otherwise, the email is delivered to the recipient. The paper describes in an empirical way the steps followed during the implementation, results, and conclusions of our research.

Mobile devices are an inseparable part of our lives. They have made it possible to access all the information and services anywhere at any time. Almost all of the organizations try to provide a mobile device-based solution to its users. However, this convenience has arisen the risk of losing personal information and has increased the threat to security. It has been observed recently that some of the mobile device manufacturers and mobile apps developers have lost the private information of their users to hackers. It has risen a great concern among mobile device users about their personal information. Android and iOS are the major operating systems for mobile devices and share over 99% of the mobile device market. This research aims to conduct a comparative analysis of the security of the components in the Android and iOS operating systems. It analyses the security from several perspectives such as memory randomization, application sandboxing, isolation, encryption, built-in antivirus, and data storage. From the analysis, it is evident that iOS is more secure than Android operating system. However, this security comes with a cost of losing the freedom.

Virtual machine (VM) based application sandboxes leverage strong isolation guarantees of virtualization techniques to address several security issues through effective containment of malware. Specifically, in end-user physical hosts, potentially vulnerable applications can be isolated from each other (and the host) using VM based sandboxes. However, sharing data across applications executing within different sandboxes is a non-trivial requirement for end-user systems because at the end of the day, all applications are used by the end-user owning the device. Existing file sharing techniques compromise the security or efficiency, especially considering lack of technical expertise of many end-users in the contemporary times. In this paper, we propose MicroBlind, a security hardened file sharing framework for virtualized sandboxes to support efficient data sharing across different application sandboxes. MicroBlind enables a simple file sharing management API for end users where the end user can orchestrate file sharing across different VM sandboxes in a secure manner. To demonstrate the efficacy of MicroBlind, we perform comprehensive empirical analysis against existing data sharing techniques (augmented for the sandboxing setup) and show that MicroBlind provides improved security and efficiency.