Intrusion detection

The domain name system (DNS) protocol plays a significant role in operation of the Internet by enabling the bi-directional association of domain names with IP addresses. It is also increasingly abused by malware, particularly botnets, by use of: (1) automated domain generation algorithms for rendezvous with a command-and-control (C&C) server, (2) DNS fast flux as a way to hide the location of malicious servers, and (3) DNS as a carrier channel for C&C communications.

Computers today are so complex and opaque that a user cannot possibly hope to know, let alone trust, everything occurring within the machine. While software security techniques help ensure the integrity of user computations, they are only as trustworthy as the underlying hardware. Even though many proposals provide some relief to the problem of hardware trust, the user must ultimately rely on the assurances of other parties. This work restores hardware trust through a simple, small, and slow pluggable hardware element.

Compliance officers specify organizations' policies and procedures for mitigating risk to sensitive data. However, demands for employees' quick access to organizational data often limit which security technologies can be deployed. As a result, many organizations configure an open access environment in which authenticated employees can access any piece of data (e.g., a common practice across health care facilities).

To reduce production cost while meeting time-to-market constraints, semiconductor companies usually design hardware systems with reusable hardware modules, popularly known as Intellectual Property (IP) blocks. Growing reliance on these hardware IPs, often gathered from untrusted third-party vendors, severely affects the security and trustworthiness of the final system. The hardware IPs acquired from external sources may come with deliberate malicious implants, undocumented interfaces working as hidden backdoor, or other integrity issues.

Embedded computing systems are found at the heart of medical devices, automotive systems, smartphone, etc. Securing these embedded systems is a significant challenge that requires new methods that address the power, time, and cost requirements under which these systems operate. Because embedded systems must meet precise time requirements, detecting changes in timing can indicate the presence of malware. This research investigates new models for capturing the expected behavior of embedded systems, in which time requirements play a pivotal role.