2,788 research outputs found
ANCHOR: logically-centralized security for Software-Defined Networks
While the centralization of SDN brought advantages such as a faster pace of
innovation, it also disrupted some of the natural defenses of traditional
architectures against different threats. The literature on SDN has mostly been
concerned with the functional side, despite some specific works concerning
non-functional properties like 'security' or 'dependability'. Though addressing
the latter in an ad-hoc, piecemeal way, may work, it will most likely lead to
efficiency and effectiveness problems. We claim that the enforcement of
non-functional properties as a pillar of SDN robustness calls for a systemic
approach. As a general concept, we propose ANCHOR, a subsystem architecture
that promotes the logical centralization of non-functional properties. To show
the effectiveness of the concept, we focus on 'security' in this paper: we
identify the current security gaps in SDNs and we populate the architecture
middleware with the appropriate security mechanisms, in a global and consistent
manner. Essential security mechanisms provided by anchor include reliable
entropy and resilient pseudo-random generators, and protocols for secure
registration and association of SDN devices. We claim and justify in the paper
that centralizing such mechanisms is key for their effectiveness, by allowing
us to: define and enforce global policies for those properties; reduce the
complexity of controllers and forwarding devices; ensure higher levels of
robustness for critical services; foster interoperability of the non-functional
property enforcement mechanisms; and promote the security and resilience of the
architecture itself. We discuss design and implementation aspects, and we prove
and evaluate our algorithms and mechanisms, including the formalisation of the
main protocols and the verification of their core security properties using the
Tamarin prover.Comment: 42 pages, 4 figures, 3 tables, 5 algorithms, 139 reference
Formal Verification of Security Protocol Implementations: A Survey
Automated formal verification of security protocols has been mostly focused on analyzing high-level abstract models which, however, are significantly different from real protocol implementations written in programming languages. Recently, some researchers have started investigating techniques that bring automated formal proofs closer to real implementations. This paper surveys these attempts, focusing on approaches that target the application code that implements protocol logic, rather than the libraries that implement cryptography. According to these approaches, libraries are assumed to correctly implement some models. The aim is to derive formal proofs that, under this assumption, give assurance about the application code that implements the protocol logic. The two main approaches of model extraction and code generation are presented, along with the main techniques adopted for each approac
Visual Model-Driven Design, Verification and Implementation of Security Protocols
A novel visual model-driven approach to security protocol design, verification, and implementation is presented in this paper. User-friendly graphical models are combined with rigorous formal methods to enable protocol verification and sound automatic code generation. Domain-specific abstractions keep the graphical models simple, yet powerful enough to represent complex, realistic protocols such as SSH. The main contribution is to bring together aspects that were only partially available or not available at all in previous proposal
BlockPKI: An Automated, Resilient, and Transparent Public-Key Infrastructure
This paper describes BlockPKI, a blockchain-based public-key infrastructure
that enables an automated, resilient, and transparent issuance of digital
certificates. Our goal is to address several shortcomings of the current TLS
infrastructure and its proposed extensions. In particular, we aim at reducing
the power of individual certification authorities and make their actions
publicly visible and accountable, without introducing yet another trusted third
party. To demonstrate the benefits and practicality of our system, we present
evaluation results and describe our prototype implementation.Comment: Workshop on Blockchain and Sharing Economy Application
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