823 research outputs found
A Survey on Security Threats and Countermeasures in IEEE Test Standards
International audienceEditor's note: Test infrastructure has been shown to be a portal for hackers. This article reviews the threats and countermeasures for IEEE test infrastructure standards
Execution Integrity with In-Place Encryption
Instruction set randomization (ISR) was initially proposed with the main goal
of countering code-injection attacks. However, ISR seems to have lost its
appeal since code-injection attacks became less attractive because protection
mechanisms such as data execution prevention (DEP) as well as code-reuse
attacks became more prevalent.
In this paper, we show that ISR can be extended to also protect against
code-reuse attacks while at the same time offering security guarantees similar
to those of software diversity, control-flow integrity, and information hiding.
We present Scylla, a scheme that deploys a new technique for in-place code
encryption to hide the code layout of a randomized binary, and restricts the
control flow to a benign execution path. This allows us to i) implicitly
restrict control-flow targets to basic block entries without requiring the
extraction of a control-flow graph, ii) achieve execution integrity within
legitimate basic blocks, and iii) hide the underlying code layout under
malicious read access to the program. Our analysis demonstrates that Scylla is
capable of preventing state-of-the-art attacks such as just-in-time
return-oriented programming (JIT-ROP) and crash-resistant oriented programming
(CROP). We extensively evaluate our prototype implementation of Scylla and show
feasible performance overhead. We also provide details on how this overhead can
be significantly reduced with dedicated hardware support
Fast and secure key distribution using mesoscopic coherent states of light
This work shows how two parties A and B can securely share sequences of
random bits at optical speeds. A and B possess true-random physical sources and
exchange random bits by using a random sequence received to cipher the
following one to be sent. A starting shared secret key is used and the method
can be described as an unlimited one-time-pad extender. It is demonstrated that
the minimum probability of error in signal determination by the eavesdropper
can be set arbitrarily close to the pure guessing level. Being based on the
-ry encryption protocol this method also allows for optical amplification
without security degradation, offering practical advantages over the BB84
protocol for key distribution.Comment: 11 pages and 4 figures. This version updates the one published in PRA
68, 052307 (2003). Minor changes were made in the text and one section on
Mutual Information was adde
A Hardware Security Solution against Scan-Based Attacks
Scan based Design for Test (DfT) schemes have been widely used to achieve high fault coverage for integrated circuits. The scan technique provides full access to the internal nodes of the device-under-test to control them or observe their response to input test vectors. While such comprehensive access is highly desirable for testing, it is not acceptable for secure chips as it is subject to exploitation by various attacks. In this work, new methods are presented to protect the security of critical information against scan-based attacks. In the proposed methods, access to the circuit containing secret information via the scan chain has been severely limited in order to reduce the risk of a security breach. To ensure the testability of the circuit, a built-in self-test which utilizes an LFSR as the test pattern generator (TPG) is proposed. The proposed schemes can be used as a countermeasure against side channel attacks with a low area overhead as compared to the existing solutions in literature
Whether using encryption in SCADA systems, the services performance requirements are still met in OT IT environment over an MPLS core network?
A Research Project Abstract
submitted in fulfillment of the requirements
for
Master of Science in Engineering [Electrical]: Telecommunications
at the
University Of The Witwatersrand, Johannesburg
07 June 2016Utilities use Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition systems as their industrial control
system. The architecture of these systems in the past was based on them being isolated from
other networks. Now with recent ever changing requirements of capabilities from these
systems there is a need to converge with information technology systems and with the need to
have these industrial networks communicating on packet switched networks there are cyber
security concerns that come up.
This research project looks at the whether using encryption in an IP/MPLS core network for
SCADA in an OT IT environment has an effect on the performance requirements. This was
done through an experimental simulation with the results recorded. The research project also
looks at the key literature study considerations.
The key research question for the research project of this MSc 50/50 mini-thesis is “whether
using encryption in SCADA systems, the services performance requirements are still met in
OT/ IT environment over an MPLS core network”? The research project seeks to determine if
SCADA performance requirements are met over an encrypted MPLS/IP core network in an
OT/IT environment. The key focus area of the research project is only encryption in the
whole cyber security value chain versus SCADA services performances. This means that the
research project only focused on the encryption portion of the whole cyber security value
chain and the scope did not focus on other aspects of the value chain. This suffices for an
MSc 50/50 mini-thesis research project as a focus on the whole value chain would require a
full MSc thesis.
Thus the primary objective for the research project is to research and demonstrate that
encryption is essential for secure SCADA communication over a MPLS/IP core network. As
aforementioned encryption forms an essential part of the Cyber Security value chain which
has to achieve the following objectives.
Confidentiality: ensuring that the information source is really from that source.
Integrity: ensuring that the information has not been altered in any way.
Availability: ensuring that system is not comprised but that it is available.
These objectives of encryption should be met with SCADA service performance
requirements not violated which is the objective of the research project.M T 201
Self-Synchronized Encryption for Physical Layer in Gigabit Ethernet Optical Links
In this work a new self-synchronized symmetric encryption solution for high speed communication systems necessary to preserve the format of the plaintext is proposed, developed and tested. This new encryption mechanism is based on the block cipher operation mode called PSCFB (Pipelined Statistical Cipher Feedback) and the modulo operation. The confidentiality of this mode is analyzed in terms of its IND-CPA (Indistinguishability under Chosen-Plaintext Attack) advantage, concluding that it can be considered secure in the same way as traditional modes are. The encryption system has been integrated in the physical layer of a 1000Base-X Gigabit Ethernet Interface, where the 8b/10b symbol flow is encrypted at line rate. Moreover, an implementation of the proposed system has been carried out in an FPGA (Field Programmable Gate Array) device. Finally, an encrypted optical link has been tested with real Ethernet frames, getting maximum throughput and protecting the data traffic from passive eavesdroppers
Survey on Lightweight Primitives and Protocols for RFID in Wireless Sensor Networks
The use of radio frequency identification (RFID) technologies is becoming widespread in all kind of wireless network-based applications. As expected, applications based on sensor networks, ad-hoc or mobile ad hoc networks (MANETs) can be highly benefited from the adoption of RFID solutions. There is a strong need to employ lightweight cryptographic primitives for many security applications because of the tight cost and constrained resource requirement of sensor based networks. This paper mainly focuses on the security analysis of lightweight protocols and algorithms proposed for the security of RFID systems. A large number of research solutions have been proposed to implement lightweight cryptographic primitives and protocols in sensor and RFID integration based resource constraint networks. In this work, an overview of the currently discussed lightweight primitives and their attributes has been done. These primitives and protocols have been compared based on gate equivalents (GEs), power, technology, strengths, weaknesses and attacks. Further, an integration of primitives and protocols is compared with the possibilities of their applications in practical scenarios
- …