7,379 research outputs found
A Secure and Reliable Bootstrap Architecture
In a computer system, the integrity of lower layers is treated as axiomatic by higher layers. Under the presumption that the hardware comprising the machine (the lowest layer) is valid, integrity of a layer can be guaranteed if and only if: (1) the integrity of the lower layers is checked, and (2) transitions to higher layers occur only after integrity checks on them are complete. The resulting integrity chain inductively guarantees system integrity. When these conditions are not met, as they typically are not in the bootstrapping (initialization) of a computer system, no integrity guarantees can be made. Yet, these guarantees are increasingly important to diverse applications such as Internet commerce, intrusion detection systems, and active networks. In this paper, we describe the AEGIS architecture for initializing a computer system. It validates integrity at each layer transition in the bootstrap process. AEGIS also includes a recovery process for integrity check failures, and we show how this results in robust systems. We discuss our prototype implementation for the IBM personal computer (PC) architecture, and show that the cost of such system protection is surprisingly small
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
Reflections on security options for the real-time transport protocol framework
The Real-time Transport Protocol (RTP) supports a range of video conferencing, telephony, and streaming video ap- plications, but offers few native security features. We discuss the problem of securing RTP, considering the range of applications. We outline why this makes RTP a difficult protocol to secure, and describe the approach we have recently proposed in the IETF to provide security for RTP applications. This approach treats RTP as a framework with a set of extensible security building blocks, and prescribes mandatory-to-implement security at the level of different application classes, rather than at the level of the media transport protocol
Kompics: a message-passing component model for building distributed systems
The Kompics component model and programming framework was designedto simplify the development of increasingly complex distributed systems. Systems built with Kompics leverage multi-core machines out of the box and they can be dynamically reconfigured to support hot software upgrades. A simulation framework enables deterministic debugging and reproducible performance evaluation of unmodified Kompics distributed systems.
We describe the component model and show how to program and compose event-based distributed systems. We present the architectural patterns and abstractions that Kompics facilitates and we highlight a case study of a complex
distributed middleware that we have built with Kompics. We show how our approach enables systematic development and evaluation of large-scale and dynamic distributed systems
Tree-formed Verification Data for Trusted Platforms
The establishment of trust relationships to a computing platform relies on
validation processes. Validation allows an external entity to build trust in
the expected behaviour of the platform based on provided evidence of the
platform's configuration. In a process like remote attestation, the 'trusted'
platform submits verification data created during a start up process. These
data consist of hardware-protected values of platform configuration registers,
containing nested measurement values, e.g., hash values, of loaded or started
components. Commonly, the register values are created in linear order by a
hardware-secured operation. Fine-grained diagnosis of components, based on the
linear order of verification data and associated measurement logs, is not
optimal. We propose a method to use tree-formed verification data to validate a
platform. Component measurement values represent leaves, and protected
registers represent roots of a hash tree. We describe the basic mechanism of
validating a platform using tree-formed measurement logs and root registers and
show an logarithmic speed-up for the search of faults. Secure creation of a
tree is possible using a limited number of hardware-protected registers and a
single protected operation. In this way, the security of tree-formed
verification data is maintained.Comment: 15 pages, 11 figures, v3: Reference added, v4: Revised, accepted for
publication in Computers and Securit
A new security architecture for SIP based P2P computer networks
Many applications are transferred from C/S (Client/Server) mode to P2P (Peer-to-Peer) mode such as VoIP (Voice over IP). This paper presents a new security architecture, i.e. a trustworthy authentication algorithm of peers, for Session Initialize Protocol (SIP) based P2P computer networks. A mechanism for node authentication using a cryptographic primitive called one-way accumulator is proposed to secure the P2P SIP computer networks. It leverages the distributed nature of P2P to allow for distributed resource discovery and rendezvous in a SIP network, thus eliminating (or at least reducing) the need for centralized servers. The distributed node authentication algorithm is established for the P2P SIP computer networks. The corresponding protocol has been implemented in our P2P SIP experiment platform successfully. The performance study has verified the proposed distributed node authentication algorithm for SIP based P2P computer networks
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