14,650 research outputs found
Device-Based Isolation for Securing Cryptographic Keys
In this work, we describe an eective device-based isolation
approach for achieving data security. Device-based isolation
leverages the proliferation of personal computing devices to
provide strong run-time guarantees for the condentiality of
secrets. To demonstrate our isolation approach, we show its
use in protecting the secrecy of highly sensitive data that
is crucial to security operations, such as cryptographic keys
used for decrypting ciphertext or signing digital signatures.
Private key is usually encrypted when not used, however,
when being used, the plaintext key is loaded into the memory
of the host for access. In our threat model, the host may
be compromised by attackers, and thus the condentiality of
the host memory cannot be preserved. We present a novel
and practical solution and its prototype called DataGuard to
protect the secrecy of the highly sensitive data through the
storage isolation and secure tunneling enabled by a mobile
handheld device. DataGuard can be deployed for the key
protection of individuals or organizations
Quire: Lightweight Provenance for Smart Phone Operating Systems
Smartphone apps often run with full privileges to access the network and
sensitive local resources, making it difficult for remote systems to have any
trust in the provenance of network connections they receive. Even within the
phone, different apps with different privileges can communicate with one
another, allowing one app to trick another into improperly exercising its
privileges (a Confused Deputy attack). In Quire, we engineered two new security
mechanisms into Android to address these issues. First, we track the call chain
of IPCs, allowing an app the choice of operating with the diminished privileges
of its callers or to act explicitly on its own behalf. Second, a lightweight
signature scheme allows any app to create a signed statement that can be
verified anywhere inside the phone. Both of these mechanisms are reflected in
network RPCs, allowing remote systems visibility into the state of the phone
when an RPC is made. We demonstrate the usefulness of Quire with two example
applications. We built an advertising service, running distinctly from the app
which wants to display ads, which can validate clicks passed to it from its
host. We also built a payment service, allowing an app to issue a request which
the payment service validates with the user. An app cannot not forge a payment
request by directly connecting to the remote server, nor can the local payment
service tamper with the request
Secure Mobile Social Networks using USIM in a Closed Environment
Online social networking and corresponding mobile based applications are gaining popularity and now considered
a well-integrated service within mobile devices. Basic security mechanisms normally based on passwords for the authentication of social-network users are widely deployed and poses a threat for the user security. In particular, for dedicated social groups with high confidentiality and privacy demands, stronger and user friendly principles for the authentication and identification of group members are needed. On the other hand, most of the mobile units already provide strong authentication procedures through the USIM/ISIM module. This paper explores how to build an architectural framework for secure enrollment and identification of group members in dedicated closed social groups using the USIM/SIM authentication and in particular, the 3GPP Generic Authentication Architecture (GAA), which is built upon the USIM/SIM capabilities. One part of the research is to identify the marketable use-cases with corresponding security challenges to fulfill the requirements that extend beyond the online connectivity. This paper proposes a secure identification design to satisfy the security dimensions for both online and offline peers. We have also implemented an initial proof of the concept prototype to simulate the secure identification procedure based on the proposed design. Our implementation has demonstrated the flexibility of the solution to be applied independently for applications requiring secure identification
Secure Identification in Social Wireless Networks
The applications based on social networking have brought revolution towards social life and are continuously gaining popularity among the Internet users. Due to the advanced computational resources offered by the innovative hardware and nominal subscriber charges of network operators, most of the online social networks are transforming into the mobile domain by offering exciting applications and games exclusively designed for users on the go. Moreover, the mobile devices are considered more personal as compared to their desktop rivals, so there is a tendency among the mobile users to store sensitive data like contacts, passwords, bank account details, updated calendar entries with key dates and personal notes on their devices.
The Project Social Wireless Network Secure Identification (SWIN) is carried out at Swedish Institute of Computer Science (SICS) to explore the practicality of providing the secure mobile social networking portal with advanced security features to tackle potential security threats by extending the existing methods with more innovative security technologies. In addition to the extensive background study and the determination of marketable use-cases with their corresponding security requirements, this thesis proposes a secure identification design to satisfy the security dimensions for both online and offline peers. We have implemented an initial prototype using PHP Socket and OpenSSL library to simulate the secure identification procedure based on the proposed design. The design is in compliance with 3GPP‟s Generic Authentication Architecture (GAA) and our implementation has demonstrated the flexibility of the solution to be applied independently for the applications requiring secure identification. Finally, the thesis provides strong foundation for the advanced implementation on mobile platform in future
Enabling Social Applications via Decentralized Social Data Management
An unprecedented information wealth produced by online social networks,
further augmented by location/collocation data, is currently fragmented across
different proprietary services. Combined, it can accurately represent the
social world and enable novel socially-aware applications. We present
Prometheus, a socially-aware peer-to-peer service that collects social
information from multiple sources into a multigraph managed in a decentralized
fashion on user-contributed nodes, and exposes it through an interface
implementing non-trivial social inferences while complying with user-defined
access policies. Simulations and experiments on PlanetLab with emulated
application workloads show the system exhibits good end-to-end response time,
low communication overhead and resilience to malicious attacks.Comment: 27 pages, single ACM column, 9 figures, accepted in Special Issue of
Foundations of Social Computing, ACM Transactions on Internet Technolog
Continuous Authentication for Voice Assistants
Voice has become an increasingly popular User Interaction (UI) channel,
mainly contributing to the ongoing trend of wearables, smart vehicles, and home
automation systems. Voice assistants such as Siri, Google Now and Cortana, have
become our everyday fixtures, especially in scenarios where touch interfaces
are inconvenient or even dangerous to use, such as driving or exercising.
Nevertheless, the open nature of the voice channel makes voice assistants
difficult to secure and exposed to various attacks as demonstrated by security
researchers. In this paper, we present VAuth, the first system that provides
continuous and usable authentication for voice assistants. We design VAuth to
fit in various widely-adopted wearable devices, such as eyeglasses,
earphones/buds and necklaces, where it collects the body-surface vibrations of
the user and matches it with the speech signal received by the voice
assistant's microphone. VAuth guarantees that the voice assistant executes only
the commands that originate from the voice of the owner. We have evaluated
VAuth with 18 users and 30 voice commands and find it to achieve an almost
perfect matching accuracy with less than 0.1% false positive rate, regardless
of VAuth's position on the body and the user's language, accent or mobility.
VAuth successfully thwarts different practical attacks, such as replayed
attacks, mangled voice attacks, or impersonation attacks. It also has low
energy and latency overheads and is compatible with most existing voice
assistants
- …