A Cryptographic Tour of the IPsec Standards

In this article, we provide an overview of cryptography and cryptographic key management as they are specified in IPsec, a popular suite of standards for providing communications security and network access control for Internet communications. We focus on the latest generation of the IPsec standards, recently published as Request for Comments 4301–4309 by the Internet Engineering Task Force, and how they have evolved from earlier versions of the standards

Network layer access control for context-aware IPv6 applications

As part of the Lancaster GUIDE II project, we have developed a novel wireless access point protocol designed to support the development of next generation mobile context-aware applications in our local environs. Once deployed, this architecture will allow ordinary citizens secure, accountable and convenient access to a set of tailored applications including location, multimedia and context based services, and the public Internet. Our architecture utilises packet marking and network level packet filtering techniques within a modified Mobile IPv6 protocol stack to perform access control over a range of wireless network technologies. In this paper, we describe the rationale for, and components of, our architecture and contrast our approach with other state-of-the- art systems. The paper also contains details of our current implementation work, including preliminary performance measurements

System-on-chip architecture for secure sub-microsecond synchronization systems

213 p.En esta tesis, se pretende abordar los problemas que conlleva la protección cibernética del Precision Time Protocol (PTP). Éste es uno de los protocolos de comunicación más sensibles de entre los considerados por los organismos de estandarización para su aplicación en las futuras Smart Grids o redes eléctricas inteligentes. PTP tiene como misión distribuir una referencia de tiempo desde un dispositivo maestro al resto de dispositivos esclavos, situados dentro de una misma red, de forma muy precisa. El protocolo es altamente vulnerable, ya que introduciendo tan sólo un error de tiempo de un microsegundo, pueden causarse graves problemas en las funciones de protección del equipamiento eléctrico, o incluso detener su funcionamiento. Para ello, se propone una nueva arquitectura System-on-Chip basada en dispositivos reconfigurables, con el objetivo de integrar el protocolo PTP y el conocido estándar de seguridad MACsec para redes Ethernet. La flexibilidad que los modernos dispositivos reconfigurables proporcionan, ha sido aprovechada para el diseño de una arquitectura en la que coexisten procesamiento hardware y software. Los resultados experimentales avalan la viabilidad de utilizar MACsec para proteger la sincronización en entornos industriales, sin degradar la precisión del protocolo

Internet of Things From Hype to Reality

The Internet of Things (IoT) has gained significant mindshare, let alone attention, in academia and the industry especially over the past few years. The reasons behind this interest are the potential capabilities that IoT promises to offer. On the personal level, it paints a picture of a future world where all the things in our ambient environment are connected to the Internet and seamlessly communicate with each other to operate intelligently. The ultimate goal is to enable objects around us to efficiently sense our surroundings, inexpensively communicate, and ultimately create a better environment for us: one where everyday objects act based on what we need and like without explicit instructions

Reputation-Based Internet Protocol Security: A Multilayer Security Framework for Mobil Ad Hoc Networks

This research effort examines the theory, application, and results for a Reputation-based Internet Protocol Security (RIPSec) framework that provides security for an ad-hoc network operating in a hostile environment. In RIPSec, protection from external threats is provided in the form of encrypted communication links and encryption-wrapped nodes while internal threats are mitigated by behavior grading that assigns reputations to nodes based on their demonstrated participation in the routing process. Network availability is provided by behavior grading and round-robin multipath routing. If a node behaves faithfully, it earns a positive reputation over time. If a node misbehaves (for any number of reasons, not necessarily intentional), it earns a negative reputation. Each member of the MANET has its own unique and subjective set of Reputation Indexes (RI) that enumerates the perceived reputation of the other MANET nodes. Nodes that desire to send data will eliminate relay nodes they perceive to have a negative reputation during the formulation of a route. A 50-node MANET is simulated with streaming multimedia and varying levels of misbehavior to determine the impact of the framework on network performance. Results of this research were very favorable. Analysis of the simulation data shows the number of routing errors sent in a MANET is reduced by an average of 52% when using RIPSec. The network load is also reduced, decreasing the overall traffic introduced into the MANET and permitting individual nodes to perform more work without overtaxing their limited resources. Finally, throughput is decreased due to larger packet sizes and longer round trips for packets to traverse the MANET, but is still sufficient to pass traffic with high bandwidth requirements (i.e., video and imagery) that is of interest in military networks

Security Threats to 5G Networks for Social Robots in Public Spaces: A Survey

This paper surveys security threats to 5G-enabled wireless access networks for social robots in public spaces (SRPS). The use of social robots (SR) in public areas requires specific Quality of Service (QoS) planning to meet its unique requirements. Its 5G threat landscape entails more than cybersecurity threats that most previous studies focus on. This study examines the 5G wireless RAN for SRPS from three perspectives: SR and wireless access points, the ad hoc network link between SR and user devices, and threats to SR and users’ communication equipment. The paper analyses the security threats to confidentiality, integrity, availability, authentication, authorisation, and privacy from the SRPS security objectives perspective. We begin with an overview of SRPS use cases and access network requirements, followed by 5G security standards, requirements, and the need for a more representative threat landscape for SRPS. The findings confirm that the RAN of SRPS is most vulnerable to physical, side-channel, intrusion, injection, manipulation, and natural and malicious threats. The paper presents existing mitigation to the identified attacks and recommends including physical level security (PLS) and post-quantum cryptography in the early design of SRPS. The insights from this survey will provide valuable risk assessment and management input to researchers, industrial practitioners, policymakers, and other stakeholders of SRPS.publishedVersio

The InfoSec Handbook

Computer scienc

Analyse de sécurité et QoS dans les réseaux à contraintes temporelles

Dans le domaine des réseaux, deux précieux objectifs doivent être atteints, à savoir la QoS et la sécurité, plus particulièrement lorsqu’il s’agit des réseaux à caractère critique et à fortes contraintes temporelles. Malheureusement, un conflit existe : tandis que la QoS œuvre à réduire les temps de traitement, les mécanismes de sécurité quant à eux requièrent d’importants temps de traitement et causent, par conséquent, des délais et dégradent la QoS. Par ailleurs, les systèmes temps réel, la QoS et la sécurité ont très souvent été étudiés séparément, par des communautés différentes. Dans le contexte des réseaux avioniques de données, de nombreux domaines et applications, de criticités différentes, échangent mutuellement des informations, souvent à travers des passerelles. Il apparaît clairement que ces informations présentent différents niveaux de sensibilité en termes de sécurité et de QoS. Tenant compte de cela, le but de cette thèse est d’accroître la robustesse des futures générations de réseaux avioniques de données en contrant les menaces de sécurité et évitant les ruptures de trafic de données. A cet effet, nous avons réalisé un état de l’art des mécanismes de sécurité, de la QoS et des applications à contraintes temporelles. Nous avons, ensuite étudié la nouvelle génération des réseaux avioniques de données. Chose qui nous a permis de déterminer correctement les différentes menaces de sécurité. Sur la base de cette étude, nous avons identifié à la fois les exigences de sécurité et de QoS de cette nouvelle génération de réseaux avioniques. Afin de les satisfaire, nous avons proposé une architecture de passerelle de sécurité tenant compte de la QoS pour protéger ces réseaux avioniques et assurer une haute disponibilité en faveur des données critiques. Pour assurer l’intégration des différentes composantes de la passerelle, nous avons développé une table de session intégrée permettant de stocker toutes les informations nécessaires relatives aux sessions et d’accélérer les traitements appliqués aux paquets (filtrage à états, les traductions d’adresses NAT, la classification QoS et le routage). Cela a donc nécessité, en premier lieu, l'étude de la structure existante de la table de session puis, en second lieu, la proposition d'une toute nouvelle structure répondant à nos objectifs. Aussi, avons-nous présenté un algorithme permettant l’accès et l’exploitation de la nouvelle table de session intégrée. En ce qui concerne le composant VPN IPSec, nous avons détecté que le trafic chiffré par le protocole ESP d’IPSec ne peut pas être classé correctement par les routeurs de bordure. Afin de surmonter ce problème, nous avons développé un protocole, Q-ESP, permettant la classification des trafics chiffrés et offrant les services de sécurité fournis par les protocoles AH et ESP combinés. Plusieurs techniques de gestion de bande passante ont été développées en vue d’optimiser la gestion du trafic réseau. Pour évaluer les performances offertes par ces techniques et identifier laquelle serait la plus appropriée dans notre cas, nous avons effectué une comparaison basée sur le critère du délai, par le biais de tests expérimentaux. En dernière étape, nous avons évalué et comparé les performances de la passerelle de sécurité que nous proposons par rapport à trois produits commerciaux offrant les fonctions de passerelle de sécurité logicielle en vue de déterminer les points forts et faibles de notre implémentation pour la développer ultérieurement. Le manuscrit s’organise en deux parties : la première est rédigée en français et représente un résumé détaillé de la deuxième partie qui est, quant à elle, rédigée en anglais. ABSTRACT : QoS and security are two precious objectives for network systems to attain, especially for critical networks with temporal constraints. Unfortunately, they often conflict; while QoS tries to minimize the processing delay, strong security protection requires more processing time and causes traffic delay and QoS degradation. Moreover, real-time systems, QoS and security have often been studied separately and by different communities. In the context of the avionic data network various domains and heterogeneous applications with different levels of criticality cooperate for the mutual exchange of information, often through gateways. It is clear that this information has different levels of sensitivity in terms of security and QoS constraints. Given this context, the major goal of this thesis is then to increase the robustness of the next generation e-enabled avionic data network with respect to security threats and ruptures in traffic characteristics. From this perspective, we surveyed the literature to establish state of the art network security, QoS and applications with time constraints. Then, we studied the next generation e-enabled avionic data network. This allowed us to draw a map of the field, and to understand security threats. Based on this study we identified both security and QoS requirements of the next generation e-enabled avionic data network. In order to satisfy these requirements we proposed the architecture of QoS capable integrated security gateway to protect the next generation e-enabled avionic data network and ensure the availability of critical traffic. To provide for a true integration between the different gateway components we built an integrated session table to store all the needed session information and to speed up the packet processing (firewall stateful inspection, NAT mapping, QoS classification and routing). This necessitates the study of the existing session table structure and the proposition of a new structure to fulfill our objective. Also, we present the necessary processing algorithms to access the new integrated session table. In IPSec VPN component we identified the problem that IPSec ESP encrypted traffic cannot be classified appropriately by QoS edge routers. To overcome this problem, we developed a Q-ESP protocol which allows the classifications of encrypted traffic and combines the security services provided by IPSec ESP and AH. To manage the network traffic wisely, a variety of bandwidth management techniques have been developed. To assess their performance and identify which bandwidth management technique is the most suitable given our context we performed a delay-based comparison using experimental tests. In the final stage, we benchmarked our implemented security gateway against three commercially available software gateways. The goal of this benchmark test is to evaluate performance and identify problems for future research work. This dissertation is divided into two parts: in French and in English respectively. Both parts follow the same structure where the first is an extended summary of the second