ERINYES: A CONTINUOUS AUTHENTICATION PROTOCOL

The need for user authentication in the digital domain is paramount as the number of digital interactions that involve sensitive data continues to increase. Advances in the fields of machine learning (ML) and biometric encryption have enabled the development of technologies that can provide fully remote continuous user authentication services. This thesis introduces the Erinyes protocol. The protocol leverages state of the art ML models, biometric encryption of asymmetric cryptographic keys, and a trusted third-party client-server architecture to continuously authenticate users through their behavioral biometrics. The goals in developing the protocol were to identify if biometric encryption using keystroke timing and mouse cursor movement sequences were feasible and to measure the performance of a continuous authentication system that utilizes biometric encryption. Our research found that with a combined keystroke and mouse cursor movement dataset, the biometric encryption system can perform with a 0.93% False Acceptance Rate (FAR), 0.00% False Reject Rate (FRR), and 99.07% accuracy. Using a similar dataset, the overall integrated system averaged 0% FAR, 2% FRR and 98% accuracy across multiple users. These metrics demonstrate that the Erinyes protocol can achieve continuous user authentication with minimal user intrusion.Lieutenant, United States NavyLieutenant, United States NavyApproved for public release. Distribution is unlimited

Recent Application in Biometrics

In the recent years, a number of recognition and authentication systems based on biometric measurements have been proposed. Algorithms and sensors have been developed to acquire and process many different biometric traits. Moreover, the biometric technology is being used in novel ways, with potential commercial and practical implications to our daily activities. The key objective of the book is to provide a collection of comprehensive references on some recent theoretical development as well as novel applications in biometrics. The topics covered in this book reflect well both aspects of development. They include biometric sample quality, privacy preserving and cancellable biometrics, contactless biometrics, novel and unconventional biometrics, and the technical challenges in implementing the technology in portable devices. The book consists of 15 chapters. It is divided into four sections, namely, biometric applications on mobile platforms, cancelable biometrics, biometric encryption, and other applications. The book was reviewed by editors Dr. Jucheng Yang and Dr. Norman Poh. We deeply appreciate the efforts of our guest editors: Dr. Girija Chetty, Dr. Loris Nanni, Dr. Jianjiang Feng, Dr. Dongsun Park and Dr. Sook Yoon, as well as a number of anonymous reviewers

Greenpass Client Tools for Delegated Authorization in Wireless Networks

Dartmouth\u27s Greenpass project seeks to provide strong access control to a wireless network while simultaneously providing flexible guest access; to do so, it augments the Wi-Fi Alliance\u27s existing WPA standard, which offers sufficiently strong user authentication and access control, with authorization based on SPKI certificates. SPKI allows certain local users to delegate network access to guests by issuing certificates that state, in essence, he should get access because I said it\u27s okay. The Greenpass RADIUS server described in Kim\u27s thesis [55] performs an authorization check based on such statements so that guests can obtain network access without requiring a busy network administrator to set up new accounts in a centralized database. To our knowledge, Greenpass is the first working delegation-based solution to Wi-Fi access control. My thesis describes the Greenpass client tools, which allow a guest to introduce himself to a delegator and allow the delegator to issue a new SPKI certificate to the guest. The guest does not need custom client software to introduce himself or to connect to the Wi-Fi network. The guest and delegator communicate using a set of Web applications. The guest obtains a temporary key pair and X.509 certificate if needed, then sends his public key value to a Web server we provide. The delegator looks up her guest\u27s public key and runs a Java applet that lets her verify her guests\u27 identity using visual hashing and issue a new SPKI certificate to him. The guest\u27s new certificate chain is stored as an HTTP cookie to enable him to push it to an authorization server at a later time. I also describe how Greenpass can be extended to control access to a virtual private network (VPN) and suggest several interesting future research and development directions that could build on this work.My thesis describes the Greenpass client tools, which allow a guest to introduce himself to a delegator and allow the delegator to issue a new SPKI certificate to the guest. The guest does not need custom client software to introduce himself or to connect to the Wi-Fi network. The guest and delegator communicate using a set of Web applications. The guest obtains a temporary key pair and X.509 certificate if needed, then sends his public key value to a Web server we provide. The delegator looks up her guest\u27s public key and runs a Java applet that lets her verify her guests\u27 identity using visual hashing and issue a new SPKI certificate to him. The guest\u27s new certificate chain is stored as an HTTP cookie to enable him to push it to an authorization server at a later time. I also describe how Greenpass can be extended to control access to a virtual private network (VPN) and suggest several interesting future research and development directions that could build on this work

Development of a secure multi-factor authentication algorithm for mobile money applications

A Thesis Submitted in Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Information and Communication Science and Engineering of the Nelson Mandela African Institution of Science and TechnologyWith the evolution of industry 4.0, financial technologies have become paramount and mobile money as one of the financial technologies has immensely contributed to improving financial inclusion among the unbanked population. Several mobile money schemes were developed but, they suffered severe authentication security challenges since they implemented two-factor authentication. This study focused on developing a secure multi-factor authentication (MFA) algorithm for mobile money applications. It uses personal identification numbers, one-time passwords, biometric fingerprints, and quick response codes to authenticate and authorize mobile money subscribers. Secure hash algorithm-256, Rivest-Shamir-Adleman encryption, and Fernet encryption were used to secure the authentication factors, confidential financial information and data before transmission to the remote databases. A literature review, survey, evolutionary prototyping model, and heuristic evaluation and usability testing methods were used to identify authentication issues, develop prototypes of native genuine mobile money (G-MoMo) applications, and identify usability issues with the interface designs and ascertain their usability, respectively. The results of the review grouped the threat models into attacks against privacy, authentication, confidentiality, integrity, and availability. The survey identified authentication attacks, identity theft, phishing attacks, and PIN sharing as the key mobile money systems’ security issues. The researcher designed a secure MFA algorithm for mobile money applications and developed three native G-MoMo applications to implement the designed algorithm to prove the feasibility of the algorithm and that it provided robust security. The algorithm was resilient to non-repudiation, ensured strong authentication security, data confidentiality, integrity, privacy, and user anonymity, was highly effective against several attacks but had high communication overhead and computational costs. Nevertheless, the heuristic evaluation results showed that the G-MoMo applications’ interface designs lacked forward navigation buttons, uniformity in the applications’ menu titles, search fields, actions needed for recovery, and help and documentation. Similarly, the usability testing revealed that they were easy to learn, effective, efficient, memorable, with few errors, subscriber satisfaction, easy to use, aesthetic, easy to integrate, and understandable. Implementing a secure mobile money authentication and authorisation by combining multiple factors which are securely stored helps mobile money subscribers and other stakeholders to have trust in the developed native G-MoMo applications

Selected Computing Research Papers Volume 1 June 2012

An Evaluation of Anti-phishing Solutions (Arinze Bona Umeaku) ..................................... 1 A Detailed Analysis of Current Biometric Research Aimed at Improving Online Authentication Systems (Daniel Brown) .............................................................................. 7 An Evaluation of Current Intrusion Detection Systems Research (Gavin Alexander Burns) .................................................................................................... 13 An Analysis of Current Research on Quantum Key Distribution (Mark Lorraine) ............ 19 A Critical Review of Current Distributed Denial of Service Prevention Methodologies (Paul Mains) ............................................................................................... 29 An Evaluation of Current Computing Methodologies Aimed at Improving the Prevention of SQL Injection Attacks in Web Based Applications (Niall Marsh) .............. 39 An Evaluation of Proposals to Detect Cheating in Multiplayer Online Games (Bradley Peacock) ............................................................................................................... 45 An Empirical Study of Security Techniques Used In Online Banking (Rajinder D G Singh) .......................................................................................................... 51 A Critical Study on Proposed Firewall Implementation Methods in Modern Networks (Loghin Tivig) .................................................................................................... 5

The Proceedings of 15th Australian Information Security Management Conference, 5-6 December, 2017, Edith Cowan University, Perth, Australia

Conference Foreword The annual Security Congress, run by the Security Research Institute at Edith Cowan University, includes the Australian Information Security and Management Conference. Now in its fifteenth year, the conference remains popular for its diverse content and mixture of technical research and discussion papers. The area of information security and management continues to be varied, as is reflected by the wide variety of subject matter covered by the papers this year. The papers cover topics from vulnerabilities in “Internet of Things” protocols through to improvements in biometric identification algorithms and surveillance camera weaknesses. The conference has drawn interest and papers from within Australia and internationally. All submitted papers were subject to a double blind peer review process. Twenty two papers were submitted from Australia and overseas, of which eighteen were accepted for final presentation and publication. We wish to thank the reviewers for kindly volunteering their time and expertise in support of this event. We would also like to thank the conference committee who have organised yet another successful congress. Events such as this are impossible without the tireless efforts of such people in reviewing and editing the conference papers, and assisting with the planning, organisation and execution of the conference. To our sponsors, also a vote of thanks for both the financial and moral support provided to the conference. Finally, thank you to the administrative and technical staff, and students of the ECU Security Research Institute for their contributions to the running of the conference

Device fingerprinting identification and authentication: A two-fold use in multi-factor access control schemes

Network security has always had an issue with secure authentication and identification. In the current mixed device network of today, the number of nodes on a network has expanded but these nodes are often unmanaged from a network security perspective. The solution proposed requires a paradigm shift, a recognition of what has already happened, identity is for sale across the internet. That identity is the users’ network ID, their behavior, and even their behavior in using the networks. Secondly a majority of the devices on the Internet have been fingerprinted. Use of device fingerprinting can help secure a network if properly understood and properly executed. The research into this area suggests a solution. Which is the use of device fingerprints including clock skews to identify the devices and a dual- authentication process targeted at authenticating the device and the user. Not only authenticating the identity presented but also combining them into a unified entity so failure to authenticate part of the entity means the whole is denied access to the network and its resources

Does the online card payment system unwittingly facilitate fraud?

PhD ThesisThe research work in this PhD thesis presents an extensive investigation into the security settings of Card Not Present (CNP) financial transactions. These are the transactions which include payments performed with a card over the Internet on the websites, and over the phone. Our detailed analysis on hundreds of websites and on multiple CNP payment protocols justifies that the current security architecture of CNP payment system is not adequate enough to protect itself from fraud. Unintentionally, the payment system itself will allow an adversary to learn and exploit almost all of the security features put in place to protect the CNP payment system from fraud. With insecure modes of accepting payments, the online payment system paves the way for cybercriminals to abuse even the latest designed payment protocols like 3D Secure 2.0. We follow a structured analysis methodology which identifies vulnerabilities in the CNP payment protocols and demonstrates the impact of these vulnerabilities on the overall payment system. The analysis methodology comprises of UML diagrams and reference tables which describe the CNP payment protocol sequences, software tools which implements the protocol and practical demonstrations of the research results. Detailed referencing of the online payment specifications provides a documented link between the exploitable vulnerabilities observed in real implementations and the source of the vulnerability in the payment specifications. We use practical demonstrations to show that these vulnerabilities can be exploited in the real-world with ease. This presents a stronger impact message when presenting our research results to a nontechnical audience. This has helped to raise awareness of security issues relating to payment cards, with our work appearing in the media, radio and T

End-to-end security in active networks

Active network solutions have been proposed to many of the problems caused by the increasing heterogeneity of the Internet. These ystems allow nodes within the network to process data passing through in several ways. Allowing code from various sources to run on routers introduces numerous security concerns that have been addressed by research into safe languages, restricted execution environments, and other related areas. But little attention has been paid to an even more critical question: the effect on end-to-end security of active flow manipulation. This thesis first examines the threat model implicit in active networks. It develops a framework of security protocols in use at various layers of the networking stack, and their utility to multimedia transport and flow processing, and asks if it is reasonable to give active routers access to the plaintext of these flows. After considering the various security problem introduced, such as vulnerability to attacks on intermediaries or coercion, it concludes not. We then ask if active network systems can be built that maintain end-to-end security without seriously degrading the functionality they provide. We describe the design and analysis of three such protocols: a distributed packet filtering system that can be used to adjust multimedia bandwidth requirements and defend against denial-of-service attacks; an efficient composition of link and transport-layer reliability mechanisms that increases the performance of TCP over lossy wireless links; and a distributed watermarking servicethat can efficiently deliver media flows marked with the identity of their recipients. In all three cases, similar functionality is provided to designs that do not maintain end-to-end security. Finally, we reconsider traditional end-to-end arguments in both networking and security, and show that they have continuing importance for Internet design. Our watermarking work adds the concept of splitting trust throughout a network to that model; we suggest further applications of this idea

Identifying and combating cyber-threats in the field of online banking

This thesis has been carried out in the industrial environment external to the University, as an industrial PhD. The results of this PhD have been tested, validated, and implemented in the production environment of Caixabank and have been used as models for others who have followed the same ideas. The most burning threats against banks throughout the Internet environment are based on software tools developed by criminal groups, applications running on web environment either on the computer of the victim (Malware) or on their mobile device itself through downloading rogue applications (fake app's with Malware APP). Method of the thesis has been used is an approximation of qualitative exploratory research on the problem, the answer to this problem and the use of preventive methods to this problem like used authentication systems. This method is based on samples, events, surveys, laboratory tests, experiments, proof of concept; ultimately actual data that has been able to deduce the thesis proposal, using both laboratory research and grounded theory methods of data pilot experiments conducted in real environments. I've been researching the various aspects related to e-crime following a line of research focusing on intrinsically related topics: - The methods, means and systems of attack: Malware, Malware families of banker Trojans, Malware cases of use, Zeus as case of use. - The fixed platforms, mobile applications and as a means for malware attacks. - forensic methods to analyze the malware and infrastructure attacks. - Continuous improvement of methods of authentication of customers and users as a first line of defense anti- malware. - Using biometrics as innovative factor authentication.The line investigating Malware and attack systems intrinsically is closed related to authentication methods and systems to infect customer (executables, APP's, etc.), because the main purpose of malware is precisely steal data entered in the "logon "authentication system, to operate and thus, fraudulently, steal money from online banking customers. Experiments in the Malware allowed establishing a new method of decryption establishing guidelines to combat its effects describing his fraudulent scheme and operation infection. I propose a general methodology to break the encryption communications malware (keystream), extracting the system used to encrypt such communications and a general approach of the Keystream technique. We show that this methodology can be used to respond to the threat of Zeus and finally provide lessons learned highlighting some general principles of Malware (in general) and in particular proposing Zeus Cronus, an IDS that specifically seeks the Zeus malware, testing it experimentally in a network production and providing an effective skills to combat the Malware are discussed. The thesis is a research interrelated progressive evolution between malware infection systems and authentication methods, reflected in the research work cumulatively, showing an evolution of research output and looking for a progressive improvement of methods authentication and recommendations for prevention and preventing infections, a review of the main app stores for mobile financial services and a proposal to these stores. The most common methods eIDAMS (authentication methods and electronic identification) implemented in Europe and its robustness are analyzed. An analysis of adequacy is presented in terms of efficiency, usability, costs, types of operations and segments including possibilities of use as authentication method with biometrics as innovation.Este trabajo de tesis se ha realizado en el entorno industrial externo a la Universidad como un PhD industrial Los resultados de este PhD han sido testeados, validados, e implementados en el entorno de producción de Caixabank y han sido utilizados como modelos por otras que han seguido las mismas ideas. Las amenazas más candentes contra los bancos en todo el entorno Internet, se basan en herramientas software desarrolladas por los grupos delincuentes, aplicaciones que se ejecutan tanto en entornos web ya sea en el propio ordenador de la víctima (Malware) o en sus dispositivos móviles mediante la descarga de falsas aplicaciones (APP falsa con Malware). Como método se ha utilizado una aproximación de investigación exploratoria cualitativa sobre el problema, la respuesta a este problema y el uso de métodos preventivos a este problema a través de la autenticación. Este método se ha basado en muestras, hechos, encuestas, pruebas de laboratorio, experimentos, pruebas de concepto; en definitiva datos reales de los que se ha podido deducir la tesis propuesta, utilizando tanto investigación de laboratorio como métodos de teoría fundamentada en datos de experimentos pilotos realizados en entornos reales. He estado investigando los diversos aspectos relacionados con e-crime siguiendo una línea de investigación focalizada en temas intrínsecamente relacionadas: - Los métodos, medios y sistemas de ataque: Malware, familias de Malware de troyanos bancarios, casos de usos de Malware, Zeus como caso de uso. - Las plataformas fijas, los móviles y sus aplicaciones como medio para realizar los ataques de Malware. - Métodos forenses para analizar el Malware y su infraestructura de ataque. - Mejora continuada de los métodos de autenticación de los clientes y usuarios como primera barrera de defensa anti- malware. - Uso de la biometría como factor de autenticación innovador. La línea investiga el Malware y sus sistemas de ataque intrínsecamente relacionada con los métodos de autenticación y los sistemas para infectar al cliente (ejecutables, APP's, etc.) porque el objetivo principal del malware es robar precisamente los datos que se introducen en el "logon" del sistema de autenticación para operar de forma fraudulenta y sustraer así el dinero de los clientes de banca electrónica. Los experimentos realizados en el Malware permitieron establecer un método novedoso de descifrado que estableció pautas para combatir sus efectos fraudulentos describiendo su esquema de infección y funcionamiento Propongo una metodología general para romper el cifrado de comunicaciones del malware (keystream) extrayendo el sistema utilizado para cifrar dichas comunicaciones y una generalización de la técnica de Keystream. Se demuestra que esta metodología puede usarse para responder a la amenaza de Zeus y finalmente proveemos lecciones aprendidas resaltando algunos principios generales del Malware (en general) y Zeus en particular proponiendo Cronus, un IDS que persigue específicamente el Malware Zeus, probándolo experimentalmente en una red de producción y se discuten sus habilidades y efectividad. En la tesis hay una evolución investigativa progresiva interrelacionada entre el Malware, sistemas de infección y los métodos de autenticación, que se refleja en los trabajos de investigación de manera acumulativa, mostrando una evolución del output de investigación y buscando una mejora progresiva de los métodos de autenticación y de la prevención y recomendaciones para evitar las infecciones, una revisión de las principales tiendas de Apps para servicios financieros para móviles y una propuesta para estas tiendas. Se analizan los métodos más comunes eIDAMS (Métodos de Autenticación e Identificación electrónica) implementados en Europa y su robustez y presentamos un análisis de adecuación en función de eficiencia, usabilidad, costes, tipos de operación y segmentos incluyendo un análisis de posibilidades con métodos biométricos como innovación.Postprint (published version