Cross-validation based man-in-the-middle attack protection

A thesis submitted to the University of Bedfordshire, in fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Science by researchIn recent years, computer network has widely used in almost all areas of our social life. It has been profoundly changing the way of our living. However, various network attacks have become an increasingly problem at the same time. In local area networks, Man-in-the-Middle attack, as one kind of ARP attack, is the most common attack. This research implemented a cross-validation based Man-in-the-Middle attack protection method (CVP). This approach enables a host to check whether another host that responds the initialising host with an ARP reply packet is genuine. It then allows the ARP cache table of the initialising hosts to be updated with the MAC address and IP address pairs of the genuine host and to place the MAC address of inauthentic hosts into a blacklist. This research introduced ARP and ICMP firstly, including the structure of ARP and ICMP packets, and their workflows. Secondly, this research discussed the types of ARP attacks and the existing ARP attacks protection methods, including their principles, applicable environment, advantages and disadvantages. Then, this research proposed and implemented a cross-validation based Man-in-the-Middle attack protection method. Simulations and experiments were performed to examine the effect of CVP method. The results show the effectiveness of the proposed cross-validation based method in protecting network from Man-in-the-Middle attack. Compared with the existing Man-in-the-Middle attack protection methods, CVP requires no extra devices and administration, leading to more secure local area networks and low cost. It also has made a “tabu” to attackers. That is, it places the MAC address of attackers into a blacklist. So they will be identified immediately if they try to attack the network again

Security by Spatial Reference:Using Relative Positioning to Authenticate Devices for Spontaneous Interaction

Spontaneous interaction is a desirable characteristic associated with mobile and ubiquitous computing. The aim is to enable users to connect their personal devices with devices encountered in their environment in order to take advantage of interaction opportunities in accordance with their situation. However, it is difficult to secure spontaneous interaction as this requires authentication of the encountered device, in the absence of any prior knowledge of the device. In this paper we present a method for establishing and securing spontaneous interactions on the basis of emphspatial references that capture the spatial relationship of the involved devices. Spatial references are obtained by accurate sensing of relative device positions, presented to the user for initiation of interactions, and used in a peer authentication protocol that exploits a novel mechanism for message transfer over ultrasound to ensures spatial authenticity of the sender

Machine Learning-Enabled IoT Security: Open Issues and Challenges Under Advanced Persistent Threats

Despite its technological benefits, Internet of Things (IoT) has cyber weaknesses due to the vulnerabilities in the wireless medium. Machine learning (ML)-based methods are widely used against cyber threats in IoT networks with promising performance. Advanced persistent threat (APT) is prominent for cybercriminals to compromise networks, and it is crucial to long-term and harmful characteristics. However, it is difficult to apply ML-based approaches to identify APT attacks to obtain a promising detection performance due to an extremely small percentage among normal traffic. There are limited surveys to fully investigate APT attacks in IoT networks due to the lack of public datasets with all types of APT attacks. It is worth to bridge the state-of-the-art in network attack detection with APT attack detection in a comprehensive review article. This survey article reviews the security challenges in IoT networks and presents the well-known attacks, APT attacks, and threat models in IoT systems. Meanwhile, signature-based, anomaly-based, and hybrid intrusion detection systems are summarized for IoT networks. The article highlights statistical insights regarding frequently applied ML-based methods against network intrusion alongside the number of attacks types detected. Finally, open issues and challenges for common network intrusion and APT attacks are presented for future research.Comment: ACM Computing Surveys, 2022, 35 pages, 10 Figures, 8 Table

IPTV Service Framework Based on Secure Authentication and Lightweight Content Encryption for Screen-Migration in Cloud Computing

These days, the advancing of smart devices (e.g. smart phones, tablets, PC, etc.) capabilities and the increase of internet bandwidth enables IPTV service provider to extend their services to smart mobile devices. User can just receive their IPTV service using any smart devices by accessing the internet via wireless network from anywhere anytime in the world which is convenience for users. However, wireless network communication has well a known critical security threats and vulnerabilities to user smart devices and IPTV service such as user identity theft, reply attack, MIM attack, and so forth. A secure authentication for user devices and multimedia protection mechanism is necessary to protect both user devices and IPTV services. As result, we proposed framework of IPTV service based on secure authentication mechanism and lightweight content encryption method for screen-migration in Cloud computing. We used cryptographic nonce combined with user ID and password to authenticate user device in any mobile terminal they passes by. In addition we used Lightweight content encryption to protect and reduce the content decode overload at mobile terminals. Our proposed authentication mechanism reduces the computational processing by 30% comparing to other authentication mechanism and our lightweight content encryption reduces encryption delay to 0.259 second

A Novel Seed Based Random Interleaving for OFDM System and Its PHY Layer Security Implications

Wireless channels are characterized by multipath and fading that can often cause long burst of errors. Even though, to date, many very sophisticated error correcting codes have been designed, yet none can handle long burst of errors efficiently. An interleaver, a device that distributes a burst of errors, possibly caused by a deep fade, and makes them appear as simple random errors, therefore, proves to a very useful technique when used in conjunction with an efficient error correcting code. In this work, a novel near optimal seed based random interleaver is designed. An optimal interleaver scatters a given burst of errors uniformly over a fixed block of data - a property that is measured by so called ‘spread’. The design makes use of a unique seed based pseudo-random sequence generator or logistic map based chaotic sequence generator to scramble the given block of data. Since the proposed design is based on a seed based scrambler, the nature of input is irrelevant. Therefore, the proposed interleaver can interleave either the bits or the symbols or the packets or even the frames. Accordingly, in this work, we analyze the suitability of interleaver when introduced before or after the modulation in single carrier communication systems and show that interleaving the bits before modulation or interleaving the symbols after modulation has same advantage. We further show that, in an orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) systems, the position of interleaver, whether before or after constellation mapper, has no significance, and is interchangeable. However, scrambling symbols is computationally less expensive than scrambling bits. For the purpose of analyzing the performance of the proposed seed based random interleaver, simulations are carried out in MATLAB®. Results show that our proposed seed based random interleaver has near optimal properties of ‘spread’ and ‘dispersion’. Furthermore, the proposed interleaver is evaluated in terms of bit error rate (BER) versus length of burst error in a single carrier system both before and after modulation. The proposed interleaver out-performs the built in RANDINTLV in MATLAB® when used in the same system. It shows that proposed interleaver can convert greater amount of burst errors into simple random errors than that of MATLAB® interleaver. The proposed interleaver is also tested in IEEE 802.16e based WiMAX system with Stanford University Interim (SUI) channels to compare the performance of average BER versus SNR for both pre modulation and post modulation interleaver. Results show that pre modulation interleaver and post modulation has same performance. There is also a side advantage of this seed based interleaver, in that it generates a variety of unique random-looking interleaving sequences. Only a receiver that has the knowledge of the input seed can generate this sequence and no one else. If the interleaving patterns are kept secure then it can possibly be used to introduce an extra layer of security at physical (PHY) layer. In that way, at PHY layer, one builds an additional entry barrier to break through and it comes with no extra cost. This property has been investigated by carrying out key sensitivity analysis to show that the attacks to guess key can be very futile, as difference at 4th decimal place in the initial condition can lead to entirely different scrambling

Systematic Review on Security and Privacy Requirements in Edge Computing: State of the Art and Future Research Opportunities

Edge computing is a promising paradigm that enhances the capabilities of cloud computing. In order to continue patronizing the computing services, it is essential to conserve a good atmosphere free from all kinds of security and privacy breaches. The security and privacy issues associated with the edge computing environment have narrowed the overall acceptance of the technology as a reliable paradigm. Many researchers have reviewed security and privacy issues in edge computing, but not all have fully investigated the security and privacy requirements. Security and privacy requirements are the objectives that indicate the capabilities as well as functions a system performs in eliminating certain security and privacy vulnerabilities. The paper aims to substantially review the security and privacy requirements of the edge computing and the various technological methods employed by the techniques used in curbing the threats, with the aim of helping future researchers in identifying research opportunities. This paper investigate the current studies and highlights the following: (1) the classification of security and privacy requirements in edge computing, (2) the state of the art techniques deployed in curbing the security and privacy threats, (3) the trends of technological methods employed by the techniques, (4) the metrics used for evaluating the performance of the techniques, (5) the taxonomy of attacks affecting the edge network, and the corresponding technological trend employed in mitigating the attacks, and, (6) research opportunities for future researchers in the area of edge computing security and privacy