9,709 research outputs found
Denial-of-Service Resistance in Key Establishment
Denial of Service (DoS) attacks are an increasing problem for network connected systems. Key establishment protocols are applications that are particularly vulnerable to DoS attack as they are typically required to perform computationally expensive cryptographic operations in order to authenticate the protocol initiator and to generate the cryptographic keying material that will subsequently be used to secure the communications between initiator and responder. The goal of DoS resistance in key establishment protocols is to ensure that attackers cannot prevent a legitimate initiator and responder deriving cryptographic keys without expending resources beyond a responder-determined threshold. In this work we review the strategies and techniques used to improve resistance to DoS attacks. Three key establishment protocols implementing DoS resistance techniques are critically reviewed and the impact of misapplication of the techniques on DoS resistance is discussed. Recommendations on effectively applying resistance techniques to key establishment protocols are made
Herding Vulnerable Cats: A Statistical Approach to Disentangle Joint Responsibility for Web Security in Shared Hosting
Hosting providers play a key role in fighting web compromise, but their
ability to prevent abuse is constrained by the security practices of their own
customers. {\em Shared} hosting, offers a unique perspective since customers
operate under restricted privileges and providers retain more control over
configurations. We present the first empirical analysis of the distribution of
web security features and software patching practices in shared hosting
providers, the influence of providers on these security practices, and their
impact on web compromise rates. We construct provider-level features on the
global market for shared hosting -- containing 1,259 providers -- by gathering
indicators from 442,684 domains. Exploratory factor analysis of 15 indicators
identifies four main latent factors that capture security efforts: content
security, webmaster security, web infrastructure security and web application
security. We confirm, via a fixed-effect regression model, that providers exert
significant influence over the latter two factors, which are both related to
the software stack in their hosting environment. Finally, by means of GLM
regression analysis of these factors on phishing and malware abuse, we show
that the four security and software patching factors explain between 10\% and
19\% of the variance in abuse at providers, after controlling for size. For
web-application security for instance, we found that when a provider moves from
the bottom 10\% to the best-performing 10\%, it would experience 4 times fewer
phishing incidents. We show that providers have influence over patch
levels--even higher in the stack, where CMSes can run as client-side
software--and that this influence is tied to a substantial reduction in abuse
levels
DTLS Performance in Duty-Cycled Networks
The Datagram Transport Layer Security (DTLS) protocol is the IETF standard
for securing the Internet of Things. The Constrained Application Protocol,
ZigBee IP, and Lightweight Machine-to-Machine (LWM2M) mandate its use for
securing application traffic. There has been much debate in both the
standardization and research communities on the applicability of DTLS to
constrained environments. The main concerns are the communication overhead and
latency of the DTLS handshake, and the memory footprint of a DTLS
implementation. This paper provides a thorough performance evaluation of DTLS
in different duty-cycled networks through real-world experimentation, emulation
and analysis. In particular, we measure the duration of the DTLS handshake when
using three duty cycling link-layer protocols: preamble-sampling, the IEEE
802.15.4 beacon-enabled mode and the IEEE 802.15.4e Time Slotted Channel
Hopping mode. The reported results demonstrate surprisingly poor performance of
DTLS in radio duty-cycled networks. Because a DTLS client and a server exchange
more than 10 signaling packets, the DTLS handshake takes between a handful of
seconds and several tens of seconds, with similar results for different duty
cycling protocols. Moreover, because of their limited memory, typical
constrained nodes can only maintain 3-5 simultaneous DTLS sessions, which
highlights the need for using DTLS parsimoniously.Comment: International Symposium on Personal, Indoor and Mobile Radio
Communications (PIMRC - 2015), IEEE, IEEE, 2015,
http://pimrc2015.eee.hku.hk/index.htm
The Web SSO Standard OpenID Connect: In-Depth Formal Security Analysis and Security Guidelines
Web-based single sign-on (SSO) services such as Google Sign-In and Log In
with Paypal are based on the OpenID Connect protocol. This protocol enables
so-called relying parties to delegate user authentication to so-called identity
providers. OpenID Connect is one of the newest and most widely deployed single
sign-on protocols on the web. Despite its importance, it has not received much
attention from security researchers so far, and in particular, has not
undergone any rigorous security analysis.
In this paper, we carry out the first in-depth security analysis of OpenID
Connect. To this end, we use a comprehensive generic model of the web to
develop a detailed formal model of OpenID Connect. Based on this model, we then
precisely formalize and prove central security properties for OpenID Connect,
including authentication, authorization, and session integrity properties.
In our modeling of OpenID Connect, we employ security measures in order to
avoid attacks on OpenID Connect that have been discovered previously and new
attack variants that we document for the first time in this paper. Based on
these security measures, we propose security guidelines for implementors of
OpenID Connect. Our formal analysis demonstrates that these guidelines are in
fact effective and sufficient.Comment: An abridged version appears in CSF 2017. Parts of this work extend
the web model presented in arXiv:1411.7210, arXiv:1403.1866,
arXiv:1508.01719, and arXiv:1601.0122
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