The Value of User-Visible Internet Cryptography

Cryptographic mechanisms are used in a wide range of applications, including email clients, web browsers, document and asset management systems, where typical users are not cryptography experts. A number of empirical studies have demonstrated that explicit, user-visible cryptographic mechanisms are not widely used by non-expert users, and as a result arguments have been made that cryptographic mechanisms need to be better hidden or embedded in end-user processes and tools. Other mechanisms, such as HTTPS, have cryptography built-in and only become visible to the user when a dialogue appears due to a (potential) problem. This paper surveys deployed and potential technologies in use, examines the social and legal context of broad classes of users, and from there, assesses the value and issues for those users

Introducing keytagging, a novel technique for the protection of medical image-based tests

This paper introduces keytagging, a novel technique to protect medical image-based tests by implementing image authentication, integrity control and location of tampered areas, private captioning with role-based access control, traceability and copyright protection. It relies on the association of tags (binary data strings) to stable, semistable or volatile features of the image, whose access keys (called keytags) depend on both the image and the tag content. Unlike watermarking, this technique can associate information to the most stable features of the image without distortion. Thus, this method preserves the clinical content of the image without the need for assessment, prevents eavesdropping and collusion attacks, and obtains a substantial capacity-robustness tradeoff with simple operations. The evaluation of this technique, involving images of different sizes from various acquisition modalities and image modifications that are typical in the medical context, demonstrates that all the aforementioned security measures can be implemented simultaneously and that the algorithm presents good scalability. In addition to this, keytags can be protected with standard Cryptographic Message Syntax and the keytagging process can be easily combined with JPEG2000 compression since both share the same wavelet transform. This reduces the delays for associating keytags and retrieving the corresponding tags to implement the aforementioned measures to only ¿30 and ¿90. ms respectively. As a result, keytags can be seamlessly integrated within DICOM, reducing delays and bandwidth when the image test is updated and shared in secure architectures where different users cooperate, e.g. physicians who interpret the test, clinicians caring for the patient and researchers

Sähköisen identiteetin toteuttaminen TPM 2.0 -laitteistolla

Most of the financial, healthcare, and governmental services are available on Internet, where traditional identification methods used on face-to-face identification are not possible. Identification with username and password is a mediocre solution and therefore some services require strong authentication. Finland has three approved strong authentication methods: smart cards, bank credentials, and mobile ID. Out of the three authentication methods, only the government issued smart card is available to everyone who police can identify reliably. Bank credentials require identification with an identity document from Finland or other European Economic Area (EEA) country. Mobile ID explicitly require identification with Finnish identity document. The problem with smart cards is the requirement for a reader, slow functioning, and requirement for custom driver. A TPM could function as a replacement for a smart card with accompanying software library. In this thesis, I created a PKCS #11 software library that allows TPM to be used for browser based authentication according to draft specification by Finnish population registry. The keys used for authentication are created, stored and used securely inside the TPM. TPMs are deemed viable replacement for smart cards. The implemented system is faster to use than smart cards and has similar security properties as smart cards have. The created library contains implementations for 30% of all TPM 2.0 functions and could be used as a base for further TPM 2.0 based software.Pankki-, terveys- ja julkiset palvelut ovat suureksi osin saatavilla internetin välityksellä. Tunnistautuminen käyttäjätunnuksella ja salasanalla ei takaa riittävää luotettavuutta, vaan joissain palveluissa on käytettävä vahvaa tunnistautumista. Suomessa on tällä hetkellä käytössä kolme vahvaa tunnistautumisvälinettä: pankkien käyttämät verkkopankkitunnukset, Väestörekisterikeskuksen kansalaisvarmenne ja teleyritysten mobiilivarmenteet. Näistä kolmesta kansalaisvarmenne on ainoa, joka ei vaadi asiakkuutta ja on täten kaikille saatavilla, jotka poliisi voi luotettavasti tunnistaa. Verkkopankkitunnukset vaativat tunnistautumisen suomalaisella tai Euroopan talousalueen (ETA) valtion myöntämällä henkilötodistus. Mobiilivarmenne myönnetään vain henkilölle, joka voidaan tunnistaa suomalaisella henkilötodistuksella. Kansalaisvarmenne on kuitenkin älykortti kaikkine älykortin ongelmineen: sen käyttämiseen tarvitaan erillinen lukija, sen toiminta on hidasta ja se vaatii erillisen laiteajurin. Tämän työn tavoitteena on luoda ratkaisu, jolla älykorttipohjainen tunnistautuminen voidaan toteuttaa tietokoneissa olevan TPM-piirin avulla. Tässä diplomityössä luotiin PKCS #11 -rajapinnan täyttävä ohjelmistokirjasto, joka mahdollistaa TPM-piirin käyttämisen tunnistautumiseen selaimessa Väestörekisterikeskuksen laatiman määritelmän luonnoksen mukaan. Tunnistautumisavaimet luodaan, tallennetaan ja niitä käytetään TPM:ssa, mikä varmistaa avainten luottamuksellisuuden. Älykortin toiminnallisuudet todettiin mahdolliseksi toteuttaa TPM-piirillä. Toteutettu järjestelmä on nopeampi käyttää kuin älykortti ja se takaa älykortteja vastaavan tietoturvatason. Työn tuloksena tehty kirjasto toteuttaa 30 % kaikista TPM 2.0 -ohjelmistorajapinnoista, ja kirjastoa voidaan käyttää osana tulevia TPM 2.0 -ohjelmistoja

Implementing Azure Active Directory Integration with an Existing Cloud Service

Training Simulator (TraSim) is an online, web-based platform for holding crisis management exercises. It simulates epidemics and other exceptional situations to test the functionality of an organization’s operating instructions in the hour of need. The main objective of this thesis is to further develop the service by delegating its existing authentication and user provisioning mechanisms to a centralized, cloud-based Identity and Access Management (IAM) service. Making use of a centralized access control service is widely known as a Single Sign-On (SSO) implementation which comes with multiple benefits such as increased security, reduced administrative overhead and improved user experience. The objective originates from a customer organization’s request to enable SSO for TraSim. The research mainly focuses on implementing SSO by integrating TraSim with Azure Active Directory (AD) from a wide range of IAM services since it is considered as an industry standard and already utilized by the customer. Anyhow, the complexity of the integration is kept as reduced as possible to retain compatibility with other services besides Azure AD. While the integration is a unique operation with an endless amount of software stacks that a service can build on and multiple IAM services to choose from, this thesis aims to provide a general guideline of how to approach a resembling assignment. Conducting the study required extensive search and evaluation of the available literature about terms such as IAM, client-server communication, SSO, cloud services and AD. The literature review is combined with an introduction to the basic technologies that TraSim is built with to justify the choice of OpenID Connect as the authentication protocol and why it was implemented using the mozilla-django-oidc library. The literature consists of multiple online articles, publications and the official documentation of the utilized technologies. The research uses a constructive approach as it focuses into developing and testing a new feature that is merged into the source code of an already existing piece of software

Sigurnosni protokoli

The Internet, as a computer network, connects millions of people all around the world and gives them a possibility to access a big quantity of data. Throughout the Internet users exchange data using certain protocols and a part of this communication is private or secret. TCP (Transmission Control Protocol) and IP (Internet Protocol) protocols are the kernel of Internet protocol. Everything that is transmitted through the Internet uses these protocols, but they cannot provide security of data transfer. For example, IP packages can be easily changed and their content can be seen by everybody in every moment, even by an unauthorized person. Today the world is already globally connected and the individuals and institutions need privacy and also the protection from identity theft that is today a very frequent aspect of misuse of the Internet. So, we need transparent and flexible tools to fulfill demands of different users and at the same time capable to achieve the assigned degree of security. Security protocols, as the most prominent SSL (Secure Sockets Layers) and TLS (Transport Layer Security), solve a good part of given problems.Internet, kao računarska mreža, povezuje milione ljudi širom sveta i obezbeđuje im pristup velikoj količini informacija. Korisnici preko Interneta razmenjuju podatke na osnovu određenih protokola, a deo te komunikacije je privatnog ili službeno tajnog karaktera. Pri ovoj razmeni, korisnici resursa računarskih sistema, računara u mrežama i samostalnih računara, pre svega žele da budu sigurni da će pristup njihovim podacima i resursima uopšte imati samo oni kojima se pristup dozvoli. Dakle, analogno sigurnosti fizičke imovine korisnici računarskih sistema žele takozvanu računarsku sigurnost. Jezgro Internet protokola predstavljaju TCP (Transmission Control Protocol) i IP (Internet Protocoll) protokoli. Sve što putuje Internetom koristi ove protokole, ali oni ne obezbeđuje sigurnost prenosa podataka. IP paketi se, na primer, mogu lako izmeniti a njihov sadržaj može u bilo kom trenutku da pregleda ma ko, pa i neovlašćena osoba. U svetu koji je danas već globalno povezan, pojedinci i razne institucije imaju potrebe za privatnošću, kao i za zaštitom od krađe identiteta, koja postaje sve češći vid zloupotrebe globalne mreže. Dakle, potrebna su sredstva koja su transparentna i dovoljno fleksibilna da zadovolje zahteve raznih korisnika, a istovremeno ostvare zadati stepen sigurnosti. U ovom radu, pažnja je usmerena na komunikacijske zaštitne mehanizme definisane sigurnosnim protokolima, pri čemu se smatra da su ispunjene ostale kategorije računarske sigurnosti. Protokoli TLS (Transport Layer Security) i SSL (Secure Sockets Layers) su kriptografski protokoli koji omogućavaju sigurnu komunikaciju na Internetu za poslove elektronskog bankarstva i trgovine, e-mail, fax, pristup udaljenim računarima, a korisnicima rešavaju dobar deo navedenih problema

Design of a secure architecture for the exchange of biomedical information in m-Health scenarios

El paradigma de m-Salud (salud móvil) aboga por la integración masiva de las más avanzadas tecnologías de comunicación, red móvil y sensores en aplicaciones y sistemas de salud, para fomentar el despliegue de un nuevo modelo de atención clínica centrada en el usuario/paciente. Este modelo tiene por objetivos el empoderamiento de los usuarios en la gestión de su propia salud (p.ej. aumentando sus conocimientos, promocionando estilos de vida saludable y previniendo enfermedades), la prestación de una mejor tele-asistencia sanitaria en el hogar para ancianos y pacientes crónicos y una notable disminución del gasto de los Sistemas de Salud gracias a la reducción del número y la duración de las hospitalizaciones. No obstante, estas ventajas, atribuidas a las aplicaciones de m-Salud, suelen venir acompañadas del requisito de un alto grado de disponibilidad de la información biomédica de sus usuarios para garantizar una alta calidad de servicio, p.ej. fusionar varias señales de un usuario para obtener un diagnóstico más preciso. La consecuencia negativa de cumplir esta demanda es el aumento directo de las superficies potencialmente vulnerables a ataques, lo que sitúa a la seguridad (y a la privacidad) del modelo de m-Salud como factor crítico para su éxito. Como requisito no funcional de las aplicaciones de m-Salud, la seguridad ha recibido menos atención que otros requisitos técnicos que eran más urgentes en etapas de desarrollo previas, tales como la robustez, la eficiencia, la interoperabilidad o la usabilidad. Otro factor importante que ha contribuido a retrasar la implementación de políticas de seguridad sólidas es que garantizar un determinado nivel de seguridad implica unos costes que pueden ser muy relevantes en varias dimensiones, en especial en la económica (p.ej. sobrecostes por la inclusión de hardware extra para la autenticación de usuarios), en el rendimiento (p.ej. reducción de la eficiencia y de la interoperabilidad debido a la integración de elementos de seguridad) y en la usabilidad (p.ej. configuración más complicada de dispositivos y aplicaciones de salud debido a las nuevas opciones de seguridad). Por tanto, las soluciones de seguridad que persigan satisfacer a todos los actores del contexto de m-Salud (usuarios, pacientes, personal médico, personal técnico, legisladores, fabricantes de dispositivos y equipos, etc.) deben ser robustas y al mismo tiempo minimizar sus costes asociados. Esta Tesis detalla una propuesta de seguridad, compuesta por cuatro grandes bloques interconectados, para dotar de seguridad a las arquitecturas de m-Salud con unos costes reducidos. El primer bloque define un esquema global que proporciona unos niveles de seguridad e interoperabilidad acordes con las características de las distintas aplicaciones de m-Salud. Este esquema está compuesto por tres capas diferenciadas, diseñadas a la medidas de los dominios de m-Salud y de sus restricciones, incluyendo medidas de seguridad adecuadas para la defensa contra las amenazas asociadas a sus aplicaciones de m-Salud. El segundo bloque establece la extensión de seguridad de aquellos protocolos estándar que permiten la adquisición, el intercambio y/o la administración de información biomédica -- por tanto, usados por muchas aplicaciones de m-Salud -- pero no reúnen los niveles de seguridad detallados en el esquema previo. Estas extensiones se concretan para los estándares biomédicos ISO/IEEE 11073 PHD y SCP-ECG. El tercer bloque propone nuevas formas de fortalecer la seguridad de los tests biomédicos, que constituyen el elemento esencial de muchas aplicaciones de m-Salud de carácter clínico, mediante codificaciones novedosas. Finalmente el cuarto bloque, que se sitúa en paralelo a los anteriores, selecciona herramientas genéricas de seguridad (elementos de autenticación y criptográficos) cuya integración en los otros bloques resulta idónea, y desarrolla nuevas herramientas de seguridad, basadas en señal -- embedding y keytagging --, para reforzar la protección de los test biomédicos.The paradigm of m-Health (mobile health) advocates for the massive integration of advanced mobile communications, network and sensor technologies in healthcare applications and systems to foster the deployment of a new, user/patient-centered healthcare model enabling the empowerment of users in the management of their health (e.g. by increasing their health literacy, promoting healthy lifestyles and the prevention of diseases), a better home-based healthcare delivery for elderly and chronic patients and important savings for healthcare systems due to the reduction of hospitalizations in number and duration. It is a fact that many m-Health applications demand high availability of biomedical information from their users (for further accurate analysis, e.g. by fusion of various signals) to guarantee high quality of service, which on the other hand entails increasing the potential surfaces for attacks. Therefore, it is not surprising that security (and privacy) is commonly included among the most important barriers for the success of m-Health. As a non-functional requirement for m-Health applications, security has received less attention than other technical issues that were more pressing at earlier development stages, such as reliability, eficiency, interoperability or usability. Another fact that has contributed to delaying the enforcement of robust security policies is that guaranteeing a certain security level implies costs that can be very relevant and that span along diferent dimensions. These include budgeting (e.g. the demand of extra hardware for user authentication), performance (e.g. lower eficiency and interoperability due to the addition of security elements) and usability (e.g. cumbersome configuration of devices and applications due to security options). Therefore, security solutions that aim to satisfy all the stakeholders in the m-Health context (users/patients, medical staff, technical staff, systems and devices manufacturers, regulators, etc.) shall be robust and, at the same time, minimize their associated costs. This Thesis details a proposal, composed of four interrelated blocks, to integrate appropriate levels of security in m-Health architectures in a cost-efcient manner. The first block designes a global scheme that provides different security and interoperability levels accordingto how critical are the m-Health applications to be implemented. This consists ofthree layers tailored to the m-Health domains and their constraints, whose security countermeasures defend against the threats of their associated m-Health applications. Next, the second block addresses the security extension of those standard protocols that enable the acquisition, exchange and/or management of biomedical information | thus, used by many m-Health applications | but do not meet the security levels described in the former scheme. These extensions are materialized for the biomedical standards ISO/IEEE 11073 PHD and SCP-ECG. Then, the third block proposes new ways of enhancing the security of biomedical standards, which are the centerpiece of many clinical m-Health applications, by means of novel codings. Finally the fourth block, with is parallel to the others, selects generic security methods (for user authentication and cryptographic protection) whose integration in the other blocks results optimal, and also develops novel signal-based methods (embedding and keytagging) for strengthening the security of biomedical tests. The layer-based extensions of the standards ISO/IEEE 11073 PHD and SCP-ECG can be considered as robust, cost-eficient and respectful with their original features and contents. The former adds no attributes to its data information model, four new frames to the service model |and extends four with new sub-frames|, and only one new sub-state to the communication model. Furthermore, a lightweight architecture consisting of a personal health device mounting a 9 MHz processor and an aggregator mounting a 1 GHz processor is enough to transmit a 3-lead electrocardiogram in real-time implementing the top security layer. The extra requirements associated to this extension are an initial configuration of the health device and the aggregator, tokens for identification/authentication of users if these devices are to be shared and the implementation of certain IHE profiles in the aggregator to enable the integration of measurements in healthcare systems. As regards to the extension of SCP-ECG, it only adds a new section with selected security elements and syntax in order to protect the rest of file contents and provide proper role-based access control. The overhead introduced in the protected SCP-ECG is typically 2{13 % of the regular file size, and the extra delays to protect a newly generated SCP-ECG file and to access it for interpretation are respectively a 2{10 % and a 5 % of the regular delays. As regards to the signal-based security techniques developed, the embedding method is the basis for the proposal of a generic coding for tests composed of biomedical signals, periodic measurements and contextual information. This has been adjusted and evaluated with electrocardiogram and electroencephalogram-based tests, proving the objective clinical quality of the coded tests, the capacity of the coding-access system to operate in real-time (overall delays of 2 s for electrocardiograms and 3.3 s for electroencephalograms) and its high usability. Despite of the embedding of security and metadata to enable m-Health services, the compression ratios obtained by this coding range from ' 3 in real-time transmission to ' 5 in offline operation. Complementarily, keytagging permits associating information to images (and other signals) by means of keys in a secure and non-distorting fashion, which has been availed to implement security measures such as image authentication, integrity control and location of tampered areas, private captioning with role-based access control, traceability and copyright protection. The tests conducted indicate a remarkable robustness-capacity tradeoff that permits implementing all this measures simultaneously, and the compatibility of keytagging with JPEG2000 compression, maintaining this tradeoff while setting the overall keytagging delay in only ' 120 ms for any image size | evidencing the scalability of this technique. As a general conclusion, it has been demonstrated and illustrated with examples that there are various, complementary and structured manners to contribute in the implementation of suitable security levels for m-Health architectures with a moderate cost in budget, performance, interoperability and usability. The m-Health landscape is evolving permanently along all their dimensions, and this Thesis aims to do so with its security. Furthermore, the lessons learned herein may offer further guidance for the elaboration of more comprehensive and updated security schemes, for the extension of other biomedical standards featuring low emphasis on security or privacy, and for the improvement of the state of the art regarding signal-based protection methods and applications

A framework for cryptography algorithms on mobile devices

Mobile communication devices have become a popular tool for gathering and disseminating information and data. With the evidence of the growth of wireless technology and a need for more flexible, customizable and better-optimised security schemes, it is evident that connection-based security such as HTTPS may not be sufficient. In order to provide sufficient security at the application layer, developers need access to a cryptography package. Such packages are available as third party mobile cryptographic toolkits or are supported natively on the mobile device. Typically mobile cryptographic packages have reduced their number of API methods to keep the package lightweight in size, but consequently making it quite complex to use. As a result developers could easily misuse a method which can weaken the entire security of a system without knowing it. Aside from the complexities in the API, mobile cryptography packages often do not apply sound cryptography within the implementation of the algorithms thus causing vulnerabilities in its utilization and initialization. Although FIPS 140-2 and CAPI suggest guidelines on how cryptographic algorithms should be implemented, they do not define the guidelines for implementing and using cryptography in a mobile environment. In our study, we do not define new cryptographic algorithms, instead, we investigate how sound cryptography can be applied practically in a mobile application environment and developed a framework called Linca (which stands for Logical Integration of Cryptographic Architectures) that can be used as a mobile cryptographic package to demonstrate our findings. The benefit that Linca has is that it hides the complexity of making incorrect cryptographic algorithm decisions, cryptographic algorithm initialization and utilization and key management, while maintaining a small size. Linca also applies sound cryptographic fundamentals internally within the framework, which radiates these benefits outwards at the API. Because Linca is a framework, certain architecture and design patterns are applied internally so that the cryptographic mechanisms and algorithms can be easily maintained. Linca showed better results when evaluated against two mobile cryptography API packages namely Bouncy Castle API and Secure and Trust Service API in terms of security and design. We demonstrate the applicability of Linca on using two realistic examples that cover securing network channels and on-device data.Dissertation (MSc (Computer Science))--University of Pretoria, 2007.Computer ScienceMScunrestricte

A SOAP-based Model for secure messaging in a global context

For integration between application-systems in a global context, interoperability needs to be established on a global level; global interoperability, in turn, is based on a global common application-interface. This is achieved through resolving differences in, inter alia, protocol profiles, among participants in the global network. ebXML is used as the point of departure. A messaging framework, which is based on existing Web technology and standards, is proposed. Certain security and Web service standards are examined to determine specific parameters for an interoperable secure messaging environment. A security based framework comprising a predefined message format and architecture is investigated for a secure interoperable global electronic marketspace