Context-Awareness Enhances 5G Multi-Access Edge Computing Reliability

The fifth generation (5G) mobile telecommunication network is expected to support Multi- Access Edge Computing (MEC), which intends to distribute computation tasks and services from the central cloud to the edge clouds. Towards ultra-responsive, ultra-reliable and ultra-low-latency MEC services, the current mobile network security architecture should enable a more decentralized approach for authentication and authorization processes. This paper proposes a novel decentralized authentication architecture that supports flexible and low-cost local authentication with the awareness of context information of network elements such as user equipment and virtual network functions. Based on a Markov model for backhaul link quality, as well as a random walk mobility model with mixed mobility classes and traffic scenarios, numerical simulations have demonstrated that the proposed approach is able to achieve a flexible balance between the network operating cost and the MEC reliability.Comment: Accepted by IEEE Access on Feb. 02, 201

Survey and Systematization of Secure Device Pairing

Secure Device Pairing (SDP) schemes have been developed to facilitate secure communications among smart devices, both personal mobile devices and Internet of Things (IoT) devices. Comparison and assessment of SDP schemes is troublesome, because each scheme makes different assumptions about out-of-band channels and adversary models, and are driven by their particular use-cases. A conceptual model that facilitates meaningful comparison among SDP schemes is missing. We provide such a model. In this article, we survey and analyze a wide range of SDP schemes that are described in the literature, including a number that have been adopted as standards. A system model and consistent terminology for SDP schemes are built on the foundation of this survey, which are then used to classify existing SDP schemes into a taxonomy that, for the first time, enables their meaningful comparison and analysis.The existing SDP schemes are analyzed using this model, revealing common systemic security weaknesses among the surveyed SDP schemes that should become priority areas for future SDP research, such as improving the integration of privacy requirements into the design of SDP schemes. Our results allow SDP scheme designers to create schemes that are more easily comparable with one another, and to assist the prevention of persisting the weaknesses common to the current generation of SDP schemes.Comment: 34 pages, 5 figures, 3 tables, accepted at IEEE Communications Surveys & Tutorials 2017 (Volume: PP, Issue: 99

Defining the Behavior of IoT Devices through the MUD Standard: Review, Challenges, and Research Directions

With the strong development of the Internet of Things (IoT), the definition of IoT devices' intended behavior is key for an effective detection of potential cybersecurity attacks and threats in an increasingly connected environment. In 2019, the Manufacturer Usage Description (MUD) was standardized within the IETF as a data model and architecture for defining, obtaining and deploying MUD files, which describe the network behavioral profiles of IoT devices. While it has attracted a strong interest from academia, industry, and Standards Developing Organizations (SDOs), MUD is not yet widely deployed in real-world scenarios. In this work, we analyze the current research landscape around this standard, and describe some of the main challenges to be considered in the coming years to foster its adoption and deployment. Based on the literature analysis and our own experience in this area, we further describe potential research directions exploiting the MUD standard to encourage the development of secure IoT-enabled scenarios

Decentralized Identity and Access Management Framework for Internet of Things Devices

The emerging Internet of Things (IoT) domain is about connecting people and devices and systems together via sensors and actuators, to collect meaningful information from the devices surrounding environment and take actions to enhance productivity and efficiency. The proliferation of IoT devices from around few billion devices today to over 25 billion in the next few years spanning over heterogeneous networks defines a new paradigm shift for many industrial and smart connectivity applications. The existing IoT networks faces a number of operational challenges linked to devices management and the capability of devices’ mutual authentication and authorization. While significant progress has been made in adopting existing connectivity and management frameworks, most of these frameworks are designed to work for unconstrained devices connected in centralized networks. On the other hand, IoT devices are constrained devices with tendency to work and operate in decentralized and peer-to-peer arrangement. This tendency towards peer-to-peer service exchange resulted that many of the existing frameworks fails to address the main challenges faced by the need to offer ownership of devices and the generated data to the actual users. Moreover, the diversified list of devices and offered services impose that more granular access control mechanisms are required to limit the exposure of the devices to external threats and provide finer access control policies under control of the device owner without the need for a middleman. This work addresses these challenges by utilizing the concepts of decentralization introduced in Distributed Ledger (DLT) technologies and capability of automating business flows through smart contracts. The proposed work utilizes the concepts of decentralized identifiers (DIDs) for establishing a decentralized devices identity management framework and exploits Blockchain tokenization through both fungible and non-fungible tokens (NFTs) to build a self-controlled and self-contained access control policy based on capability-based access control model (CapBAC). The defined framework provides a layered approach that builds on identity management as the foundation to enable authentication and authorization processes and establish a mechanism for accounting through the adoption of standardized DLT tokenization structure. The proposed framework is demonstrated through implementing a number of use cases that addresses issues related identity management in industries that suffer losses in billions of dollars due to counterfeiting and lack of global and immutable identity records. The framework extension to support applications for building verifiable data paths in the application layer were addressed through two simple examples. The system has been analyzed in the case of issuing authorization tokens where it is expected that DLT consensus mechanisms will introduce major performance hurdles. A proof of concept emulating establishing concurrent connections to a single device presented no timed-out requests at 200 concurrent connections and a rise in the timed-out requests ratio to 5% at 600 connections. The analysis showed also that a considerable overhead in the data link budget of 10.4% is recorded due to the use of self-contained policy token which is a trade-off between building self-contained access tokens with no middleman and link cost

Secure Device Bootstrapping with the Nimble Out of Band Authentication Protocol

The smart personal and business appliances which form the Internet of Things are expected to become ubiquitous and to make our daily life more convenient. Most of these devices are connected though wireless networks to cloud-based online services. However, such devices may be vulnerable to various attacks which could compromise the users’ security and privacy and even cause physical harm. Therefore, securing the network connection for the devices is of utmost importance. In order to secure the network connections, the devices need to be configured with the necessary keys and other connection parameters. There is not yet any widely adopted generic solution for this secure bootstrapping. One proposed solution is out-of-band (OOB) authentication with a protocol called EAP-NOOB, which is a new method for the EAP and IEEE 802.1X authentication framework. The goal of this thesis is to build a prototype of the EAP-NOOB protocol and deploy the prototype to test it with the real-world scenarios. The protocol requires no a-priori information either about the device or the user is necessary for the bootstrapping. Instead, the user’s ownership of the device is established during the bootstrapping process. The protocol was implemented both by adding support for the new EAP method into existing open-source software, the commonly used WPA_Supplicant and Hostapd packages. We also implemented a web interface for the back-end authentication server, which works in tandem with the AAA server, and out-of-band channels based on dynamic QR codes and NFC tags. We used the prototype to test and demonstrate the EAP-NOOB protocol, including its usability and authentication latency. The bootstrapping procedure can be completed in less than a minute in most cases. The main results of the project are the EAP-NOOB implementation and various improvements and clarifications to the protocol specification. These results are an essential part of the protocol standardization process at IETF

Platforms and Protocols for the Internet of Things

Building a general architecture for the Internet of Things (IoT) is a very complex task, exacerbated by the extremely large variety of devices, link layer technologies, and services that may be involved in such a system. In this paper, we identify the main blocks of a generic IoT architecture, describing their features and requirements, and analyze the most common approaches proposed in the literature for each block. In particular, we compare three of the most important communication technologies for IoT purposes, i.e., REST, MQTT, and AMQP, and we also analyze three IoT platforms: openHAB, Sentilo, and Parse. The analysis will prove the importance of adopting an integrated approach that jointly addresses several issues and is able to flexibly accommodate the requirements of the various elements of the system. We also discuss a use case which illustrates the design challenges and the choices to make when selecting which protocols and technologies to use

Enhancements to Secure Bootstrapping of Smart Appliances

In recent times, there has been a proliferation of smart IoT devices that make our everyday life more convenient, both at home and at work environment. Most of these smart devices are connected to cloud-based online services, and they typically reuse the existing Wi-Fi network infrastructure for Internet connectivity. Hence, it is of paramount importance to ensure that these devices establish a robust security association with the Wi-Fi networks and cloud-based servers. The initial process by which a device establishes a robust security association with the network and servers is known as secure bootstrapping. The bootstrapping process results in the derivation of security keys and other connection parameters required by the security associations. Since the smart IoT devices often possess minimal user-interface, there is a need for bootstrapping methods with which the users can effortlessly connect their smart IoT devices to the networks and services. Nimble out-of-band authentication for Extensible Authentication Protocol (EAP-NOOB) is one such secure bootstrapping method. It is a new EAP authentication method for IEEE 802.1X/EAP authentication framework. The protocol does not assume or require any pre-configured authentication credentials such as symmetric keys or certificates. In lieu, the authentication credentials along with the user’s ownership of the device are established during the bootstrapping process. The primary goal of this thesis is to study and implement the draft specification of the EAP-NOOB protocol in order to evaluate the working of EAP-NOOB in real-world scenarios. During our implementation and testing of the initial prototype for EAP-NOOB, we discovered several issues in the protocol. In this thesis, we propose a suitable solution for each of the problems identified and also, verify the solutions through implementation and testing. The main results of this thesis work are various enhancements and clarifications to the EAP-NOOB protocol specification. The results consequently aid the standardisation of the protocol at IETF. We also design and implement several additional features for EAP-NOOB to enhance the user experience

An identity framework for providing access to FIWARE OAuth 2.0-based services according to the eIDAS European Regulation

Secure electronic identification (eID) is one of the key enablers of data protection, privacy, and the prevention of online fraud. However, until now, the lack of common legal basis prevented European Member States from recognizing and accepting eIDs issued in the other Member States. The electronic identification and trust services (eIDAS) regulation provides a solution to these issues by ensuring the cross-border mutual recognition of eIDs. FIWARE is a European initiative that provides a rather simple yet powerful set of application programming interfaces (APIs) that ease the development of smart applications in multiple vertical sectors and oriented to the future internet. In this paper, we propose a model that enables the connection of FIWARE OAuth 2.0-based services with the eID authentication provided by eIDAS reference. Thanks to this model, services already connected with an OAuth 2.0 identity provider can be automatically connected with eIDAS nodes for providing eID authentication to European citizens. For validating the proposed model, we have deployed an instance of the FIWARE identity manager connected to the Spanish eIDAS node. Then, we have registered two services, a private videoconferencing system, and a public smart city deployment, and extended their functionalities for enriching the user experience leveraging the eID authentication. We have evaluated the integration of both services in the eIDAS network with real users from seven different countries. We conclude that the proposed model facilitates the integration of generic and FIWARE-based OAuth 2.0 services to the eIDAS infrastructure, making the connection transparent for developers