TCPSnitch: Dissecting the Usage of the Socket API

Networked applications interact with the TCP/IP stack through the socket API. Over the years, various extensions have been added to this popular API. In this paper, we propose and implement the TCPSnitch software that tracks the interactions between Linux and Android applications and the TCP/IP stack. We collect a dataset containing the interactions produced by more than 120 different applications. Our analysis reveals that applications use a variety of API calls. On Android, many applications use various socket options even if the Java API does not expose them directly. TCPSnitch and the associated dataset are publicly available.Comment: See https://www.tcpsnitch.or

Risks of Offline Verify PIN on Contactless Cards

Contactless card payments are being introduced around the world al- lowing customers to use a card to pay for small purchases by simply placing the card onto the Point of Sale terminal. Contactless transactions do not require veri- fication of the cardholder’s PIN. However our research has found the redundant verify PIN functionality is present on the most commonly issued contactless credit and debit cards currently in circulation in the UK. This paper presents a plausible attack scenario which exploits contactless verify PIN to give unlimited attempts to guess the cardholder’s PIN without their knowledge. It also gives experimental data to demonstrate the practical viability of the attack as well as references to support our argument that contactless verify PIN is redundant functionality which compromises the security of payment cards and the cardholder

Using Inhabitation in Bounded Combinatory Logic with Intersection Types for Composition Synthesis

We describe ongoing work on a framework for automatic composition synthesis from a repository of software components. This work is based on combinatory logic with intersection types. The idea is that components are modeled as typed combinators, and an algorithm for inhabitation {\textemdash} is there a combinatory term e with type tau relative to an environment Gamma? {\textemdash} can be used to synthesize compositions. Here, Gamma represents the repository in the form of typed combinators, tau specifies the synthesis goal, and e is the synthesized program. We illustrate our approach by examples, including an application to synthesis from GUI-components.Comment: In Proceedings ITRS 2012, arXiv:1307.784

XMILE:An XML-based approach for programmable networks

In this paper we describe an XML-based platform for dynamic active node policy updates. XML supports the definitionof specific policy languages, their extension to satisfy new needs and the management of deployed policies on differentactive nodes. We show an example of the management of router packet forwarding policies where the XML policiesthat drive the packet routing are updated at run-time on the active nodes depending on the network status. The platformdecouples policy management, which is handled through XML interpretation, from packet forwarding that, forperformance reasons has to be implemented in more efficient languages

Building Programmable Wireless Networks: An Architectural Survey

In recent times, there have been a lot of efforts for improving the ossified Internet architecture in a bid to sustain unstinted growth and innovation. A major reason for the perceived architectural ossification is the lack of ability to program the network as a system. This situation has resulted partly from historical decisions in the original Internet design which emphasized decentralized network operations through co-located data and control planes on each network device. The situation for wireless networks is no different resulting in a lot of complexity and a plethora of largely incompatible wireless technologies. The emergence of "programmable wireless networks", that allow greater flexibility, ease of management and configurability, is a step in the right direction to overcome the aforementioned shortcomings of the wireless networks. In this paper, we provide a broad overview of the architectures proposed in literature for building programmable wireless networks focusing primarily on three popular techniques, i.e., software defined networks, cognitive radio networks, and virtualized networks. This survey is a self-contained tutorial on these techniques and its applications. We also discuss the opportunities and challenges in building next-generation programmable wireless networks and identify open research issues and future research directions.Comment: 19 page