Network Security Concepts, Dangers, and Defense Best Practical

In today's highly interconnected world, network security has become a critical aspect of protecting organizations from cyber-attacks. The increasing sophistication of attackers and their ability to exploit software and firmware vulnerabilities pose significant dangers to the security of networks. However, many organizations often neglect the essential steps required to secure their networks, leading to an increased risk of security breaches. In this research article, we aim to address this issue by investigating network security concepts, potential dangers, and practical defense strategies. We begin by exploring the different types of cyber-attacks and their sources, highlighting the various ways attackers exploit network vulnerabilities. We also examine the reasons why organizations often overlook network security and the consequences of not prioritizing it. To better understand the complexity of network security, we categorize the different security concerns using the CIA (confidentiality, integrity, and availability) triangle. This approach allows us to identify the various areas of vulnerability and their potential impact on network security. Next, we focus on the most crucial basic concepts and steps involved in various network security operations. We outline the best practices and practical approaches organizations can take to improve their network security, including implementing security policies and procedures, using encryption and authentication methods, and conducting regular security assessments. By highlighting the importance of network security and providing practical guidance on how organizations can defend against cyber-attacks, we hope to raise awareness and help prevent security breaches. Keywords: Network, Internet, Security, Security Threats, IP Address, Network Attack, Attackers DOI: 10.7176/CEIS/14-2-03 Publication date:March 31st 202

Sharing Computer Network Logs for Security and Privacy: A Motivation for New Methodologies of Anonymization

Logs are one of the most fundamental resources to any security professional. It is widely recognized by the government and industry that it is both beneficial and desirable to share logs for the purpose of security research. However, the sharing is not happening or not to the degree or magnitude that is desired. Organizations are reluctant to share logs because of the risk of exposing sensitive information to potential attackers. We believe this reluctance remains high because current anonymization techniques are weak and one-size-fits-all--or better put, one size tries to fit all. We must develop standards and make anonymization available at varying levels, striking a balance between privacy and utility. Organizations have different needs and trust other organizations to different degrees. They must be able to map multiple anonymization levels with defined risks to the trust levels they share with (would-be) receivers. It is not until there are industry standards for multiple levels of anonymization that we will be able to move forward and achieve the goal of widespread sharing of logs for security researchers.Comment: 17 pages, 1 figur

Authentication and Key Management Automation in Decentralized Secure Email and Messaging via Low-Entropy Secrets

We revisit the problem of entity authentication in decentralized end-to-end encrypted email and secure messaging to propose a practical and self-sustaining cryptographic solution based on password-authenticated key exchange (PAKE). This not only allows users to authenticate each other via shared low-entropy secrets, e.g., memorable words, without a public key infrastructure or a trusted third party, but it also paves the way for automation and a series of cryptographic enhancements; improves security by minimizing the impact of human error and potentially improves usability. First, we study a few vulnerabilities in voice-based out-of-band authentication, in particular a combinatorial attack against lazy users, which we analyze in the context of a secure email solution. Next, we propose solving the problem of secure equality test using PAKE to achieve entity authentication and to establish a shared high-entropy secret key. Our solution lends itself to offline settings, compatible with the inherently asynchronous nature of email and modern messaging systems. The suggested approach enables enhancements in key management such as automated key renewal and future key pair authentications, multi-device synchronization, secure secret storage and retrieval, and the possibility of post-quantum security as well as facilitating forward secrecy and deniability in a primarily symmetric-key setting. We also discuss the use of auditable PAKEs for mitigating a class of online guess and abort attacks in authentication protocols

Security Hazards when Law is Code.

As software continues to eat the world, there is an increasing pressure to automate every aspect of society, from self-driving cars, to algorithmic trading on the stock market. As this pressure manifests into software implementations of everything, there are security concerns to be addressed across many areas. But are there some domains and fields that are distinctly susceptible to attacks, making them difficult to secure? My dissertation argues that one domain in particular—public policy and law— is inherently difficult to automate securely using computers. This is in large part because law and policy are written in a manner that expects them to be flexibly interpreted to be fair or just. Traditionally, this interpreting is done by judges and regulators who are capable of understanding the intent of the laws they are enforcing. However, when these laws are instead written in code, and interpreted by a machine, this capability to understand goes away. Because they blindly fol- low written rules, computers can be tricked to perform actions counter to their intended behavior. This dissertation covers three case studies of law and policy being implemented in code and security vulnerabilities that they introduce in practice. The first study analyzes the security of a previously deployed Internet voting system, showing how attackers could change the outcome of elections carried out online. The second study looks at airport security, investigating how full-body scanners can be defeated in practice, allowing attackers to conceal contraband such as weapons or high explosives past airport checkpoints. Finally, this dissertation also studies how an Internet censorship system such as China’s Great Firewall can be circumvented by techniques that exploit the methods employed by the censors themselves. To address these concerns of securing software implementations of law, a hybrid human-computer approach can be used. In addition, systems should be designed to allow for attacks or mistakes to be retroactively undone or inspected by human auditors. By combining the strengths of computers (speed and cost) and humans (ability to interpret and understand), systems can be made more secure and more efficient than a method employing either alone.PhDComputer Science and EngineeringUniversity of Michigan, Horace H. Rackham School of Graduate Studieshttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/120795/1/ewust_1.pd

Protecting data privacy with decentralized self-emerging data release systems

In the age of Big Data, releasing private data at a future point in time is critical for various applications. Such self-emerging data release requires the data to be protected until a prescribed data release time and be automatically released to the target recipient at the release time. While straight-forward centralized approaches such as cloud storage services may provide a simple way to implement self-emerging data release, unfortunately, they are limited to a single point of trust and involves a single point of control. This dissertation proposes new decentralized designs of self-emerging data release systems using large-scale peer-to-peer (P2P) networks as the underlying infrastructure to eliminate a single point of trust or control. The first part of the dissertation presents the design of decentralized self-emerging data release systems using two different P2P network infrastructures, namely Distributed Hash Table (DHT) and blockchain. The second part of this dissertation proposes new mechanisms for supporting two key functionalities of self-emerging data release, namely (i) enabling the release of self-emerging data to blockchain-based smart contracts for facilitating a wide range of decentralized applications and (ii) supporting a cost-effective gradual release of self-emerging data in the decentralized infrastructure. We believe that the outcome of this dissertation would contribute to the development of decentralized security primitives and protocols in the context of timed release of private data

Privacy-Preserving Passive DNS

The Domain Name System (DNS) was created to resolve the IP addresses of web servers to easily remembered names. When it was initially created, security was not a major concern; nowadays, this lack of inherent security and trust has exposed the global DNS infrastructure to malicious actors. The passive DNS data collection process creates a database containing various DNS data elements, some of which are personal and need to be protected to preserve the privacy of the end users. To this end, we propose the use of distributed ledger technology. We use Hyperledger Fabric to create a permissioned blockchain, which only authorized entities can access. The proposed solution supports queries for storing and retrieving data from the blockchain ledger, allowing the use of the passive DNS database for further analysis, e.g., for the identification of malicious domain names. Additionally, it effectively protects the DNS personal data from unauthorized entities, including the administrators that can act as potential malicious insiders, and allows only the data owners to perform queries over these data. We evaluated our proposed solution by creating a proof-of-concept experimental setup that passively collects DNS data from a network and then uses the distributed ledger technology to store the data in an immutable ledger, thus providing a full historical overview of all the records