An investigation into Off-Link IPv6 host enumeration search methods

This research investigated search methods for enumerating networked devices on off-link 64 bit Internet Protocol version 6 (IPv6) subnetworks. IPv6 host enumeration is an emerging research area involving strategies to enable detection of networked devices on IPv6 networks. Host enumeration is an integral component in vulnerability assessments (VAs), and can be used to strengthen the security profile of a system. Recently, host enumeration has been applied to Internet-wide VAs in an effort to detect devices that are vulnerable to specific threats. These host enumeration exercises rely on the fact that the existing Internet Protocol version 4 (IPv4) can be exhaustively enumerated in less than an hour. The same is not true for IPv6, which would take over 584,940 years to enumerate a single network. As such, research is required to determine appropriate host enumeration search methods for IPv6, given that the protocol is seeing increase global usage. For this study, a survey of Internet resources was conducted to gather information about the nature of IPv6 usage in real-world scenarios. The collected survey data revealed patterns in the usage of IPv6 that influenced search techniques. The research tested the efficacy of various searching algorithms against IPv6 datasets through the use of simulation. Multiple algorithms were devised to test different approaches to host enumeration against 64 bit IPv6 subnetworks. Of these, a novel adaptive heuristic search algorithm, a genetic algorithm and a stripe search algorithm were chosen to conduct off-link IPv6 host enumeration. The suitability of a linear algorithm, a Monte Carlo algorithm and a pattern heuristics algorithm were also tested for their suitability in searching off-link IPv6 networks. These algorithms were applied to two test IPv6 address datasets, one comprised of unique IPv6 data observed during the survey phase, and one comprised of unique IPv6 data generated using pseudorandom number generators. Searching against the two unique datasets was performed in order to determine appropriate strategies for off-link host enumeration under circumstances where networked devices were configured with addresses that represented real-word IPv6 addresses, and where device addresses were configured through some randomisation function. Whilst the outcomes of this research support that an exhaustive enumeration of an IPv6 network is infeasible, it has been demonstrated that devices on IPv6 networks can be enumerated. In particular, it was identified that the linear search technique and the variants tested in this study (pattern search and stripe search), remained the most consistent means of enumerating an IPv6 network. Machine learning methods were also successfully applied to the problem. It was determined that the novel adaptive heuristic search algorithm was an appropriate candidate for search operations. The adaptive heuristic search algorithm successfully enumerated over 24% of the available devices on the dataset that was crafted from surveyed IPv6 address data. Moreover, it was confirmed that stochastic address generation can reduce the effectiveness of enumeration strategies, as all of the algorithms failed to enumerate more than 1% of hosts against a pseudorandomly generated dataset. This research highlights a requirement for effective IPv6 host enumeration algorithms, and presents and validates appropriate methods. The methods presented in this thesis can help to influence the tools and utilities that are used to conduct host enumeration exercises

IPv4 to IPv6 transition : security challenges

Tese de mestrado integrado. Engenharia Informática e Computação. Faculdade de Engenharia. Universidade do Porto. 201

Moving target defense for securing smart grid communications: Architectural design, implementation and evaluation

Supervisory Control And Data Acquisition (SCADA) communications are often subjected to various kinds of sophisticated cyber-attacks which can have a serious impact on the Critical Infrastructure such as the power grid. Most of the time, the success of the attack is based on the static characteristics of the system, thereby enabling an easier profiling of the target system(s) by the adversary and consequently exploiting their limited resources. In this thesis, a novel approach to mitigate such static vulnerabilities is proposed by implementing a Moving Target Defense (MTD) strategy in a power grid SCADA environment, which leverages the existing communication network with an end-to-end IP Hopping technique among the trusted peer devices. This offers a proactive L3 layer network defense, minimizing IP-specific threats and thwarting worm propagation, APTs, etc., which utilize the cyber kill chain for attacking the system through the SCADA network. The main contribution of this thesis is to show how MTD concepts provide proactive defense against targeted cyber-attacks, and a dynamic attack surface to adversaries without compromising the availability of a SCADA system. Specifically, the thesis presents a brief overview of the different type of MTD designs, the proposed MTD architecture and its implementation with IP hopping technique over a Control Center–Substation network link along with a 3-way handshake protocol for synchronization on the Iowa State’s Power Cyber testbed. The thesis further investigates the delay and throughput characteristics of the entire system with and without the MTD to choose the best hopping rate for the given link. It also includes additional contributions for making the testbed scenarios more realistic to real world scenarios with multi-hop, multi-path WAN. Using that and studying a specific attack model, the thesis analyses the best ranges of IP address for different hopping rate and different number of interfaces. Finally, the thesis describes two case studies to explore and identify potential weaknesses of the proposed mechanism, and also experimentally validate the proposed mitigation alterations to resolve the discovered vulnerabilities. As part of future work, we plan to extend this work by optimizing the MTD algorithm to be more resilient by incorporating other techniques like network port mutation to further increase the attack complexity and cost

Developing an Advanced IPv6 Evasion Attack Detection Framework

Internet Protocol Version 6 (IPv6) is the most recent generation of Internet protocol. The transition from the current Internet Version 4 (IPv4) to IPv6 raised new issues and the most crucial issue is security vulnerabilities. Most vulnerabilities are common between IPv4 and IPv6, e.g. Evasion attack, Distributed Denial of Service (DDOS) and Fragmentation attack. According to the IPv6 RFC (Request for Comment) recommendations, there are potential attacks against various Operating Systems. Discrepancies between the behaviour of several Operating Systems can lead to Intrusion Detection System (IDS) evasion, Firewall evasion, Operating System fingerprint, Network Mapping, DoS/DDoS attack and Remote code execution attack. We investigated some of the security issues on IPv6 by reviewing existing solutions and methods and performed tests on two open source Network Intrusion Detection Systems (NIDSs) which are Snort and Suricata against some of IPv6 evasions and attack methods. The results show that both NIDSs are unable to detect most of the methods that are used to evade detection. This thesis presents a detection framework specifically developed for IPv6 network to detect evasion, insertion and DoS attacks when using IPv6 Extension Headers and Fragmentation. We implemented the proposed theoretical solution into a proposed framework for evaluation tests. To develop the framework, “dpkt” module is employed to capture and decode the packet. During the development phase, a bug on the module used to parse/decode packets has been found and a patch provided for the module to decode the IPv6 packet correctly. The standard unpack function included in the “ip6” section of the “dpkt” package follows extension headers which means following its parsing, one has no access to all the extension headers in their original order. By defining, a new field called all_extension_headers and adding each header to it before it is moved along allows us to have access to all the extension headers while keeping the original parse speed of the framework virtually untouched. The extra memory footprint from this is also negligible as it will be a linear fraction of the size of the whole set of packet. By decoding the packet, extracting data from packet and evaluating the data with user-defined value, the proposed framework is able to detect IPv6 Evasion, Insertion and DoS attacks. The proposed framework consists of four layers. The first layer captures the network traffic and passes it to second layer for packet decoding which is the most important part of the detection process. It is because, if NIDS could not decode and extract the packet content, it would not be able to pass correct information into the Detection Engine process for detection. Once the packet has been decoded by the decoding process, the decoded packet will be sent to the third layer which is the brain of the proposed solution to make a decision by evaluating the information with the defined value to see whether the packet is threatened or not. This layer is called the Detection Engine. Once the packet(s) has been examined by detection processes, the result will be sent to output layer. If the packet matches with a type or signature that system admin chose, it raises an alarm and automatically logs all details of the packet and saves it for system admin for further investigation. We evaluated the proposed framework and its subsequent process via numerous experiments. The results of these conclude that the proposed framework, called NOPO framework, is able to offer better detection in terms of accuracy, with a more accurate packet decoding process, and reduced resources usage compared to both exciting NIDs

Novel security mechanisms for wireless sensor networks

Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) are used for critical applications such as health care, traffic management or plant automation. Thus, we depend on their availability, and reliable, resilient and accurate operation. It is therefore essential that these systems are protected against attackers who may intend to interfere with operations. Existing security mechanisms cannot always be directly transferred to the application domain of WSNs, and in some cases even novel methods are desirable to give increased protection to these systems. The aim of the work presented in this thesis is to augment security of WSNs by devising novel mechanisms and protocols. In particular, it contributes to areas which require protection mechanisms but have not yet received much attention from the research community. For example, the work addresses the issue of secure storage of data on sensor nodes using cryptographic methods. Although cryptography is needed for basic protection, it cannot always secure the sensor nodes as the keys might be compromised and key management becomes more challenging as the number of deployed sensor nodes increases. Therefore, the work includes mechanisms for node identification and tamper detection by means other than pure cryptography. The three core contributions of this thesis are (i) Methods for confidential data storage on WSN nodes. In particular, fast and energy-efficient data storage and retrieval while maintaining the required protection level is addressed. A framework is presented that provides confidential data storage in WSNs with minimal impact on sensor node operation and performance. This framework is further advanced by combining it with secure communication in WSNs. With this framework, data is stored securely on the flash file system such that it can be directly used for secure transmission, which removes the duplication of security operations on the sensor node. (ii) Methods for node identification based on clock skew. Here, unique clock drift patterns of nodes, which are normally a problem for wireless network operation, are used for non-cryptographic node identification. Clock skew has been previously used for device identification, requiring timestamps to be distributed over the network, but this is impractical in duty-cycled WSNs. To overcome this problem, clock skew is measured locally on the node using precise local clocks. (iii) Methods for tamper detection and node identification based on Channel State Information (CSI). Characteristics of a wireless channel at the receiver are analysed using the CSI of incoming packets to identify the transmitter and to detect tampering on it. If an attacker tampers with the transmitter, it will have an effect on the CSI measured at the receiver. However, tamper-unrelated events, such as walking in the communication environment, also affect CSI values and cause false alarms. This thesis demonstrates that false alarms can be eliminated by analysing the CSI value of a transmitted packet at multiple receivers

New Waves of IoT Technologies Research – Transcending Intelligence and Senses at the Edge to Create Multi Experience Environments

The next wave of Internet of Things (IoT) and Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) brings new technological developments that incorporate radical advances in Artificial Intelligence (AI), edge computing processing, new sensing capabilities, more security protection and autonomous functions accelerating progress towards the ability for IoT systems to self-develop, self-maintain and self-optimise. The emergence of hyper autonomous IoT applications with enhanced sensing, distributed intelligence, edge processing and connectivity, combined with human augmentation, has the potential to power the transformation and optimisation of industrial sectors and to change the innovation landscape. This chapter is reviewing the most recent advances in the next wave of the IoT by looking not only at the technology enabling the IoT but also at the platforms and smart data aspects that will bring intelligence, sustainability, dependability, autonomy, and will support human-centric solutions.acceptedVersio

Security for Decentralised Service Location - Exemplified with Real-Time Communication Session Establishment

Decentralised Service Location, i.e. finding an application communication endpoint based on a Distributed Hash Table (DHT), is a fairly new concept. The precise security implications of this approach have not been studied in detail. More importantly, a detailed analysis regarding the applicability of existing security solutions to this concept has not been conducted. In many cases existing client-server approaches to security may not be feasible. In addition, to understand the necessity for such an analysis, it is key to acknowledge that Decentralised Service Location has some unique security requirements compared to other P2P applications such as filesharing or live streaming. This thesis concerns the security challenges for Decentralised Service Location. The goals of our work are on the one hand to precisely understand the security requirements and research challenges for Decentralised Service Location, and on the other hand to develop and evaluate corresponding security mechanisms. The thesis is organised as follows. First, fundamentals are explained and the scope of the thesis is defined. Decentralised Service Location is defined and P2PSIP is explained technically as a prototypical example. Then, a security analysis for P2PSIP is presented. Based on this security analysis, security requirements for Decentralised Service Location and the corresponding research challenges -- i.e. security concerns not suitably mitigated by existing solutions -- are derived. Second, several decentralised solutions are presented and evaluated to tackle the security challenges for Decentralised Service Location. We present decentralised algorithms to enable availability of the DHTs lookup service in the presence of adversary nodes. These algorithms are evaluated via simulation and compared to analytical bounds. Further, a cryptographic approach based on self-certifying identities is illustrated and discussed. This approach enables decentralised integrity protection of location-bindings. Finally, a decentralised approach to assess unknown identities is introduced. The approach is based on a Web-of-Trust model. It is evaluated via prototypical implementation. Finally, the thesis closes with a summary of the main contributions and a discussion of open issues

Securing mHealth - Investigating the development of a novel information security framework

The deployment of Mobile Health (mHealth) platforms as well as the use of mobile and wireless technologies have significant potential to transform healthcare services. The use of mHealth technologies allow a real-time remote monitoring as well as direct access to healthcare data so that users (e.g., patients and healthcare professionals) can utilise mHealth services anywhere and anytime. Generally, mHealth offers smart solutions to tackle challenges in healthcare. However, there are still various issues regarding the development of the mHealth system. One of the most common diffi-culties in developing the mHealth system is the security of healthcare data. mHealth systems are still vulnerable to numerous security issues with regard to their weak-nesses in design and data management. Several information security frameworks for mHealth devices as well as information security frameworks for Cloud storage have been proposed, however, the major challenge is developing an effective information se-curity framework that will encompass every component of an mHealth system to secure sensitive healthcare data. This research investigates how healthcare data is managed in mHealth systems and proposes a new information security framework that secures mHealth systems. Moreover, a prototype is developed for the purpose of testing the proposed information security framework. Firstly, risk identification is carried out to determine what could happen to cause potential damage and to gain insight into how, where, and why the damage might happen. The process of risk identification includes the identification of assets those need to be protected, threats that we try to protect against, and vulnerabilities that are weaknesses in mHealth systems. Afterward, a detailed analysis of the entire mHealth domain is undertaken to determine domain-specific features and a taxonomy for mHealth, from which a set of the most essential security requirements is identified to develop a new information security framework. It then examines existing information security frameworks for mHealth devices and the Cloud, noting similarities and differences. Key mechanisms to implement the new framework are discussed and the new framework is then presented. Furthermore, a prototype is developed for the purpose of testing. It consists of four layers including an mHealth secure storage system, Capability system, Secure transactional layer, and Service management layer. Capability system, Secure transactional layer, and Service management layer are developed as main contributions of the research