Cryptography and Its Applications in Information Security

Nowadays, mankind is living in a cyber world. Modern technologies involve fast communication links between potentially billions of devices through complex networks (satellite, mobile phone, Internet, Internet of Things (IoT), etc.). The main concern posed by these entangled complex networks is their protection against passive and active attacks that could compromise public security (sabotage, espionage, cyber-terrorism) and privacy. This Special Issue “Cryptography and Its Applications in Information Security” addresses the range of problems related to the security of information in networks and multimedia communications and to bring together researchers, practitioners, and industrials interested by such questions. It consists of eight peer-reviewed papers, however easily understandable, that cover a range of subjects and applications related security of information

Junos OS Security Configuration Guide

This preface provides the following guidelines for using the Junos OS Security Configuration Guide: • J Series and SRX Series Documentation and Release Notes on page xli • Objectives on page xlii • Audience on page xlii • Supported Routing Platforms on page xlii • Document Conventions on page xlii • Documentation Feedback on page xliv • Requesting Technical Support on page xliv Juniper Networks supports a technical book program to publish books by Juniper Networks engineers and subject matter experts with book publishers around the world. These books go beyond the technical documentation to explore the nuances of network architecture, deployment, and administration using the Junos operating system (Junos OS) and Juniper Networks devices. In addition, the Juniper Networks Technical Library, published in conjunction with O'Reilly Media, explores improving network security, reliability, and availability using Junos OS configuration techniques. All the books are for sale at technical bookstores and book outlets around the world. The current list can be viewed at http://www.juniper.net/books .Junos OS for SRX Series Services Gateways integrates the world-class network security and routing capabilities of Juniper Networks. Junos OS includes a wide range of packet-based filtering, class-of-service (CoS) classifiers, and traffic-shaping features as well as a rich, extensive set of flow-based security features including policies, screens, network address translation (NAT), and other flow-based services. Traffic that enters and exits services gateway is processed according to features you configure, such as packet filters, security policies, and screens. For example, the software can determine: • Whether the packet is allowed into the device • Which firewall screens to apply to the packet • The route the packet takes to reach its destination • Which CoS to apply to the packet, if any • Whether to apply NAT to translate the packet’s IP address • Whether the packet requires an Application Layer Gateway (ALG

A reputation framework for behavioural history: developing and sharing reputations from behavioural history of network clients

The open architecture of the Internet has enabled its massive growth and success by facilitating easy connectivity between hosts. At the same time, the Internet has also opened itself up to abuse, e.g. arising out of unsolicited communication, both intentional and unintentional. It remains an open question as to how best servers should protect themselves from malicious clients whilst offering good service to innocent clients. There has been research on behavioural profiling and reputation of clients, mostly at the network level and also for email as an application, to detect malicious clients. However, this area continues to pose open research challenges. This thesis is motivated by the need for a generalised framework capable of aiding efficient detection of malicious clients while being able to reward clients with behaviour profiles conforming to the acceptable use and other relevant policies. The main contribution of this thesis is a novel, generalised, context-aware, policy independent, privacy preserving framework for developing and sharing client reputation based on behavioural history. The framework, augmenting existing protocols, allows fitting in of policies at various stages, thus keeping itself open and flexible to implementation. Locally recorded behavioural history of clients with known identities are translated to client reputations, which are then shared globally. The reputations enable privacy for clients by not exposing the details of their behaviour during interactions with the servers. The local and globally shared reputations facilitate servers in selecting service levels, including restricting access to malicious clients. We present results and analyses of simulations, with synthetic data and some proposed example policies, of client-server interactions and of attacks on our model. Suggestions presented for possible future extensions are drawn from our experiences with simulation

Cyber Security of Critical Infrastructures

Critical infrastructures are vital assets for public safety, economic welfare, and the national security of countries. The vulnerabilities of critical infrastructures have increased with the widespread use of information technologies. As Critical National Infrastructures are becoming more vulnerable to cyber-attacks, their protection becomes a significant issue for organizations as well as nations. The risks to continued operations, from failing to upgrade aging infrastructure or not meeting mandated regulatory regimes, are considered highly significant, given the demonstrable impact of such circumstances. Due to the rapid increase of sophisticated cyber threats targeting critical infrastructures with significant destructive effects, the cybersecurity of critical infrastructures has become an agenda item for academics, practitioners, and policy makers. A holistic view which covers technical, policy, human, and behavioural aspects is essential to handle cyber security of critical infrastructures effectively. Moreover, the ability to attribute crimes to criminals is a vital element of avoiding impunity in cyberspace. In this book, both research and practical aspects of cyber security considerations in critical infrastructures are presented. Aligned with the interdisciplinary nature of cyber security, authors from academia, government, and industry have contributed 13 chapters. The issues that are discussed and analysed include cybersecurity training, maturity assessment frameworks, malware analysis techniques, ransomware attacks, security solutions for industrial control systems, and privacy preservation methods

Improving Security for the Internet of Things: Applications of Blockchain, Machine Learning and Inter-Pulse Interval

The Internet of Things (IoT) is a concept where physical objects of various sizes can seamlessly connect and communicate with each other without human intervention. The concept covers various applications, including healthcare, utility services, automotive/vehicular transportation, smart agriculture and smart city. The number of interconnected IoT devices has recently grown rapidly as a result of technological advancement in communications and computational systems. Consequently, this trend also highlights the need to address issues associated with IoT, the biggest risk of which is commonly known to be security. This thesis focuses on three selected security challenges from the IoT application areas of connected and autonomous vehicles (CAVs), Internet of Flying Things (IoFT), and human body interface and control systems (HBICS). For each of these challenges, a novel and innovative solution is proposed to address the identified problems. The research contributions of this thesis to the literature can be summarised as follows: • A blockchain-based conditionally anonymised pseudonym management scheme for CAVs, supporting multi-jurisdictional road networks. • A Sybil attack detection scheme for IoFT using machine learning carried out on intrinsically generated physical layer data of radio signals. • A potential approach of using inter-pulse interval (IPI) biometrics for frequency hopping to mitigate jamming attacks on HBICS devices

Cryptography and Computer Communications Security. Extending the Human Security Perimeter through a Web of Trust

This work modifies Shamir’s algorithm by sharing a random key that is used to lock up the secret data; as against sharing the data itself. This is significant in cloud computing, especially with homomorphic encryption. Using web design, the resultant scheme practically globalises secret sharing with authentications and inherent secondary applications. The work aims at improving cybersecurity via a joint exploitation of human factors and technology; a human-centred cybersecurity design as opposed to technology-centred. The completed functional scheme is tagged CDRSAS. The literature on secret sharing schemes is reviewed together with the concepts of human factors, trust, cyberspace/cryptology and an analysis on a 3-factor security assessment process. This is followed by the relevance of passwords within the context of human factors. The main research design/implementation and system performance are analysed, together with a proposal for a new antidote against 419 fraudsters. Two twin equations were invented in the investigation process; a pair each for secret sharing and a risk-centred security assessment technique. The building blocks/software used for the CDRSAS include Shamir’s algorithm, MD5, HTML5, PHP, Java, Servlets, JSP, Javascript, MySQL, JQuery, CSS, MATLAB, MS Excel, MS Visio, and Photoshop. The codes are developed in Eclipse IDE, and the Java-based system runs on Tomcat and Apache, using XAMPP Server. Its code units have passed JUnit tests. The system compares favourably with SSSS. Defeating socio-cryptanalysis in cyberspace requires strategies that are centred on human trust, trust-related human attributes, and technology. The PhD research is completed but there is scope for future work.Petroleum Technology Development Fund (PTDF), Abuja, Nigeria

Security-centric analysis and performance investigation of IEEE 802.16 WiMAX

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The Lazarus Effect: Healing Compromised Devices in the Internet of Small Things

We live in a time when billions of IoT devices are being deployed and increasingly relied upon. This makes ensuring their availability and recoverability in case of a compromise a paramount goal. The large and rapidly growing number of deployed IoT devices make manual recovery impractical, especially if the devices are dispersed over a large area. Thus, there is a need for a reliable and scalable remote recovery mechanism that works even after attackers have taken full control over devices, possibly misusing them or trying to render them useless. To tackle this problem, we present Lazarus, a system that enables the remote recovery of compromised IoT devices. With Lazarus, an IoT administrator can remotely control the code running on IoT devices unconditionally and within a guaranteed time bound. This makes recovery possible even in case of severe corruption of the devices' software stack. We impose only minimal hardware requirements, making Lazarus applicable even for low-end constrained off-the-shelf IoT devices. We isolate Lazarus's minimal recovery trusted computing base from untrusted software both in time and by using a trusted execution environment. The temporal isolation prevents secrets from being leaked through side-channels to untrusted software. Inside the trusted execution environment, we place minimal functionality that constrains untrusted software at runtime. We implement Lazarus on an ARM Cortex-M33-based microcontroller in a full setup with an IoT hub, device provisioning and secure update functionality. Our prototype can recover compromised embedded OSs and bare-metal applications and prevents attackers from bricking devices, for example, through flash wear out. We show this at the example of FreeRTOS, which requires no modifications but only a single additional task. Our evaluation shows negligible runtime performance impact and moderate memory requirements.Comment: In Proceedings of the 15th ACM Asia Conference on Computer and Communications Security (ASIA CCS 20

An Internet-Wide Analysis of Diffie-Hellman Key Exchange and X.509 Certificates in TLS

Transport Layer Security (TLS) is a mature cryptographic protocol, but has flexibility during implementation which can introduce exploitable flaws. New vulnerabilities are routinely discovered that affect the security of TLS implementations. We discovered that discrete logarithm implementations have poor parameter validation, and we mathematically constructed a deniable backdoor to exploit this flaw in the finite field Diffie-Hellman key exchange. We described attack vectors an attacker could use to position this backdoor, and outlined a man-in-the-middle attack that exploits the backdoor to force Diffie-Hellman use during the TLS connection. We conducted an Internet-wide survey of ephemeral finite field Diffie-Hellman (DHE) across TLS and STARTTLS, finding hundreds of potentially backdoored DHE parameters and partially recovering the private DHE key in some cases. Disclosures were made to companies using these parameters, resulting in a public security advisory and discussions with the CTO of a billion-dollar company. We conducted a second Internet-wide survey investigating X.509 certificate name mismatch errors, finding approximately 70 million websites invalidated by these errors and additionally discovering over 1000 websites made inaccessible due to a combination of forced HTTPS and mismatch errors. We determined that name mismatch errors occur largely due to certificate mismanagement by web hosting and content delivery network companies. Further research into TLS implementations is necessary to encourage the use of more secure parameters

The InfoSec Handbook

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