Revision of Security Risk-oriented Patterns for Distributed Systems

Turvariskide haldamine on oluline osa tarkvara arendusest. Arvestades, et enamik tänapäeva ettevõtetest sõltuvad suuresti infosüsteemidest, on turvalisusel oluline roll sujuvalt toimivate äriprotsesside tagamisel. Paljud inimesed kasutavad e-teenuseid, mida pakuvad näiteks pangad ja haigekassa. Ebapiisavatel turvameetmetel infosüsteemides võivad olla soovimatud tagajärjed nii ettevõtte mainele kui ka inimeste eludele.\n\rTarkvara turvalisusega tuleb tavaliselt tegeleda kogu tarkvara arendusperioodi ja tarkvara eluea jooksul. Uuringute andmetel tegeletakse tarkvara turvaküsimustega alles tarkvara arenduse ja hooldus etappidel. Kuna turvariskide vähendamine kaasneb tavaliselt muudatustena informatsioonisüsteemi spetsifikatsioonis, on turvaanalüüsi mõistlikum teha tarkvara väljatöötamise algusjärgus. See võimaldab varakult välistada ebasobivad lahendused. Lisaks aitab see vältida hilisemaid kulukaid muudatusi tarkvara arhitektuuris.\n\rKäesolevas töös käsitleme turvalise tarkvara arendamise probleemi, pakkudes lahendusena välja turvariskidele orienteeritud mustreid. Need mustrid aitavad leida turvariske äriprotsessides ja pakuvad välja turvariske vähendavaid lahendusi. Turvamustrid pakuvad analüütikutele vahendit turvanõuete koostamiseks äriprotsessidele. Samuti vähendavad nad riskianalüüsiks vajalikku töömahtu. Oma töös joondame me turvariskidele orienteeritud mustrid vastu hajussüsteemide turvaohtude mustreid. See võimaldab meil täiustada olemasolevaid turvariski mustreid ja võtta kasutusele täiendavaid mustreid turvariskide vähendamiseks hajussüsteemides.\n\rTurvariskidele orienteeritud mustrite kasutatavust on kontrollitud lennunduse äriprotsessides. Tulemused näitavad, et turvariskidele orienteeritud mustreid saab kasutada turvariskide vähendamiseks hajussüsteemides.Security risk management is an important part of software development. Given that majority of modern organizations rely heavily on information systems, security plays a big part in ensuring smooth operation of business processes. Many people rely on e-services offered by banks and medical establishments. Inadequate security measures in information systems could have unwanted effects on an organization’s reputation and on people’s lives. Security concerns usually need to be addressed throughout the development and lifetime of a software system. Literature reports however, that security is often considered during implementation and maintenance stages of software development. Since security risk mitigation usually results with changes to an IS’s specification, security analysis is best done at an early phase of the development process. This allows an early exclusion of inadequate system designs. Additionally, it helps prevent the need for fundamental and expensive design changes later in the development process. In this thesis, we target the secure system development problem by suggesting application of security risk-oriented patterns. These patterns help find security risk occurrences in business processes and present mitigations for these risks. They provide business analysts with means to elicit and introduce security requirements to business processes. At the same time, they reduce the efforts needed for risk analysis. We confront the security risk-oriented patterns against threat patterns for distributed systems. This allows us to refine the collection of existing patterns and introduce additional patterns to mitigate security risks in processes of distributed systems. The applicability of these security risk-oriented patterns is validated on business processes from aviation turnaround system. The validation results show that the security risk-oriented patterns can be used to mitigate security risks in distributed systems

A Pattern Language for Designing Application-Level Communication Protocols and the Improvement of Computer Science Education through Cloud Computing

Networking protocols have been developed throughout time following layered architectures such as the Open Systems Interconnection model and the Internet model. These protocols are grouped in the Internet protocol suite. Most developers do not deal with low-level protocols, instead they design application-level protocols on top of the low-level protocol. Although each application-level protocol is different, there is commonality among them and developers can apply lessons learned from one protocol to the design of new ones. Design patterns can help by gathering and sharing proven and reusable solution to common, reoccurring design problems. The Application-level Communication Protocols Design Patterns language captures this knowledge about application-level protocol design, so developers can create better, more fitting protocols base on these common and well proven solutions. Another aspect of contemporary development technics is the need of distribution of software artifacts. Most of the development companies have started using Cloud Computing services to overcome this need; either public or private clouds are widely used. Future developers need to manage this technology infrastructure, software, and platform as services. These two aspects, communication protocols design and cloud computing represent an opportunity to contribute to the software development community and to the software engineering education curriculum. The Application-level Communication Protocols Design Patterns language aims to help solve communication software design. The use of cloud computing in programming assignments targets on a positive influence on improving the Analysis to Reuse skills of students of computer science careers

How Physicality Enables Trust: A New Era of Trust-Centered Cyberphysical Systems

Multi-agent cyberphysical systems enable new capabilities in efficiency, resilience, and security. The unique characteristics of these systems prompt a reevaluation of their security concepts, including their vulnerabilities, and mechanisms to mitigate these vulnerabilities. This survey paper examines how advancement in wireless networking, coupled with the sensing and computing in cyberphysical systems, can foster novel security capabilities. This study delves into three main themes related to securing multi-agent cyberphysical systems. First, we discuss the threats that are particularly relevant to multi-agent cyberphysical systems given the potential lack of trust between agents. Second, we present prospects for sensing, contextual awareness, and authentication, enabling the inference and measurement of ``inter-agent trust" for these systems. Third, we elaborate on the application of quantifiable trust notions to enable ``resilient coordination," where ``resilient" signifies sustained functionality amid attacks on multiagent cyberphysical systems. We refer to the capability of cyberphysical systems to self-organize, and coordinate to achieve a task as autonomy. This survey unveils the cyberphysical character of future interconnected systems as a pivotal catalyst for realizing robust, trust-centered autonomy in tomorrow's world

NASA space station automation: AI-based technology review

Research and Development projects in automation for the Space Station are discussed. Artificial Intelligence (AI) based automation technologies are planned to enhance crew safety through reduced need for EVA, increase crew productivity through the reduction of routine operations, increase space station autonomy, and augment space station capability through the use of teleoperation and robotics. AI technology will also be developed for the servicing of satellites at the Space Station, system monitoring and diagnosis, space manufacturing, and the assembly of large space structures

Quality Control in Crowdsourcing: A Survey of Quality Attributes, Assessment Techniques and Assurance Actions

Crowdsourcing enables one to leverage on the intelligence and wisdom of potentially large groups of individuals toward solving problems. Common problems approached with crowdsourcing are labeling images, translating or transcribing text, providing opinions or ideas, and similar - all tasks that computers are not good at or where they may even fail altogether. The introduction of humans into computations and/or everyday work, however, also poses critical, novel challenges in terms of quality control, as the crowd is typically composed of people with unknown and very diverse abilities, skills, interests, personal objectives and technological resources. This survey studies quality in the context of crowdsourcing along several dimensions, so as to define and characterize it and to understand the current state of the art. Specifically, this survey derives a quality model for crowdsourcing tasks, identifies the methods and techniques that can be used to assess the attributes of the model, and the actions and strategies that help prevent and mitigate quality problems. An analysis of how these features are supported by the state of the art further identifies open issues and informs an outlook on hot future research directions.Comment: 40 pages main paper, 5 pages appendi

Harmonisation and Cybercrime Jurisdiction: Uneasy Bedfellows? An analysis of the jurisdictional trajectories of the Council of Europe’s Cybercrime Convention

This thesis examines the Council of Europe’s Cybercrime Convention and suggests there is a structural imbalance: while improving the procedures for investigating cybercrimes, it has failed to address the prosecutorial complexities and disputes resulting from multijurisdictional cybercrimes, by following the usual trend of ‘suppression’ conventions. This trend is to expand the procedural mechanisms through which States can acquire evidence in relation to the ‘suppressed’ offences, while suggesting that State Parties adopt broad rules in relation to criminal jurisdiction. These procedural powers have provided powerful tools for policing cybercrime, and the Convention has been innovative by developing mechanisms for facilitating networking interactions between law enforcement, and on most interpretations, even providing for directly contacting foreign service providers for data. The traditional limitations of enforcement jurisdiction are gradually being transformed, but the resulting difficulties for jurisdictional concurrency are not appreciated. Given the malleability of the concept of ‘territoriality’, and the flexibility afforded in international law in its interpretation, seizures of jurisdiction over many cybercrimes have sometimes been on the most tenuous of grounds. This results in a problem of concurrent jurisdiction on a scale previously unseen in the context of other transnational offences. It is often assumed that once substantive criminal harmonisation occurs, jurisdictional conflict between States dissipates, but I highlight three areas where concurrency is beginning to generate difficulties: investigatory and prosecutorial negotiations, cybercrime extraditions, and the law relating to ne bis in idem. I argue that these problems are only going to be exacerbated given the inroads that are being made in investigative powers and enforcement jurisdiction, coupled with the global reach of cybercrime which brings more and more States into play. I provide both the theoretical and practical case for more refined approaches towards the concept of territoriality, and consider some of the potential mechanisms for dealing with these uneasy bedfellows in the Cybercrime Convention.Graduate Teaching Assistant PhD scholarship, Queen Mary University of Londo

Methodologies synthesis

This deliverable deals with the modelling and analysis of interdependencies between critical infrastructures, focussing attention on two interdependent infrastructures studied in the context of CRUTIAL: the electric power infrastructure and the information infrastructures supporting management, control and maintenance functionality. The main objectives are: 1) investigate the main challenges to be addressed for the analysis and modelling of interdependencies, 2) review the modelling methodologies and tools that can be used to address these challenges and support the evaluation of the impact of interdependencies on the dependability and resilience of the service delivered to the users, and 3) present the preliminary directions investigated so far by the CRUTIAL consortium for describing and modelling interdependencies