A secure searcher for end-to-end encrypted email communication

Email has become a common mode of communication for confidential personal as well as business needs. There are different approaches to authenticate the sender of an email message at the receiver‟s client and ensure that the message can be read only by the intended recipient. A typical approach is to use an email encryption standard to encrypt the message on the sender‟s client and decrypt it on the receiver‟s client for secure communication. A major drawback of this approach is that only the encrypted email messages are stored in the mail servers and the default search does not work on encrypted data. This project details an approach that could be adopted for securely searching email messages protected using end-to-end encrypted email communication. This project proposes an overall design for securely searching encrypted email messages and provides an implementation in Java based on a cryptographically secure Bloom filter technique to create a secure index. The implemented library is then integrated with an open source email client to depict its usability in a live environment. The technique and the implemented library are further evaluated for security and scalability while allowing remote storage of the created secure index. The research in this project would enhance email clients that support encrypted email transfer with a full secure search functionality

A security analysis of email communications

The objective of this report is to analyse the security and privacy risks of email communications and identify technical countermeasures capable of mitigating them effectively. In order to do so, the report analyses from a technical point of view the core set of communication protocols and standards that support email communications in order to identify and understand the existing security and privacy vulnerabilities. On the basis of this analysis, the report identifies and analyses technical countermeasures, in the form of newer standards, protocols and tools, aimed at ensuring a better protection of the security and privacy of email communications. The practical implementation of each countermeasure is evaluated in order to understand its limitations and identify potential technical and organisational constrains that could limit its effectiveness in practice. The outcome of the above mentioned analysis is a set of recommendations regarding technical and organisational measures that when combined properly have the potential of more effectively mitigating the privacy and security risks of today's email communications.JRC.G.6-Digital Citizen Securit

Web browser for delay-tolerant networks

Due to growth of the Internet, the number of devices increasing and the structure of networks becoming more complex, the problem of time delays during information transmissions has arisen. In environments with long transmission delays modern protocols may become inefficient or even useless. Delay-tolerant Networking (DTN) is one approach that allows to solve the problem of long transmission delay times. In the thesis, an approach to web access in such networks is proposed. The problem of data transmission in the networks with long delays is considered. Special methods exist for data transmission in computer networks. But traditional data transmission protocols do not work well in networks with long delays, e.g. when transmitting over long distances, such as in space, or when connectivity may be disrupted, such as in mobile networks. It is necessary, therefore, to replace TCP and to change the existing web protocol (Hypertext Transfer Protocol - HTTP) in order to allow HTTP data transmissions in DTN environments. In the thesis, HTTP is analyzed and an adaptation of HTTP to DTN environments, as proposed in earlier research, is reviewed and extended further. A client part is created and the implementation is described. The client allows solving the problem of HTTP over DTN usage. An open-source browser is modified and the necessary extensions are developed. The extensions allow to use the DTN transport protocol (i.e. the Bundle Protocol) as another option of transport other than TCP. The software module for a web browser is built on the Mozilla platform. It was shown that it is possible to create a browser to work in DTNs

Applications of internet technology for requirements elicitation

During the Requirements Elicitation part of a project various stakeholders need to be able to communicate their requirements to the developers, and the developers need to be able communicate their understanding back to the stakeholders. Communication between the various members of the project is the key factor during the Requirements Elicitation part of a project. Easing communications between stakeholders and developers makes the process of eliciting requirement easier, leading to better requirements specification and eventually a better product. The Requirements Elicitation Process through Internet (REPI) web site has been designed and implemented to explore this idea. The prototype version of REPI guides project members through the elicitation phase using the Software Engineering Institute\u27s framework for Requirements Elicitation. The REPI web site forces stakeholders to explicitly describe the requirements and encourage early discussion between stakeholders and developers. This decreases the likelihood of misunderstood requirements, leading to better requirements specification

The Virtual Device: Expanding Wireless Communication Services Through Service Discovery and Session Mobility

We present a location-based, ubiquitous service architecture, based on the Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) and a service discovery protocol that enables users to enhance the multimedia communications services available on their mobile devices by discovering other local devices, and including them in their active sessions, creating a 'virtual device.' We have implemented our concept based on Columbia University's multimedia environment and we show its feasibility by a performance analysis

Supporting Cyber-Physical Systems with Wireless Sensor Networks: An Outlook of Software and Services

Sensing, communication, computation and control technologies are the essential building blocks of a cyber-physical system (CPS). Wireless sensor networks (WSNs) are a way to support CPS as they provide fine-grained spatial-temporal sensing, communication and computation at a low premium of cost and power. In this article, we explore the fundamental concepts guiding the design and implementation of WSNs. We report the latest developments in WSN software and services for meeting existing requirements and newer demands; particularly in the areas of: operating system, simulator and emulator, programming abstraction, virtualization, IP-based communication and security, time and location, and network monitoring and management. We also reflect on the ongoing efforts in providing dependable assurances for WSN-driven CPS. Finally, we report on its applicability with a case-study on smart buildings