103,149 research outputs found
Software based deployment of encryption keys in wireless sensor networks.
Sensor networks are just in their infancy. Their use will continue to grow as the technology becomes cheaper and more efficient. A current shortcoming with sensor networks is the inability to efficiently provide secure communications. As sensor networks are deployed to monitor and control systems, the security of communications will become a more important. This thesis proposes a new approach to key establishment and renewal through the use of point-to-point keys and software verification and validation to ensure the integrity of two nodes. Sensor networks exist on limited resources, so power efficiency is a concern. The proposed protocol allows for the use of small keys instead of large pre-distributed keys. This thesis explores the design and implementation of a new point-to-point key generation and renewal algorithm. The main contribution is the development of an algorithm that utilizes a software integrity check to ensure the validity of a node. The thesis also utilizes a simulated sensor network to test and validate the new software algorithm
Towards the Model-Driven Engineering of Secure yet Safe Embedded Systems
We introduce SysML-Sec, a SysML-based Model-Driven Engineering environment
aimed at fostering the collaboration between system designers and security
experts at all methodological stages of the development of an embedded system.
A central issue in the design of an embedded system is the definition of the
hardware/software partitioning of the architecture of the system, which should
take place as early as possible. SysML-Sec aims to extend the relevance of this
analysis through the integration of security requirements and threats. In
particular, we propose an agile methodology whose aim is to assess early on the
impact of the security requirements and of the security mechanisms designed to
satisfy them over the safety of the system. Security concerns are captured in a
component-centric manner through existing SysML diagrams with only minimal
extensions. After the requirements captured are derived into security and
cryptographic mechanisms, security properties can be formally verified over
this design. To perform the latter, model transformation techniques are
implemented in the SysML-Sec toolchain in order to derive a ProVerif
specification from the SysML models. An automotive firmware flashing procedure
serves as a guiding example throughout our presentation.Comment: In Proceedings GraMSec 2014, arXiv:1404.163
SECMACE: Scalable and Robust Identity and Credential Management Infrastructure in Vehicular Communication Systems
Several years of academic and industrial research efforts have converged to a
common understanding on fundamental security building blocks for the upcoming
Vehicular Communication (VC) systems. There is a growing consensus towards
deploying a special-purpose identity and credential management infrastructure,
i.e., a Vehicular Public-Key Infrastructure (VPKI), enabling pseudonymous
authentication, with standardization efforts towards that direction. In spite
of the progress made by standardization bodies (IEEE 1609.2 and ETSI) and
harmonization efforts (Car2Car Communication Consortium (C2C-CC)), significant
questions remain unanswered towards deploying a VPKI. Deep understanding of the
VPKI, a central building block of secure and privacy-preserving VC systems, is
still lacking. This paper contributes to the closing of this gap. We present
SECMACE, a VPKI system, which is compatible with the IEEE 1609.2 and ETSI
standards specifications. We provide a detailed description of our
state-of-the-art VPKI that improves upon existing proposals in terms of
security and privacy protection, and efficiency. SECMACE facilitates
multi-domain operations in the VC systems and enhances user privacy, notably
preventing linking pseudonyms based on timing information and offering
increased protection even against honest-but-curious VPKI entities. We propose
multiple policies for the vehicle-VPKI interactions, based on which and two
large-scale mobility trace datasets, we evaluate the full-blown implementation
of SECMACE. With very little attention on the VPKI performance thus far, our
results reveal that modest computing resources can support a large area of
vehicles with very low delays and the most promising policy in terms of privacy
protection can be supported with moderate overhead.Comment: 14 pages, 9 figures, 10 tables, IEEE Transactions on Intelligent
Transportation System
Glimmers: Resolving the Privacy/Trust Quagmire
Many successful services rely on trustworthy contributions from users. To
establish that trust, such services often require access to privacy-sensitive
information from users, thus creating a conflict between privacy and trust.
Although it is likely impractical to expect both absolute privacy and
trustworthiness at the same time, we argue that the current state of things,
where individual privacy is usually sacrificed at the altar of trustworthy
services, can be improved with a pragmatic , which allows
services to validate user contributions in a trustworthy way without forfeiting
user privacy. We describe how trustworthy hardware such as Intel's SGX can be
used client-side -- in contrast to much recent work exploring SGX in cloud
services -- to realize the Glimmer architecture, and demonstrate how this
realization is able to resolve the tension between privacy and trust in a
variety of cases
Information standards to support application and enterprise interoperability for the smart grid
Copyright @ 2012 IEEE.Current changes in the European electricity industry are driven by regulatory directives to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, at the same time as replacing aged infrastructure and maintaining energy security. There is a wide acceptance of the requirement for smarter grids to support such changes and accommodate variable injections from renewable energy sources. However the design templates are still emerging to manage the level of information required to meet challenges such as balancing, planning and market dynamics under this new paradigm. While secure and scalable cloud computing architectures may contribute to supporting the informatics challenges of the smart grid, this paper focuses on the essential need for business alignment with standardised information models such as the IEC Common Information Model (CIM), to leverage data value and control system interoperability. In this paper we present details of use cases being considered by National Grid, the GB transmission system operator for information interoperability in pan-network system management and planning.This study is financially supported by the National Grid, UK
Keeping Authorities "Honest or Bust" with Decentralized Witness Cosigning
The secret keys of critical network authorities - such as time, name,
certificate, and software update services - represent high-value targets for
hackers, criminals, and spy agencies wishing to use these keys secretly to
compromise other hosts. To protect authorities and their clients proactively
from undetected exploits and misuse, we introduce CoSi, a scalable witness
cosigning protocol ensuring that every authoritative statement is validated and
publicly logged by a diverse group of witnesses before any client will accept
it. A statement S collectively signed by W witnesses assures clients that S has
been seen, and not immediately found erroneous, by those W observers. Even if S
is compromised in a fashion not readily detectable by the witnesses, CoSi still
guarantees S's exposure to public scrutiny, forcing secrecy-minded attackers to
risk that the compromise will soon be detected by one of the W witnesses.
Because clients can verify collective signatures efficiently without
communication, CoSi protects clients' privacy, and offers the first
transparency mechanism effective against persistent man-in-the-middle attackers
who control a victim's Internet access, the authority's secret key, and several
witnesses' secret keys. CoSi builds on existing cryptographic multisignature
methods, scaling them to support thousands of witnesses via signature
aggregation over efficient communication trees. A working prototype
demonstrates CoSi in the context of timestamping and logging authorities,
enabling groups of over 8,000 distributed witnesses to cosign authoritative
statements in under two seconds.Comment: 20 pages, 7 figure
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