Discovery of Malicious Attacks to Improve Mobile Collaborative Learning (MCL)

Mobile collaborative learning (MCL) is highly acknowledged and focusing paradigm in eductional institutions and several organizations across the world. It exhibits intellectual synergy of various combined minds to handle the problem and stimulate the social activity of mutual understanding. To improve and foster the baseline of MCL, several supporting architectures, frameworks including number of the mobile applications have been introduced. Limited research was reported that particularly focuses to enhance the security of those pardigms and provide secure MCL to users. The paper handles the issue of rogue DHCP server that affects and disrupts the network resources during the MCL. The rogue DHCP is unauthorized server that releases the incorrect IP address to users and sniffs the traffic illegally. The contribution specially provides the privacy to users and enhances the security aspects of mobile supported collaborative framework (MSCF). The paper introduces multi-frame signature-cum anomaly-based intrusion detection systems (MSAIDS) supported with novel algorithms through addition of new rules in IDS and mathematcal model. The major target of contribution is to detect the malicious attacks and blocks the illegal activities of rogue DHCP server. This innovative security mechanism reinforces the confidence of users, protects network from illicit intervention and restore the privacy of users. Finally, the paper validates the idea through simulation and compares the findings with other existing techniques.Comment: 20 pages and 11 figures; International Journal of Computer Networks and Communications (IJCNC) July 2012, Volume 4. Number

Evaluation of Security Availability of Data Components for A Renewable Energy Micro Smart Grid System

In this thesis, we study the development and security testing of photovoltaic data collection system. With the introduction of the smart grid concept, a lot of research has been done on the communication aspect of energy production and distribution throughout the power network. For Smart Grid, Internet is used as the communication medium for specific required services and for data collection. Despite all the advantages of the Smart Grid infrastructure, there is also some security concern regarding the vulnerabilities associated with internet access. In this thesis, we consider security testing of the two most popular and globally deployed web server platforms Apache running on Red Had Linux 5 and IIS on Windows Server 2008, and their performance under Distributed Denial of Service Attacks. Furthermore we stress test the data collection services provided by MySQL running on both Windows and Linux Servers when it is also under DDoS attacks

An architecture framework for enhanced wireless sensor network security

This thesis develops an architectural framework to enhance the security of Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) and provides the implementation proof through different security countermeasures, which can be used to establish secure WSNs, in a distributed and self-healing manner. Wireless Sensors are used to monitor and control environmental properties such as sound, acceleration, vibration, air pollutants, and temperature. Due to their limited resources in computation capability, memory and energy, their security schemes are susceptible to many kinds of security vulnerabilities. This thesis investigated all possible network attacks on WSNs and at the time of writing, 19 different types of attacks were identified, all of which are discussed including exposures to the attacks, and the impact of those attacks. The author then utilises this work to examine the ZigBee series, which are the new generation of wireless sensor network products with built-in layered security achieved by secure messaging using symmetric cryptography. However, the author was able to uniquely identify several security weaknesses in ZigBee by examining its protocol and launching the possible attacks. It was found that ZigBee is vulnerable to the following attacks, namely: eavesdropping, replay attack, physical tampering and Denial of Services (DoS). The author then provides solutions to improve the ZigBee security through its security schema, including an end-to-end WSN security framework, architecture design and sensor configuration, that can withstand all types of attacks on the WSN and mitigate ZigBee’s WSN security vulnerabilities

Contributions to the privacy provisioning for federated identity management platforms

Identity information, personal data and user’s profiles are key assets for organizations and companies by becoming the use of identity management (IdM) infrastructures a prerequisite for most companies, since IdM systems allow them to perform their business transactions by sharing information and customizing services for several purposes in more efficient and effective ways. Due to the importance of the identity management paradigm, a lot of work has been done so far resulting in a set of standards and specifications. According to them, under the umbrella of the IdM paradigm a person’s digital identity can be shared, linked and reused across different domains by allowing users simple session management, etc. In this way, users’ information is widely collected and distributed to offer new added value services and to enhance availability. Whereas these new services have a positive impact on users’ life, they also bring privacy problems. To manage users’ personal data, while protecting their privacy, IdM systems are the ideal target where to deploy privacy solutions, since they handle users’ attribute exchange. Nevertheless, current IdM models and specifications do not sufficiently address comprehensive privacy mechanisms or guidelines, which enable users to better control over the use, divulging and revocation of their online identities. These are essential aspects, specially in sensitive environments where incorrect and unsecured management of user’s data may lead to attacks, privacy breaches, identity misuse or frauds. Nowadays there are several approaches to IdM that have benefits and shortcomings, from the privacy perspective. In this thesis, the main goal is contributing to the privacy provisioning for federated identity management platforms. And for this purpose, we propose a generic architecture that extends current federation IdM systems. We have mainly focused our contributions on health care environments, given their particularly sensitive nature. The two main pillars of the proposed architecture, are the introduction of a selective privacy-enhanced user profile management model and flexibility in revocation consent by incorporating an event-based hybrid IdM approach, which enables to replace time constraints and explicit revocation by activating and deactivating authorization rights according to events. The combination of both models enables to deal with both online and offline scenarios, as well as to empower the user role, by letting her to bring together identity information from different sources. Regarding user’s consent revocation, we propose an implicit revocation consent mechanism based on events, that empowers a new concept, the sleepyhead credentials, which is issued only once and would be used any time. Moreover, we integrate this concept in IdM systems supporting a delegation protocol and we contribute with the definition of mathematical model to determine event arrivals to the IdM system and how they are managed to the corresponding entities, as well as its integration with the most widely deployed specification, i.e., Security Assertion Markup Language (SAML). In regard to user profile management, we define a privacy-awareness user profile management model to provide efficient selective information disclosure. With this contribution a service provider would be able to accesses the specific personal information without being able to inspect any other details and keeping user control of her data by controlling who can access. The structure that we consider for the user profile storage is based on extensions of Merkle trees allowing for hash combining that would minimize the need of individual verification of elements along a path. An algorithm for sorting the tree as we envision frequently accessed attributes to be closer to the root (minimizing the access’ time) is also provided. Formal validation of the above mentioned ideas has been carried out through simulations and the development of prototypes. Besides, dissemination activities were performed in projects, journals and conferences.Programa Oficial de Doctorado en Ingeniería TelemáticaPresidente: María Celeste Campo Vázquez.- Secretario: María Francisca Hinarejos Campos.- Vocal: Óscar Esparza Martí