Threat Landscape and Good Practice Guide for Software Defined Networks/5G

5G represents the next major phase of mobile telecommunication systems and network architectures beyond the current 4G standards, aiming at extreme broadband and ultra-robust, low latency connectivity, to enable the programmable connectivity for the Internet of Everything2. Despite the significant debate on the technical specifications and the technological maturity of 5G, which are under discussion in various fora3, 5G is expected to affect positively and significantly several industry sectors ranging from ICT to industry sectors such as car and other manufacturing, health and agriculture in the period up to and beyond 2020. 5G will be driven by the influence of software on network functions, known as Software Defined Networking (SDN) and Network Function Virtualization (NFV). The key concept that underpins SDN is the logical centralization of network control functions by decoupling the control and packet forwarding functionality of the network. NFV complements this vision through the virtualization of these functionalities based on recent advances in general server and enterprise IT virtualization. Considering the technological maturity of the technologies that 5G can leverage on, SDN is the one that is moving faster from development to production. To realize the business potential of SDN/5G, a number of technical issues related to the design and operation of Software Defined Networks need to be addressed. Amongst them, SDN/5G security is one of the key issues, that needs to be addressed comprehensively in order to avoid missing the business opportunities arising from SDN/5G. In this report, we review threats and potential compromises related to the security of SDN/5G networks. More specifically, this report contains a review of the emerging threat landscape of 5G networks with particular focus on Software Defined Networking. It also considers security of NFV and radio network access. To provide a comprehensive account of the emerging threat SDN/5G landscape, this report has identified related network assets and the security threats, challenges and risks arising for these assets. Driven by the identified threats and risks, this report has also reviewed and identified existing security mechanisms and good practices for SDN/5G/NFV, and based on these it has analysed gaps and provided technical, policy and organizational recommendations for proactively enhancing the security of SDN/5G

Cyber Physical System Security — DoS Attacks on Synchrophasor Networks in the Smart Grid

With the rapid increase of network-enabled sensors, switches, and relays, cyber-physical system security in the smart grid has become important. The smart grid operation demands reliable communication. Existing encryption technologies ensures the authenticity of delivered messages. However, commonly applied technologies are not able to prevent the delay or drop of smart grid communication messages. In this dissertation, the author focuses on the network security vulnerabilities in synchrophasor network and their mitigation methods. Side-channel vulnerabilities of the synchrophasor network are identified. Synchrophasor network is one of the most important technologies in the smart grid transmission system. Experiments presented in this dissertation shows that a DoS attack that exploits the side-channel vulnerability against the synchrophasor network can lead to the power system in stability. Side-channel analysis extracts information by observing implementation artifacts without knowing the actual meaning of the information. Synchrophasor network consist of Phasor Measurement Units (PMUs) use synchrophasor protocol to transmit measurement data. Two side-channels are discovered in the synchrophasor protocol. Side-channel analysis based Denial of Service (DoS) attacks differentiate the source of multiple PMU data streams within an encrypted tunnel and only drop selected PMU data streams. Simulations on a power system shows that, without any countermeasure, a power system can be subverted after an attack. Then, mitigation methods from both the network and power grid perspectives are carried out. From the perspective of network security study, side-channel analysis, and protocol transformation has the potential to assist the PMU communication to evade attacks lead with protocol identifications. From the perspective of power grid control study, to mitigate PMU DoS attacks, Cellular Computational Network (CCN) prediction of PMU data is studied and used to implement a Virtual Synchrophasor Network (VSN), which learns and mimics the behaviors of an objective power grid. The data from VSN is used by the Automatic Generation Controllers (AGCs) when the PMU packets are disrupted by DoS attacks. Real-time experimental results show the CCN based VSN effectively inferred the missing data and mitigated the negative impacts of DoS attacks. In this study, industry-standard hardware PMUs and Real-Time Digital Power System Simulator (RTDS) are used to build experimental environments that are as close to actual production as possible for this research. The above-mentioned attack and mitigation methods are also tested on the Internet. Man-In-The-Middle (MITM) attack of PMU traffic is performed with Border Gateway Protocol (BGP) hijacking. A side-channel analysis based MITM attack detection method is also investigated. A game theory analysis is performed to give a broade

Improved Architectures for Secure Intra-process Isolation

Intra-process memory isolation can improve security by enforcing least-privilege at a finer granularity than traditional operating system controls without the context-switch overhead associated with inter-process communication. Because the process has traditionally been a fundamental security boundary, assigning different levels of trust to components within a process is a fundamental change in secure systems design. However, so far there has been little research on the challenges of securely implementing intra-process isolation on top of existing operating system abstractions. We find that frequently-used assumptions in secure system design do not precisely hold under realistic conditions, and that these discrepancies lead to exploitable vulnerabilities. We evaluate two recently-proposed memory isolation systems and show that both are vulnerable to the same generic attacks that break their security model. We then extend a subset of these attacks by applying them to a fully-precise model of control-flow integrity, demonstrating a data-only attack that bypasses both static and dynamic control-flow integrity enforcement by overwriting executable code in-memory even under typical w^x assumptions. From these two results, we propose a set of kernel modifications called Xlock that systemically addresses weaknesses in memory permissions enforcement on Linux, bringing them into line with w^x assumptions. Finally, we present modifications to intra-process isolation systems that preserve efficient userspace component transitions while drastically reducing risk of accidental kernel mismanagement by modeling intra-process components as separate processes from the kernel\u27s perspective. Taken together, these mitigations represent a more robust architecture for efficient and secure intra-process isolation

Retrofitting privacy controls to stock Android

Android ist nicht nur das beliebteste Betriebssystem für mobile Endgeräte, sondern auch ein ein attraktives Ziel für Angreifer. Um diesen zu begegnen, nutzt Androids Sicherheitskonzept App-Isolation und Zugangskontrolle zu kritischen Systemressourcen. Nutzer haben dabei aber nur wenige Optionen, App-Berechtigungen gemäß ihrer Bedürfnisse einzuschränken, sondern die Entwickler entscheiden über zu gewährende Berechtigungen. Androids Sicherheitsmodell kann zudem nicht durch Dritte angepasst werden, so dass Nutzer zum Schutz ihrer Privatsphäre auf die Gerätehersteller angewiesen sind. Diese Dissertation präsentiert einen Ansatz, Android mit umfassenden Privatsphäreeinstellungen nachzurüsten. Dabei geht es konkret um Techniken, die ohne Modifikationen des Betriebssystems oder Zugriff auf Root-Rechte auf regulären Android-Geräten eingesetzt werden können. Der erste Teil dieser Arbeit etabliert Techniken zur Durchsetzung von Sicherheitsrichtlinien für Apps mithilfe von inlined reference monitors. Dieser Ansatz wird durch eine neue Technik für dynamic method hook injection in Androids Java VM erweitert. Schließlich wird ein System eingeführt, das prozessbasierte privilege separation nutzt, um eine virtualisierte App-Umgebung zu schaffen, um auch komplexe Sicherheitsrichtlinien durchzusetzen. Eine systematische Evaluation unseres Ansatzes konnte seine praktische Anwendbarkeit nachweisen und mehr als eine Million Downloads unserer Lösung zeigen den Bedarf an praxisgerechten Werkzeugen zum Schutz der Privatsphäre.Android is the most popular operating system for mobile devices, making it a prime target for attackers. To counter these, Android’s security concept uses app isolation and access control to critical system resources. However, Android gives users only limited options to restrict app permissions according to their privacy preferences but instead lets developers dictate the permissions users must grant. Moreover, Android’s security model is not designed to be customizable by third-party developers, forcing users to rely on device manufacturers to address their privacy concerns. This thesis presents a line of work that retrofits comprehensive privacy controls to the Android OS to put the user back in charge of their device. It focuses on developing techniques that can be deployed to stock Android devices without firmware modifications or root privileges. The first part of this dissertation establishes fundamental policy enforcement on thirdparty apps using inlined reference monitors to enhance Android’s permission system. This approach is then refined by introducing a novel technique for dynamic method hook injection on Android’s Java VM. Finally, we present a system that leverages process-based privilege separation to provide a virtualized application environment that supports the enforcement of complex security policies. A systematic evaluation of our approach demonstrates its practical applicability, and over one million downloads of our solution confirm user demand for privacy-enhancing tools

A Taxonomy of Virtualization Security Issues in Cloud Computing Environments

Objectives: To identify the main challenges and security issues of virtualization in cloud computing environments. It reviews the alleviation techniques for improving the security of cloud virtualization systems. Methods/ Statistical Analysis: Virtualization is a fundamental technology for cloud computing, and for this reason, any cloud vulnerabilities and threats affect virtualization. In this study, the systematic literature review is performed to find out the vulnerabilities and risks of virtualization in cloud computing and to identify threats, and attacks result from those vulnerabilities. Furthermore, we discover and analyze the effective mitigation techniques that are used to protect, secure, and manage virtualization environments. Findings: Thirty vulnerabilities are identified, explained, and classified into six proposed classes. Furthermore, fifteen main virtualization threats and attacks ar defined according to exploited vulnerabilities in a cloud environment. Application/Improvements: A set of common mitigation solutions are recognized and discovered to alleviate the virtualization security risks. These reviewed techniques are analyzed and evaluated according to five specified security criteria

The Service Worker Hiding in Your Browser: Novel Attacks and Defenses in Appified Websites

The service worker (SW) is an emerging web technology that was introduced to enhance the browsing experience of web users. At the core, it is essentially a JavaScript file that runs in an isolated and privileged context separated from the main web page or web workers. Websites can register a service worker to enable native mobile application features including but not limited to supporting offline usage and sending push notifications. With the help of this technology, traditional websites can now act like native mobile apps or become appified. Recently, the use of service workers has gained much attention from web developers, security researchers, and even cyber-criminals due to the service worker’s unique capabilities, especially the ability to intercept and modify web requests and responses at runtime. Such capabilities inevitably introduce new factors to web security considerations. The goal of this research is to systematically study both the vulnerabilities and the security enhancement to websites that can come with the introduction of service workers. The contributions of this dissertation are three folds. First, we investigate the service worker lifecycle and uncover a vulnerability allowing cross-site scripts to be executed inside the service worker. We term this novel attack as Service Worker Cross-Site Scripting (SW-XSS) and develop a dynamic taint tracking tool to measure the impact of SW-XSS in the wild. Second, we analyze the communication channels between the service worker and other web contexts. We identify two vulnerable channels, IndexedDB and Push notifications. These channels can be utilized to launch SW-XSS and push hijacking attacks, which can lead to the privacy leakage of users. Third, we propose and develop a framework, SWAPP (Service Worker APplication Platform), for implementing security appliances by leveraging the unique capabilities of a service worker. Not only can SWAPP prevent the aforementioned attacks against service workers but also be used to implement defense mechanisms for traditional web attacks such as Cross-Site Scripting (XSS), data leakage, or side-channel attacks. We develop several defenses for traditional attacks using SWAPP and show that they are easier to develop, have lesser installation requirements, and are effective compared to existing solutions

Embedded System Security: A Software-based Approach

We present a body of work aimed at understanding and improving the security posture of embedded devices. We present results from several large-scale studies that measured the quantity and distribution of exploitable vulnerabilities within embedded devices in the world. We propose two host-based software defense techniques, Symbiote and Autotomic Binary Structure Randomization, that can be practically deployed to a wide spectrum of embedded devices in use today. These defenses are designed to overcome major challenges of securing legacy embedded devices. To be specific, our proposed algorithms are software- based solutions that operate at the firmware binary level. They do not require source-code, are agnostic to the operating-system environment of the devices they protect, and can work on all major ISAs like MIPS, ARM, PowerPC and X86. More importantly, our proposed defenses are capable of augmenting the functionality of embedded devices with a plethora of host-based defenses like dynamic firmware integrity attestation, binary structure randomization of code and data, and anomaly-based malcode detection. Furthermore, we demonstrate the safety and efficacy of the proposed defenses by applying them to a wide range of real- time embedded devices like enterprise networking equipment, telecommunication appliances and other commercial devices like network-based printers and IP phones. Lastly, we present a survey of promising directions for future research in the area of embedded security

Emerging Risks in the Marine Transportation System (MTS), 2001- 2021

How has maritime security evolved since 2001, and what challenges exist moving forward? This report provides an overview of the current state of maritime security with an emphasis on port security. It examines new risks that have arisen over the last twenty years, the different types of security challenges these risks pose, and how practitioners can better navigate these challenges. Building on interviews with 37 individuals immersed in maritime security protocols, we identify five major challenges in the modern maritime security environment: (1) new domains for exploitation, (2) big data and information processing, (3) attribution challenges, (4) technological innovations, and (5) globalization. We explore how these challenges increase the risk of small-scale, high-probability incidents against an increasingly vulnerable Marine Transportation System (MTS). We conclude by summarizing several measures that can improve resilience-building and mitigate these risks