1,257 research outputs found
A Lightweight Attribute-Based Access Control System for IoT.
The evolution of the Internet of things (IoT) has made a significant impact on our daily and professional life. Home and office automation are now even easier with the implementation of IoT. Multiple sensors are connected to monitor the production line, or to control an unmanned environment is now a reality. Sensors are now smart enough to sense an environment and also communicate over the Internet. That is why, implementing an IoT system within the production line, hospitals, office space, or at home could be beneficial as a human can interact over the Internet at any time to know the environment. 61% of International Data
Corporation (IDC) surveyed organizations are actively pursuing IoT initiatives, and 6.8% of the average IT budgets is also being allocated to IoT initiatives. However, the security risks are still unknown, and 34% of
respondents pointed out that data safety is their primary concern [1].
IoT sensors are being open to the users with portable/mobile devices. These mobile devices have enough computational power and make it di cult to track down who is using the data or resources. That is why this research focuses on proposing a dynamic access control system for portable devices in IoT environment. The proposed architecture evaluates user context information from mobile devices and calculates trust value by matching with de ned policies to mitigate IoT risks. The cloud application acts as a trust module or gatekeeper that provides the authorization access to READ, WRITE, and control the IoT sensor.
The goal of this thesis is to offer an access control system that is dynamic, flexible, and lightweight. This proposed access control architecture can secure IoT sensors as well as protect sensor data. A prototype of the working model of the cloud, mobile application, and sensors is developed to prove the concept and evaluated against automated generated web requests to measure the response time and performance overhead. The results show that the proposed system requires less interaction time than the state-of-the-art methods
M-health review: joining up healthcare in a wireless world
In recent years, there has been a huge increase in the use of information and communication technologies (ICT) to deliver health and social care. This trend is bound to continue as providers (whether public or private) strive to deliver better care to more people under conditions of severe budgetary constraint
Consumerization of IT: Risk Mitigation Strategies and Good Practices. Responding to the Emerging Threat Environment.
This report presents security policies that can be deployed to mitigate risks that are related with the trend of Consumerization of IT (COIT) and Bring Your Own Device (BYOD).
The aim of this document is to identify mitigation strategies, policies and controls for the risks identified in this area
Toward Open and Programmable Wireless Network Edge
Increasingly, the last hop connecting users to their enterprise and home networks is wireless. Wireless is becoming ubiquitous not only in homes and enterprises but in public venues such as coffee shops, hospitals, and airports. However, most of the publicly and privately available wireless networks are proprietary and closed in operation. Also, there is little effort from industries to move forward on a path to greater openness for the requirement of innovation. Therefore, we believe it is the domain of university researchers to enable innovation through openness. In this thesis work, we introduce and defines the importance of open framework in addressing the complexity of the wireless network. The Software Defined Network (SDN) framework has emerged as a popular solution for the data center network. However, the promise of the SDN framework is to make the network open, flexible and programmable. In order to deliver on the promise, SDN must work for all users and across all networks, both wired and wireless. Therefore, we proposed to create new modules and APIs to extend the standard SDN framework all the way to the end-devices (i.e., mobile devices, APs). Thus, we want to provide an extensible and programmable abstraction of the wireless network as part of the current SDN-based solution. In this thesis work, we design and develop a framework, weSDN (wireless extension of SDN), that extends the SDN control capability all the way to the end devices to support client-network interaction capabilities and new services. weSDN enables the control-plane of wireless networks to be extended to mobile devices and allows for top-level decisions to be made from an SDN controller with knowledge of the network as a whole, rather than device centric configurations. In addition, weSDN easily obtains user application information, as well as the ability to monitor and control application flows dynamically. Based on the weSDN framework, we demonstrate new services such as application-aware traffic management, WLAN virtualization, and security management
The Dilemma of Security Smells and How to Escape It
A single mobile app can now be more complex than entire operating systems ten years ago, thus security becomes a major concern for mobile apps. Unfortunately, previous studies focused rather on particular aspects of mobile application security and did not provide a holistic overview of security issues. Therefore, they could not accurately understand the fundamental flaws to propose effective solutions to common security problems. In order to understand these fundamental flaws, we followed a hybrid strategy, i.e., we collected reported issues from existing work, and we actively identified security-related code patterns that violate best practices in software development. We further introduced the term ``security smell,'' i.e., a security issue that could potentially lead to a vulnerability. As a result, we were able to establish comprehensive security smell catalogues for Android apps and related components, i.e., inter-component communication, web communication, app servers, and HTTP clients. Furthermore, we could identify a dilemma of security smells, because most security smells require unique fixes that increase the code complexity, which in return increases the risk of introducing more security smells. With this knowledge, we investigate the interaction of our security smells with the 192 Mitre CAPEC attack mechanism categories of which the majority could be mitigated with just a few additional security measures. These measures, a String class with behavior and the more thorough use of secure default values and paradigms, would simplify the application logic and at the same time largely increase security if implemented appropriately. We conclude that application security has to focus on the String class, which has not largely changed over the last years, and secure default values and paradigms since they are the smallest common denominator for a strong foundation to build resilient applications. Moreover, we provide an initial implementation for a String class with behavior, however the further exploration remains future work. Finally, the term ``security smell'' is now widely used in academia and eases the communication among security researchers
A Framework for Facilitating Secure Design and Development of IoT Systems
The term Internet of Things (IoT) describes an ever-growing ecosystem of physical objects
or things interconnected with each other and connected to the Internet. IoT devices
consist of a wide range of highly heterogeneous inanimate and animate objects. Thus, a
thing in the context of the IoT can even mean a person with blood pressure or heart rate
monitor implant or a pet with a biochip transponder. IoT devices range from ordinary
household appliances, such as smart light bulbs or smart coffee makers, to sophisticated
tools for industrial automation. IoT is currently leading a revolutionary change in many
industries and, as a result, a lot of industries and organizations are adopting the paradigm
to gain a competitive edge. This allows them to boost operational efficiency and optimize
system performance through real-time data management, which results in an optimized
balance between energy usage and throughput. Another important application area is
the Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT), which is the application of the IoT in industrial
settings. This is also referred to as the Industrial Internet or Industry 4.0, where Cyber-
Physical Systems (CPS) are interconnected using various technologies to achieve wireless
control as well as advanced manufacturing and factory automation. IoT applications
are becoming increasingly prevalent across many application domains, including smart
healthcare, smart cities, smart grids, smart farming, and smart supply chain management.
Similarly, IoT is currently transforming the way people live and work, and hence
the demand for smart consumer products among people is also increasing steadily. Thus,
many big industry giants, as well as startup companies, are competing to dominate the
market with their new IoT products and services, and hence unlocking the business value
of IoT.
Despite its increasing popularity, potential benefits, and proven capabilities, IoT is still in
its infancy and fraught with challenges. The technology is faced with many challenges, including
connectivity issues, compatibility/interoperability between devices and systems,
lack of standardization, management of the huge amounts of data, and lack of tools for
forensic investigations. However, the state of insecurity and privacy concerns in the IoT
are arguably among the key factors restraining the universal adoption of the technology.
Consequently, many recent research studies reveal that there are security and privacy issues
associated with the design and implementation of several IoT devices and Smart Applications
(smart apps). This can be attributed, partly, to the fact that as some IoT device
makers and smart apps development companies (especially the start-ups) reap business
value from the huge IoT market, they tend to neglect the importance of security. As a
result, many IoT devices and smart apps are created with security vulnerabilities, which
have resulted in many IoT related security breaches in recent years.
This thesis is focused on addressing the security and privacy challenges that were briefly
highlighted in the previous paragraph. Given that the Internet is not a secure environ ment even for the traditional computer systems makes IoT systems even less secure due
to the inherent constraints associated with many IoT devices. These constraints, which are
mainly imposed by cost since many IoT edge devices are expected to be inexpensive and
disposable, include limited energy resources, limited computational and storage capabilities,
as well as lossy networks due to the much lower hardware performance compared
to conventional computers. While there are many security and privacy issues in the IoT
today, arguably a root cause of such issues is that many start-up IoT device manufacturers
and smart apps development companies do not adhere to the concept of security by
design. Consequently, some of these companies produce IoT devices and smart apps with
security vulnerabilities.
In recent years, attackers have exploited different security vulnerabilities in IoT infrastructures
which have caused several data breaches and other security and privacy incidents
involving IoT devices and smart apps. These have attracted significant attention
from the research community in both academia and industry, resulting in a surge of proposals
put forward by many researchers. Although research approaches and findings may
vary across different research studies, the consensus is that a fundamental prerequisite for
addressing IoT security and privacy challenges is to build security and privacy protection
into IoT devices and smart apps from the very beginning. To this end, this thesis investigates
how to bake security and privacy into IoT systems from the onset, and as its main
objective, this thesis particularly focuses on providing a solution that can foster the design
and development of secure IoT devices and smart apps, namely the IoT Hardware Platform
Security Advisor (IoT-HarPSecA) framework. The security framework is expected to
provide support to designers and developers in IoT start-up companies during the design
and implementation of IoT systems. IoT-HarPSecA framework is also expected to facilitate
the implementation of security in existing IoT systems.
To accomplish the previously mentioned objective as well as to affirm the aforementioned
assertion, the following step-by-step problem-solving approach is followed. The first step
is an exhaustive survey of different aspects of IoT security and privacy, including security requirements in IoT architecture, security threats in IoT architecture, IoT application domains
and their associated cyber assets, the complexity of IoT vulnerabilities, and some
possible IoT security and privacy countermeasures; and the survey wraps up with a brief
overview of IoT hardware development platforms. The next steps are the identification of
many challenges and issues associated with the IoT, which narrowed down to the abovementioned
fundamental security/privacy issue; followed by a study of different aspects of
security implementation in the IoT. The remaining steps are the framework design thinking
process, framework design and implementation, and finally, framework performance
evaluation.
IoT-HarPSecA offers three functionality features, namely security requirement elicitation security best practice guidelines for secure development, and above all, a feature that recommends
specific Lightweight Cryptographic Algorithms (LWCAs) for both software and
hardware implementations. Accordingly, IoT-HarPSecA is composed of three main components,
namely Security Requirements Elicitation (SRE) component, Security Best Practice
Guidelines (SBPG) component, and Lightweight Cryptographic Algorithms Recommendation
(LWCAR) component, each of them servicing one of the aforementioned features.
The author has implemented a command-line tool in C++ to serve as an interface
between users and the security framework. This thesis presents a detailed description,
design, and implementation of the SRE, SBPG, and LWCAR components of the security
framework. It also presents real-world practical scenarios that show how IoT-HarPSecA
can be used to elicit security requirements, generate security best practices, and recommend
appropriate LWCAs based on user inputs. Furthermore, the thesis presents performance
evaluation of the SRE, SBPG, and LWCAR components framework tools, which
shows that IoT-HarPSecA can serve as a roadmap for secure IoT development.O termo Internet das coisas (IoT) é utilizado para descrever um ecossistema, em expansão,
de objetos fÃsicos ou elementos interconetados entre si e à Internet. Os dispositivos
IoT consistem numa gama vasta e heterogénea de objetos animados ou inanimados e,
neste contexto, podem pertencer à IoT um indivÃduo com um implante que monitoriza a
frequência cardÃaca ou até mesmo um animal de estimação que tenha um biochip. Estes
dispositivos variam entre eletrodomésticos, tais como máquinas de café ou lâmpadas inteligentes,
a ferramentas sofisticadas de uso na automatização industrial. A IoT está a
revolucionar e a provocar mudanças em várias indústrias e muitas adotam esta tecnologia
para incrementar as suas vantagens competitivas. Este paradigma melhora a eficiência
operacional e otimiza o desempenho de sistemas através da gestão de dados em tempo
real, resultando num balanço otimizado entre o uso energético e a taxa de transferência.
Outra área de aplicação é a IoT Industrial (IIoT) ou internet industrial ou Indústria 4.0,
ou seja, uma aplicação de IoT no âmbito industrial, onde os sistemas ciberfÃsicos estão interconectados
a diversas tecnologias de forma a obter um controlo de rede sem fios, bem
como fabricações avançadas e automatização fabril. As aplicações da IoT estão a crescer
e a tornarem-se predominantes em muitos domÃnios de aplicação inteligentes como sistemas
de saúde, cidades, redes, agricultura e sistemas de fornecimento. Da mesma forma,
a IoT está a transformar estilos de vida e de trabalho e assim, a procura por produtos inteligentes
está constantemente a aumentar. As grandes indústrias e startups competem
entre si de forma a dominar o mercado com os seus novos serviços e produtos IoT, desbloqueando
o valor de negócio da IoT.
Apesar da sua crescente popularidade, benefÃcios e capacidades comprovadas, a IoT está
ainda a dar os seus primeiros passos e é confrontada com muitos desafios. Entre eles,
problemas de conectividade, compatibilidade/interoperabilidade entre dispositivos e sistemas,
falta de padronização, gestão das enormes quantidades de dados e ainda falta de
ferramentas para investigações forenses. No entanto, preocupações quanto ao estado de
segurança e privacidade ainda estão entre os fatores adversos à adesão universal desta
tecnologia. Estudos recentes revelaram que existem questões de segurança e privacidade
associadas ao design e implementação de vários dispositivos IoT e aplicações inteligentes
(smart apps.), isto pode ser devido ao facto, em parte, de que alguns fabricantes e empresas
de desenvolvimento de dispositivos (especialmente startups) IoT e smart apps., recolham
o valor de negócio dos grandes mercados IoT, negligenciando assim a importância
da segurança, resultando em dispositivos IoT e smart apps. com carências e violações de
segurança da IoT nos últimos anos.
Esta tese aborda os desafios de segurança e privacidade que foram supra mencionados.
Visto que a Internet e os sistemas informáticos tradicionais são por vezes considerados inseguros,
os sistemas IoT tornam-se ainda mais inseguros, devido a restrições inerentes a tais dispositivos. Estas restrições são impostas devido ao custo, uma vez que se espera que
muitos dispositivos de ponta sejam de baixo custo e descartáveis, com recursos energéticos
limitados, bem como limitações na capacidade de armazenamento e computacionais,
e redes com perdas devido a um desempenho de hardware de qualidade inferior, quando
comparados com computadores convencionais. Uma das raÃzes do problema é o facto
de que muitos fabricantes, startups e empresas de desenvolvimento destes dispositivos e
smart apps não adiram ao conceito de segurança por construção, ou seja, logo na conceção,
não preveem a proteção da privacidade e segurança. Assim, alguns dos produtos e
dispositivos produzidos apresentam vulnerabilidades na segurança.
Nos últimos anos, hackers maliciosos têm explorado diferentes vulnerabilidades de segurança
nas infraestruturas da IoT, causando violações de dados e outros incidentes de
privacidade envolvendo dispositivos IoT e smart apps. Estes têm atraÃdo uma atenção significativa
por parte das comunidades académica e industrial, que culminaram num grande
número de propostas apresentadas por investigadores cientÃficos. Ainda que as abordagens
de pesquisa e os resultados variem entre os diferentes estudos, há um consenso e
pré-requisito fundamental para enfrentar os desafios de privacidade e segurança da IoT,
que buscam construir proteção de segurança e privacidade em dispositivos IoT e smart
apps. desde o fabrico. Para esta finalidade, esta tese investiga como produzir segurança
e privacidade destes sistemas desde a produção, e como principal objetivo, concentra-se
em fornecer soluções que possam promover a conceção e o desenvolvimento de dispositivos
IoT e smart apps., nomeadamente um conjunto de ferramentas chamado Consultor
de Segurança da Plataforma de Hardware da IoT (IoT-HarPSecA). Espera-se que o conjunto
de ferramentas forneça apoio a designers e programadores em startups durante a
conceção e implementação destes sistemas ou que facilite a integração de mecanismos de
segurança nos sistemas préexistentes.
De modo a alcançar o objetivo proposto, recorre-se à seguinte abordagem. A primeira fase
consiste num levantamento exaustivo de diferentes aspetos da segurança e privacidade na
IoT, incluindo requisitos de segurança na arquitetura da IoT e ameaças à sua segurança,
os seus domÃnios de aplicação e os ativos cibernéticos associados, a complexidade das
vulnerabilidades da IoT e ainda possÃveis contramedidas relacionadas com a segurança e
privacidade. Evolui-se para uma breve visão geral das plataformas de desenvolvimento
de hardware da IoT. As fases seguintes consistem na identificação dos desafios e questões
associadas à IoT, que foram restringidos às questões de segurança e privacidade. As demais
etapas abordam o processo de pensamento de conceção (design thinking), design e
implementação e, finalmente, a avaliação do desempenho.
O IoT-HarPSecA é composto por três componentes principais: a Obtenção de Requisitos
de Segurança (SRE), Orientações de Melhores Práticas de Segurança (SBPG) e a recomendação
de Componentes de Algoritmos Criptográficos Leves (LWCAR) na implementação de software e hardware. O autor implementou uma ferramenta em linha de comandos
usando linguagem C++ que serve como interface entre os utilizadores e a IoT-HarPSecA.
Esta tese apresenta ainda uma descrição detalhada, desenho e implementação das componentes
SRE, SBPG, e LWCAR. Apresenta ainda cenários práticos do mundo real que
demostram como o IoT-HarPSecA pode ser utilizado para elicitar requisitos de segurança,
gerar boas práticas de segurança (em termos de recomendações de implementação) e recomendar
algoritmos criptográficos leves apropriados com base no contributo dos utilizadores.
De igual forma, apresenta-se a avaliação do desempenho destes três componentes,
demonstrando que o IoT-HarPSecA pode servir como um roteiro para o desenvolvimento
seguro da IoT
Two sides of data protection: Examining the complex and political nature to the personal data transfers between the European Union and the United States
This thesis investigates the complexity and the political aspects of the data protection. This thesis is viewed from the perspective of international transfers of personal data between the European Union and the United States. These two parties were chosen because of the special role each one has - the US in the cloud storages and the EU in the privacy regulation sphere. The thesis follows legal dogmatic methodology based on legal and doctrinal research materials with a focus on the importance of well- functioning data protection legislation by placing an interest towards technology-based approach rather than political. The thesis contains in-depth analysis on the history of EU’s data protection legislation and to events that have influenced it trying to answer the question what is wrong and why. Furthermore, the thesis attempts to resolve underlying problems with the current data protection legislation and analyse whether technological innovations could be used to our benefit. The thesis reaches the result that the possibility of having political sway in the data protection legislation has an impact and does not resolve the underlying problem of trust. Furthermore, technological innovations such as Fully Homomorphic Encryption could be used to resolve, at least partially, the problems faced in data protection. I reached the conclusion that if the EU chooses not to go with technology based problem-solving methods, adequacy decisions should be approved by the European Data Protection instead of the European Commission
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