On the Design of Future Communication Systems with Coded Transport, Storage, and Computing

Communication systems are experiencing a fundamental change. There are novel applications that require an increased performance not only of throughput but also latency, reliability, security, and heterogeneity support from these systems. To fulfil the requirements, future systems understand communication not only as the transport of bits but also as their storage, processing, and relation. In these systems, every network node has transport storage and computing resources that the network operator and its users can exploit through virtualisation and softwarisation of the resources. It is within this context that this work presents its results. We proposed distributed coded approaches to improve communication systems. Our results improve the reliability and latency performance of the transport of information. They also increase the reliability, flexibility, and throughput of storage applications. Furthermore, based on the lessons that coded approaches improve the transport and storage performance of communication systems, we propose a distributed coded approach for the computing of novel in-network applications such as the steering and control of cyber-physical systems. Our proposed approach can increase the reliability and latency performance of distributed in-network computing in the presence of errors, erasures, and attackers

On the combination of multi-cloud and network coding for cost-efficient storage in industrial applications

The adoption of both Cyber–Physical Systems (CPSs) and the Internet-of-Things (IoT) has enabled the evolution towards the so-called Industry 4.0. These technologies, together with cloud computing and artificial intelligence, foster new business opportunities. Besides, several industrial applications need immediate decision making and fog computing is emerging as a promising solution to address such requirement. In order to achieve a cost-efficient system, we propose taking advantage from spot instances, a new service offered by cloud providers, which provide resources at lower prices. The main downside of these instances is that they do not ensure service continuity and they might suffer from interruptions. An architecture that combines fog and multi-cloud deployments along with Network Coding (NC) techniques, guarantees the needed fault-tolerance for the cloud environment, and also reduces the required amount of redundant data to provide reliable services. In this paper we analyze how NC can actually help to reduce the storage cost and improve the resource efficiency for industrial applications, based on a multi-cloud infrastructure. The cost analysis has been carried out using both real AWS EC2 spot instance prices and, to complement them, prices obtained from a model based on a finite Markov chain, derived from real measurements. We have analyzed the overall system cost, depending on different parameters, showing that configurations that seek to minimize the storage yield a higher cost reduction, due to the strong impact of storage cost

On the combination of multi-cloud and network coding for cost-efficient storage in industrial applications

The adoption of both Cyber-Physical Systems (CPSs) and the Internet-of-Things (IoT) has enabled the evolution towards the so-called Industry 4.0. These technologies, together with cloud computing and artificial intelligence, foster new business opportunities. Besides, several industrial applications need immediate decision making and fog computing is emerging as a promising solution to address such requirement. In order to achieve a cost-efficient system, we propose taking advantage from spot instances, a new service offered by cloud providers, which provide resources at lower prices. The main downside of these instances is that they do not ensure service continuity and they might suffer from interruptions. An architecture that combines fog and multi-cloud deployments along with Network Coding (NC) techniques, guarantees the needed fault-tolerance for the cloud environment, and also reduces the required amount of redundant data to provide reliable services. In this paper we analyze how NC can actually help to reduce the storage cost and improve the resource efficiency for industrial applications, based on a multi-cloud infrastructure. The cost analysis has been carried out using both real AWS EC2 spot instance prices and, to complement them, prices obtained from a model based on a finite Markov chain, derived from real measurements. We have analyzed the overall system cost, depending on different parameters, showing that configurations that seek to minimize the storage yield a higher cost reduction, due to the strong impact of storage cost.This work has been partially supported by the Basque Government through the Elkartek program (Grant agreement no. KK-2018/00115), the H2020 research framework of the European Commission under the ELASTIC project (Grant agreement no. 825473), and the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness through the CARMEN project (TEC2016-75067-C4-3-R), the ADVICE project (TEC2015-71329-C2-1-R), and the COMONSENS network (TEC2015-69648-REDC)

Fault-tolerant satellite computing with modern semiconductors

Miniaturized satellites enable a variety space missions which were in the past infeasible, impractical or uneconomical with traditionally-designed heavier spacecraft. Especially CubeSats can be launched and manufactured rapidly at low cost from commercial components, even in academic environments. However, due to their low reliability and brief lifetime, they are usually not considered suitable for life- and safety-critical services, complex multi-phased solar-system-exploration missions, and missions with a longer duration. Commercial electronics are key to satellite miniaturization, but also responsible for their low reliability: Until 2019, there existed no reliable or fault-tolerant computer architectures suitable for very small satellites. To overcome this deficit, a novel on-board-computer architecture is described in this thesis.Robustness is assured without resorting to radiation hardening, but through software measures implemented within a robust-by-design multiprocessor-system-on-chip. This fault-tolerant architecture is component-wise simple and can dynamically adapt to changing performance requirements throughout a mission. It can support graceful aging by exploiting FPGA-reconfiguration and mixed-criticality.  Experimentally, we achieve 1.94W power consumption at 300Mhz with a Xilinx Kintex Ultrascale+ proof-of-concept, which is well within the powerbudget range of current 2U CubeSats. To our knowledge, this is the first COTS-based, reproducible on-board-computer architecture that can offer strong fault coverage even for small CubeSats.European Space AgencyComputer Systems, Imagery and Medi

Literature based Cyber Security Topics: Handbook

Cyber security is the practice of protecting systems, networks, and programs from digital attacks. These cyber attacks are usually aimed at accessing, changing, or destroying sensitive information; extorting money from users; or interrupting normal business processes. Cloud computing has emerged from the legacy data centres. Consequently, threats applicable in legacy system are equally applicable to cloud computing along with emerging new threats that plague only the cloud systems. Traditionally the data centres were hosted on-premises. Hence, control over the data was comparatively easier than handling a cloud system which is borderless and ubiquitous. Threats due to multi-tenancy, access from anywhere, control of cloud, etc. are some examples of why cloud security becomes important. Considering the significance of cloud security, this work is an attempt to understand the existing cloud service and deployment models, and the major threat factors to cloud security that may be critical in cloud environment. It also highlights various methods employed by the attackers to cause the damage. Cyber-attacks are highlighted as well. This work will be profoundly helpful to the industry and researchers in understanding the various cloud specific cyber-attack and enable them to evolve the strategy to counter them more effectively

The Proceedings of 14th Australian Information Security Management Conference, 5-6 December 2016, Edith Cowan University, Perth, Australia

The annual Security Congress, run by the Security Research Institute at Edith Cowan University, includes the Australian Information Security and Management Conference. Now in its fourteenth year, the conference remains popular for its diverse content and mixture of technical research and discussion papers. The area of information security and management continues to be varied, as is reflected by the wide variety of subject matter covered by the papers this year. The conference has drawn interest and papers from within Australia and internationally. All submitted papers were subject to a double blind peer review process. Fifteen papers were submitted from Australia and overseas, of which ten were accepted for final presentation and publication. We wish to thank the reviewers for kindly volunteering their time and expertise in support of this event. We would also like to thank the conference committee who have organised yet another successful congress. Events such as this are impossible without the tireless efforts of such people in reviewing and editing the conference papers, and assisting with the planning, organisation and execution of the conferences. To our sponsors also a vote of thanks for both the financial and moral support provided to the conference. Finally, thank you to the administrative and technical staff, and students of the ECU Security Research Institute for their contributions to the running of the conference

Provable Security for Cryptocurrencies

The past several years have seen the surprising and rapid rise of Bitcoin and other “cryptocurrencies.” These are decentralized peer-to-peer networks that allow users to transmit money, tocompose financial instruments, and to enforce contracts between mutually distrusting peers, andthat show great promise as a foundation for financial infrastructure that is more robust, efficientand equitable than ours today. However, it is difficult to reason about the security of cryptocurrencies. Bitcoin is a complex system, comprising many intricate and subtly-interacting protocol layers. At each layer it features design innovations that (prior to our work) have not undergone any rigorous analysis. Compounding the challenge, Bitcoin is but one of hundreds of competing cryptocurrencies in an ecosystem that is constantly evolving. The goal of this thesis is to formally reason about the security of cryptocurrencies, reining in their complexity, and providing well-defined and justified statements of their guarantees. We provide a formal specification and construction for each layer of an abstract cryptocurrency protocol, and prove that our constructions satisfy their specifications. The contributions of this thesis are centered around two new abstractions: “scratch-off puzzles,” and the “blockchain functionality” model. Scratch-off puzzles are a generalization of the Bitcoin “mining” algorithm, its most iconic and novel design feature. We show how to provide secure upgrades to a cryptocurrency by instantiating the protocol with alternative puzzle schemes. We construct secure puzzles that address important and well-known challenges facing Bitcoin today, including wasted energy and dangerous coalitions. The blockchain functionality is a general-purpose model of a cryptocurrency rooted in the “Universal Composability” cryptography theory. We use this model to express a wide range of applications, including transparent “smart contracts” (like those featured in Bitcoin and Ethereum), and also privacy-preserving applications like sealed-bid auctions. We also construct a new protocol compiler, called Hawk, which translates user-provided specifications into privacy-preserving protocols based on zero-knowledge proofs

Fault Tolerant Integer Data Computations: Algorithms and Applications

As computing units move to higher transistor integration densities and computing clusters become highly heterogeneous, studies begin to predict that, rather than being exceptions, data corruptions in memory and processor failures are likely to become more prevalent. It has therefore become imperative to improve the reliability of systems in the face of increasing soft error probabilities in memory and computing logic units of silicon CMOS integrated chips. This thesis introduces a new class of algorithms for fault tolerance in compute-intensive linear and sesquilinear (“one-and-half-linear”) data computations on integer data inputs within high-performance computing systems. The key difference between the proposed algorithms and existing fault tolerance methods is the elimination of the traditional requirement for additional hardware resources for system reliability. The first contribution of this thesis is in the detection of hardware-induced errors in integer matrix products. The proposed method of numerical packing for detecting a single error within a quadruple of matrix outputs is described in Chapter 2. The chapter includes analytic calculations of the proposed method’s computational complexity and reliability. Experimental results show that the proposed algorithm incurs comparable execution time overhead to existing algorithms for the detection and correction of a limited number of errors within generic matrix multiplication (GEMM) outputs. On the other hand, numerical packing becomes substantially more efficient in the mitigation of multiple errors. The achieved execution time gain of numerical packing is further analyzed with respect to its energy saving equivalent, thus paving the way for a new class of silent data corruption (SDC) mitigation method for integer matrix products that are fast, energy efficient, and highly reliable. A further advancement of the proposed numerical packing approach for the mitigation of core/processor failures in computing clusters (a.k.a., failstop failures) is described in Chapter 3 . The key advantage of this new packing approach is the ability to tolerate processor failures for all classes of sum-of-product computations. Because multimedia applications running on cloud computing platforms are now required to mitigate an increasing number of failures and outages at runtime, we analyze the efficiency of numerical packing within an image retrieval framework deployed over a cluster of AWS EC2 spot (i.e., low-cost albeit terminable) instances. Our results show that more than 70% reduction of cost can be achieved in comparison to conventional failure-intolerant processing based on AWS EC2 on-demand (i.e., higher-cost albeit guaranteed) instances. Finally, beyond numerical packing, we present a second approach for reliability in the case of linear and sesquilinear integer data computations by generalizing the recently-proposed concept of numerical entanglement. The proposed approach is capable of recovering from multiple fail-stop failures in a parallel/distributed computing environment. We present theoretical analysis of the computational and bit-width requirements of the proposed method in comparison to existing methods of checksum generation and processing. Our experiments with integer matrix products show that the proposed approach incurs 1.72% − 37.23% reduction in processing throughput in comparison to failure-intolerant processing while allowing for the mitigation of multiple fail-stop failures without the use of additional computing resources

Compilation of Abstracts, June 2016

NPS Class of June 2016This quarter’s Compilation of Abstracts summarizes cutting-edge, security-related research conducted by NPS students and presented as theses, dissertations, and capstone reports. Each expands knowledge in its field.http://archive.org/details/compilationofabs109454990

SInCom 2015

2nd Baden-Württemberg Center of Applied Research Symposium on Information and Communication Systems, SInCom 2015, 13. November 2015 in Konstan