Separation of SSL protocol phases across process boundaries

Secure Sockets Layer is the de-facto standard used in the industry today for secure communications through web sites. An SSL connection is established by performing a Handshake, which is followed by the Record phase. While the SSL Handshake is computationally intensive and can cause of bottlenecks on an application server, the Record phase can cause similar bottlenecks while encrypting large volumes of data. SSL Accelerators have been used to improve the performance of SSL-based application servers. These devices are expensive, complex to configure and inflexible to customizations. By separating the SSL Handshake and the Record phases into separate software processes, high availability and throughput can be achieved using open-source software and platforms. The delegation of the SSL Record phase to a separate process by transfer of necessary cryptographic information was achieved. Load tests conducted, showed gains with the separation of the Handshake and Record phases at nominal data sizes and the approach provides flexibility for enhancements to be carried out for performance improvements at higher data sizes

Denial-of-Service Resistance in Key Establishment

Denial of Service (DoS) attacks are an increasing problem for network connected systems. Key establishment protocols are applications that are particularly vulnerable to DoS attack as they are typically required to perform computationally expensive cryptographic operations in order to authenticate the protocol initiator and to generate the cryptographic keying material that will subsequently be used to secure the communications between initiator and responder. The goal of DoS resistance in key establishment protocols is to ensure that attackers cannot prevent a legitimate initiator and responder deriving cryptographic keys without expending resources beyond a responder-determined threshold. In this work we review the strategies and techniques used to improve resistance to DoS attacks. Three key establishment protocols implementing DoS resistance techniques are critically reviewed and the impact of misapplication of the techniques on DoS resistance is discussed. Recommendations on effectively applying resistance techniques to key establishment protocols are made

Nation-State Attackers and their Effects on Computer Security

Nation-state intelligence agencies have long attempted to operate in secret, but recent revelations have drawn the attention of security researchers as well as the general public to their operations. The scale, aggressiveness, and untargeted nature of many of these now public operations were not only alarming, but also baffling as many were thought impossible or at best infeasible at scale. The security community has since made many efforts to protect end-users by identifying, analyzing, and mitigating these now known operations. While much-needed, the security community's response has largely been reactionary to the oracled existence of vulnerabilities and the disclosure of specific operations. Nation-State Attackers, however, are dynamic, forward-thinking, and surprisingly agile adversaries who do not rest on their laurels and are continually advancing their efforts to obtain information. Without the ability to conceptualize their actions, understand their perspective, or account for their presence, the security community's advances will become antiquated and unable to defend against the progress of Nation-State Attackers. In this work, we present and discuss a model of Nation-State Attackers that can be used to represent their attributes, behavior patterns, and world view. We use this representation of Nation-State Attackers to show that real-world threat models do not account for such highly privileged attackers, to identify and support technical explanations of known but ambiguous operations, and to identify and analyze vulnerabilities in current systems that are favorable to Nation-State Attackers.PHDComputer Science & EngineeringUniversity of Michigan, Horace H. Rackham School of Graduate Studieshttps://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/143907/1/aaspring_1.pd

Towards usable and fine-grained security for HTTPS with middleboxes

Over the past few years, technology firms have inlined end-to-end encryption for their services and implored for increased in-network functionality. Most firms deploy TLS and middleboxes by performing man-in-the-middle (MITM) of network sessions. In practice, there are no official guidelines for performing MITM and often several tweaks are used resulting in less secure systems. TLS was designed for exactly two parties and introducing a third party by doing MITM breaks TLS and the security benefits it offers. With increasing debate in finding a clean way to deploy middleboxes with TLS, our work surveys the literature and introduces a benchmark based on the Usability-Deployability-Security (UDS) framework for evaluating existing TLS middlebox interception proposals. Our benchmark encompasses and helps understand the current benefits, solutions and challenges in the existing solutions for incorporating TLS with middleboxes. We perform a comparative and qualitative evaluation for the schemes and summarize the results in a single table. We propose: Triraksha, an alternative to the currently deployed middlebox interception models. Triraksha provides a packet inspection service for end-to-end encrypted connections while maintaining fine-grained confidentiality for end points. We evaluate a prototype implementation of our scheme on local and remote servers and show that the overhead in terms of latency and throughput is minimal. Our scheme is easily deployable as only a few software additions are made at the middlebox and client end

Secure service proxy : a CoAP(s) intermediary for a securer and smarter web of things

As the IoT continues to grow over the coming years, resource-constrained devices and networks will see an increase in traffic as everything is connected in an open Web of Things. The performance- and function-enhancing features are difficult to provide in resource-constrained environments, but will gain importance if the WoT is to be scaled up successfully. For example, scalable open standards-based authentication and authorization will be important to manage access to the limited resources of constrained devices and networks. Additionally, features such as caching and virtualization may help further reduce the load on these constrained systems. This work presents the Secure Service Proxy (SSP): a constrained-network edge proxy with the goal of improving the performance and functionality of constrained RESTful environments. Our evaluations show that the proposed design reaches its goal by reducing the load on constrained devices while implementing a wide range of features as different adapters. Specifically, the results show that the SSP leads to significant savings in processing, network traffic, network delay and packet loss rates for constrained devices. As a result, the SSP helps to guarantee the proper operation of constrained networks as these networks form an ever-expanding Web of Things

Improving Security in Software-as-a-Service Solutions

The essence of cloud computing is about moving workloads from your local IT infrastructure to a data center that scales and provides resources at a moments notice. Using a pay-as-you-go model to rent virtual infrastructure is also known as a Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) offering. This helps consumers provision hardware on-demand without the need for physical infrastructure and the challenges and costs that come with it. When moving to the cloud, however, issues regarding the confidentiality, integrity, and availability of the data and infrastructure arise, and new security challenges compared to traditional on-premises computing appear. It is important for the consumer to know exactly what is their responsibility when it comes to securing software running on IaaS platforms. Axis has one such software solution, henceforth referred to as the 'Axis-hosted cloud service'. There is a need for Axis to improve the client-cloud communication, and in this report, we detail a prototype solution for a new secure communication between client and cloud. Additionally, an evaluation of the prototype is presented. The evaluation is based on a model constructed by studying literature from state-of-the-art cloud service providers and organizations dedicated to defining best practices and critical areas of focus for cloud computing. This was collected and compiled in order to present a summary of the most important aspects to keep in mind when deploying software on an IaaS. It showed that the cloud service fulfills many industry best-practices, such as encrypting data in transit between client and cloud, using virtual private clouds to separate infrastructure credentials from unauthorized access, and following the guidelines from their infrastructure provider. It also showed areas where there was a need for improvement in order to reach a state-of-the-art level. The model proved to be a useful tool to ensure that security best practices are being met by an organization moving to the cloud, and specifically for Axis, the prototype communication solution can be used as a base for further development

Using Large-Scale Empirical Methods to Understand Fragile Cryptographic Ecosystems

Cryptography is a key component of the security of the Internet. Unfortunately, the process of using cryptography to secure the Internet is fraught with failure. Cryptography is often fragile, as a single mistake can have devastating consequences on security, and this fragility is further complicated by the diverse and distributed nature of the Internet. This dissertation shows how to use empirical methods in the form of Internet-wide scanning to study how cryptography is deployed on the Internet, and shows this methodology can discover vulnerabilities and gain insights into fragile cryptographic ecosystems that are not possible without an empirical approach. I introduce improvements to ZMap, the fast Internet-wide scanner, that allow it to fully utilize a 10 GigE connection, and then use Internet-wide scanning to measure cryptography on the Internet. First, I study how Diffie-Hellman is deployed, and show that implementations are fragile and not resilient to small subgroup attacks. Next, I measure the prevalence of ``export-grade'' cryptography. Although regulations limiting the strength of cryptography that could be exported from the United States were lifted in 1999, Internet-wide scanning shows that support for various forms of export cryptography remains widespread. I show how purposefully weakening TLS to comply with these export regulations led to the FREAK, Logjam, and DROWN vulnerabilities, each of which exploits obsolete export-grade cryptography to attack modern clients. I conclude by discussing how empirical cryptography improved protocol design, and I present further opportunities for empirical research in cryptography.PHDComputer Science & EngineeringUniversity of Michigan, Horace H. Rackham School of Graduate Studieshttps://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/149809/1/davadria_1.pd