Using secure coprocessors to enforce network access policies in enterprise and ad hoc networks

Nowadays, network security is critically important. Enterprises rely on networks to improvetheir business. However, network security breaches may cause them loss of millions of dollars.Ad hoc networks, which enable computers to communicate wirelessly without the need forinfrastructure support, have been attracting more and more interests. However, they cannotbe deployed effectively due to security concerns.Studies have shown that the major network security threat is insiders (malicious orcompromised nodes). Enterprises have traditionally employed network security solutions(e.g., firewalls, intrusion detection systems, anti-virus software) and network access controltechnologies (e.g., 802.1x, IPsec/IKE) to protect their networks. However, these approachesdo not prevent malicious or compromised nodes from accessing the network. Many attacksagainst ad hoc networks, including routing, forwarding, and leader-election attacks, requiremalicious nodes joining the attacked network too.This dissertation presents a novel solution to protect both enterprise and ad hoc networksby addressing the above problem. It is a hardware-based solution that protects a networkthrough the attesting of a node's configuration before authorizing the node's access to thenetwork. Attestation is the unforgeable disclosure of a node's configuration to another node,signed by a secure coprocessor known as a Trusted Platform Module (TPM).This dissertation makes following contributions. First, several techniques at operatingsystem level (i.e., TCB prelogging, secure association root tripping, and sealing-free attestation confinement) are developed to support attestation and policy enforcement. Second, two secure attestation protocols at network level (i.e., Bound Keyed Attestation (BKA) andBatched Bound Keyed Attestation (BBKA)) are designed to overcome the risk of a man-inthe-middle (MITM) attack. Third, the above techniques are applied in enterprise networks todifferent network access control technologies to enhance enterprise network security. Fourth,AdHocSec, a novel network security solution for ad hoc networks, is proposed and evaluated. AdHocSec inserts a security layer between the network and data link layer of the networkstack. Several algorithms are designed to facilitate node's attestation in ad hoc networks,including distributed attestation (DA), and attested merger (AM) algorithm

Stop Hiding The Sharp Knives: The WebAssembly Linux Interface

WebAssembly is gaining popularity as a portable binary format targetable from many programming languages. With a well-specified low-level virtual instruction set, minimal memory footprint and many high-performance implementations, it has been successfully adopted for lightweight in-process memory sandboxing in many contexts. Despite these advantages, WebAssembly lacks many standard system interfaces, making it difficult to reuse existing applications. This paper proposes WALI: The WebAssembly Linux Interface, a thin layer over Linux's userspace system calls, creating a new class of virtualization where WebAssembly seamlessly interacts with native processes and the underlying operating system. By virtualizing the lowest level of userspace, WALI offers application portability with little effort and reuses existing compiler backends. With WebAssembly's control flow integrity guarantees, these modules gain an additional level of protection against remote code injection attacks. Furthermore, capability-based APIs can themselves be virtualized and implemented in terms of WALI, improving reuse and robustness through better layering. We present an implementation of WALI in a modern WebAssembly engine and evaluate its performance on a number of applications which we can now compile with mostly trivial effort.Comment: 12 pages, 8 figure

A Novel Approach to Transport-Layer Security for Spacecraft Constellations

Spacecraft constellations seek to provide transformational services from increased environmental awareness to reduced-latency international finance. This connected future requires trusted communications. Transport-layer security models presume link characteristics and encapsulation techniques that may not be sustainable in a networked constellation. Emerging transport layer protocols for space communications enable new transport security protocols that may provide a pragmatic alternative to deploying Internet security mechanisms in space. The Bundle Protocol (BP) and Bundle Protocol Security (BPSec) protocol have been designed to provide such an alternative. BP is a store-and-forward alternative to IP that carries session information as secondary headers. BPSec uses BP’s featureful secondary header mechanism to hold security information and security results. In doing so, BPSec provides an in-packet augmentation alternative to security by encapsulation. BPSec enables features such as security-at-rest, separate encryption/signing of individual protocol headers, and the ability to add secondary headers and secure them at waypoints in the network. These features provided by BPSec change the system trades associated with networked constellations. They enable security at rest, secure content caching, and deeper inspection at gateways otherwise obscured by tunneling

Control-Flow Security.

Computer security is a topic of paramount importance in computing today. Though enormous effort has been expended to reduce the software attack surface, vulnerabilities remain. In contemporary attacks, subverting the control-flow of an application is often the cornerstone to a successful attempt to compromise a system. This subversion, known as a control-flow attack, remains as an essential building block of many software exploits. This dissertation proposes a multi-pronged approach to securing software control-flow to harden the software attack surface. The primary domain of this dissertation is the elimination of the basic mechanism in software enabling control-flow attacks. I address the prevalence of such attacks by going to the heart of the problem, removing all of the operations that inject runtime data into program control. This novel approach, Control-Data Isolation, provides protection by subtracting the root of the problem; indirect control-flow. Previous works have attempted to address control-flow attacks by layering additional complexity in an effort to shield software from attack. In this work, I take a subtractive approach; subtracting the primary cause of both contemporary and classic control-flow attacks. This novel approach to security advances the state of the art in control-flow security by ensuring the integrity of the programmer-intended control-flow graph of an application at runtime. Further, this dissertation provides methodologies to eliminate the barriers to adoption of control-data isolation while simultaneously moving ahead to reduce future attacks. The secondary domain of this dissertation is technique which leverages the process by which software is engineered, tested, and executed to pinpoint the statements in software which are most likely to be exploited by an attacker, defined as the Dynamic Control Frontier. Rather than reacting to successful attacks by patching software, the approach in this dissertation will move ahead of the attacker and identify the susceptible code regions before they are compromised. In total, this dissertation combines software and hardware design techniques to eliminate contemporary control-flow attacks. Further, it demonstrates the efficacy and viability of a subtractive approach to software security, eliminating the elements underlying security vulnerabilities.PhDComputer Science and EngineeringUniversity of Michigan, Horace H. Rackham School of Graduate Studieshttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/133304/1/warthur_1.pd

Demystifying Internet of Things Security

Break down the misconceptions of the Internet of Things by examining the different security building blocks available in Intel Architecture (IA) based IoT platforms. This open access book reviews the threat pyramid, secure boot, chain of trust, and the SW stack leading up to defense-in-depth. The IoT presents unique challenges in implementing security and Intel has both CPU and Isolated Security Engine capabilities to simplify it. This book explores the challenges to secure these devices to make them immune to different threats originating from within and outside the network. The requirements and robustness rules to protect the assets vary greatly and there is no single blanket solution approach to implement security. Demystifying Internet of Things Security provides clarity to industry professionals and provides and overview of different security solutions What You'll Learn Secure devices, immunizing them against different threats originating from inside and outside the network Gather an overview of the different security building blocks available in Intel Architecture (IA) based IoT platforms Understand the threat pyramid, secure boot, chain of trust, and the software stack leading up to defense-in-depth Who This Book Is For Strategists, developers, architects, and managers in the embedded and Internet of Things (IoT) space trying to understand and implement the security in the IoT devices/platforms

Maruchi OS kankyo o shiensuru sofutowea oyobi hadowea kino no teian

制度:新 ; 報告番号:甲3534号 ; 学位の種類:博士(工学) ; 授与年月日:2012/2/25 ; 早大学位記番号:新587