Transparent code authentication at the processor level

The authors present a lightweight authentication mechanism that verifies the authenticity of code and thereby addresses the virus and malicious code problems at the hardware level eliminating the need for trusted extensions in the operating system. The technique proposed tightly integrates the authentication mechanism into the processor core. The authentication latency is hidden behind the memory access latency, thereby allowing seamless on-the-fly authentication of instructions. In addition, the proposed authentication method supports seamless encryption of code (and static data). Consequently, while providing the software users with assurance for authenticity of programs executing on their hardware, the proposed technique also protects the software manufacturers’ intellectual property through encryption. The performance analysis shows that, under mild assumptions, the presented technique introduces negligible overhead for even moderate cache sizes

Roadmap on optical security

Postprint (author's final draft

Ubic: Bridging the gap between digital cryptography and the physical world

Advances in computing technology increasingly blur the boundary between the digital domain and the physical world. Although the research community has developed a large number of cryptographic primitives and has demonstrated their usability in all-digital communication, many of them have not yet made their way into the real world due to usability aspects. We aim to make another step towards a tighter integration of digital cryptography into real world interactions. We describe Ubic, a framework that allows users to bridge the gap between digital cryptography and the physical world. Ubic relies on head-mounted displays, like Google Glass, resource-friendly computer vision techniques as well as mathematically sound cryptographic primitives to provide users with better security and privacy guarantees. The framework covers key cryptographic primitives, such as secure identification, document verification using a novel secure physical document format, as well as content hiding. To make a contribution of practical value, we focused on making Ubic as simple, easily deployable, and user friendly as possible.Comment: In ESORICS 2014, volume 8712 of Lecture Notes in Computer Science, pp. 56-75, Wroclaw, Poland, September 7-11, 2014. Springer, Berlin, German

Security and privacy aspects of mobile applications for post-surgical care

Mobile technologies have the potential to improve patient monitoring, medical decision making and in general the efficiency and quality of health delivery. They also pose new security and privacy challenges. The objectives of this work are to (i) Explore and define security and privacy requirements on the example of a post-surgical care application, and (ii) Develop and test a pilot implementation Post-Surgical Care Studies of surgical out- comes indicate that timely treatment of the most common complications in compliance with established post-surgical regiments greatly improve success rates. The goal of our pilot application is to enable physician to optimally synthesize and apply patient directed best medical practices to prevent post-operative complications in an individualized patient/procedure specific fashion. We propose a framework for a secure protocol to enable doctors to check most common complications for their patient during in-hospital post- surgical care. We also implemented our construction and cryptographic protocols as an iPhone application on the iOS using existing cryptographic services and libraries