1,875 research outputs found
Attack Resilience and Recovery using Physical Challenge Response Authentication for Active Sensors Under Integrity Attacks
Embedded sensing systems are pervasively used in life- and security-critical
systems such as those found in airplanes, automobiles, and healthcare.
Traditional security mechanisms for these sensors focus on data encryption and
other post-processing techniques, but the sensors themselves often remain
vulnerable to attacks in the physical/analog domain. If an adversary
manipulates a physical/analog signal prior to digitization, no amount of
digital security mechanisms after the fact can help. Fortunately, nature
imposes fundamental constraints on how these analog signals can behave. This
work presents PyCRA, a physical challenge-response authentication scheme
designed to protect active sensing systems against physical attacks occurring
in the analog domain. PyCRA provides security for active sensors by continually
challenging the surrounding environment via random but deliberate physical
probes. By analyzing the responses to these probes, and by using the fact that
the adversary cannot change the underlying laws of physics, we provide an
authentication mechanism that not only detects malicious attacks but provides
resilience against them. We demonstrate the effectiveness of PyCRA through
several case studies using two sensing systems: (1) magnetic sensors like those
found wheel speed sensors in robotics and automotive, and (2) commercial RFID
tags used in many security-critical applications. Finally, we outline methods
and theoretical proofs for further enhancing the resilience of PyCRA to active
attacks by means of a confusion phase---a period of low signal to noise ratio
that makes it more difficult for an attacker to correctly identify and respond
to PyCRA's physical challenges. In doing so, we evaluate both the robustness
and the limitations of PyCRA, concluding by outlining practical considerations
as well as further applications for the proposed authentication mechanism.Comment: Shorter version appeared in ACM ACM Conference on Computer and
Communications (CCS) 201
Tree Parity Machine Rekeying Architectures
The necessity to secure the communication between hardware components in
embedded systems becomes increasingly important with regard to the secrecy of
data and particularly its commercial use. We suggest a low-cost (i.e. small
logic-area) solution for flexible security levels and short key lifetimes. The
basis is an approach for symmetric key exchange using the synchronisation of
Tree Parity Machines. Fast successive key generation enables a key exchange
within a few milliseconds, given realistic communication channels with a
limited bandwidth. For demonstration we evaluate characteristics of a
standard-cell ASIC design realisation as IP-core in 0.18-micrometer
CMOS-technology
On the Security of the Automatic Dependent Surveillance-Broadcast Protocol
Automatic dependent surveillance-broadcast (ADS-B) is the communications
protocol currently being rolled out as part of next generation air
transportation systems. As the heart of modern air traffic control, it will
play an essential role in the protection of two billion passengers per year,
besides being crucial to many other interest groups in aviation. The inherent
lack of security measures in the ADS-B protocol has long been a topic in both
the aviation circles and in the academic community. Due to recently published
proof-of-concept attacks, the topic is becoming ever more pressing, especially
with the deadline for mandatory implementation in most airspaces fast
approaching.
This survey first summarizes the attacks and problems that have been reported
in relation to ADS-B security. Thereafter, it surveys both the theoretical and
practical efforts which have been previously conducted concerning these issues,
including possible countermeasures. In addition, the survey seeks to go beyond
the current state of the art and gives a detailed assessment of security
measures which have been developed more generally for related wireless networks
such as sensor networks and vehicular ad hoc networks, including a taxonomy of
all considered approaches.Comment: Survey, 22 Pages, 21 Figure
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Transiently Powered Computers
Demand for compact, easily deployable, energy-efficient computers has driven the development of general-purpose transiently powered computers (TPCs) that lack both batteries and wired power, operating exclusively on energy harvested from their surroundings.
TPCs\u27 dependence solely on transient, harvested power offers several important design-time benefits. For example, omitting batteries saves board space and weight while obviating the need to make devices physically accessible for maintenance. However, transient power may provide an unpredictable supply of energy that makes operation difficult. A predictable energy supply is a key abstraction underlying most electronic designs. TPCs discard this abstraction in favor of opportunistic computation that takes advantage of available resources. A crucial question is how should a software-controlled computing device operate if it depends completely on external entities for power and other resources? The question poses challenges for computation, communication, storage, and other aspects of TPC design.
The main idea of this work is that software techniques can make energy harvesting a practicable form of power supply for electronic devices. Its overarching goal is to facilitate the design and operation of usable TPCs.
This thesis poses a set of challenges that are fundamental to TPCs, then pairs these challenges with approaches that use software techniques to address them. To address the challenge of computing steadily on harvested power, it describes Mementos, an energy-aware state-checkpointing system for TPCs. To address the dependence of opportunistic RF-harvesting TPCs on potentially untrustworthy RFID readers, it describes CCCP, a protocol and system for safely outsourcing data storage to RFID readers that may attempt to tamper with data. Additionally, it describes a simulator that facilitates experimentation with the TPC model, and a prototype computational RFID that implements the TPC model.
To show that TPCs can improve existing electronic devices, this thesis describes applications of TPCs to implantable medical devices (IMDs), a challenging design space in which some battery-constrained devices completely lack protection against radio-based attacks. TPCs can provide security and privacy benefits to IMDs by, for instance, cryptographically authenticating other devices that want to communicate with the IMD before allowing the IMD to use any of its battery power. This thesis describes a simplified IMD that lacks its own radio, saving precious battery energy and therefore size. The simplified IMD instead depends on an RFID-scale TPC for all of its communication functions.
TPCs are a natural area of exploration for future electronic design, given the parallel trends of energy harvesting and miniaturization. This work aims to establish and evaluate basic principles by which TPCs can operate
Secure and efficient data extraction for ubiquitous computing applications
Ubiquitous computing creates a world where computers have blended seamlessly into our physical environment. In this world, a computer is no longer a monitor-and-keyboard setup, but everyday objects such as our clothing and furniture. Unlike current computer systems, most ubiquitous computing systems are built using small, embedded devices with limited computational, storage and communication abilities. A common requirement for many ubiquitous computing applications is to utilize the data from these small devices to perform more complex tasks. For critical applications such as healthcare or medical related applications, there is a need to ensure that only authorized users have timely access to the data found in the small device. In this dissertation, we study the problem of how to securely and efficiently extract data from small devices.;Our research considers two categories of small devices that are commonly used in ubiquitous computing, battery powered sensors and battery free RFID tags. Sensors are more powerful devices equipped with storage and sensing capabilities that are limited by battery power, whereas tags are less powerful devices with limited functionalities, but have the advantage of being operable without battery power. We also consider two types of data access patterns, local and remote access. In local data access, the application will query the tag or the sensor directly for the data, while in remote access, the data is already aggregated at a remote location and the application will query the remote location for the necessary information, The difference between local and remote access is that in local access, the tag or sensor only needs to authenticate the application before releasing the data, but in remote access, the small device may have to perform additional processing to ensure that the data remains secure after being collected. In this dissertation, we present secure and efficient local data access solutions for a single RFID tag, multiple RFID tags, and a single sensor, and remote data access solutions for both RFID tag and sensor
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