Achilles\u27 Heel: the Unbalanced Mask Sets May Destroy a Masking Countermeasure

Low Entropy Masking Scheme (LEMS) has attracted wide attention for its low-cost feature of small fixed mask sets in Side-Channel-Analysis (SCA). To achieve the expected side channel security, it is necessary to find a balanced mask set to reduce the correlations between key dependent variables and their corresponding leakages. However, the security proof of LEMS, based on an inadequate assumption, might lead to consequent mask sets proposed without balance property, which could cause vulnerable LEMS implementations. This paper focusing on correcting and improving this scheme, first gives the formal definitions of univariate balance property on mask sets and extends it to multivariate settings. From these definitions, we propose three fundamental properties to analyze the balance of mask sets in Rotating Sbox Masking (RSM), the most popular LEMS implementations. To demonstrate the definitions and properties, three state-of-the-art RSM mask sets were selected as research objects. The corresponding attacks when any properties violated distinctly indicate the necessity of evaluating the balance property of the mask set in advance (during the design phase). However, it is found impossible to get a mask set for the RSM with all three properties satisfied, which means the vulnerabilities of RSM scheme in its unbalanced mask set are unavoidable. Thus, this promising masking scheme may be broken for its unqualified mask set

Counterintelligence Technologies: An Exploratory Case Study of Preliminary Credibility Assessment Screening System in the Afghan National Defense and Security Forces

The preliminary credibility assessment screening system (PCASS) is a US-based program, which is currently being implemented by intelligence units of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) to make the initial screening of individuals suspected of infiltrating the Afghan National Defense and Security Forces (ANDSF). Sensors have been instrumental in the PCASS, leading to organizational change. The aim of this research is to describe how the ANDSF adapted to the implementation of PCASS, as well as implemented changes since the beginning of the program. To do so, we have conducted a qualitative, exploratory, and descriptive case study that allows one to understand, through the use of a series of data collection sources, a real-life phenomenon of which little is known. The results suggest that the sensors used in PCASS empower security forces with reliable technologies to identify and neutralize internal threats. It then becomes evident that the technological leadership that PCASS provides allows the developing of a relatively stable and consistent organizational change, fulfilling the objectives of the NATO and the ANDSF.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Incident Prioritisation for Intrusion Response Systems

The landscape of security threats continues to evolve, with attacks becoming more serious and the number of vulnerabilities rising. To manage these threats, many security studies have been undertaken in recent years, mainly focusing on improving detection, prevention and response efficiency. Although there are security tools such as antivirus software and firewalls available to counter them, Intrusion Detection Systems and similar tools such as Intrusion Prevention Systems are still one of the most popular approaches. There are hundreds of published works related to intrusion detection that aim to increase the efficiency and reliability of detection, prevention and response systems. Whilst intrusion detection system technologies have advanced, there are still areas available to explore, particularly with respect to the process of selecting appropriate responses. Supporting a variety of response options, such as proactive, reactive and passive responses, enables security analysts to select the most appropriate response in different contexts. In view of that, a methodical approach that identifies important incidents as opposed to trivial ones is first needed. However, with thousands of incidents identified every day, relying upon manual processes to identify their importance and urgency is complicated, difficult, error-prone and time-consuming, and so prioritising them automatically would help security analysts to focus only on the most critical ones. The existing approaches to incident prioritisation provide various ways to prioritise incidents, but less attention has been given to adopting them into an automated response system. Although some studies have realised the advantages of prioritisation, they released no further studies showing they had continued to investigate the effectiveness of the process. This study concerns enhancing the incident prioritisation scheme to identify critical incidents based upon their criticality and urgency, in order to facilitate an autonomous mode for the response selection process in Intrusion Response Systems. To achieve this aim, this study proposed a novel framework which combines models and strategies identified from the comprehensive literature review. A model to estimate the level of risks of incidents is established, named the Risk Index Model (RIM). With different levels of risk, the Response Strategy Model (RSM) dynamically maps incidents into different types of response, with serious incidents being mapped to active responses in order to minimise their impact, while incidents with less impact have passive responses. The combination of these models provides a seamless way to map incidents automatically; however, it needs to be evaluated in terms of its effectiveness and performances. To demonstrate the results, an evaluation study with four stages was undertaken; these stages were a feasibility study of the RIM, comparison studies with industrial standards such as Common Vulnerabilities Scoring System (CVSS) and Snort, an examination of the effect of different strategies in the rating and ranking process, and a test of the effectiveness and performance of the Response Strategy Model (RSM). With promising results being gathered, a proof-of-concept study was conducted to demonstrate the framework using a live traffic network simulation with online assessment mode via the Security Incident Prioritisation Module (SIPM); this study was used to investigate its effectiveness and practicality. Through the results gathered, this study has demonstrated that the prioritisation process can feasibly be used to facilitate the response selection process in Intrusion Response Systems. The main contribution of this study is to have proposed, designed, evaluated and simulated a framework to support the incident prioritisation process for Intrusion Response Systems.Ministry of Higher Education in Malaysia and University of Malay

Power analysis attack on masked AES implementation

Šifrovací algoritmy jsou dnes běžně používaným zabezpečovacím prvkem. V některých situacích je algoritmus provozován na speciálním modulu, aby nedocházelo k útokům pomocí internetu. Ovšem i na šifrovací modul může být zaútočeno a to pomocí útoku postranním kanálem. Díky nejrůznějším typům analýz proudových průběhů modulu se tajná data ocitají v nebezpečí. Útoky postranním kanálem využívají především znalosti šifrovacího algoritmu a jednoduché nebo diferenciální proudové analýzy. Diplomová práce se zaměřuje na útok, který by bylo možné uskutečnit diferenciální proudovou analýzou pro data uveřejněná v soutěži DPA Contest. Práce popisuje nejen různé techniky analýz a typy útoků, ale také novou implementaci DPACv4.2, pro kterou zároveň vypracovává korelační analýzu. Na jejím základě je diskutován možný typ útoku pro DPACv4.2.The cryptographic algorithms are commonly used as a security item today. In some situations, the special device is used to run the cryptographic algorithm, so the data are protected against the attack from the internet. Naturally, the attack can be loaded on the device as well using the side channel attack. The data are under the great danger, because nowadays plenty of power consumption analyses exist. The side channel attack uses knowledge about the cryptographic algoritm and simple or differential analysis. The diploma thesis focuses on the differential power analysis attack for the data published under the DPA contest. This thesis covers different types of analyss and attacks, and describes the new DPACv4.2 implementation. The correlation analysis is presented for the DPACv4.2 and the possible attack is discussed at the conclusion.

Women, Peace, and Security in Professional Military Education

The Women, Peace, and Security (WPS) Agenda is a global framework and policy tool that guides national actions addressing gender inequalities and the drivers of conflict and its impact on women and girls. By fostering structural and institutional change, the WPS agenda aims to 1) prevent conflict and all forms of violence against women and girls and 2) ensure the inclusion and participation of women in peace and security decision-making processes to incorporate their specific needs in relief and recovery situations. This volume gathers together student papers from the Joint Women, Peace, and Security Academic Forum's 2021 WPS in PME Writing Award program, a best-of selection of informative and empowering work that intersects with Department of Defense equities supporting global WPS principles. Student participants in the Joint WPS Academic Forum hail from prestigious DOD academic institutions, and this monograph shows how the strategic leaders of tomorrow embrace WPS today, offering a strong indication of how WPS principles will be implemented over time and how they will influence the paradigm of peace and security and our approaches to conflict prevention and resolution

RSM Outlook Summer 2014

#### Project Mainstream: Changing the Shape of Business (Lesa Sawahata) It has been clear for some time that finite resources, increasing commodities costs and the ever-greater demands of the world’s growing group of middle class consumers cannot be resolved with old business models. It’s time for a market evolution – and along with it, an economic revolution. #### Why the Circular Economy is a Cradle to Cradle Economy (Lesa Sawahata) RSM’s Cradle to Cradle Chair for Innovation and Quality – the only one of its kind in the world – places the faculty members behind it, and the school as a whole, right at the very heart of the global drive towards a circular economy

Privacy-preserving E-ticketing Systems for Public Transport Based on RFID/NFC Technologies

Pervasive digitization of human environment has dramatically changed our everyday lives. New technologies which have become an integral part of our daily routine have deeply affected our perception of the surrounding world and have opened qualitatively new opportunities. In an urban environment, the influence of such changes is especially tangible and acute. For example, ubiquitous computing (also commonly referred to as UbiComp) is a pure vision no more and has transformed the digital world dramatically. Pervasive use of smartphones, integration of processing power into various artefacts as well as the overall miniaturization of computing devices can already be witnessed on a daily basis even by laypersons. In particular, transport being an integral part of any urban ecosystem have been affected by these changes. Consequently, public transport systems have undergone transformation as well and are currently dynamically evolving. In many cities around the world, the concept of the so-called electronic ticketing (e-ticketing) is being extensively used for issuing travel permissions which may eventually result in conventional paper-based tickets being completely phased out already in the nearest future. Opal Card in Sydney, Oyster Card in London, Touch & Travel in Germany and many more are all the examples of how well the e-ticketing has been accepted both by customers and public transport companies. Despite numerous benefits provided by such e-ticketing systems for public transport, serious privacy concern arise. The main reason lies in the fact that using these systems may imply the dramatic multiplication of digital traces left by individuals, also beyond the transport scope. Unfortunately, there has been little effort so far to explicitly tackle this issue. There is still not enough motivation and public pressure imposed on industry to invest into privacy. In academia, the majority of solutions targeted at this problem quite often limit the real-world pertinence of the resultant privacy-preserving concepts due to the fact that inherent advantages of e-ticketing systems for public transport cannot be fully leveraged. This thesis is aimed at solving the aforementioned problem by providing a privacy-preserving framework which can be used for developing e-ticketing systems for public transport with privacy protection integrated from the outset. At the same time, the advantages of e-ticketing such as fine-grained billing, flexible pricing schemes, and transparent use (which are often the main drivers for public to roll out such systems) can be retained

A high-speed integrated circuit with applications to RSA Cryptography

Merged with duplicate record 10026.1/833 on 01.02.2017 by CS (TIS)The rapid growth in the use of computers and networks in government, commercial and private communications systems has led to an increasing need for these systems to be secure against unauthorised access and eavesdropping. To this end, modern computer security systems employ public-key ciphers, of which probably the most well known is the RSA ciphersystem, to provide both secrecy and authentication facilities. The basic RSA cryptographic operation is a modular exponentiation where the modulus and exponent are integers typically greater than 500 bits long. Therefore, to obtain reasonable encryption rates using the RSA cipher requires that it be implemented in hardware. This thesis presents the design of a high-performance VLSI device, called the WHiSpER chip, that can perform the modular exponentiations required by the RSA cryptosystem for moduli and exponents up to 506 bits long. The design has an expected throughput in excess of 64kbit/s making it attractive for use both as a general RSA processor within the security function provider of a security system, and for direct use on moderate-speed public communication networks such as ISDN. The thesis investigates the low-level techniques used for implementing high-speed arithmetic hardware in general, and reviews the methods used by designers of existing modular multiplication/exponentiation circuits with respect to circuit speed and efficiency. A new modular multiplication algorithm, MMDDAMMM, based on Montgomery arithmetic, together with an efficient multiplier architecture, are proposed that remove the speed bottleneck of previous designs. Finally, the implementation of the new algorithm and architecture within the WHiSpER chip is detailed, along with a discussion of the application of the chip to ciphering and key generation

Threshold Implementation in Software - Case Study of PRESENT

Masking is one of the predominantly deployed countermeasures in order to prevent side-channel analysis (SCA) attacks. Over the years, various masking schemes have been proposed. However, the implementation of Boolean masking schemes has proven to be difficult in particular for embedded devices due to undisclosed architecture details and device internals. In this article, we investigate the application of Threshold Implementation (TI) in terms of Boolean masking in software using the PRESENT cipher as a case study. Since TI has proven to be a proper solution in order to implement Boolean masking for hardware circuits, we apply the same concept for software implementations and compare it to classical first- and second-order Boolean masking schemes. Eventually, our practical security evaluations reveal that amongst all our considered implementation variants only the TI can provide first-order security while all others still exhibit detectable first-order leakage