7,718 research outputs found
Securing personal distributed environments
The Personal Distributed Environment (PDE) is a new concept being developed by Mobile VCE allowing future mobile users flexible access to their information and services. Unlike traditional mobile communications, the PDE user no longer needs to establish his or her personal communication link solely through one subscribing network but rather a diversity of disparate devices and access technologies whenever and wherever he or she requires. Depending on the servicesâ availability and coverage in the location, the PDE communication configuration could be, for instance, via a mobile radio system and a wireless ad hoc network or a digital broadcast system and a fixed telephone network. This new form of communication configuration inherently imposes newer and higher security challenges relating to identity and authorising issues especially when the number of involved entities, accessible network nodes and service providers, builds up. These also include the issue of how the subscribed service and the userâs personal information can be securely and seamlessly handed over via multiple networks, all of which can be changing dynamically. Without such security, users and operators will not be prepared to trust their information to other networks
Community-Based Security for the Internet of Things
With more and more devices becoming connectable to the internet, the number
of services but also a lot of threats increases dramatically. Security is often
a secondary matter behind functionality and comfort, but the problem has
already been recognized. Still, with many IoT devices being deployed already,
security will come step-by-step and through updates, patches and new versions
of apps and IoT software. While these updates can be safely retrieved from app
stores, the problems kick in via jailbroken devices and with the variety of
untrusted sources arising on the internet. Since hacking is typically a
community effort? these days, security could be a community goal too. The
challenges are manifold, and one reason for weak or absent security on IoT
devices is their weak computational power. In this chapter, we discuss a
community based security mechanism in which devices mutually aid each other in
secure software management. We discuss game-theoretic methods of community
formation and light-weight cryptographic means to accomplish authentic software
deployment inside the IoT device community
Cooperating broadcast and cellular conditional access system for digital television
This thesis was submitted for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy and awarded by Brunel University.The lack of interoperability between PayâTV service providers and a horizontally integrated business transaction model have compromised the competition in the PayâTV market. In addition, the lack of interactivity with customers has resulted in high churn rate and improper security measures have contributed into considerable business loss. These issues are the main cause of high operational costs and subscription fees in the PayâTV systems.
This paper presents a novel endâtoâend system architecture for PayâTV systems cooperating mobile and broadcasting technologies. It provides a costâeffective, scalable, dynamic and secure access control mechanism supporting converged services and new business opportunities in PayâTV systems. It enhances interactivity, security and potentially reduces customer attrition and operational cost. In this platform, service providers can effectively interact with their customers, personalise their services and adopt appropriate security measures. It breaks up the rigid relationship between a viewer and setâtop box as imposed by traditional conditional access systems, thus, a viewer can fully enjoy his entitlements via an arbitrary setâtop box.
Having thoroughly considered stateâofâtheâart technologies currently being used across the world, the thesis highlights novel use cases and presents the full design and implementation aspects of the system. The design section is enriched by providing possible security structures supported thereby. A business collaboration structure is proposed, followed by a reference model for implementing the system. Finally, the security architectures are analysed to propose the best architecture on the basis of security, complexity and setâtop box production cost criteria
Survey and Systematization of Secure Device Pairing
Secure Device Pairing (SDP) schemes have been developed to facilitate secure
communications among smart devices, both personal mobile devices and Internet
of Things (IoT) devices. Comparison and assessment of SDP schemes is
troublesome, because each scheme makes different assumptions about out-of-band
channels and adversary models, and are driven by their particular use-cases. A
conceptual model that facilitates meaningful comparison among SDP schemes is
missing. We provide such a model. In this article, we survey and analyze a wide
range of SDP schemes that are described in the literature, including a number
that have been adopted as standards. A system model and consistent terminology
for SDP schemes are built on the foundation of this survey, which are then used
to classify existing SDP schemes into a taxonomy that, for the first time,
enables their meaningful comparison and analysis.The existing SDP schemes are
analyzed using this model, revealing common systemic security weaknesses among
the surveyed SDP schemes that should become priority areas for future SDP
research, such as improving the integration of privacy requirements into the
design of SDP schemes. Our results allow SDP scheme designers to create schemes
that are more easily comparable with one another, and to assist the prevention
of persisting the weaknesses common to the current generation of SDP schemes.Comment: 34 pages, 5 figures, 3 tables, accepted at IEEE Communications
Surveys & Tutorials 2017 (Volume: PP, Issue: 99
Designing authentication with seniors in mind
Developers typically adopt perceived best practice, and in the case of authentication this means password security. However, given the wide range of technical solutions available and the diverse needs and limitations of older users, we suggest that the default adoption of electronic âusername and passwordâ authentication may not be 'best practice' or even good practice. This paper highlights some challenges faced by three seniors, each of whom has multiple age- related disabilities and concomitant life challenges. The result is that they cannot authenticate themselves when they need to access their devices and accounts. We conclude by suggesting a number of research directions calculated to address some of these challenges and promote inclusive design and allow for diverse user authentication
Pervasive and standalone computing: The perceptual effects of variable multimedia quality.
The introduction of multimedia on pervasive and mobile communication devices raises a number of perceptual quality issues, however, limited work has been done examining the 3-way interaction between use of equipment, quality of perception and quality of service. Our work measures levels of informational transfer (objective) and user satisfaction (subjective)when users are presented with multimedia video clips at three different frame rates, using four different display devices, simulating variation in participant mobility. Our results will show that variation in frame-rate does not impact a userâs level of information assimilation, however, does impact a usersâ perception of multimedia video âqualityâ. Additionally, increased visual immersion can be used to increase transfer of video information, but can negatively affect the usersâ perception of âqualityâ. Finally, we illustrate the significant affect of clip-content on the transfer of video, audio and textual information, placing into doubt the use of purely objective quality definitions when considering multimedia
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