Advanced Topics in Systems Safety and Security

This book presents valuable research results in the challenging field of systems (cyber)security. It is a reprint of the Information (MDPI, Basel) - Special Issue (SI) on Advanced Topics in Systems Safety and Security. The competitive review process of MDPI journals guarantees the quality of the presented concepts and results. The SI comprises high-quality papers focused on cutting-edge research topics in cybersecurity of computer networks and industrial control systems. The contributions presented in this book are mainly the extended versions of selected papers presented at the 7th and the 8th editions of the International Workshop on Systems Safety and Security—IWSSS. These two editions took place in Romania in 2019 and respectively in 2020. In addition to the selected papers from IWSSS, the special issue includes other valuable and relevant contributions. The papers included in this reprint discuss various subjects ranging from cyberattack or criminal activities detection, evaluation of the attacker skills, modeling of the cyber-attacks, and mobile application security evaluation. Given this diversity of topics and the scientific level of papers, we consider this book a valuable reference for researchers in the security and safety of systems

A Defense Framework Against Denial-of-Service in Computer Networks

Denial-of-Service (DoS) is a computer security problem that poses a serious challenge totrustworthiness of services deployed over computer networks. The aim of DoS attacks isto make services unavailable to legitimate users, and current network architectures alloweasy-to-launch, hard-to-stop DoS attacks. Particularly challenging are the service-level DoSattacks, whereby the victim service is flooded with legitimate-like requests, and the jammingattack, in which wireless communication is blocked by malicious radio interference. Theseattacks are overwhelming even for massively-resourced services, and effective and efficientdefenses are highly needed. This work contributes a novel defense framework, which I call dodging, against service-level DoS and wireless jamming. Dodging has two components: (1) the careful assignment ofservers to clients to achieve accurate and quick identification of service-level DoS attackersand (2) the continuous and unpredictable-to-attackers reconfiguration of the client-serverassignment and the radio-channel mapping to withstand service-level and jamming DoSattacks. Dodging creates hard-to-evade baits, or traps, and dilutes the attack "fire power".The traps identify the attackers when they violate the mapping function and even when theyattack while correctly following the mapping function. Moreover, dodging keeps attackers"in the dark", trying to follow the unpredictably changing mapping. They may hit a fewtimes but lose "precious" time before they are identified and stopped. Three dodging-based DoS defense algorithms are developed in this work. They are moreresource-efficient than state-of-the-art DoS detection and mitigation techniques. Honeybees combines channel hopping and error-correcting codes to achieve bandwidth-efficientand energy-efficient mitigation of jamming in multi-radio networks. In roaming honeypots, dodging enables the camouflaging of honeypots, or trap machines, as real servers,making it hard for attackers to locate and avoid the traps. Furthermore, shuffling requestsover servers opens up windows of opportunity, during which legitimate requests are serviced.Live baiting, efficiently identifies service-level DoS attackers by employing results fromthe group-testing theory, discovering defective members in a population using the minimumnumber of tests. The cost and benefit of the dodging algorithms are analyzed theoretically,in simulation, and using prototype experiments

Twenty security considerations for cloud-supported Internet of Things

To realise the broad vision of pervasive computing, underpinned by the “Internet of Things” (IoT), it is essential to break down application and technology-based silos and support broad connectivity and data sharing; the cloud being a natural enabler. Work in IoT tends towards the subsystem, often focusing on particular technical concerns or application domains, before offloading data to the cloud. As such, there has been little regard given to the security, privacy and personal safety risks that arise beyond these subsystems; that is, from the wide-scale, crossplatform openness that cloud services bring to IoT. In this paper we focus on security considerations for IoT from the perspectives of cloud tenants, end-users and cloud providers, in the context of wide-scale IoT proliferation, working across the range of IoT technologies (be they things or entire IoT subsystems). Our contribution is to analyse the current state of cloud-supported IoT to make explicit the security considerations that require further work.This work was supported by UK Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council grant EP/K011510 CloudSafetyNet: End-to-End Application Security in the Cloud and Microsoft through the Microsoft Cloud Computing Research Centre

Enable Reliable and Secure Data Transmission in Resource-Constrained Emerging Networks

The increasing deployment of wireless devices has connected humans and objects all around the world, benefiting our daily life and the entire society in many aspects. Achieving those connectivity motivates the emergence of different types of paradigms, such as cellular networks, large-scale Internet of Things (IoT), cognitive networks, etc. Among these networks, enabling reliable and secure data transmission requires various resources including spectrum, energy, and computational capability. However, these resources are usually limited in many scenarios, especially when the number of devices is considerably large, bringing catastrophic consequences to data transmission. For example, given the fact that most of IoT devices have limited computational abilities and inadequate security protocols, data transmission is vulnerable to various attacks such as eavesdropping and replay attacks, for which traditional security approaches are unable to address. On the other hand, in the cellular network, the ever-increasing data traffic has exacerbated the depletion of spectrum along with the energy consumption. As a result, mobile users experience significant congestion and delays when they request data from the cellular service provider, especially in many crowded areas. In this dissertation, we target on reliable and secure data transmission in resource-constrained emerging networks. The first two works investigate new security challenges in the current heterogeneous IoT environment, and then provide certain countermeasures for reliable data communication. To be specific, we identify a new physical-layer attack, the signal emulation attack, in the heterogeneous environment, such as smart home IoT. To defend against the attack, we propose two defense strategies with the help of a commonly found wireless device. In addition, to enable secure data transmission in large-scale IoT network, e.g., the industrial IoT, we apply the amply-and-forward cooperative communication to increase the secrecy capacity by incentivizing relay IoT devices. Besides security concerns in IoT network, we seek data traffic alleviation approaches to achieve reliable and energy-efficient data transmission for a group of users in the cellular network. The concept of mobile participation is introduced to assist data offloading from the base station to users in the group by leveraging the mobility of users and the social features among a group of users. Following with that, we deploy device-to-device data offloading within the group to achieve the energy efficiency at the user side while adapting to their increasing traffic demands. In the end, we consider a perpendicular topic - dynamic spectrum access (DSA) - to alleviate the spectrum scarcity issue in cognitive radio network, where the spectrum resource is limited to users. Specifically, we focus on the security concerns and further propose two physical-layer schemes to prevent spectrum misuse in DSA in both additive white Gaussian noise and fading environments

IoT: Communication protocols and security threats

In this study, we review the fundamentals of IoT architecture and we thoroughly present the communication protocols that have been invented especially for IoT technology. Moreover, we analyze security threats, and general implementation problems, presenting several sectors that can benefit the most from IoT development. Discussion over the findings of this review reveals open issues and challenges and specifies the next steps required to expand and support IoT systems in a secure framework

Improved Cauchy Reed-Solomon Codes for Cloud Data Retrieval and Secured Data Storage using Role-Based Cryptographic Access and forensic investigation

Doling out client consent strategies to PC frameworks presents a huge test in guaranteeing legitimate approval, especially with the development of open frameworks and scattered stages like the cloud.  RBAC  has turned into a broadly involved strategy in cloud server applications because of its versatility. Granting access to cloud-stored data for investigating potential wrongdoings is crucial in computer forensic investigations. In cases where the cloud service provider's reliability is questionable, maintaining data confidentiality and establishing an efficient procedure for revoking access upon credential expiration is essential. As storage systems expand across vast networks, frequent component failures require stronger fault tolerance measures. Our work secure data-sharing system combines role (Authorized) based access control and AES encryption technology to provide safe key distribution and data sharing for dynamic groups. Data recovery entails protecting data dispersed over distributed systems by storing duplicate data and applying the erasure code technique. Erasure coding strategies, like Reed-Solomon codes, guarantee disc failure robustness while cutting down on data storage expenses dramatically. They do, however, also result in longer access times and more expensive repairs. Consequently, there has been a great deal of interest in academic and business circles for the investigation of novel coding strategies for cloud storage systems. The objective of this study is to present a novel coding method that utilizes the intricate Cauchy matrix in order to improve Reed-Solomon coding efficiency and strengthen fault tolerance

Analysis of affordance, time and adaptation in the assessment of industrial control system cybersecurity risk

Industrial control systems increasingly use standard communication protocols and are increasingly connected to public networks—creating substantial cybersecurity risks, especially when used in critical infrastructures such as electricity and water distribution systems. Methods of assessing risk in such systems have recognized for some time the way in which the strategies of potential adversaries and risk managers interact in defining the risk to which such systems are exposed. But it is also important to consider the adaptations of the systems’ operators and other legitimate users to risk controls, adaptations that often appear to undermine these controls, or shift the risk from one part of a system to another. Unlike the case with adversarial risk analysis, the adaptations of system users are typically orthogonal to the objective of minimizing or maximizing risk in the system. We argue that this need to analyze potential adaptations to risk controls is true for risk problems more generally, and we develop a framework for incorporating such adaptations into an assessment process. The method is based on the principle of affordances, and we show how this can be incorporated in an iterative procedure based on raising the minimum period of risk materialization above some threshold. We apply the method in a case study of a small European utility provider and discuss the observations arising from this

Security of Ubiquitous Computing Systems

The chapters in this open access book arise out of the EU Cost Action project Cryptacus, the objective of which was to improve and adapt existent cryptanalysis methodologies and tools to the ubiquitous computing framework. The cryptanalysis implemented lies along four axes: cryptographic models, cryptanalysis of building blocks, hardware and software security engineering, and security assessment of real-world systems. The authors are top-class researchers in security and cryptography, and the contributions are of value to researchers and practitioners in these domains. This book is open access under a CC BY license