PROVIDE: hiding from automated network scans with proofs of identity

Network scanners are a valuable tool for researchers and administrators, however they are also used by malicious actors to identify vulnerable hosts on a network. Upon the disclosure of a security vulnerability, scans are launched within hours. These opportunistic attackers enumerate blocks of IP addresses in hope of discovering an exploitable host. Fortunately, defensive measures such as port knocking protocols (PKPs) allow a service to remain stealth to unauthorized IP addresses. The service is revealed only when a client includes a special authentication token (AT) in the IP/TCP header. However this AT is generated from a secret shared between the clients/servers and distributed manually to each endpoint. As a result, these defense measures have failed to be widely adopted by other protocols such as HTTP/S due to challenges in distributing the shared secrets. In this paper we propose a scalable solution to this problem for services accessed by domain name. We make the following observation: automated network scanners access servers by IP address, while legitimate clients access the server by name. Therefore a service should only reveal itself to clients who know its name. Based on this principal, we have created a proof of the verifier’s identity (a.k.a. PROVIDE) protocol that allows a prover (legitimate user) to convince a verifier (service) that it is knowledgeable of the verifier’s identity. We present a PROVIDE implementation using a PKP and DNS (PKP+DNS) that uses DNS TXT records to distribute identification tokens (IDT) while DNS PTR records for the service’s domain name are prohibited to prevent reverse DNS lookups. Clients are modified to make an additional DNS TXT query to obtain the IDT which is used by the PKP to generate an AT. The inclusion of an AT in the packet header, generated from the DNS TXT query, is proof the client knows the service’s identity. We analyze the effectiveness of this mechanism with respect to brute force attempts for various strength ATs and discuss practical considerations.This work has been supported by the National Science Foundation (NSF) awards #1430145, #1414119, and #1012798

NSEC5, DNSSEC authenticated denial of existence

The Domain Name System Security Extensions (DNSSEC) introduced two resource records (RR) for authenticated denial of existence: the NSEC RR and the NSEC3 RR. This document introduces NSEC5 as an alternative mechanism for DNSSEC authenticated denial of existence. NSEC5 uses verifiable random functions (VRFs) to prevent offline enumeration of zone contents. NSEC5 also protects the integrity of the zone contents even if an adversary compromises one of the authoritative servers for the zone. Integrity is preserved because NSEC5 does not require private zone-signing keys to be present on all authoritative servers for the zone, in contrast to DNSSEC online signing schemes like NSEC3 White Lies.https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/draft-vcelak-nsec5/First author draf

Dynamic Trust Federation in Grids

Grids are becoming economically viable and productive tools. Grids provide a way of utilizing a vast array of linked resources such as computing systems, databases and services online within Virtual Organizations (VO). However, today’s Grid architectures are not capable of supporting dynamic, agile federation across multiple administrative domains and the main barrier, which hinders dynamic federation over short time scales is security. Federating security and trust is one of the most significant architectural issues in Grids. Existing relevant standards and specifications can be used to federate security services, but do not directly address the dynamic extension of business trust relationships into the digital domain. In this paper we describe an experiment in which we highlight those challenging architectural issues and we will further describe how the approach that combines dynamic trust federation and dynamic authorization mechanism can address dynamic security trust federation in Grids. The experiment made with the prototype described in this paper is used in the NextGRID project for the definition of requirements for next generation Grid architectures adapted to business application need

Verifying and Monitoring IoTs Network Behavior using MUD Profiles

IoT devices are increasingly being implicated in cyber-attacks, raising community concern about the risks they pose to critical infrastructure, corporations, and citizens. In order to reduce this risk, the IETF is pushing IoT vendors to develop formal specifications of the intended purpose of their IoT devices, in the form of a Manufacturer Usage Description (MUD), so that their network behavior in any operating environment can be locked down and verified rigorously. This paper aims to assist IoT manufacturers in developing and verifying MUD profiles, while also helping adopters of these devices to ensure they are compatible with their organizational policies and track devices network behavior based on their MUD profile. Our first contribution is to develop a tool that takes the traffic trace of an arbitrary IoT device as input and automatically generates the MUD profile for it. We contribute our tool as open source, apply it to 28 consumer IoT devices, and highlight insights and challenges encountered in the process. Our second contribution is to apply a formal semantic framework that not only validates a given MUD profile for consistency, but also checks its compatibility with a given organizational policy. We apply our framework to representative organizations and selected devices, to demonstrate how MUD can reduce the effort needed for IoT acceptance testing. Finally, we show how operators can dynamically identify IoT devices using known MUD profiles and monitor their behavioral changes on their network.Comment: 17 pages, 17 figures. arXiv admin note: text overlap with arXiv:1804.0435

User-Relative Names for Globally Connected Personal Devices

Nontechnical users who own increasingly ubiquitous network-enabled personal devices such as laptops, digital cameras, and smart phones need a simple, intuitive, and secure way to share information and services between their devices. User Information Architecture, or UIA, is a novel naming and peer-to-peer connectivity architecture addressing this need. Users assign UIA names by "introducing" devices to each other on a common local-area network, but these names remain securely bound to their target as devices migrate. Multiple devices owned by the same user, once introduced, automatically merge their namespaces to form a distributed "personal cluster" that the owner can access or modify from any of his devices. Instead of requiring users to allocate globally unique names from a central authority, UIA enables users to assign their own "user-relative" names both to their own devices and to other users. With UIA, for example, Alice can always access her iPod from any of her own personal devices at any location via the name "ipod", and her friend Bob can access her iPod via a relative name like "ipod.Alice".Comment: 7 pages, 1 figure, 1 tabl

Infrastructure of DNS/DNSSEC

DNS Security Extension is introduced as a solution after the in-depth study of all expected issues regarding security of Domain Name System. Accordingly, DNS is domain name service provider via name server but it fails to facilitate the support for authenticity of data origin and integrity. In addition, DNS satirizing give stage to digital assaults, and can be used to watch client's exercises, for control, for conveyance of pernicious programming and to offend client's PC and even to subvert rightness and accessibility of internet systems and administrations. Therefore, it is fundamental to attract DNS framework to defeat security concerns, and to make cautious arrangement that should adapt to assaults through off way foes. So, we have broken down security of area enlistment centers and name server completely and we deal with vulnerabilities, which should open DNS foundation to store harming. In this paper, we gave the DNSSEC structure and showed how it is secure using DNSSEC

Evaluation of Dnssec in Microsoft Windows and Microsoft Windows Server 2008 R2

The Domain Name System (DNS) provides important name resolution services on the Internet. The DNS has been found to have security flaws which have the potential to undermine the reliability of many Internet-based systems. DNS Security Extensions (DNSSEC) offers a long-term solution these DNS security flaws. However, DNSSEC adoption has been slow because it is challenging to deploy and administer. DNSSEC has also been criticized for not being an end-toend solution. Microsoft included support for DNSSEC in its latest operating systems, Windows Server 2008 R2 and Windows 7. This thesis concluded that DNSSEC features in Windows Server 2008 R2 and Windows 7 are not fully developed and are unlikely to impact DNSSEC adoption rates

Is DNS Ready for Ubiquitous Internet of Things?

The vision of the Internet of Things (IoT) covers not only the well-regulated processes of specific applications in different areas but also includes ubiquitous connectivity of more generic objects (or things and devices) in the physical world and the related information in the virtual world. For example, a typical IoT application, such as a smart city, includes smarter urban transport networks, upgraded water supply, and waste-disposal facilities, along with more efficient ways to light and heat buildings. For smart city applications and others, we require unique naming of every object and a secure, scalable, and efficient name resolution which can provide access to any object\u27s inherent attributes with its name. Based on different motivations, many naming principles and name resolution schemes have been proposed. Some of them are based on the well-known domain name system (DNS), which is the most important infrastructure in the current Internet, while others are based on novel designing principles to evolve the Internet. Although the DNS is evolving in its functionality and performance, it was not originally designed for the IoT applications. Then, a fundamental question that arises is: can current DNS adequately provide the name service support for IoT in the future? To address this question, we analyze the strengths and challenges of DNS when it is used to support ubiquitous IoT. First, we analyze the requirements of the IoT name service by using five characteristics, namely security, mobility, infrastructure independence, localization, and efficiency, which we collectively refer to as SMILE. Then, we discuss the pros and cons of the DNS in satisfying SMILE in the context of the future evolution of the IoT environment