Blueprint for a Science of Cybersecurity

A secure system must defend against all possible attacks--including those unknown to the defender. But defenders, having limited resources, typically develop defenses only for attacks they know about. New kinds of attacks are then likely to succeed. So our growing dependence on networked computing systems puts at risk individuals, commercial enterprises, the public sector, and our military

Integrating Sensor-Network Research and Development into a Software Engineering Curriculum

The emergence of a sensor-networked world produces a clear and urgent need for well-planned, safe and secure software engineering. It is the role of universities to prepare graduates with the knowledge and experience to enter the work-force with a clear understanding of software design and its application to the future safety of computing. The snBench (Sensor Network WorkBench) project aims to provide support to the programming and deployment of Sensor Network Applications, enabling shared sensor embedded spaces to be easily tasked with various sensory applications by different users for simultaneous execution. In this report we discus our experience using the snBench research project as the foundation for semester-long project in a graduate level software engineering class at Boston University (CS511)

A secure over-the-air programming scheme in wireless sensor networks

Over-The-Air dissemination of code updates in Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) have been researchers’ point of interest in past a few years and more importantly security challenges toward remote propagation of code update have taken the majority of efforts in this context. Many security models have been proposed to establish a balance between the energy consumption and security strengthen with having their concentration on constraint nature of WSN nodes. For authentication purposes most of them have used Merkle-Hash-Tree to avoid using multiple public cryptography operations. These models mostly have assumed an environment in which security has to be in a standard level and therefore they have not investigated the tree structure for mission-critical situations in which security has to be in maximum possible extent (e.g. military zones). Two major problems have been identified in Merkle Tree structure which is used in Seluge scheme, including: 1) an exponential growth in number of overhead packets when block size of hash algorithm used in design is increased. 2) Limitation of using hash algorithms with larger block size of 11 bytes when payload size is set to 72 bytes. Then several existing security models are investigated for possible vulnerabilities and a set of countermeasures correspondingly named Security Model Requirements (SMR) is provided. After concentrating on Seluge’s design, a new secure Over-The-Air Programming (OTAP) scheme named Seluge++ is proposed that complies with SMR and replaces the use of inefficient Merkle Tree with a novel method

Managed ecosystems of networked objects

Small embedded devices such as sensors and actuators will become the cornerstone of the Future Internet. To this end, generic, open and secure communication and service platforms are needed in order to be able to exploit the new business opportunities these devices bring. In this paper, we evaluate the current efforts to integrate sensors and actuators into the Internet and identify the limitations at the level of cooperation of these Internet-connected objects and the possible intelligence at the end points. As a solution, we propose the concept of Managed Ecosystem of Networked Objects, which aims to create a smart network architecture for groups of Internet-connected objects by combining network virtualization and clean-slate end-to-end protocol design. The concept maps to many real-life scenarios and should empower application developers to use sensor data in an easy and natural way. At the same time, the concept introduces many new challenging research problems, but their realization could offer a meaningful contribution to the realization of the Internet of Things

Systems and methods for automated detection of application vulnerabilities

*/Board of Regents, University of Texas Syste

Supporting Cyber-Physical Systems with Wireless Sensor Networks: An Outlook of Software and Services

Sensing, communication, computation and control technologies are the essential building blocks of a cyber-physical system (CPS). Wireless sensor networks (WSNs) are a way to support CPS as they provide fine-grained spatial-temporal sensing, communication and computation at a low premium of cost and power. In this article, we explore the fundamental concepts guiding the design and implementation of WSNs. We report the latest developments in WSN software and services for meeting existing requirements and newer demands; particularly in the areas of: operating system, simulator and emulator, programming abstraction, virtualization, IP-based communication and security, time and location, and network monitoring and management. We also reflect on the ongoing efforts in providing dependable assurances for WSN-driven CPS. Finally, we report on its applicability with a case-study on smart buildings

Performance analysis with network-enhanced complexities: On fading measurements, event-triggered mechanisms, and cyber attacks

Copyright © 2014 Derui Ding et al. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.Nowadays, the real-world systems are usually subject to various complexities such as parameter uncertainties, time-delays, and nonlinear disturbances. For networked systems, especially large-scale systems such as multiagent systems and systems over sensor networks, the complexities are inevitably enhanced in terms of their degrees or intensities because of the usage of the communication networks. Therefore, it would be interesting to (1) examine how this kind of network-enhanced complexities affects the control or filtering performance; and (2) develop some suitable approaches for controller/filter design problems. In this paper, we aim to survey some recent advances on the performance analysis and synthesis with three sorts of fashionable network-enhanced complexities, namely, fading measurements, event-triggered mechanisms, and attack behaviors of adversaries. First, these three kinds of complexities are introduced in detail according to their engineering backgrounds, dynamical characteristic, and modelling techniques. Then, the developments of the performance analysis and synthesis issues for various networked systems are systematically reviewed. Furthermore, some challenges are illustrated by using a thorough literature review and some possible future research directions are highlighted.This work was supported in part by the National Natural Science Foundation of China under Grants 61134009, 61329301, 61203139, 61374127, and 61374010, the Royal Society of the UK, and the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation of Germany