Security and Performance Verification of Distributed Authentication and Authorization Tools

Parallel distributed systems are widely used for dealing with massive data sets and high performance computing. Securing parallel distributed systems is problematic. Centralized security tools are likely to cause bottlenecks and introduce a single point of failure. In this paper, we introduce existing distributed authentication and authorization tools. We evaluate the quality of the security tools by verifying their security and performance. For security tool verification, we use process calculus and mathematical modeling languages. Casper, Communicating Sequential Process (CSP) and Failure Divergence Refinement (FDR) to test for security vulnerabilities, Petri nets and Karp Miller trees are used to find performance issues of distributed authentication and authorization methods. Kerberos, PERMIS, and Shibboleth are evaluated. Kerberos is a ticket based distributed authentication service, PERMIS is a role and attribute based distributed authorization service, and Shibboleth is an integration solution for federated single sign-on authentication. We find no critical security and performance issues

A Method for Authentication Services in Wireless Networks

With the widespread use of wireless network services and applications, security is a major concern. From wireless network security aspects, authentication for services is very important especially in Internet banking. In this paper, an authentication method for wireless networks using dynamic key theory is presented. The dynamic key theory is used to produce “one time keys” for authentication. These one time keys will improve the efficiency and security of wireless authentication. It can be applied for Internet banking and services in wireless networks

Formal Analysis of MCAP Protocol Against Replay Attack

Replay attack is considered a common attacking technique that is used by adversaries to gain access to confidential information. Several approaches have been proposed to prevent replay attack in security-critical systems such as Automated Teller Machines (ATM) systems. Among those approaches is a recent one called the Mutual Chain Authentication Protocol for the Saudi Payments Network transactions (MCAP). This protocol aims to allow Saudi banking systems to overcome existing weaknesses in the currently used Two-Factor Authentication (2FA) protocols. In this paper, we analyze and verify the recent MCAP authentication protocol against replay attacks. Therefore, we examine the mutual authentication between the ATM Terminal, Sponsoring Banks (SBAT), Saudi Payments Network (SPAN) and the Issuing of Financial Bank (CIFI). The paper also provides a formal analysis of the MCAP to conduct formal proofs of the MCAP protocols against replay attacks

Innovative Location Based Scheme for Internet Security Protocol. A proposed Location Based Scheme N-Kerberos Security Protocol Using Intelligent Logic of Believes, Particularly by Modified BAN Logic.

The importance of the data authentication has resulted in the science of the data protection. Interest in this knowledge has been growing due to the increase in privacy of the user's identity, especially after the widespread use of online transactions. Many security techniques are available to maintain the privacy of the user's identity. These include password, smart card or token and face recognition or finger print. But unfortunately, the possibility to duplicate the identity of a user is still possible. Recently, specialists used the user's physical location as a new factor in order to increase the strength of the verification of the user's identity. This thesis focused on the authentication-based user's location. It is based on the idea of using the Global Position System in order to verify the user identity. Improving Kerberos protocol using GPS signal is proposed in order to eliminate the effect of replay attack. This proposal does not expect a high performance from the user during the implementation of the security system. Moreover, to give users more confidence to use security protocol, it has to be evaluated before accepting it. Thus, a measurement tool used to validate protocols called BAN logic was described. In this thesis, a new form of BAN logic which aims to raise the efficiency checking process of the protocol protection strength using the GPS signal is proposed. The proposed form of Kerberos protocol has been analysed using the new form of BAN logic. The new scheme has been tested and compared with the existing techniques to demonstrate its merits and capabilities

Secure entity authentication

According to Wikipedia, authentication is the act of confirming the truth of an attribute of a single piece of a datum claimed true by an entity. Specifically, entity authentication is the process by which an agent in a distributed system gains confidence in the identity of a communicating partner (Bellare et al.). Legacy password authentication is still the most popular one, however, it suffers from many limitations, such as hacking through social engineering techniques, dictionary attack or database leak. To address the security concerns in legacy password-based authentication, many new authentication factors are introduced, such as PINs (Personal Identification Numbers) delivered through out-of-band channels, human biometrics and hardware tokens. However, each of these authentication factors has its own inherent weaknesses and security limitations. For example, phishing is still effective even when using out-of-band-channels to deliver PINs (Personal Identification Numbers). In this dissertation, three types of secure entity authentication schemes are developed to alleviate the weaknesses and limitations of existing authentication mechanisms: (1) End user authentication scheme based on Network Round-Trip Time (NRTT) to complement location based authentication mechanisms; (2) Apache Hadoop authentication mechanism based on Trusted Platform Module (TPM) technology; and (3) Web server authentication mechanism for phishing detection with a new detection factor NRTT. In the first work, a new authentication factor based on NRTT is presented. Two research challenges (i.e., the secure measurement of NRTT and the network instabilities) are addressed to show that NRTT can be used to uniquely and securely identify login locations and hence can support location-based web authentication mechanisms. The experiments and analysis show that NRTT has superior usability, deploy-ability, security, and performance properties compared to the state-of-the-art web authentication factors. In the second work, departing from the Kerb eros-centric approach, an authentication framework for Hadoop that utilizes Trusted Platform Module (TPM) technology is proposed. It is proven that pushing the security down to the hardware level in conjunction with software techniques provides better protection over software only solutions. The proposed approach provides significant security guarantees against insider threats, which manipulate the execution environment without the consent of legitimate clients. Extensive experiments are conducted to validate the performance and the security properties of the proposed approach. Moreover, the correctness and the security guarantees are formally proved via Burrows-Abadi-Needham (BAN) logic. In the third work, together with a phishing victim identification algorithm, NRTT is used as a new phishing detection feature to improve the detection accuracy of existing phishing detection approaches. The state-of-art phishing detection methods fall into two categories: heuristics and blacklist. The experiments show that the combination of NRTT with existing heuristics can improve the overall detection accuracy while maintaining a low false positive rate. In the future, to develop a more robust and efficient phishing detection scheme, it is paramount for phishing detection approaches to carefully select the features that strike the right balance between detection accuracy and robustness in the face of potential manipulations. In addition, leveraging Deep Learning (DL) algorithms to improve the performance of phishing detection schemes could be a viable alternative to traditional machine learning algorithms (e.g., SVM, LR), especially when handling complex and large scale datasets

Verifying parameterized timed security protocols

Quantitative timing is often explicitly used in systems for better security, e.g., the credentials for automatic website logon often has limited lifetime. Verifying timing relevant security protocols in these systems is very challenging as timing adds another dimension of complexity compared with the untimed protocol verification. In our previous work, we proposed an approach to check the correctness of the timed authentication in security protocols with fixed timing constraints. However, a more difficult question persists, i.e., given a particular protocol design, whether the protocol has security flaws in its design or it can be configured secure with proper parameter values? In this work, we answer this question by proposing a parameterized verification framework, where the quantitative parameters in the protocols can be intuitively specified as well as automatically analyzed. Given a security protocol, our verification algorithm either produces the secure constraints of the parameters, or constructs an attack that works for any parameter values. The correctness of our algorithm is formally proved. We implement our method into a tool called PTAuth and evaluate it with several security protocols. Using PTAuth, we have successfully found a timing attack in Kerberos V which is unreported before.No Full Tex

A formal specification and verification framework for timed security protocols

Nowadays, protocols often use time to provide better security. For instance, critical credentials are often associated with expiry dates in system designs. However, using time correctly in protocol design is challenging, due to the lack of time related formal specification and verification techniques. Thus, we propose a comprehensive analysis framework to formally specify as well as automatically verify timed security protocols. A parameterized method is introduced in our framework to handle timing parameters whose values cannot be decided in the protocol design stage. In this work, we first propose timed applied π-calculus as a formal language for specifying timed security protocols. It supports modeling of continuous time as well as application of cryptographic functions. Then, we define its formal semantics based on timed logic rules, which facilitates efficient verification against various authentication and secrecy properties. Given a parameterized security protocol, our method either produces a constraint on the timing parameters which guarantees the security property satisfied by the protocol, or reports an attack that works for any parameter value. The correctness of our verification algorithm has been formally proved. We evaluate our framework with multiple timed and untimed security protocols and successfully find a previously unknown timing attack in Kerberos V