Secure Communication using Identity Based Encryption

Secured communication has been widely deployed to guarantee confidentiality and\ud integrity of connections over untrusted networks, e.g., the Internet. Although\ud secure connections are designed to prevent attacks on the connection, they hide\ud attacks inside the channel from being analyzed by Intrusion Detection Systems\ud (IDS). Furthermore, secure connections require a certain key exchange at the\ud initialization phase, which is prone to Man-In-The-Middle (MITM) attacks. In this paper, we present a new method to secure connection which enables Intrusion Detection and overcomes the problem of MITM attacks. We propose to apply Identity Based Encryption (IBE) to secure a communication channel. The key escrow property of IBE is used to recover the decryption key, decrypt network traffic on the fly, and scan for malicious content. As the public key can be generated based on the identity of the connected server and its exchange is not necessary, MITM attacks are not easy to be carried out any more. A prototype of a modified TLS scheme is implemented and proved with a simple client-server application. Based on this prototype, a new IDS sensor is developed to be capable of identifying IBE encrypted secure traffic on the fly. A deployment architecture of the IBE sensor in a company network is proposed. Finally, we show the applicability by a practical experiment and some preliminary performance measurements

SEABASS: Symmetric-keychain Encryption and Authentication for Building Automation Systems

There is an increasing security risk in Building Automation Systems (BAS) in that its communication is unprotected, resulting in the adversary having the capability to inject spurious commands to the actuators to alter the behaviour of BAS. The communication between the Human-Machine-Interface (HMI) and the controller (PLC) is vulnerable as there is no secret key being used to protect the authenticity, confidentiality and integrity of the sensor data and commands. We propose SEABASS, a lightweight key management scheme to distribute and manage session keys between HMI and PLCs, providing a secure communication channel between any two communicating devices in BAS through a symmetric-key based hash-chain encryption and authentication of message exchange. Our scheme facilitates automatic renewal of session keys periodically based on the use of a reversed hash-chain. A prototype was implemented using the BACnet/IP communication protocol and the preliminary results show that the symmetric keychain approach is lightweight and incurs low latency

Information Accountability Framework for a Trusted Health Care System

Trusted health care outcomes are patient centric. Requirements to ensure both the quality and sharing of patients’ health records are a key for better clinical decision making. In the context of maintaining quality health, the sharing of data and information between professionals and patients is paramount. This information sharing is a challenge and costly if patients’ trust and institutional accountability are not established. Establishment of an Information Accountability Framework (IAF) is one of the approaches in this paper. The concept behind the IAF requirements are: transparent responsibilities, relevance of the information being used, and the establishment and evidence of accountability that all lead to the desired outcome of a Trusted Health Care System. Upon completion of this IAF framework the trust component between the public and professionals will be constructed. Preservation of the confidentiality and integrity of patients’ information will lead to trusted health care outcomes

Securing the Internet of Things Infrastructure - Standards and Techniques

The Internet of Things (IoT) infrastructure is a conglomerate of electronic devices interconnected through the Internet, with the purpose of providing prompt and effective service to end-users. Applications running on an IoT infrastructure generally handle sensitive information such as a patient’s healthcare record, the position of a logistic vehicle, or the temperature readings obtained through wireless sensor nodes deployed in a bushland. The protection of such information from unlawful disclosure, tampering or modification, as well as the unscathed presence of IoT devices, in adversarial environments, is of prime concern. In this paper, a descriptive analysis of the security of standards and technologies for protecting the IoT communication channel from adversarial threats is provided. In addition, two paradigms for securing the IoT infrastructure, namely, common key based and paired key based, are proposed