2 P2P or Not 2 P2P?

In the hope of stimulating discussion, we present a heuristic decision tree that designers can use to judge the likely suitability of a P2P architecture for their applications. It is based on the characteristics of a wide range of P2P systems from the literature, both proposed and deployed.Comment: 6 pages, 1 figur

Security risk assessment in cloud computing domains

Cyber security is one of the primary concerns persistent across any computing platform. While addressing the apprehensions about security risks, an infinite amount of resources cannot be invested in mitigation measures since organizations operate under budgetary constraints. Therefore the task of performing security risk assessment is imperative to designing optimal mitigation measures, as it provides insight about the strengths and weaknesses of different assets affiliated to a computing platform. The objective of the research presented in this dissertation is to improve upon existing risk assessment frameworks and guidelines associated to different key assets of Cloud computing domains - infrastructure, applications, and users. The dissertation presents various informal approaches of performing security risk assessment which will help to identify the security risks confronted by the aforementioned assets, and utilize the results to carry out the required cost-benefit tradeoff analyses. This will be beneficial to organizations by aiding them in better comprehending the security risks their assets are exposed to and thereafter secure them by designing cost-optimal mitigation measures --Abstract, page iv

Anomaly Detection and Encrypted Programming Forensics for Automation Controllers

Securing the critical infrastructure of the United States is of utmost importance in ensuring the security of the nation. To secure this complex system a structured approach such as the NIST Cybersecurity framework is used, but systems are only as secure as the sum of their parts. Understanding the capabilities of the individual devices, developing tools to help detect misoperations, and providing forensic evidence for incidence response are all essential to mitigating risk. This thesis examines the SEL-3505 RTAC to demonstrate the importance of existing security capabilities as well as creating new processes and tools to support the NIST Framework. The research examines the potential pitfalls of having small-form factor devices in poorly secured and geographically disparate locations. Additionally, the research builds a data-collection framework to provide a proof of concept anomaly detection system for detecting network intrusions by recognizing the change in task time distribution. Statistical tests distinguish between normal and anomalous behaviour. The high true positive rates and low false positive rates show the merit of such an anomaly detection system. Finally, the work presents a network forensic process for recreating control logic from encrypted programming traffic

New directions for remote data integrity checking of cloud storage

Cloud storage services allow data owners to outsource their data, and thus reduce their workload and cost in data storage and management. However, most data owners today are still reluctant to outsource their data to the cloud storage providers (CSP), simply because they do not trust the CSPs, and have no confidence that the CSPs will secure their valuable data. This dissertation focuses on Remote Data Checking (RDC), a collection of protocols which can allow a client (data owner) to check the integrity of data outsourced at an untrusted server, and thus to audit whether the server fulfills its contractual obligations. Robustness has not been considered for the dynamic RDCs in the literature. The R-DPDP scheme being designed is the first RDC scheme that provides robustness and, at the same time, supports dynamic data updates, while requiring small, constant, client storage. The main challenge that has to be overcome is to reduce the client-server communication during updates under an adversarial setting. A security analysis for R-DPDP is provided. Single-server RDCs are useful to detect server misbehavior, but do not have provisions to recover damaged data. Thus in practice, they should be extended to a distributed setting, in which the data is stored redundantly at multiple servers. The client can use RDC to check each server and, upon having detected a corrupted server, it can repair this server by retrieving data from healthy servers, so that the reliability level can be maintained. Previously, RDC has been investigated for replication-based and erasure coding-based distributed storage systems. However, RDC has not been investigated for network coding-based distributed storage systems that rely on untrusted servers. RDC-NC is the first RDC scheme for network coding-based distributed storage systems to ensure data remain intact when faced with data corruption, replay, and pollution attacks. Experimental evaluation shows that RDC-NC is inexpensive for both the clients and the servers. The setting considered so far outsources the storage of the data, but the data owner is still heavily involved in the data management process (especially during the repair of damaged data). A new paradigm is proposed, in which the data owner fully outsources both the data storage and the management of the data. In traditional distributed RDC schemes, the repair phase imposes a significant burden on the client, who needs to expend a significant amount of computation and communication, thus, it is very difficult to keep the client lightweight. A new self-repairing concept is developed, in which the servers are responsible to repair the corruption, while the client acts as a lightweight coordinator during repair. To realize this new concept, two novel RDC schemes, RDC-SR and ERDC-SR, are designed for replication-based distributed storage systems, which enable Server-side Repair and minimize the load on the client side. Version control systems (VCS) provide the ability to track and control changes made to the data over time. The changes are usually stored in a VCS repository which, due to its massive size, is often hosted at an untrusted CSP. RDC can be used to address concerns about the untrusted nature of the VCS server by allowing a data owner to periodically check that the server continues to store the data. The RDC-AVCS scheme being designed relies on RDC to ensure all the data versions are retrievable from the untrusted server over time. The RDC-AVCS prototype built on top of Apache SVN only incurs a modest decrease in performance compared to a regular (non-secure) SVN system

External servers security

Romero Barrero, D. (2010). External servers security. http://hdl.handle.net/10251/9111.Archivo delegad

A method for securing online community service: A study of selected Western Australian councils

Since the Internet was made publicly accessible, it has become increasingly popular and its deployment has been broad and global thereby facilitating a range of available online services such as Electronic Mail (email), news or bulletins, Internet Relay Chat (IRC) and World Wide Web (WWW). Progressively, other online services such as telephony, video conference, video on demand, Interactive Television (ITV) and Geographic Information System (GIS) have been integrated with the Internet and become publicly available. Presently, Internet broadband communication services incorporating both wired and wireless network technologies has seen the emergence of the concept of a digital community which has been growing and expanding rapidly around the world. Internet and the ever expanding online services to the wider digital community has raised the issue of security of these services during usage. Most local councils throughout Western Australia have resorted to delivering online services such as library, online payments and email accessibility. The provision and usage of these services have inherent security risks. Consequently, this study investigated the concept of a secure digital community in the secure provision and usage of these online services in selected local councils in Western Australia (WA). After an extensive review of existing literature, information security frameworks were derived from the adaptation of various resources, such as the OSSTMM 2.2 Section C: Internet Technology Security benchmark which was used as the main template. In addition, this template was enhanced into a framework model by incorporating other benchmarks such as NIST, CIS, ISSAF as well as other sources of information. These included information security related books, related ICT network and security websites such as CERT, CheckPoint, Cisco, GFI, Juniper, MS, NESSUS and NMAP together with journals and personal interviews. The proposed information security frameworks were developed to enhance the level of security strength of the email and online web systems as well as to increase the level of confidence in the system security within the selected local councils in WA. All the investigative studies were based upon the available selected local councils’ data and the associated analyses of the results as obtained from the testing software. In addition, the interpretive multiple-case study principles were used during the investigation to achieve or fulfil the purpose of this study. The findings from this study were then abstracted for use in a framework and made available for use as a model for possible adaptation and implementation to other similarly structured councils or organisations. As a result, the study confirmed that the proposed information security frameworks have the capability and potential to improve the level of security strength. In addition, the level of satisfaction and confidence of council staff of the selected local councils in WA in the system security would also be increased due to the application of these frameworks. Although these information security frameworks may be recommended as practical and supporting tools for local councils, the findings from this study were specific only to the selected local councils used in this study. Further research using other councils, may be necessary in order for the information security frameworks to be adopted within a wider range of councils or organisations in WA or elsewhere