32,397 research outputs found
Security by Spatial Reference:Using Relative Positioning to Authenticate Devices for Spontaneous Interaction
Spontaneous interaction is a desirable characteristic associated with mobile and ubiquitous computing. The aim is to enable users to connect their personal devices with devices encountered in their environment in order to take advantage of interaction opportunities in accordance with their situation. However, it is difficult to secure spontaneous interaction as this requires authentication of the encountered device, in the absence of any prior knowledge of the device. In this paper we present a method for establishing and securing spontaneous interactions on the basis of emphspatial references that capture the spatial relationship of the involved devices. Spatial references are obtained by accurate sensing of relative device positions, presented to the user for initiation of interactions, and used in a peer authentication protocol that exploits a novel mechanism for message transfer over ultrasound to ensures spatial authenticity of the sender
Blindspot: Indistinguishable Anonymous Communications
Communication anonymity is a key requirement for individuals under targeted
surveillance. Practical anonymous communications also require
indistinguishability - an adversary should be unable to distinguish between
anonymised and non-anonymised traffic for a given user. We propose Blindspot, a
design for high-latency anonymous communications that offers
indistinguishability and unobservability under a (qualified) global active
adversary. Blindspot creates anonymous routes between sender-receiver pairs by
subliminally encoding messages within the pre-existing communication behaviour
of users within a social network. Specifically, the organic image sharing
behaviour of users. Thus channel bandwidth depends on the intensity of image
sharing behaviour of users along a route. A major challenge we successfully
overcome is that routing must be accomplished in the face of significant
restrictions - channel bandwidth is stochastic. We show that conventional
social network routing strategies do not work. To solve this problem, we
propose a novel routing algorithm. We evaluate Blindspot using a real-world
dataset. We find that it delivers reasonable results for applications requiring
low-volume unobservable communication.Comment: 13 Page
Impact Assessment of Hypothesized Cyberattacks on Interconnected Bulk Power Systems
The first-ever Ukraine cyberattack on power grid has proven its devastation
by hacking into their critical cyber assets. With administrative privileges
accessing substation networks/local control centers, one intelligent way of
coordinated cyberattacks is to execute a series of disruptive switching
executions on multiple substations using compromised supervisory control and
data acquisition (SCADA) systems. These actions can cause significant impacts
to an interconnected power grid. Unlike the previous power blackouts, such
high-impact initiating events can aggravate operating conditions, initiating
instability that may lead to system-wide cascading failure. A systemic
evaluation of "nightmare" scenarios is highly desirable for asset owners to
manage and prioritize the maintenance and investment in protecting their
cyberinfrastructure. This survey paper is a conceptual expansion of real-time
monitoring, anomaly detection, impact analyses, and mitigation (RAIM) framework
that emphasizes on the resulting impacts, both on steady-state and dynamic
aspects of power system stability. Hypothetically, we associate the
combinatorial analyses of steady state on substations/components outages and
dynamics of the sequential switching orders as part of the permutation. The
expanded framework includes (1) critical/noncritical combination verification,
(2) cascade confirmation, and (3) combination re-evaluation. This paper ends
with a discussion of the open issues for metrics and future design pertaining
the impact quantification of cyber-related contingencies
- …