Transatlantic Relations and Flexibility within the AFSJ

Variable geometry may constitute an entity that appears to be constantly evolving through the Treaties, however, the UK and Ireland, together with Denmark, appear to be its principal beneficiaries thereof, obtaining positions that new accession States are unable to achieve and thus generating lopsided contours to the phenomenon. The opt-out/in provisions ostensibly indicate an outward constitutional stance of isolation towards further and deeper integration and seem to have generated much legal even political incoherence.The paper analyses in detail the impact of the Protocols upon the international relations agreements of the EU, particularly their operation in the specific case of EU-US relations, on the basis of the practice that has developed since the entry into force of the Treaty of Lisbon. Nevertheless, this variable geometry does not in recent years appear to have complicated the negotiation of international agreements dealing with criminal justice and policing measures. Even though it is perhaps too early to establish a definite picture on the UK implication in the external dimension of the AFSJ, it seems clear that the UK is committed to intensify international cooperation in matters dealing with criminal justice and policing measures

Shifting sands and changing minds: the role of the European Parliament in the area of freedom, security and justice

After the extension of the European Parliament’s (EP) decision-making powers introduced by the Treaties of Amsterdam and Lisbon, it was assumed that the EP would increase the democratic credentials of the Area of Freedom, Security and Justice (AFSJ) and, given the EP’s traditional promotion of civil liberties and human rights, that it would also tip the balance towards a more rights-based approach. Six years on, these expectations have not been fulfilled. The objective of this study is to evaluate why the EP, now a co-legislator, has been unable (or unwilling) to maintain its past policy preferences. In order to understand this gap between expectations and actions, the study looks at three case studies (the ‘Data retention’ directive, the ‘Returns’ directive and the SWIFT Agreement) and compares the impact that the introduction of more powers for the EP has had on these different episodes. In order to maximise the number of possible explanations, the study uses rational-choice and constructivist institutionalist approaches to identify the reasons behind the change in the policy preferences of the EP. In this sense, it aims to uncover the levels and direction of change as well as the main conditions and drivers that led to the abandonment of its previous policy positions

DDoS-Capable IoT Malwares: comparative analysis and Mirai Investigation

The Internet of Things (IoT) revolution has not only carried the astonishing promise to interconnect a whole generation of traditionally “dumb” devices, but also brought to the Internet the menace of billions of badly protected and easily hackable objects. Not surprisingly, this sudden flooding of fresh and insecure devices fueled older threats, such as Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks. In this paper, we first propose an updated and comprehensive taxonomy of DDoS attacks, together with a number of examples on how this classification maps to real-world attacks. Then, we outline the current situation of DDoS-enabled malwares in IoT networks, highlighting how recent data support our concerns about the growing in popularity of these malwares. Finally, we give a detailed analysis of the general framework and the operating principles of Mirai, the most disruptive DDoS-capable IoT malware seen so far

Intelligence sharing and preemptive war in the fight against terrorism

Terrorism is the biggest threat to international security, therefore the United States (US) and the European Union (EU) established different strategies to combat this issue. Given the circumstances aforementioned, this capstone project will analyze how the US use preemptive war and how the EU use intelligence sharing to counter terrorism...El terrorismo es la amenaza más grande a la seguridad internacional, de tal manera los Estados Unidos (EEUU) y la Unión Europea (UE) han establecido estrategias diferentes para combatir este tema. De acuerdo a lo mencionado anteriormente, este trabajo de titulación analizará como EEUU aplica guerra preemptiva y como la UE comparte inteligencia para combatir el terrorismo..

Federation of Cyber Ranges

Küberkaitse võimekuse aluselemendiks on kõrgete oskustega ja kokku treeninud spetsialistid. Tehnikute, operaatorite ja otsustajate teadlikkust ja oskusi saab treenida läbi rahvusvaheliste õppuste. On mõeldamatu, et kaitse ja rünnakute harjutamiseks kasutatakse toimivat reaalajalist organisatsiooni IT-süsteemi. Päriseluliste süsteemide simuleerimiseks on võimalik kasutada küberharjutusväljakuid.NATO ja Euroopa Liidu liikmesriikides on mitmed juba toimivad ja käimasolevad arendusprojektid uute küberharjutusväljakute loomiseks. Et olemasolevast ressurssi täies mahus kasutada, tuleks kõik sellised harjutusväljakud rahvusvaheliste õppuste tarbeks ühendada. Ühenduvus on võimalik saavutada alles pärast kokkuleppeid, tehnoloogiate ja erinevate harjutusväljakute kitsenduste arvestamist.Antud lõputöö vaatleb kahte küberharjutusväljakut ja uurib võimalusi, kuidas on võimalik rahvuslike harjutusväljakute ressursse jagada ja luua ühendatud testide ja õppuste keskkond rahvusvahelisteks küberkaitseõppusteks. Lõputöö annab soovitusi informatsiooni voogudest, testkontseptsioonidest ja eeldustest, kuidas saavutada ühendused ressursside jagamise võimekusega. Vaadeldakse erinevaid tehnoloogiad ja operatsioonilisi aspekte ning hinnatakse nende mõju.Et paremini mõista harjutusväljakute ühendamist, on üles seatud testkeskkond Eesti ja Tšehhi laborite infrastruktuuride vahel. Testiti erinevaid võrguparameetreid, operatsioone virtuaalmasinatega, virtualiseerimise tehnoloogiad ning keskkonna haldust avatud lähtekoodiga tööriistadega. Testide tulemused olid üllatavad ja positiivsed, muutes ühendatud küberharjutusväljakute kontseptsiooni saavutamise oodatust lihtsamaks.Magistritöö on kirjutatud inglise keeles ja sisaldab teksti 42 leheküljel, 7 peatükki, 12 joonist ja 4 tabelit.Võtmesõnad:Küberharjutusväljak, NATO, ühendamine, virtualiseerimine, rahvusvahelised küberkaitse õppusedAn essential element of the cyber defence capability is highly skilled and well-trained personnel. Enhancing awareness and education of technicians, operators and decision makers can be done through multinational exercises. It is unthinkable to use an operational production environment to train attack and defence of the IT system. For simulating a life like environment, a cyber range can be used. There are many emerging and operational cyber ranges in the EU and NATO. To benefit more from available resources, a federated cyber range environment for multinational cyber defence exercises can be built upon the current facilities. Federation can be achieved after agreements between nations and understanding of the technologies and limitations of different national ranges.This study compares two cyber ranges and looks into possibilities of pooling and sharing of national facilities and to the establishment of a logical federation of interconnected cyber ranges. The thesis gives recommendations on information flow, proof of concept, guide-lines and prerequisites to achieve an initial interconnection with pooling and sharing capabilities. Different technologies and operational aspects are discussed and their impact is analysed. To better understand concepts and assumptions of federation, a test environment with Estonian and Czech national cyber ranges was created. Different aspects of network parameters, virtual machine manipulations, virtualization technologies and open source administration tools were tested. Some surprising and positive outcomes were in the result of the tests, making logical federation technologically easier and more achievable than expected.The thesis is in English and contains 42 pages of text, 7 chapters, 12 figures and 4 tables.Keywords:Cyber Range, NATO, federation, virtualization, multinational cyber defence exercise

{SoK}: {An} Analysis of Protocol Design: Avoiding Traps for Implementation and Deployment

Today's Internet utilizes a multitude of different protocols. While some of these protocols were first implemented and used and later documented, other were first specified and then implemented. Regardless of how protocols came to be, their definitions can contain traps that lead to insecure implementations or deployments. A classical example is insufficiently strict authentication requirements in a protocol specification. The resulting Misconfigurations, i.e., not enabling strong authentication, are common root causes for Internet security incidents. Indeed, Internet protocols have been commonly designed without security in mind which leads to a multitude of misconfiguration traps. While this is slowly changing, to strict security considerations can have a similarly bad effect. Due to complex implementations and insufficient documentation, security features may remain unused, leaving deployments vulnerable. In this paper we provide a systematization of the security traps found in common Internet protocols. By separating protocols in four classes we identify major factors that lead to common security traps. These insights together with observations about end-user centric usability and security by default are then used to derive recommendations for improving existing and designing new protocols---without such security sensitive traps for operators, implementors and users

{SoK}: {An} Analysis of Protocol Design: Avoiding Traps for Implementation and Deployment

Today's Internet utilizes a multitude of different protocols. While some of these protocols were first implemented and used and later documented, other were first specified and then implemented. Regardless of how protocols came to be, their definitions can contain traps that lead to insecure implementations or deployments. A classical example is insufficiently strict authentication requirements in a protocol specification. The resulting Misconfigurations, i.e., not enabling strong authentication, are common root causes for Internet security incidents. Indeed, Internet protocols have been commonly designed without security in mind which leads to a multitude of misconfiguration traps. While this is slowly changing, to strict security considerations can have a similarly bad effect. Due to complex implementations and insufficient documentation, security features may remain unused, leaving deployments vulnerable. In this paper we provide a systematization of the security traps found in common Internet protocols. By separating protocols in four classes we identify major factors that lead to common security traps. These insights together with observations about end-user centric usability and security by default are then used to derive recommendations for improving existing and designing new protocols---without such security sensitive traps for operators, implementors and users

Assessing the security of VoIP Services

ISBN : 1-4244-0799-0/http://www.comsoc.orgInternational audienceVoIP networks are in a major deployment phase and are becoming widely spread out due to their extended functionality and cost efficiency. Meanwhile, as VoIP traffic is transported over the Internet, it is the target of a range of attacks that can jeopardize its proper functionality. In this paper we describe our work in a VoIP specific security assessment framework. Such an assessment is automated with integrated discovery actions, data management and security attacks allowing to perform VoIP specific penetration tests. These tests are important because they permit to search and detect existing vulnerabilities or misconfigured devices and services. Our main contributions consist in an elaborated network information model capable to be used in VoIP assessment, an extensible assessment architecture and its implementation, as well as in a comprehensive framework for defining and composing VoIP specific attacks

An improved medium access control protocol for real-time applications in WLANs and its firmware development

The IEEE 802.11 Wireless Local Area Network (WLAN), commonly known as Wi-Fi, has emerged as a popular internet access technology and researchers are continuously working on improvement of the quality of service (QoS) in WLAN by proposing new and efficient schemes. Voice and video over Internet Protocol (VVoIP) applications are becoming very popular in Wi-Fi enabled portable/handheld devices because of recent technological advancements and lower service costs. Different from normal voice and video streaming, these applications demand symmetric throughput for the upstream and downstream. Existing Wi-Fi standards are optimised for generic internet applications and fail to provide symmetric throughput due to traffic bottleneck at access points. Performance analysis and benchmarking is an integral part of WLAN research, and in the majority of the cases, this is done through computer simulation using popular network simulators such as Network Simulator ff 2 (NS-2) or OPNET. While computer simulation is an excellent approach for saving time and money, results generated from computer simulations do not always match practical observations. This is why, for proper assessment of the merits of a proposed system in WLAN, a trial on a practical hardware platform is highly recommended and is often a requirement. In this thesis work, with a view to address the abovementioned challenges for facilitating VoIP and VVoIP services over Wi-Fi, two key contributions are made: i) formulating a suitable medium access control (MAC) protocol to address symmetric traffic scenario and ii) firmware development of this newly devised MAC protocol for real WLAN hardware. The proposed solution shows signifocant improvements over existing standards by supporting higher number of stations with strict QoS criteria. The proposed hardware platform is available off-the-shelf in the market and is a cost effective way of generating and evaluating performance results on a hardware system

Research into alternative network approaches for space operations

The main goal is to resolve the interoperability problem of applications employing DOD TCP/IP (Department of Defence Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol) family of protocols on a CCITT/ISO based network. The objective is to allow them to communicate over the CCITT/ISO protocol GPLAN (General Purpose Local Area Network) network without modification to the user's application programs. There were two primary assumptions associated with the solution that was actually realized. The first is that the solution had to allow for future movement to the exclusive use of the CCITT/ISO standards. The second is that the solution had to be software transparent to the currently installed TCP/IP and CCITT/ISO user application programs