Thin Hypervisor-Based Security Architectures for Embedded Platforms

Virtualization has grown increasingly popular, thanks to its benefits of isolation, management, and utilization, supported by hardware advances. It is also receiving attention for its potential to support security, through hypervisor-based services and advanced protections supplied to guests. Today, virtualization is even making inroads in the embedded space, and embedded systems, with their security needs, have already started to benefit from virtualization’s security potential. In this thesis, we investigate the possibilities for thin hypervisor-based security on embedded platforms. In addition to significant background study, we present implementation of a low-footprint, thin hypervisor capable of providing security protections to a single FreeRTOS guest kernel on ARM. Backed by performance test results, our hypervisor provides security to a formerly unsecured kernel with minimal performance overhead, and represents a first step in a greater research effort into the security advantages and possibilities of embedded thin hypervisors. Our results show that thin hypervisors are both possible and beneficial even on limited embedded systems, and sets the stage for more advanced investigations, implementations, and security applications in the future

Agent-Based Cloud Resource Management for Secure Cloud Infrastructures

The cloud offers clear benefits for computations as well as for storage for diverse application areas. Security concerns are by far the greatest barriers to the wider uptake of cloud computing, particularly for privacy-sensitive applications. The aim of this article is to propose an approach for establishing trust between users and providers of cloud infrastructures (IaaS model) based on certified trusted agents. Such approach would remove barriers that prevent security sensitive applications being moved to the cloud. The core technology encompasses a secure agent platform for providing the execution environment for agents and the secure attested software base which ensures the integrity of the host platform. In this article we describe the motivation, concept, design and initial implementation of these technologies

Staging European Union Democracy: Discussion Paper Prepared for the 'Round Table on a Sustainable Project for Europe'. EPIN Working Paper No. 10, December 2003

Much of the malaise surrounding EU democracy can be accounted for by the fact that there is no effective staging of political debate between the European Parliament and EU executive power. This paper explores the options to increase the visibility of political choices in the European Union, to open ways to have political positions challenged and, thereby, to improve the staging of the democratic process. It starts from the relationship between the European Parliament and the Commission as this is the relationship that has come to resemble most the dynamics of representative democracy at the EU level. In turn, possible reforms are then explored to strengthen the articulation of political alternatives in the European Parliament, to allow for a well-calibrated politicisation of the Commission and to subject EU executive powers beyond the Commission to democratic accountability. The paper concludes with 20 concrete recommendations for reform – some of which would preferably still be taken on board by the current Intergovernmental Conference, but most of which can be followed up upon by the European actors in the years to come

The city mouse and the country mouse: the geography of creativity and cultural production in Italy

Through census employment data we analyze the evolving structure of the Italian cultural economy and highlights diverging spatial and organizational patterns of cultural production systems in urban and regional areas. Whilst large metropolitan areas remain the more important loci of cultural content production and consumption, craft-based sectors and creative systems of design have a tendency to locate in non-metropolitan centers. Based on the historical formation of manufacturing districts and on the emergence of Rome and Milan as “world cities”, the Italian cultural economy provides an interesting case study to analyze the geographical patterns of different cultural product industries. We extend previous literature on the geography of the cultural economy by offering new insights as to conditions in which metropolitan and rural areas emerge as leading centers of cultural production and creativity.

L’Environmental Kuznets Curve nel Settore dei Rifiuti Solidi Urbani

This paper provides a specific application of the Environmental Kuznets Curve (EKC) theory in order to explain the correlation between income and household waste generation. The model highlights an U-shaped path of income-refuse relationship that verifies the existence of EKC depending on the effort of household recycling and consumption. The existence of delinking can derive by income and other socio economic variables that affect the shape of the curve. This model would be a particular application of the theory of delinking with the intent to be empirically implemented.Environmental Kuznets Curve, Waste Collection, Delinking, Waste policies