VisTAS:Blockchain-based Visible and Trusted Remote Authentication System

The information security domain focuses on security needs at all levels in a computing environment in either the Internet of Things, Cloud Computing, Cloud of Things, or any other implementation. Data, devices, services, or applications and communication are required to be protected and provided by information security shields at all levels and in all working states. Remote authentication is required to perform different administrative operations in an information system, and Administrators have full access to the system and may pose insider threats. Superusers and administrators are the most trusted persons in an organisation. “Trust but verify” is an approach to have an eye on the superusers and administrators. Distributed ledger technology (Blockchain-based data storage) is an immutable data storage scheme and provides a built-in facility to share statistics among peers. Distributed ledgers are proposed to provide visible security and non-repudiation, which securely records administrators’ authentications requests. The presence of security, privacy, and accountability measures establish trust among its stakeholders. Securing information in an electronic data processing system is challenging, i.e., providing services and access control for the resources to only legitimate users. Authentication plays a vital role in systems’ security; therefore, authentication and identity management are the key subjects to provide information security services. The leading cause of information security breaches is the failure of identity management/authentication systems and insider threats. In this regard, visible security measures have more deterrence than other schemes. In this paper, an authentication scheme, “VisTAS,” has been introduced, which provides visible security and trusted authentication services to the tenants and keeps the records in the blockchain

Networks and trust: systems for understanding and supporting internet security

Includes bibliographical references.2022 Fall.This dissertation takes a systems-level view of the multitude of existing trust management systems to make sense of when, where and how (or, in some cases, if) each is best utilized. Trust is a belief by one person that by transacting with another person (or organization) within a specific context, a positive outcome will result. Trust serves as a heuristic that enables us to simplify the dozens decisions we make each day about whom we will transact with. In today's hyperconnected world, in which for many people a bulk of their daily transactions related to business, entertainment, news, and even critical services like healthcare take place online, we tend to rely even more on heuristics like trust to help us simplify complex decisions. Thus, trust plays a critical role in online transactions. For this reason, over the past several decades researchers have developed a plethora of trust metrics and trust management systems for use in online systems. These systems have been most frequently applied to improve recommender systems and reputation systems. They have been designed for and applied to varied online systems including peer-to-peer (P2P) filesharing networks, e-commerce platforms, online social networks, messaging and communication networks, sensor networks, distributed computing networks, and others. However, comparatively little research has examined the effects on individuals, organizations or society of the presence or absence of trust in online sociotechnical systems. Using these existing trust metrics and trust management systems, we design a set of experiments to benchmark the performance of these existing systems, which rely heavily on network analysis methods. Drawing on the experiments' results, we propose a heuristic decision-making framework for selecting a trust management system for use in online systems. In this dissertation we also investigate several related but distinct aspects of trust in online sociotechnical systems. Using network/graph analysis methods, we examine how trust (or lack of trust) affects the performance of online networks in terms of security and quality of service. We explore the structure and behavior of online networks including Twitter, GitHub, and Reddit through the lens of trust. We find that higher levels of trust within a network are associated with more spread of misinformation (a form of cybersecurity threat, according to the US CISA) on Twitter. We also find that higher levels of trust in open source developer networks on GitHub are associated with more frequent incidences of cybersecurity vulnerabilities. Using our experimental and empirical findings previously described, we apply the Systems Engineering Process to design and prototype a trust management tool for use on Reddit, which we dub Coni the Trust Moderating Bot. Coni is, to the best of our knowledge, the first trust management tool designed specifically for use on the Reddit platform. Through our work with Coni, we develop and present a blueprint for constructing a Reddit trust tool which not only measures trust levels, but can use these trust levels to take actions on Reddit to improve the quality of submissions within the community (a subreddit)

Security in a Distributed Processing Environment

Distribution plays a key role in telecommunication and computing systems today. It has become a necessity as a result of deregulation and anti-trust legislation, which has forced businesses to move from centralised, monolithic systems to distributed systems with the separation of applications and provisioning technologies, such as the service and transportation layers in the Internet. The need for reliability and recovery requires systems to use replication and secondary backup systems such as those used in ecommerce. There are consequences to distribution. It results in systems being implemented in heterogeneous environment; it requires systems to be scalable; it results in some loss of control and so this contributes to the increased security issues that result from distribution. Each of these issues has to be dealt with. A distributed processing environment (DPE) is middleware that allows heterogeneous environments to operate in a homogeneous manner. Scalability can be addressed by using object-oriented technology to distribute functionality. Security is more difficult to address because it requires the creation of a distributed trusted environment. The problem with security in a DPE currently is that it is treated as an adjunct service, i.e. and after-thought that is the last thing added to the system. As a result, it is not pervasive and therefore is unable to fully support the other DPE services. DPE security needs to provide the five basic security services, authentication, access control, integrity, confidentiality and non-repudiation, in a distributed environment, while ensuring simple and usable administration. The research, detailed in this thesis, starts by highlighting the inadequacies of the existing DPE and its services. It argues that a new management structure was introduced that provides greater flexibility and configurability, while promoting mechanism and service independence. A new secure interoperability framework was introduced which provides the ability to negotiate common mechanism and service level configurations. New facilities were added to the non-repudiation and audit services. The research has shown that all services should be security-aware, and therefore would able to interact with the Enhanced Security Service in order to provide a more secure environment within a DPE. As a proof of concept, the Trader service was selected. Its security limitations were examined, new security behaviour policies proposed and it was then implemented as a Security-aware Trader, which could counteract the existing security limitations.IONA TECHNOLOGIES PLC & ORANG

Distributed Solutions for a Reliable Data-Driven Transformation of Healthcare Management and Research

Modern healthcare management and clinical practice strongly rely on data and scientific evidence. Digital technologies, tools, and services are core components of Healthcare Management and scientific Research (HMR). Data interoperability, security, privacy, and ease of sharing represent fundamental conditions for guaranteeing quality HMR. Current data management solutions in HMR are mainly built on two technological infrastructures: cloud-based (CB) or distributed ledger systems (DLTs). DLTs offer alternative and reliable alternatives for the management and sharing of data in HMR. Their use can help increase confidence and trust in the integrity of data and the resulting evidence. The aim of this paper is to shed light on CB and DLT solutions, emphasizing the potential role of innovative digital solutions based on DLTs in creating a data-driven transformation of HMR, and to describe relevant examples and practical uses of DLT-based solutions for patients, healthcare management, and research activities. DLTs in particular can be increasingly useful for patients to truly have control over their health, for healthcare policymakers to increase the quality of organizational processes, and for research funders, editors and publishers to increase the return on investment, and the reuse and reproducibility of research. In conclusion, harnessing the potential of digital technologies is essential to transform healthcare management and research, by enhancing data quality, reliability, and trust

How the Role-Based Trust Management Can Be Applied to Wireless Sensor Networks, Journal of Telecommunications and Information Technology, 2012, nr 4

Trust plays an important role in human life environments. That is why the researchers has been focusing on it for a long time. It allows us to delegate tasks and decisions to an appropriate person. In social sciences trust between humans was studied, but it also was analyzed in economic transactions. A lot of computer scientists from different areas, like security, semantic web, electronic commerce, social networks tried to transfer this concept to their domains. Trust is an essential factor in any kind of network, whether social or computer. Wireless sensor networks (WSN) are characterized by severely constrained resources, they have limited power supplies, low transmission bandwidth, small memory sizes and limited energy, therefore security techniques used in traditional wired networks cannot be adopted directly. Some effort has been expended in this fields, but the concept of trust is defined in slightly different ways by different researchers. In this paper we will show how the family of Role-based Trust management languages (RT) can be used in WSN. RT is used for representing security policies and credentials in decentralized, distributed access control systems. A credential provides information about the privileges of users and the security policies issued by one or more trusted authorities

RTT+ – Time Validity Constraints in RT RTT Language, Journal of Telecommunications and Information Technology, 2012, nr 2

Most of the traditional access control models, like mandatory, discretionary and role based access control make authorization decisions based on the identity, or the role of the requester, who must be known to the resource owner. Thus, they may be suitable for centralized systems but not for decentralized environments, where the requester and service provider or resource owner are often unknown to each other. To overcome the shortcomings of traditional access control models, trust management models have been presented. The topic of this paper is three different semantics (set-theoretic, operational, and logic- programming) of RTT , language from the family of role-based trust management languages (RT). RT is used for representing security policies and credentials in decentralized, distributed access control systems. A credential provides information about the privileges of users and the security policies issued by one or more trusted authorities. The set-theoretic semantics maps roles to a set of sets of entity names. Members of such a set must cooperate in order to satisfy the role. In the case of logic-programming semantics, the credentials are translated into a logic program. In the operational semantics the credentials can be established using a simple set of inference rules. It turns out to be fundamental mainly in large- scale distributed systems, where users have only partial view of their execution context. The core part of this paper is the introduction of time validity constraints to show how that can make RTT language more realistic. The new language, named RTT+ takes time validity constraints into account. The semantics for RTT+ language will also be shown. Inference system will be introduced not just for specific moment but also for time intervals. It will evaluate maximal time validity, when it is possible to derive the credential from the set of available credentials. The soundness and completeness of the inference systems with the time validity constraints with respect to the set-theoretic semantics of RTT+ will be proven

Two Semantics of Trust Management Language with Negation, Journal of Telecommunications and Information Technology, 2013, nr 4

The family of Role-based Trust management languages is used for representing security policies by defining a formalism, which uses credentials to handle trust in decentralized, distributed access control systems. A credential provides information about the privileges of users and the security policies issued by one or more trusted authorities. The main topic of this paper is RT⊖, a language which provides a carefully controlled form of non-monotonicity. The core part of the paper defines two different semantics of RT⊖ language – a relational, set-theoretic semantics for the language, and an inference system, which is a kind of operational semantics. The set-theoretic semantics maps roles to a set of entity names. In the operational semantics credentials can be derived from an initial set of credentials using a set of inference rules. The soundness and the completeness of the inference system with respect to the set-theoretic semantics of RT⊖ will be proven

Authorization-enhanced security framework for OGSA support.

Security plays an important role for a large distributed system in an open community. Without enough knowledge about the user, it is hard to make access decision to the local resources. Current Public Key Infrastructure (PKI) uses a trusted third party, called Certificate Authority (CA), to check the identity of the users. The assumption of PKI is that every entity trusts CA absolutely and equally. This is also a weakness of PKI. The security problem in a Single-Sign-On (SSO) environment is more difficult to manage. Most of the current SSO security approach relies heavily on the pre-established trust relationship. This prevents wider adoption of SSO and greatly affects the local autonomy of the security policy making. Such SSO approaches have been employed recently in the Security Assertion Mark-up Language (SAML). Based on the Dempster-Shafer theory and derived subjective logic, we propose an authorization-enhanced framework for large-distributed systems using a Single-Sign-On security approach. We extended the SAML assertion set to include opinions of the assertion issuer about the user. Based on the assertion issuer\u27s opinion about the user and the trust relationship between the asserting party and accepting party, new assertion is generated at each local site. The probability expectation about the user\u27s trustworthiness is computed. This value provides a reference for the system to make the access control decision. Two sub-frameworks will be discussed. The first is a Peer-to-Peer model involving two parties and a technique of discounting opinions. The second is a multi-party model. In the latter case, opinions about the user from many asserting parties are considered and computed using a consensus operator to combine opinions. A numerical study is performed to compare these two models. We also compare this approach with other work related with trust management. Paper copy at Leddy Library: Theses & Major Papers - Basement, West Bldg. / Call Number: Thesis2003 .C48. Source: Masters Abstracts International, Volume: 42-03, page: 0959. Adviser: Robert Kent. Thesis (M.Sc.)--University of Windsor (Canada), 2003