Towards Secure Cloud Data Management

This paper explores the security challenges posed by data-intensive applications deployed in cloud environments that span administrative and network domains. We propose a data-centric view of cloud security and discuss data management challenges in the areas of secure distributed data processing, end-to-end query result verification, and cross-user trust policy management. In addition, we describe our current and future efforts to investigate security challenges in cloud data management using the Declarative Secure Distributed Systems (DS2) platform, a declarative infrastructure for specifying, analyzing, and deploying secure information systems

Verifiably-safe software-defined networks for CPS

Next generation cyber-physical systems (CPS) are expected to be deployed in domains which require scalability as well as performance under dynamic conditions. This scale and dynamicity will require that CPS communication networks be programmatic (i.e., not requiring manual intervention at any stage), but still maintain iron-clad safety guarantees. Software-defined networking standards like OpenFlow provide a means for scalably building tailor-made network architectures, but there is no guarantee that these systems are safe, correct, or secure. In this work we propose a methodology and accompanying tools for specifying and modeling distributed systems such that existing formal verification techniques can be transparently used to analyze critical requirements and properties prior to system implementation. We demonstrate this methodology by iteratively modeling and verifying an OpenFlow learning switch network with respect to network correctness, network convergence, and mobility-related properties. We posit that a design strategy based on the complementary pairing of software-defined networking and formal verification would enable the CPS community to build next-generation systems without sacrificing the safety and reliability that these systems must deliver

Model-driven Information Flow Security for Component-Based Systems

International audienceThis paper proposes a formal framework for studying information flow security in component-based systems. The security policy is defined and verified from the early steps of the system design. Two kinds of non-interference properties are formally introduced and for both of them, sufficient conditions that ensures and simplifies the automated verification are proposed. The verification is compositional, first locally, by checking the behavior of every atomic component and then globally, by checking the inter-components communication and coordination. The potential benefits are illustrated on a concrete case study about constructing secure heterogeneous distributed systems

Composable Dynamic Secure Emulation

This work extends the composable secure-emulation of Canetti et al. to dynamic settings. Our work builds on top of dynamic probabilistic I/O automata, a recent framework introduced to model dynamic probabilistic systems. Our extension is an important tool towards the formal verification of protocols combining probabilistic distributed systems and cryptography in dynamic settings (e.g. blockchains, secure distributed computation, cybersecure distributed protocols etc)

BROSMAP: A Novel Broadcast Based Secure Mobile Agent Protocol for Distributed Service Applications

Mobile agents are smart programs that migrate from one platform to another to perform the user task. Mobile agents offer flexibility and performance enhancements to systems and service real-time applications. However, security in mobile agent systems is a great concern. In this paper, we propose a novel Broadcast based Secure Mobile Agent Protocol (BROSMAP) for distributed service applications that provides mutual authentication, authorization, accountability, nonrepudiation, integrity, and confidentiality. The proposed system also provides protection from man in the middle, replay, repudiation, and modification attacks. We proved the efficiency of the proposed protocol through formal verification with Scyther verification tool

Unifying Static And Runtime Analysis In Declarative Distributed Systems

Today’s distributed systems are becoming increasingly complex, due to the ever-growing number of network devices and their variety. The complexity makes it hard for system administrators to correctly configure distributed systems. This motivates the need for effective analytic tools that can help ensure correctness of distributed systems. One challenge in ensuring correctness is that there does not exist one solution that works for all properties. One type of properties, such as security properties, are so critical that they demand pre-deployment verification (i.e., static analysis) which, though time-consuming, explores the whole execution space. However, due to the potential problem of state explosion, static verification of all properties is not practical, and not necessary. Violation of non-critical properties, such as correct routing with shortest paths, is tolerable during execution and can be diagnosed after errors occur (i.e., runtime analysis), a more light-weight approach compared to verification. This dissertation presents STRANDS, a declarative framework that enables users to perform both pre-deployment verification and post-deployment diagnostics on top of declarative specification of distributed systems. STRANDS uses Network Datalog (NDlog), a distributed variant of Datalog query language, to specify network protocols and services. STRANDS has two components: a system verifier and a system debugger. The verifier allows the user to rigorously prove safety properties of network protocols and services, using either the program logic or symbolic execution we develop for NDlog programs. The debugger, on the other hand, facilitates diagnosis of system errors by allowing for querying of the structured history of network execution (i.e., network provenance) that is maintained in a storage-efficient manner. We show the effectiveness of STRANDS by evaluating both the verifier and the debugger. Using the verifier, we prove path authenticity of secure routing protocols, and verify a number of safety properties in software-defined networking (SDN). Also, we demonstrate that our provenance maintenance algorithm achieves significant storage reduction, while incurring negligible network overhead