Challenges in Distance Bounding

Smartcard-based protocols represent an increasingly large share of the wireless authentication market, from contactless payments to remote car unlocking. Unfortunately, relay attacks pose a significant threat to these wireless solutions. However, this risk can be mitigated through the use of distance-bounding protocols. In this paper, we discuss the core challenges for distance-bounding, in terms of both theoretical and practical considerations. We focus on their security, but we also explore the difficulties encountered in their design and implementation. Moreover, we present our vision of the future of these protocols and of the possible paths towards their secure deployment

Challenges in Distance Bounding

Smartcard-based protocols represent an increasingly large share of the wireless authentication market, from contactless payments to remote car unlocking. Unfortunately, relay attacks pose a significant threat to these wireless solutions. However, this risk can be mitigated through the use of distance-bounding protocols. In this paper, we discuss the core challenges for distance-bounding, in terms of both theoretical and practical considerations. We focus on their security, but we also explore the difficulties encountered in their design and implementation. Moreover, we present our vision of the future of these protocols and of the possible paths towards their secure deployment

A framework for analyzing RFID distance bounding protocols

Many distance bounding protocols appropriate for the RFID technology have been proposed recently. Unfortunately, they are commonly designed without any formal approach, which leads to inaccurate analyzes and unfair comparisons. Motivated by this need, we introduce a unied framework that aims to improve analysis and design of distance bounding protocols. Our framework includes a thorough terminology about the frauds, adversary, and prover, thus disambiguating many misleading terms. It also explores the adversary's capabilities and strategies, and addresses the impact of the prover's ability to tamper with his device. It thus introduces some new concepts in the distance bounding domain as the black-box and white-box models, and the relation between the frauds with respect to these models. The relevancy and impact of the framework is nally demonstrated on a study case: Munilla-Peinado distance bounding protocol

On the Security of the Automatic Dependent Surveillance-Broadcast Protocol

Automatic dependent surveillance-broadcast (ADS-B) is the communications protocol currently being rolled out as part of next generation air transportation systems. As the heart of modern air traffic control, it will play an essential role in the protection of two billion passengers per year, besides being crucial to many other interest groups in aviation. The inherent lack of security measures in the ADS-B protocol has long been a topic in both the aviation circles and in the academic community. Due to recently published proof-of-concept attacks, the topic is becoming ever more pressing, especially with the deadline for mandatory implementation in most airspaces fast approaching. This survey first summarizes the attacks and problems that have been reported in relation to ADS-B security. Thereafter, it surveys both the theoretical and practical efforts which have been previously conducted concerning these issues, including possible countermeasures. In addition, the survey seeks to go beyond the current state of the art and gives a detailed assessment of security measures which have been developed more generally for related wireless networks such as sensor networks and vehicular ad hoc networks, including a taxonomy of all considered approaches.Comment: Survey, 22 Pages, 21 Figure

Quantifying pervasive authentication: the case of the Hancke-Kuhn protocol

As mobile devices pervade physical space, the familiar authentication patterns are becoming insufficient: besides entity authentication, many applications require, e.g., location authentication. Many interesting protocols have been proposed and implemented to provide such strengthened forms of authentication, but there are very few proofs that such protocols satisfy the required security properties. The logical formalisms, devised for reasoning about security protocols on standard computer networks, turn out to be difficult to adapt for reasoning about hybrid protocols, used in pervasive and heterogenous networks. We refine the Dolev-Yao-style algebraic method for protocol analysis by a probabilistic model of guessing, needed to analyze protocols that mix weak cryptography with physical properties of nonstandard communication channels. Applying this model, we provide a precise security proof for a proximity authentication protocol, due to Hancke and Kuhn, that uses a subtle form of probabilistic reasoning to achieve its goals.Comment: 31 pages, 2 figures; short version of this paper appeared in the Proceedings of MFPS 201

Towards trajectory anonymization: a generalization-based approach

Trajectory datasets are becoming popular due to the massive usage of GPS and locationbased services. In this paper, we address privacy issues regarding the identification of individuals in static trajectory datasets. We first adopt the notion of k-anonymity to trajectories and propose a novel generalization-based approach for anonymization of trajectories. We further show that releasing anonymized trajectories may still have some privacy leaks. Therefore we propose a randomization based reconstruction algorithm for releasing anonymized trajectory data and also present how the underlying techniques can be adapted to other anonymity standards. The experimental results on real and synthetic trajectory datasets show the effectiveness of the proposed techniques

DoubleEcho: Mitigating Context-Manipulation Attacks in Copresence Verification

Copresence verification based on context can improve usability and strengthen security of many authentication and access control systems. By sensing and comparing their surroundings, two or more devices can tell whether they are copresent and use this information to make access control decisions. To the best of our knowledge, all context-based copresence verification mechanisms to date are susceptible to context-manipulation attacks. In such attacks, a distributed adversary replicates the same context at the (different) locations of the victim devices, and induces them to believe that they are copresent. In this paper we propose DoubleEcho, a context-based copresence verification technique that leverages acoustic Room Impulse Response (RIR) to mitigate context-manipulation attacks. In DoubleEcho, one device emits a wide-band audible chirp and all participating devices record reflections of the chirp from the surrounding environment. Since RIR is, by its very nature, dependent on the physical surroundings, it constitutes a unique location signature that is hard for an adversary to replicate. We evaluate DoubleEcho by collecting RIR data with various mobile devices and in a range of different locations. We show that DoubleEcho mitigates context-manipulation attacks whereas all other approaches to date are entirely vulnerable to such attacks. DoubleEcho detects copresence (or lack thereof) in roughly 2 seconds and works on commodity devices