Acoustic Integrity Codes: Secure Device Pairing Using Short-Range Acoustic Communication

Secure Device Pairing (SDP) relies on an out-of-band channel to authenticate devices. This requires a common hardware interface, which limits the use of existing SDP systems. We propose to use short-range acoustic communication for the initial pairing. Audio hardware is commonly available on existing off-the-shelf devices and can be accessed from user space without requiring firmware or hardware modifications. We improve upon previous approaches by designing Acoustic Integrity Codes (AICs): a modulation scheme that provides message authentication on the acoustic physical layer. We analyze their security and demonstrate that we can defend against signal cancellation attacks by designing signals with low autocorrelation. Our system can detect overshadowing attacks using a ternary decision function with a threshold. In our evaluation of this SDP scheme's security and robustness, we achieve a bit error ratio below 0.1% for a net bit rate of 100 bps with a signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) of 14 dB. Using our open-source proof-of-concept implementation on Android smartphones, we demonstrate pairing between different smartphone models.Comment: 11 pages, 11 figures. Published at ACM WiSec 2020 (13th ACM Conference on Security and Privacy in Wireless and Mobile Networks). Updated reference

Android Memory Capture and Applications for Security and Privacy

The Android operating system is quickly becoming the most popular platform for mobiledevices. As Android’s use increases, so does the need for both forensic and privacy toolsdesigned for the platform. This thesis presents the first methodology and toolset for acquiringfull physical memory images from Android devices, a proposed methodology for forensicallysecuring both volatile and non-volatile storage, and details of a vulnerability discovered by theauthor that allows the bypass of the Android security model and enables applications to acquirearbitrary permissions

Quire: Lightweight Provenance for Smart Phone Operating Systems

Smartphone apps often run with full privileges to access the network and sensitive local resources, making it difficult for remote systems to have any trust in the provenance of network connections they receive. Even within the phone, different apps with different privileges can communicate with one another, allowing one app to trick another into improperly exercising its privileges (a Confused Deputy attack). In Quire, we engineered two new security mechanisms into Android to address these issues. First, we track the call chain of IPCs, allowing an app the choice of operating with the diminished privileges of its callers or to act explicitly on its own behalf. Second, a lightweight signature scheme allows any app to create a signed statement that can be verified anywhere inside the phone. Both of these mechanisms are reflected in network RPCs, allowing remote systems visibility into the state of the phone when an RPC is made. We demonstrate the usefulness of Quire with two example applications. We built an advertising service, running distinctly from the app which wants to display ads, which can validate clicks passed to it from its host. We also built a payment service, allowing an app to issue a request which the payment service validates with the user. An app cannot not forge a payment request by directly connecting to the remote server, nor can the local payment service tamper with the request

Survey and Analysis of Android Authentication Using App Locker

Android Smart phones have gained immense popularity over the years and is undoubtedly more popular than other operating system phones. Following the similar lines android wear was introduced. Steadily android wear is making its way into our daily lives. It helps keep track of the sleep you have, helps you reach fitness goals, keeps track of phone and helps users have easy authentication. Due to the usage of smart lock which enables phone to be unlocked as long as connected to the android wear, this leads to almost no security on both the ends as android wear before Android 5.0 has no lock. We aim to produce the existing authentication methods in android phones and wear and the threats that plague both kinds of devices. As authentication is one of the major building blocks of security, through research we aim at designing a system for android phones which will be able to protect the sensitive data on devices which will be at risk through smart lock using encryption techniques. In this proposed system, the user would be able to decide which applications are needed to be secured when he is using smart lock. This application will enable lock for those user chosen applications as soon as the smart phone device is connected to android wear and similarly disables the lock when connection is disabled between the devices and communication between devices is made secure using encryption algorithms. This application does not interfere with easy phone authentication which users demand but it makes sure data is protected and users are authenticated with the help of multiple authentication layering

SoK: A Systematic Review of TEE Usage for Developing Trusted Applications

Trusted Execution Environments (TEEs) are a feature of modern central processing units (CPUs) that aim to provide a high assurance, isolated environment in which to run workloads that demand both confidentiality and integrity. Hardware and software components in the CPU isolate workloads, commonly referred to as Trusted Applications (TAs), from the main operating system (OS). This article aims to analyse the TEE ecosystem, determine its usability, and suggest improvements where necessary to make adoption easier. To better understand TEE usage, we gathered academic and practical examples from a total of 223 references. We summarise the literature and provide a publication timeline, along with insights into the evolution of TEE research and deployment. We categorise TAs into major groups and analyse the tools available to developers. Lastly, we evaluate trusted container projects, test performance, and identify the requirements for migrating applications inside them.Comment: In The 18th International Conference on Availability, Reliability and Security (ARES 2023), August 29 -- September 01, 2023, Benevento, Italy. 15 page

The legal obligation to provide timely security patching and automatic updates

Do you use Office 365 or Windows 10? How about GoDaddy to support your website? Has it been a while since you connected your iPhone to Wi-Fi instead of merely running off your data? Or is your Samsung phone more than 2 years old? Would it surprise you to learn that some of these products no longer receive security support or automatic updates? If so, you may be surprised to hear that you are being exposed to security risks, as many cyber incidences are the direct result of an absence of security patching and automatic updates. There are many reasons for this. Most companies provide security patches, but they are not always timely and many are not automated, requiring manual effort (often unbeknownst to consumers and businesses). Timely security patching is, upon discovery or notification of a security flaw in a system or product, the release of a security update within a reasonable time that patches and updates the security of a system—sometimes this is automatic, sometimes the security patch is merely a notification that you can and should patch your own system. A contributing factor to this is that there is no legal obligation to provide security support, let alone timely security support. This means that there is no legal requirement to patch known security vulnerabilities and bugs or issue automatic updates. This paper asks whether or not Australia should have a legal obligation to ensure timely security patching and require automatic updates by default in all consumer systems. Our conclusion: yes, it should, since many companies cannot be relied on to self-regulate and put their client’s security interests first, and the stakes in cybersecurity have become too high to continue with the status quo. We conclude by presenting our recommended pathway for legal reform

Security Analysis and Evaluation of Smart Toys

During the last years, interconnectivity and merging the physical and digital technological dimensions have become a topic attracting the interest of the modern world. Internet of Things (IoT) is rapidly evolving as it manages to transform physical devices into communicating agents which can consecutively create complete interconnected systems. A sub-category of the IoT technology is smart toys, which are devices with networking capabilities, created for and used in play. Smart toys’ targeting group is usually children and they attempt to provide a higher level of entertainment and education by offering an enhanced and more interactive experience. Due to the nature and technical limitations of IoT devices, security experts have expressed concerns over the effectiveness and security level of smart devices. The importance of securing IoT devices has an increased weight when it pertains to smart toys, since sensitive information of children and teenagers can potentially be compromised. Furthermore, various security analyses on smart toys have discovered a worryingly high number of important security flaws. The master thesis focuses on the topic of smart toys’ security by first presenting and analyzing the necessary literature background. Furthermore, it presents a case study where a smart toy is selected and analyzed statically and dynamically utilizing a Raspberry Pi. The aim of this thesis is to examine and apply methods of analysis used in the relevant literature, in order to identify security flaws in the examined smart toy. The smart toy is a fitness band whose target consumers involve children and teenagers. The fitness band is communicating through Bluetooth with a mobile device and is accompanied by a mobile application. The mobile application has been installed and tested on an Android device. Finally, the analyses as well as their emerged results are presented and described in detail. Several security risks have been identified indicating that developers must increase their efforts in ensuring the optimal level of security in smart toys. Furthermore, several solutions that could minimize security risks and are related to our findings are suggested, along with potentially interesting topics for future work and further research