A secure architecture enabling end-user privacy in the context of commercial wide-area location-enhanced web services

Mobile location-based services have raised privacy concerns amongst mobile phone users who may need to supply their identity and location information to untrustworthy third parties in order to access these applications. Widespread acceptance of such services may therefore depend on how privacy sensitive information will be handled in order to restore users’ confidence in what could become the “killer app” of 3G networks. The work reported in this thesis is part of a larger project to provide a secure architecture to enable the delivery of location-based services over the Internet. The security of transactions and in particular the privacy of the information transmitted has been the focus of our research. In order to protect mobile users’ identities, we have designed and implemented a proxy-based middleware called the Orient Platform together with its Orient Protocol, capable of translating their real identity into pseudonyms. In order to protect users’ privacy in terms of location information, we have designed and implemented a Location Blurring algorithm that intentionally downgrades the quality of location information to be used by location-based services. The algorithm takes into account a blurring factor set by the mobile user at her convenience and blurs her location by preventing real-time tracking by unauthorized entities. While it penalizes continuous location tracking, it returns accurate and reliable information in response to sporadic location queries. Finally, in order to protect the transactions and provide end-to-end security between all the entities involved, we have designed and implemented a Public Key Infrastructure based on a Security Mediator (SEM) architecture. The cryptographic algorithms used are identitybased, which makes digital certificate retrieval, path validation and revocation redundant in our environment. In particular we have designed and implemented a cryptographic scheme based on Hess’ work [108], which represents, to our knowledge, the first identity-based signature scheme in the SEM setting. A special private key generation process has also been developed in order to enable entities to use a single private key in conjunction with multiple pseudonyms, which significantly simplifies key management. We believe our approach satisfies the security requirements of mobile users and can help restore their confidence in location-based services

Preserving Users’ Location Privacy in Mobile Platforms

Mobile and interconnected devices both have witnessed rapid advancements in computing and networking capabilities due to the emergence of Internet-of-Things, Connected Societies, Smart Cities and other similar paradigms. Compared to traditional personal computers, these devices represent moving gateways that offer possibilities to influence new businesses and, at the same time, have the potential to exchange users’ sensitive data. As a result, this raises substantial threats to the security and privacy of users that must be considered. With the focus on location data, this thesis proposes an efficient and socially-acceptable solution to preserve users’ location privacy, maintaining the quality of service, and respecting the usability by not relying on changes to the mobile app ecosystem. This thesis first analyses the current mobile app ecosystem as to apply a privacy-bydesign approach to location privacy from the data computation to its visualisation. From our analysis, a 3-Layer Classification model is proposed that depicts the state-ofthe- art in three layers providing a new perspective towards privacy-preserving locationbased applications. Secondly, we propose a theoretically sound privacy-enhancing model, called LP-Cache, that forces the mobile app ecosystem to make location data usage patterns explicit and maintains the balance between location privacy and service utility. LP-Cache defines two location privacy preserving algorithms: on-device location calculation and personalised permissions. The former incorporates caching technique to determine the location of client devices by means of wireless access points and achieve data minimisation in the current process. With the later, users can manage each app and private place distinctly to mitigate fundamental location privacy threats, such as tracking, profiling, and identification. Finally, PL-Protector, implements LP-Cache as a middleware on Android platform. We evaluate PL-Protector in terms of performance, privacy, and security. Experimental results demonstrate acceptable delay and storage overheads, which are within practical limits. Hence, we claim that our approach is a practical, secure and efficient solution to preserve location privacy in the current mobile app ecosystem

DEPENDABILITY IN CLOUD COMPUTING

The technological advances and success of Service-Oriented Architectures and the Cloud computing paradigm have produced a revolution in the Information and Communications Technology (ICT). Today, a wide range of services are provisioned to the users in a flexible and cost-effective manner, thanks to the encapsulation of several technologies with modern business models. These services not only offer high-level software functionalities such as social networks or e-commerce but also middleware tools that simplify application development and low-level data storage, processing, and networking resources. Hence, with the advent of the Cloud computing paradigm, today's ICT allows users to completely outsource their IT infrastructure and benefit significantly from the economies of scale. At the same time, with the widespread use of ICT, the amount of data being generated, stored and processed by private companies, public organizations and individuals is rapidly increasing. The in-house management of data and applications is proving to be highly cost intensive and Cloud computing is becoming the destination of choice for increasing number of users. As a consequence, Cloud computing services are being used to realize a wide range of applications, each having unique dependability and Quality-of-Service (Qos) requirements. For example, a small enterprise may use a Cloud storage service as a simple backup solution, requiring high data availability, while a large government organization may execute a real-time mission-critical application using the Cloud compute service, requiring high levels of dependability (e.g., reliability, availability, security) and performance. Service providers are presently able to offer sufficient resource heterogeneity, but are failing to satisfy users' dependability requirements mainly because the failures and vulnerabilities in Cloud infrastructures are a norm rather than an exception. This thesis provides a comprehensive solution for improving the dependability of Cloud computing -- so that -- users can justifiably trust Cloud computing services for building, deploying and executing their applications. A number of approaches ranging from the use of trustworthy hardware to secure application design has been proposed in the literature. The proposed solution consists of three inter-operable yet independent modules, each designed to improve dependability under different system context and/or use-case. A user can selectively apply either a single module or combine them suitably to improve the dependability of her applications both during design time and runtime. Based on the modules applied, the overall proposed solution can increase dependability at three distinct levels. In the following, we provide a brief description of each module. The first module comprises a set of assurance techniques that validates whether a given service supports a specified dependability property with a given level of assurance, and accordingly, awards it a machine-readable certificate. To achieve this, we define a hierarchy of dependability properties where a property represents the dependability characteristics of the service and its specific configuration. A model of the service is also used to verify the validity of the certificate using runtime monitoring, thus complementing the dynamic nature of the Cloud computing infrastructure and making the certificate usable both at discovery and runtime. This module also extends the service registry to allow users to select services with a set of certified dependability properties, hence offering the basic support required to implement dependable applications. We note that this module directly considers services implemented by service providers and provides awareness tools that allow users to be aware of the QoS offered by potential partner services. We denote this passive technique as the solution that offers first level of dependability in this thesis. Service providers typically implement a standard set of dependability mechanisms that satisfy the basic needs of most users. Since each application has unique dependability requirements, assurance techniques are not always effective, and a pro-active approach to dependability management is also required. The second module of our solution advocates the innovative approach of offering dependability as a service to users' applications and realizes a framework containing all the mechanisms required to achieve this. We note that this approach relieves users from implementing low-level dependability mechanisms and system management procedures during application development and satisfies specific dependability goals of each application. We denote the module offering dependability as a service as the solution that offers second level of dependability in this thesis. The third, and the last, module of our solution concerns secure application execution. This module considers complex applications and presents advanced resource management schemes that deploy applications with improved optimality when compared to the algorithms of the second module. This module improves dependability of a given application by minimizing its exposure to existing vulnerabilities, while being subject to the same dependability policies and resource allocation conditions as in the second module. Our approach to secure application deployment and execution denotes the third level of dependability offered in this thesis. The contributions of this thesis can be summarized as follows.The contributions of this thesis can be summarized as follows. \u2022 With respect to assurance techniques our contributions are: i) de finition of a hierarchy of dependability properties, an approach to service modeling, and a model transformation scheme; ii) de finition of a dependability certifi cation scheme for services; iii) an approach to service selection that considers users' dependability requirements; iv) de finition of a solution to dependability certifi cation of composite services, where the dependability properties of a composite service are calculated on the basis of the dependability certi ficates of component services. \u2022 With respect to off ering dependability as a service our contributions are: i) de finition of a delivery scheme that transparently functions on users' applications and satisfi es their dependability requirements; ii) design of a framework that encapsulates all the components necessary to o er dependability as a service to the users; iii) an approach to translate high level users' requirements to low level dependability mechanisms; iv) formulation of constraints that allow enforcement of deployment conditions inherent to dependability mechanisms and an approach to satisfy such constraints during resource allocation; v) a resource management scheme that masks the a ffect of system changes by adapting the current allocation of the application. \u2022 With respect to security management our contributions are: i) an approach that deploys users' applications in the Cloud infrastructure such that their exposure to vulnerabilities is minimized; ii) an approach to build interruptible elastic algorithms whose optimality improves as the processing time increases, eventually converging to an optimal solution

Semantic discovery and reuse of business process patterns

Patterns currently play an important role in modern information systems (IS) development and their use has mainly been restricted to the design and implementation phases of the development lifecycle. Given the increasing significance of business modelling in IS development, patterns have the potential of providing a viable solution for promoting reusability of recurrent generalized models in the very early stages of development. As a statement of research-in-progress this paper focuses on business process patterns and proposes an initial methodological framework for the discovery and reuse of business process patterns within the IS development lifecycle. The framework borrows ideas from the domain engineering literature and proposes the use of semantics to drive both the discovery of patterns as well as their reuse

Unmanned Aircraft Systems (UAS) Integration in the National Airspace System (NAS) Project Subcommittee Final

UAS Integration in the NAS Project overview with details from each of the subprojects. Subprojects include: Communications, Certification, Integrated Test and Evaluation, Human Systems Integration, and Separation Assurance/Sense and Avoid Interoperability

Arquitectura y mecanismos para la provisión de servicios de acreditación y sellado espacio-temporal

Esta tesis se centra en unos servicios de seguridad de reciente aparición: los servicios de acreditación y sellado espacio-temporal (SASET). Estos servicios tienen como objetivo generar, recoger, mantener, proporcionar y validar evidencias digitales acerca de las condiciones espacio-temporales de una entidad o un documento. Dichas evidencias deben permitir que, con posterioridad, terceras entidades se convenzan de las condiciones espacio-temporales que se acreditan en ellas. Según esta definición, los SASET se enmarcan dentro del conjunto de servicios de seguridad denominados como servicios de confianza, que son aquellos servicios que tienen como objetivo establecer y gestionar la confianza en diversas actividades llevadas a cabo utilizando comunicaciones electrónicas en redes abiertas (e.g., actividades comerciales, administrativas, financieras, legales, etc.).The focus of this thesis is a new kind of security services that have recently been proposed. These services are known as spatial-temporal attestation services (STAS). Their goal is to generate, collect, store, provide and validate digital evidences about the spatial temporal conditions of an entity or a document. These evidences should allow to convince third parties about the spatial-temporal conditions they attest. According to this definition, the STAS can be considered trust services, whose goal is to establish and manage trust in different activities that take place using electronic communications in open networks (e.g., business, financial, legal, commercial, administrative, etc.)

Federal Register

Daily publication of the U.S. Office of the Federal Register contains rules and regulations, proposed legislation and rule changes, and other notices, including "Presidential proclamations and Executive Orders, Federal agency documents having general applicability and legal effect, documents required to be published by act of Congress, and other Federal agency documents of public interest" (p. ii). Table of Contents starts on page iii

Realization of Performance Advancements for WPI\u27s UGV - Prometheus

The objective of this project is to design and implement performance improvements for WPI\u27s intelligent ground vehicle, Prometheus, leading to a more competitive entry at the Intelligent Ground Vehicle Competition. Performance enhancements implemented by the project team include a new upper chassis design, a reconfigurable camera mount, extended Kalman filter-based localization with a GPS receiver and a compass module, a lane detection algorithm, and a modular software framework. As a result, Prometheus has improved autonomy, accessibility, robustness, reliability, and usability