Novel Techniques for Secure Use of Public Cloud Computing Resources

The federal government has an expressed interest in moving data and services to third party service providers in order to take advantage of the flexibility, scalability, and potential cost savings. This approach is called cloud computing. The thesis for this research is that efficient techniques exist to support the secure use of public cloud computing resources by a large, federated enterprise. The primary contributions of this research are the novel cryptographic system MA-AHASBE (Multi-Authority Anonymous Hierarchical Attribute-Set Based Encryption), and the techniques used to incorporate MA-AHASBE in a real world application. Performance results indicate that while there is a cost associated with enforcing the suggested security model, the cost is not unreasonable and the benefits in security can be significant. The contributions of this research give the DoD additional tools for supporting the mission while taking advantage of the cost efficient public cloud computing resources that are becoming widely available

Authentication Protocols and Privacy Protection

Tato dizertační práce se zabývá kryptografickými prostředky pro autentizaci. Hlavním tématem však nejsou klasické autentizační protokoly, které nabízejí pouze ověření identity, ale tzv. atributové autentizační systémy, pomocí kterých mohou uživatelé prokazovat svoje osobní atributy. Tyto atributy pak mohou představovat jakékoliv osobní informace, např. věk, národnost či místo narození. Atributy mohou být prokazovány anonymně a s podporou mnoha funkcí na ochranu digitální identity. Mezi takové funkce patří např. nespojitelnost autentizačních relací, nesledovatelnost, možnost výběru prokazovaných atributů či efektivní revokace. Atributové autentizační systémy jsou již nyní považovány za nástupce současných systémů v oficiálních strategických plánech USA (NSTIC) či EU (ENISA). Část požadovaných funkcí je již podporována existujícími kryptografickými koncepty jako jsou U-Prove či idemix. V současné době však není známý systém, který by poskytoval všechny potřebné funkce na ochranu digitální identity a zároveň byl prakticky implementovatelný na zařízeních, jako jsou čipové karty. Mezi klíčové slabiny současných systémů patří především chybějící nespojitelnost relací a absence revokace. Není tak možné efektivně zneplatnit zaniklé uživatele, ztracené či ukradené autentizační karty či karty škodlivých uživatelů. Z těchto důvodů je v této práci navrženo kryptografické schéma, které řeší slabiny nalezené při analýze existujících řešení. Výsledné schéma, jehož návrh je založen na ověřených primitivech, jako jsou $\Sigma$-protokoly pro důkazy znalostí, kryptografické závazky či ověřitelné šifrování, pak podporuje všechny požadované vlastnosti pro ochranu soukromí a digitální identity. Zároveň je však návrh snadno implementovatelný v prostředí smart-karet. Tato práce obsahuje plný kryptografický návrh systému, formální ověření klíčových vlastností, matematický model schématu v programu Mathematica pro ověření funkčnosti a výsledky experimentální implementace v prostředí .NET smart-karet. I přesto, že navrhovaný systém obsahuje podporu všech funkcí na ochranu soukromí, včetně těch, které chybí u existujících systémů, jeho výpočetní složitost zůstává stejná či nižší, doba ověření uživatele je tedy kratší než u existujících systémů. Výsledkem je schéma, které může velmi znatelně zvýšit ochranu soukromí uživatelů při jejich ověřování, především při využití v elektronických dokladech, přístupových systémech či Internetových službách.This dissertation thesis deals with the cryptographic constructions for user authentication. Rather than classical authentication protocols which allow only the identity verification, the attribute authentication systems are the main topic of this thesis. The attribute authentication systems allow users to give proofs about the possession of personal attributes. These attributes can represent any personal information, for example age, nationality or birthplace. The attribute ownership can be proven anonymously and with the support of many features for digital identity protection. These features include, e.g., the unlinkability of verification sessions, untraceability, selective disclosure of attributes or efficient revocation. Currently, the attribute authentication systems are considered to be the successors of existing authentication systems by the official strategies of USA (NSTIC) and EU (ENISA). The necessary features are partially provided by existing cryptographic concepts like U-Prove and idemix. But at this moment, there is no system providing all privacy-enhancing features which is implementable on computationally restricted devices like smart-cards. Among all weaknesses of existing systems, the missing unlinkability of verification sessions and the absence of practical revocation are the most critical ones. Without these features, it is currently impossible to invalidate expired users, lost or stolen authentication cards and cards of malicious users. Therefore, a new cryptographic scheme is proposed in this thesis to fix the weaknesses of existing schemes. The resulting scheme, which is based on established primitives like $\Sigma$-protocols for proofs of knowledge, cryptographic commitments and verifiable encryption, supports all privacy-enhancing features. At the same time, the scheme is easily implementable on smart-cards. This thesis includes the full cryptographic specification, the formal verification of key properties, the mathematical model for functional verification in Mathematica software and the experimental implementation on .NET smart-cards. Although the scheme supports all privacy-enhancing features which are missing in related work, the computational complexity is the same or lower, thus the time of verification is shorter than in existing systems. With all these features and properties, the resulting scheme can significantly improve the privacy of users during their verification, especially when used in electronic ID systems, access systems or Internet services.

A framework for IPSec functional architecture.

In today\u27s network, various stand-alone security services and/or proxies are used to provide different security services. These individual security systems implementing one single security function cannot address security needs of evolving networks that require secure protocol such as IPSec. In this paper, we provide a framework for implementing IPSec security functions in a well structured functional architecture. The proposed architecture is modular and allows for composing software applications from products commercially available and developed by different suppliers to implement the entire security requirements of IPSec protocol. In addition the proposed architecture is robust in the sense that it supports open standards and interfaces, and implements security functions of IPSec as an integrated solution under a unified security management system.Dept. of Electrical and Computer Engineering. Paper copy at Leddy Library: Theses & Major Papers - Basement, West Bldg. / Call Number: Thesis2005 .F34. Source: Masters Abstracts International, Volume: 44-03, page: 1451. Thesis (M.Sc.)--University of Windsor (Canada), 2005

A scalable and dynamic application-level secure communication framework for inter-cloud services

Most of the current cloud computing platforms offer Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) model, which aims to provision basic virtualized computing resources as on-demand and dynamic services. Nevertheless, a single cloud does not have limitless resources to offer to its users, hence the notion of an Inter-Cloud environment where a cloud can use the infrastructure resources of other clouds. However, there is no common framework in existence that allows the service owners to seamlessly provision even some basic services across multiple cloud service providers, albeit not due to any inherent incompatibility or proprietary nature of the foundation technologies on which these cloud platforms is built. In this paper we present a novel solution which aims to cover a gap in a subsection of this problem domain. Our solution offers a security architecture that enables service owners to provision a dynamic and service-oriented secure virtual private network on top of multiple cloud IaaS providers. It does this by leveraging the scalability, robustness and exibility of peer-to-peer overlay techniques to eliminate the manual configuration, key management and peer churn problems encountered in setting up the secure communication channels dynamically, between different components of a typical service that is deployed on multiple clouds. We present the implementation details of our solution as well as experimental results carried out on two commercial clouds

Evolving Bitcoin Custody

The broad topic of this thesis is the design and analysis of Bitcoin custody systems. Both the technology and threat landscape are evolving constantly. Therefore, custody systems, defence strategies, and risk models should be adaptive too. We introduce Bitcoin custody by describing the different types, design principles, phases and functions of custody systems. We review the technology stack of these systems and focus on the fundamentals; key-management and privacy. We present a perspective we call the systems view. It is an attempt to capture the full complexity of a custody system, including technology, people, and processes. We review existing custody systems and standards. We explore Bitcoin covenants. This is a mechanism to enforce constraints on transaction sequences. Although previous work has proposed how to construct and apply Bitcoin covenants, these require modifying the consensus rules of Bitcoin, a notoriously difficult task. We introduce the first detailed exposition and security analysis of a deleted-key covenant protocol, which is compatible with current consensus rules. We demonstrate a range of security models for deleted-key covenants which seem practical, in particular, when applied in autonomous (user-controlled) custody systems. We conclude with a comparative analysis with previous proposals. Covenants are often proclaimed to be an important primitive for custody systems, but no complete design has been proposed to validate that claim. To address this, we propose an autonomous custody system called Ajolote which uses deleted-key covenants to enforce a vault sequence. We evaluate Ajolote with; a model of its state dynamics, a privacy analysis, and a risk model. We propose a threat model for custody systems which captures a realistic attacker for a system with offline devices and user-verification. We perform ceremony analysis to construct the risk model.Comment: PhD thesi

Defense in Depth of Resource-Constrained Devices

The emergent next generation of computing, the so-called Internet of Things (IoT), presents significant challenges to security, privacy, and trust. The devices commonly used in IoT scenarios are often resource-constrained with reduced computational strength, limited power consumption, and stringent availability requirements. Additionally, at least in the consumer arena, time-to-market is often prioritized at the expense of quality assurance and security. An initial lack of standards has compounded the problems arising from this rapid development. However, the explosive growth in the number and types of IoT devices has now created a multitude of competing standards and technology silos resulting in a highly fragmented threat model. Tens of billions of these devices have been deployed in consumers\u27 homes and industrial settings. From smart toasters and personal health monitors to industrial controls in energy delivery networks, these devices wield significant influence on our daily lives. They are privy to highly sensitive, often personal data and responsible for real-world, security-critical, physical processes. As such, these internet-connected things are highly valuable and vulnerable targets for exploitation. Current security measures, such as reactionary policies and ad hoc patching, are not adequate at this scale. This thesis presents a multi-layered, defense in depth, approach to preventing and mitigating a myriad of vulnerabilities associated with the above challenges. To secure the pre-boot environment, we demonstrate a hardware-based secure boot process for devices lacking secure memory. We introduce a novel implementation of remote attestation backed by blockchain technologies to address hardware and software integrity concerns for the long-running, unsupervised, and rarely patched systems found in industrial IoT settings. Moving into the software layer, we present a unique method of intraprocess memory isolation as a barrier to several prevalent classes of software vulnerabilities. Finally, we exhibit work on network analysis and intrusion detection for the low-power, low-latency, and low-bandwidth wireless networks common to IoT applications. By targeting these areas of the hardware-software stack, we seek to establish a trustworthy system that extends from power-on through application runtime

Studies on the Security of Selected Advanced Asymmetric Cryptographic Primitives

The main goal of asymmetric cryptography is to provide confidential communication, which allows two parties to communicate securely even in the presence of adversaries. Ever since its invention in the seventies, asymmetric cryptography has been improved and developed further, and a formal security framework has been established around it. This framework includes different security goals, attack models, and security notions. As progress was made in the field, more advanced asymmetric cryptographic primitives were proposed, with other properties in addition to confidentiality. These new primitives also have their own definitions and notions of security. This thesis consists of two parts, where the first relates to the security of fully homomorphic encryption and related primitives. The second part presents a novel cryptographic primitive, and defines what security goals the primitive should achieve. The first part of the thesis consists of Article I, II, and III, which all pertain to the security of homomorphic encryption schemes in one respect or another. Article I demonstrates that a particular fully homomorphic encryption scheme is insecure in the sense that an adversary with access only to the public material can recover the secret key. It is also shown that this insecurity mainly stems from the operations necessary to make the scheme fully homomorphic. Article II presents an adaptive key recovery attack on a leveled homomorphic encryption scheme. The scheme in question claimed to withstand precisely such attacks, and was the only scheme of its kind to do so at the time. This part of the thesis culminates with Article III, which is an overview article on the IND-CCA1 security of all acknowledged homomorphic encryption schemes. The second part of the thesis consists of Article IV, which presents Vetted Encryption (VE), a novel asymmetric cryptographic primitive. The primitive is designed to allow a recipient to vet who may send them messages, by setting up a public filter with a public verification key, and providing each vetted sender with their own encryption key. There are three different variants of VE, based on whether the sender is identifiable to the filter and/or the recipient. Security definitions, general constructions and comparisons to already existing cryptographic primitives are provided for all three variants.Doktorgradsavhandlin

Pre-Constrained Encryption

In all existing encryption systems, the owner of the master secret key has the ability to decrypt all ciphertexts. In this work, we propose a new notion of pre-constrained encryption (PCE) where the owner of the master secret key does not have "full" decryption power. Instead, its decryption power is constrained in a pre-specified manner during the system setup. We present formal definitions and constructions of PCE, and discuss societal applications and implications to some well-studied cryptographic primitives

Physical-Layer Security, Quantum Key Distribution and Post-quantum Cryptography

The growth of data-driven technologies, 5G, and the Internet place enormous pressure on underlying information infrastructure. There exist numerous proposals on how to deal with the possible capacity crunch. However, the security of both optical and wireless networks lags behind reliable and spectrally efficient transmission. Significant achievements have been made recently in the quantum computing arena. Because most conventional cryptography systems rely on computational security, which guarantees the security against an efficient eavesdropper for a limited time, with the advancement in quantum computing this security can be compromised. To solve these problems, various schemes providing perfect/unconditional security have been proposed including physical-layer security (PLS), quantum key distribution (QKD), and post-quantum cryptography. Unfortunately, it is still not clear how to integrate those different proposals with higher level cryptography schemes. So the purpose of the Special Issue entitled “Physical-Layer Security, Quantum Key Distribution and Post-quantum Cryptography” was to integrate these various approaches and enable the next generation of cryptography systems whose security cannot be broken by quantum computers. This book represents the reprint of the papers accepted for publication in the Special Issue