234 research outputs found
Hardware-based Security for Virtual Trusted Platform Modules
Virtual Trusted Platform modules (TPMs) were proposed as a software-based
alternative to the hardware-based TPMs to allow the use of their cryptographic
functionalities in scenarios where multiple TPMs are required in a single
platform, such as in virtualized environments. However, virtualizing TPMs,
especially virutalizing the Platform Configuration Registers (PCRs), strikes
against one of the core principles of Trusted Computing, namely the need for a
hardware-based root of trust. In this paper we show how strength of
hardware-based security can be gained in virtual PCRs by binding them to their
corresponding hardware PCRs. We propose two approaches for such a binding. For
this purpose, the first variant uses binary hash trees, whereas the other
variant uses incremental hashing. In addition, we present an FPGA-based
implementation of both variants and evaluate their performance
General Impossibility of Group Homomorphic Encryption in the Quantum World
Group homomorphic encryption represents one of the most important building
blocks in modern cryptography. It forms the basis of widely-used, more
sophisticated primitives, such as CCA2-secure encryption or secure multiparty
computation. Unfortunately, recent advances in quantum computation show that
many of the existing schemes completely break down once quantum computers reach
maturity (mainly due to Shor's algorithm). This leads to the challenge of
constructing quantum-resistant group homomorphic cryptosystems.
In this work, we prove the general impossibility of (abelian) group
homomorphic encryption in the presence of quantum adversaries, when assuming
the IND-CPA security notion as the minimal security requirement. To this end,
we prove a new result on the probability of sampling generating sets of finite
(sub-)groups if sampling is done with respect to an arbitrary, unknown
distribution. Finally, we provide a sufficient condition on homomorphic
encryption schemes for our quantum attack to work and discuss its
satisfiability in non-group homomorphic cases. The impact of our results on
recent fully homomorphic encryption schemes poses itself as an open question.Comment: 20 pages, 2 figures, conferenc
Proactive Detection of Computer Worms Using Model Checking
Although recent estimates are speaking of 200,000 different viruses, worms, and Trojan horses, the majority of them are variants of previously existing malware. As these variants mostly differ in their binary representation rather than their functionality, they can be recognized by analyzing the program behavior, even though they are not covered by the signature databases of current antivirus tools. Proactive malware detectors mitigate this risk by detection procedures that use a single signature to detect whole classes of functionally related malware without signature updates. It is evident that the quality of proactive detection procedures depends on their ability to analyze the semantics of the binary. In this paper, we propose the use of model checkinga well-established software verification techniquefor proactive malware detection. We describe a tool that extracts an annotated control flow graph from the binary and automatically verifies it against a formal malware specification. To this end, we introduce the new specification language CTPL, which balances the high expressive power needed for malware signatures with efficient model checking algorithms. Our experiments demonstrate that our technique indeed is able to recognize variants of existing malware with a low risk of false positives. © 2006 IEEE
On (The Lack Of) Location Privacy in Crowdsourcing Applications
Crowdsourcing enables application developers to benefit from large and diverse datasets at a low cost. Specifically, mobile crowdsourcing (MCS) leverages users' devices as sensors to perform geo-located data collection. The collection of geo-located data raises serious privacy concerns for users. Yet, despite the large research body on location privacy-preserving mechanisms (LPPMs), MCS developers implement little to no protection for data collection or publication. To understand this mismatch, we study the performance of existing LPPMs on publicly available data from two mobile crowdsourcing projects. Our results show that well-established defenses are either not applicable or offer little protection in the MCS setting. Additionally, they have a much stronger impact on applications' utility than foreseen in the literature. This is because existing LPPMs, designed with location-based services (LBSs) in mind, are optimized for utility functions based on users' locations, while MCS utility functions depend on the values (e.g., measurements) associated with those locations. We finally outline possible research avenues to facilitate the development of new location privacy solutions that fit the needs of MCS so that the increasing number of such applications do not jeopardize their users' privacy
Protecting Software through Obfuscation:Can It Keep Pace with Progress in Code Analysis?
Software obfuscation has always been a controversially discussed research area. While theoretical results indicate that provably secure obfuscation in general is impossible, its widespread application in malware and commercial software shows that it is nevertheless popular in practice. Still, it remains largely unexplored to what extent today’s software obfuscations keep up with state-of-the-art code analysis and where we stand in the arms race between software developers and code analysts. The main goal of this survey is to analyze the effectiveness of different classes of software obfuscation against the continuously improving deobfuscation techniques and off-the-shelf code analysis tools.
The answer very much depends on the goals of the analyst and the available resources. On the one hand, many forms of lightweight static analysis have difficulties with even basic obfuscation schemes, which explains the unbroken popularity of obfuscation among malware writers. On the other hand, more expensive analysis techniques, in particular when used interactively by a human analyst, can easily defeat many obfuscations. As a result, software obfuscation for the purpose of intellectual property protection remains highly challenging.</jats:p
Blurry-ORAM: A Multi-Client Oblivious Storage Architecture
Since the development of tree-based Oblivious RAM by Shi et al. (Asiacrypt \u2711) it has become apparent that privacy preserving outsourced storage can be
practical. Although most current constructions follow a client-server model, in many applications it is desirable to share data between different clients, in a way that hides the access patterns, not only from the server, but also between the clients.
In this work, we introduce Blurry-ORAM, an extension of Path-ORAM
that allows for oblivious sharing of data in the multi-client setting, so that accesses
can be hidden from the server and other clients. Our construction follows the design of
Path-ORAM as closely as possible in order to benefit from its performance as well
as security. We prove our construction secure in a setting where the clients
are semi-honest, do not trust each other but try to learn the access
patterns of each other
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