Formalizing and safeguarding blockchain-based BlockVoke protocol as an ACME extension for fast certificate revocation

Certificates are integral to the security of today’s Internet. Protocols like BlockVoke allow secure, timely and efficient revocation of certificates that need to be invalidated. ACME, a scheme used by the non-profit Let’s Encrypt Certificate Authority to handle most parts of the certificate lifecycle, allows automatic and seamless certificate issuance. In this work, we bring together both protocols by describing and formalizing an extension of the ACME protocol to support BlockVoke, combining the benefits of ACME’s certificate lifecycle management and BlockVoke’s timely and secure revocations. We then formally verify this extension through formal methods such as Colored Petri Nets (CPNs) and conduct a risk and threat analysis of the ACME/BlockVoke extension using the ISSRM domain model. Identified risks and threats are mitigated to secure our novel extension. Furthermore, a proof-of-concept implementation of the ACME/BlockVoke extension is provided, bridging the gap towards deployment in the real world

Digital investigation of wireless sensor networks - IRIS mote

© 2018 IEEE. For forensically analyzing incidents, it is important to gather as much data about the incident as possible. In the case of WSNs, this means that data has to be extracted from the sensor nodes, when a compromise or other security incident occurs. Among the data to be extracted are the program running on the node, so it can be analyzed for tampering, as well as the log and configuration flash memory usually stored on a separate chip on the sensor node. In this paper we will present how to perform an extraction of RAM, program memory, and flash memory with their necessary tools, and steps. Finally, information about the compromise can be gathered from the node’s RAM, program, and flash memory especially if for example a vulnerability in the software running on the node was exploited, the (commonly small) RAM, program, and flash memory can be examined for anomalies

Smart RFID application in health care: Using RFID technology for smart inventory and logistic systems in hospitals

In today\u27s hospital environments, many medical devices and tools are used. While some of these will be stationary due to size and bulk, many devices can also be moved from room to room. To facilitate an efficiently running hospital environment and protect expensive devices from being lost, it is important to keep track of the whereabouts of every medical device or utensil. We propose an RFID based system with a smartphone application based frontend for tracking the locations of medical devices and utensils in a hospital environment, both enabling medical professionals to quickly locate required devices as well as allowing hospital administration to keep track of when and where devices leave hospital premises, optionally alerting security after a configurable grace period. In addition to this, our proposed application allows doctors and other medical personnal to reserve equipment and rooms such as examination or operating rooms and to easily find which rooms or pieces of equipment are available at a given time. This reduces administrative overhead and allows a smoother operation of the hospital, where efficiency is needed not only for the sake of profits but also to ensure the continued well-being of patients

Improving energy efficiency of data communication in a hybrid PKI-based approach for WSNs

Securing communications in wireless sensor networks is increasingly important, as the diversity of applications increases. In this paper, we analyze the performance and power efficiency of bulk user data communications in a simple, secure PKI-based communication scheme employing a hybrid cryptographic approach. Detailed benchmarks of the involved cryptographic primitives are performed. The results are used to determine how the necessary computing ressources can be reduced from the current implementation, without compromising and even increasing security. At the same time, the special circumstances of the PKI-based framework on memory constrained sensor motes, such as IRIS or MICA2 motes, are considered. An improved set of cryptographic primitives is determined and implemented, improving execution speed and thus energy efficiency. © 2013 IEEE

Smart parking system for vehicles

© 2014 IEEE. There are various regions of applications for wireless sensor networks (WSNs). In this demonstration, we are using a WSN to build an efficient and smart parking system for vehicles. Our application will use light sensors to automatically determine the use of parking spaces in a parking area and calculate billable parking time while also providing a useful overview of occupied and free parking spaces to vehicle operators. Such a system can provide increased driver comfort and reduce costs in parking space operation by allowing drivers to easily decide on where to park, while the used components only generate low costs for the operator

A privacy-preserving and power-efficient bicycle tracking scheme for theft mitigation

© 2016 IEEE. Bicycle theft is a big problem in places such as university towns, where bicycles offer one of the most costefficient and quick ways for students to move around. For example, 1,200 bicycles are stolen yearly in Göttingen, with more than 300,000 being reported as stolen in the whole of Germany during 2014. We present a power efficient architecture to track the locations of stolen bicycles using opportunistic communication with collection nodes placed in high traffic spots, that can be used to find stolen and lost bicycles. At the same time, the scheme is designed to prevent a loss of privacy for the owners of bicycles that have not been marked as stolen, while also reducing power usage during times where bicycles are under the control of their proper owners.We also show the feasibility of our approach using a simplified implementation using IRIS nodes, with a university campus serving as a testbed

Received signal strength indication for movement detection

© 2015 IPSJ. Wireless networks are spreading continuously, filling our homes and the world around us. By using a ZigBee network we will show that a person can be detected by analyzing the fluctuations of signal strength inside the network. The simplicity of our approach means that it could be extended to all wireless networks. This work shows both implications on privacy as well as promising advances in fields like home automation and smart devices by localizing people as they go about their daily lives

Secure and authenticated data communication in wireless sensor networks

© 2015 by the authors; licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. Securing communications in wireless sensor networks is increasingly important as the diversity of applications increases. However, even today, it is equally important for the measures employed to be energy efficient. For this reason, this publication analyzes the suitability of various cryptographic primitives for use in WSNs according to various criteria and, finally, describes a modular, PKI-based framework for confidential, authenticated, secure communications in which most suitable primitives can be employed. Due to the limited capabilities of common WSN motes, criteria for the selection of primitives are security, power efficiency and memory requirements. The implementation of the framework and the singular components have been tested and benchmarked in our tested of IRISmotes

Calculating the speed of vehicles using Wireless Sensor Networks

© 2016 Polish Information Processing Society. Speed measurement is an important issue for some types of Wireless Sensor Networks (WSN), especially for Vehicular Ad-hoc Networks (VANETs). However, calculating this value is error-prone and costly. This report intends to demonstrate the calculation of speed of an object without the use of any additional devices or sensor boards, only using Received Signal Strength Indication (RSSI) for localization of the vehicles and time calculation using synchronization. We implemented these methods in actual IRIS motes, and tested them. The results show that, while not perfectly accurate, our method proved to be reliable and close to the real speed. In addition, the results do not have any linear correlation in divergence of real speed and calculated speed, which means the system avoids systematic errors

Secure Localization in Wireless Sensor Networks

With the growing popularity of the Internet of Things, Wireless Sensor Networks also only grow more and more common in various different forms. However, sensor data is often only useful in connection with information about where it comes from. For this reason, localization schemes that allow sensor nodes to localize their positions are a very active field of research. As schemes are refined, localization results grow increasingly more accurate, but it also becomes more and more important to make localization approaches more robust against malfunctioning or malicious nodes in the network, as well as network scale attacks. This thesis presents two approaches, Unchained and Rechained, to monetarily disincentivize the creation of Sybil identities in decentralized networks, mitigating a common class of network level attacks against localization schemes. Furthermore, Robustness Enhanced Sensor Assisted Monte Carlo Localization (RESA-MCL) is introduced, evaluated and compared against previous comparable schemes. Evaluation is performed in simulations without attacks and under three different attack models that are introduced for the application field of Wireless Sensor Networks. RESA-MCL outperforms other approaches both without and with attacks and performs well in both low and high anchor density scenarios (e.g. a localization error of 0.5 is reached at an anchor density of ~0.33), reaching a localization error up to 48% lower than that of a recent comparable approach at a similar anchor density. It is shown to be much more robust than other approaches under attacks while computational complexity is barely increased.2022-05-1