Hardware-Backed Identity Management Systems

This thesis explores how hardware security technologies can be applied to satisfy the diverse set of requirements inherent to identity management systems and technologies. This thesis focuses on the use of existing hardware-based security technologies by software rather than developing new hardware components. All concepts proposed in this thesis are subjected to an in-depth evaluation and are validated by means of a prototype.The first part of this thesis deals with device authentication between resource-constrained nodes and more powerful devices. A security architecture is presented that allows low-cost resource-constrained devices to establish a secure authenticated channel with more powerful devices using symmetric-key cryptography. The constrained devices can enforce fine-grained access control policies based on the information obtained during authentication. In application domains with a limited scope a tamper-resistant module containing a common cryptographic key can be added to the constrained devices to increase the scalability of the key management process.In the second part of this thesis a new user-centric identity management system is presented. Instead of relying on digital signature algorithms to assert the validity of attributes to service providers, the identity management system proposed in this part relies on a trusted application running on a tamperproof secure element. The service provider is assured that the received information originates from a genuine secure element in the system. The tamperproofness ensures that an attacker cannot directly access the memory of the secure element to extract or modify information. The identity management system combines several interesting features of existing governmental and federated identity management systems.In the third part of this thesis a trusted execution environment that can be established on commodity workstations and laptops using TPM-based technologies is used to increase the security and privacy of existing identity management technologies. Two complementary case studies are presented. The first case study focuses on the prevention of credential abuse through sharing or theft. The user's credential is, therefore, bound to one or more of his biometric traits. The second case study focuses on increasing the security and privacy of authentication infrastructures that rely on a smart card containing an X.509 credential and the identity information of the user. The system increases the security by allowing the user to enter his passcode via his workstation while protecting it from malware running on the operating system. The system increases the privacy of the user by giving the user more control over the disclosure of his information.nrpages: 136status: publishe

Secure Remote Access to Industrial Control Systems with Mobile Devices

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Towards a cross-domain identity card

The Belgian identitycard allows citizens to prove their identity digitally and to sign electronic documents. Since its introduction in 2002, the number of available eID applications is increasing considerably. Early applications were developed to support the interaction between government and its citizens. Recent applications, however, are often designed for commercial purposes. Commercial applications are encouraged by the Belgian government to increase the usability of the card. Hence, the Belgian eID is now used across multiple domains. This raises multiple challenging privacy and security concerns that are hard to tackle with the current eID card.(Rump Session)status: publishe

Development of an Embedded Platform for Secure CPS Services

Cyber-Physical Systems are growing more complex and the evolution of the Internet of Things is causing them to be more connected to other networks. This trend, combined with the fact that increasingly powerful embedded devices are added to these systems opens up many new opportunities for the development of richer and more complex CPS services. This, however, introduces several new challenges with respect to the data and software managed on these CPS devices and gateways. This paper proposes a platform for the development of secure cyber-physical devices and gateways. The platform provides a secure environment in which critical CPS services can be running. The secure environment relies on the ARM TrustZone security extensions. A commodity Android environment is provided in which the user can install additional software components to extend the functionality of the devices. A prototype of the platform is developed and this prototype is evaluated.status: publishe

A Quantitative Assessment of Performance in Mobile App Development Tools

The popularity and maturity of mobile cross-platform tools increased considerably during the last years. They can be used to increase the efficiency during the development cycle of mobile applications. Although it is common knowledge that cross-platform tools come with a performance penalty, the size of the overhead is unclear. Our study targets the assessment of two representative cross-platform tools. This paper presents a quantitative performance analysis that is applied to a non-trivial, multi-screen app. Relevant performance properties on both low-end and high-end devices are evaluated and compared to a native Android and iOS implementation. We further reflect about the impact of the results on the user acceptance and experience, and define guidelines for the selection of a particular tool.status: publishe

Comparing performance parameters of mobile app development strategies

Mobile cross-platform tools (CPTs) provide an interesting alternative to native development. Cross-platform tools aim at sharing a significant portion of the application codebase between the implementations for the different platforms. This can drastically decrease the development costs of mobile applications. There is, however, some reluctance of mobile application developers to adopt these tools. One of the reasons is that the landscape of CPTs is so diverse that it is hard to select the most suitable CPT to implement a specific application. The contribution of this paper is twofold. First, it presents a performance analysis of a fully functional mobile application implemented with ten cross-platform tools and native for Android, iOS and Windows Phone. The performance tests are executed on a high- and low-end Android and iOS device, and a Windows Phone device. Second, based on the performance analysis, general conclusions of which application developers should be aware when selecting a specific (type of) cross-platform tool are drawn.status: publishe

Security Analysis of Cordova Applications in Google Play

© 2017 Association for Computing Machinery. Mobile Cross-Platform Tools (CPTs) provide an alternative to native application development that allows mobile app developers to drastically reduce the development time and cost when targeting multiple platforms. They allow sharing a significant part of the application codebase between the implementations for the targeted platforms (e.g. Android, iOS, Windows Phone). Although CPTs provide significant benefits for developers, there can introduce several disadvantages. The CPT software layers and translation steps can impact the security of the produced applications. One of the most well-known and often-used CPTs is Cordova, formerly known as PhoneGap. Cordova has, over the years, taken several steps to reduce the attack surface and introduced several mechanisms that allow developers to increase the security of Cordova applications. This paper gives a statistical overview of the adoption of Cordova security best practices and mechanisms in Cordova applications downloaded from the Google Play Store. For the analysis, over a thousand Cordova application were downloaded. The research shows that the poor adoption of these mechanisms leads to a significant number of insecure Cordova applications.status: accepte

A Logic-Based Framework for the Security Analysis of Industrial Control Systems

© 2017, Allerton Press, Inc. Industrial Control Systems (ICS) are used for monitoring and controlling critical infrastructures such as power stations, waste water treatment facilities, traffic lights, and many more. Lately, these systems have become a popular target for cyber-attacks. Security is often an afterthought, leaving them vulnerable to all sorts of attacks. This article presents a formal approach for analysing the security of Industrial Control Systems, both during their design phase and while operational. A knowledge- based system is used to analyse a model of the control system and extract system vulnerabilities. The approach has been validated on an ICS in the design phase.status: publishe

Client-Side Biometric Verification Based on Trusted Computing

Part 1: Research PapersInternational audienceTraditionally, a user requires substantial trust in a workstation for correctly handling her credentials (e.g. password/login). Unfortunately, malware and compromised software makes them unsuitable for secure credential management. Credentials are easily stolen and the user cannot trust what is being displayed on her workstation, obstructing informed consent.This paper presents a new solution that addresses these issues. Credentials are bound to the owner using biometrics, effectively impeding abuse through credential sharing and theft. The biometric verification is performed on the client side, preserving the privacy of the user. The solution ensures that the user is correctly informed about the pending authentication, preventing abuse by malware. To demonstrate the feasibility of our approach, a prototype was implemented