Engineering Commons^™

Design And Implementation Of Path Finding And Verification In The Internet, Hao Cai

Doctoral Dissertations

In the Internet, network traffic between endpoints typically follows one path that is determined by the control plane. Endpoints have little control over the choice of which path their network traffic takes and little ability to verify if the traffic indeed follows a specific path. With the emergence of software-defined networking (SDN), more control over connections can be exercised, and thus the opportunity for novel solutions exists. However, there remain concerns about the attack surface exposed by fine-grained control, which may allow attackers to inject and redirect traffic. To address these opportunities and concerns, we consider two specific challenges: (1) …

Trustworthy Systems And Protocols For The Internet Of Things, Arman Pouraghily

Doctoral Dissertations

Processor-based embedded systems are integrated into many aspects of everyday life such as industrial control, automotive systems, healthcare, the Internet of Things, etc. As Moore’s law progresses, these embedded systems have moved from simple microcontrollers to full-scale embedded computing systems with multiple processor cores and operating systems support. At the same time, the security of these devices has also become a key concern. Our main focus in this work is the security and privacy of the embedded systems used in IoT systems. In the first part of this work, we take a look at the security of embedded systems from …

A Study On Controlling Power Supply Ramp-Up Time In Sram Pufs, Harshavardhan Ramanna

Masters Theses

With growing connectivity in the modern era, the risk of encrypted data stored in hardware being exposed to third-party adversaries is higher than ever. The security of encrypted data depends on the secrecy of the stored key. Conventional methods of storing keys in Non-Volatile Memory have been shown to be susceptible to physical attacks. Physically Unclonable Functions provide a unique alternative to conventional key storage. SRAM PUFs utilize inherent process variation caused during manufacturing to derive secret keys from the power-up values of SRAM memory cells.

This thesis analyzes the effect of supply ramp-up times on the reliability of SRAM …

On-Chip Communication And Security In Fpgas, Shivukumar Basanagouda Patil

Masters Theses

Innovations in Field Programmable Gate Array (FPGA) manufacturing processes and architectural design have led to the development of extremely large FPGAs. There has also been a widespread adaptation of these large FPGAs in cloud infrastructures and data centers to accelerate search and machine learning applications. Two important topics related to FPGAs are addressed in this work: on-chip communication and security. On-chip communication is quickly becoming a bottleneck in to- day’s large multi-million gate FPGAs. Hard Networks-on-Chip (NoC), made of fixed silicon, have been shown to provide low power, high speed, flexible on-chip communication. An iterative algorithm for routing pre-scheduled time-division-multiplexed …

Protecting Controllers Against Denial-Of-Service Attacks In Software-Defined Networks, Jingrui Li

Masters Theses

Connection setup in software-defined networks (SDN) requires considerable amounts of processing, communication, and memory resources. Attackers can target SDN controllers defense mechanism based on a proof-of-work protocol. This thesis proposes a new protocol to protect controllers against such attacks, shows implementation of the system and analyze the its performance. The key characteristics of this protocol, namely its one-way operation, its requirement for freshness in proofs of work, its adjustable difficulty, its ability to work withmultiple network providers, and its use of existing TCP/IP header fields, ensure that this approach can be used in practice.

Enhancing Secrecy Via Exploring Randomness In The Wireless Physical Layer, Rehan Talat

Masters Theses 1911 - February 2014

In order to establish a secure connections in the wireless environment, cryptographic methods may require an exchange of a key or secret. Fortunately, the environment provides randomness due to multi-path fading that can be exploited by physical-layer security algorithms to help establish this shared secret. However, in some cases, multi-path fading might be absent or negligible; therefore, we look for artificial ways to increase randomness. In this thesis, we explore antenna radiation variation by altering the phase between two antennas as a means of creating artificial fading. We construct a model of the antenna gain variation by analyzing the radiation …

Secure And Energy Efficient Physical Unclonable Functions, Sudheendra Srivathsa

Masters Theses 1911 - February 2014

Physical Unclonable Functions are a unique class of circuits that leverage the inherentvariations in manufacturing process to create unique,unclonableIDs and secret keys.The distinguishing feature of PUFs is that even an untrusted foundry cannot create a copy of the circuit as it is impossible to control the manufacturing process variations.PUFs can operate reliably in presence of voltage and temperature variations. In thisthesis, weexplorethe security offered by PUFs and tradeoffs between different metrics such as uniqueness, reliability and energy consumption.Benefits of sub-threshold PUF operation and the use of delay based Arbiter PUFs and ring oscillator PUFs in low power applications is evaluated. …

Techniques For Detection Of Malicious Packet Drops In Networks, Vikram R. Desai

Masters Theses 1911 - February 2014

The introduction of programmability and dynamic protocol deployment in routers, there would be an increase in the potential vulnerabilities and attacks . The next- generation Internet promises to provide a fundamental shift in the underlying architecture to support dynamic deployment of network protocols. In this thesis, we consider the problem of detecting malicious packet drops in routers. Specifically, we focus on an attack scenario, where a router selectively drops packets destined for another node. Detecting such an attack is challenging since it requires differentiating malicious packet drops from congestion-based packet losses. We propose a controller- based malicious packet detection technique …

Wireless Physical-Layer Security Performance Of Uwb Systems, Miyong Ko

Masters Theses 1911 - February 2014

Traditionally, spread-spectrum systems have been employed to provide low probability-of-intercept (LPI) and low probability-of-detection (LPD) performances at the physical layer, but the messages transmitted over such a system are still encrypted with a powerful cipher to protect their secrecy. Our challenge is to find a solution to provide an additional level of security at the physical layer so that simple systems such as RFID tags with limited resources can be secure without using standard encryption. It has recently been suggested that the cryptographic security of the system can be enhanced by exploiting physical properties of UWB signals. With an eavesdropper …