Engineering Commons^™

Capturing Cognitive Fingerprints From Keystroke Dynamics, J. Morris Chang, Chi-Chen Fang, Kuan-Hsing Ho, Norene Kelly, Pei-Yuan Wu, Yixiao Ding, Chris Chu, Stephen B. Gilbert, Amed E. Kamal, Sun-Yuan Kung

Morris Chang

Conventional authentication systems identify a user only at the entry point. Keystroke dynamics can continuously authenticate users by their typing rhythms without extra devices. This article presents a new feature called cognitive typing rhythm (CTR) to continuously verify the identities of computer users. Two machine techniques, SVM and KRR, have been developed for the system. The best results from experiments conducted with 1,977 users show a false-rejection rate of 0.7 percent and a false-acceptance rate of 5.5 percent. CTR therefore constitutes a cognitive fingerprint for continuous. Its effectiveness has been verified through a large-scale dataset. This article is part of …

Implementing And Testing A Novel Chaotic Cryptosystem, Samuel Jackson, Scott Kerlin, Jeremy Straub

Jeremy Straub

Cryptography in the domain of small satellites is a relatively new area of research. Compared to typical desktop computers, small satellites have limited bandwidth, processing power, and battery power. Many of the current encryption schemes were developed for desktop computers and servers, and as such may be unsuitable for small satellites. In addition, most cryptographic research in the domain of small satellites focuses on hardware solutions, which can be problematic given the limited space requirements of small satellites.

This paper investigates potential software solutions that could be used to encrypt and decrypt data on small satellites and other devices with …

Cloud Computing Data Breaches: A Socio-Technical Review Of Literature, David Kolevski, Katina Michael

Professor Katina Michael

As more and more personal, enterprise and government data, services and infrastructure moves to the cloud for storage and processing, the potential for data breaches increases. Already major corporations that have outsourced some of their IT requirements to the cloud have become victims of cyber attacks. Who is responsible and how to respond to these data breaches are just two pertinent questions facing cloud computing stakeholders who have entered an agreement on cloud services. This paper reviews literature in the domain of cloud computing data breaches using a socio-technical approach. Socio-technical theory encapsulates three major dimensions- the social, the technical, …

Reflections From The Wearable Computing Conference In Toronto, Canada, Nick Rheinberger, Katina Michael, Alexander Hayes

Alexander Hayes Mr.

Could sports men and women who are monitored using wearable computers actually be playing to a global theatre to ensure the upkeep of their performance benchmarks instead of consciously watching and reacting to what is happening in the game they are playing? What are the social implications of heart rate monitors and GPS units now embedded into player clothing? What were some of the reflections from the IEEE ISTAS13 meeting on Wearable Computers in Every Day Life? What were some of the main messages that you walked away with from that conference? What made the greatest impression on us was …

On Modeling Eavesdropping Attacks In Wireless Networks, Xuran Li, Jianlong Xu, Hong-Ning Dai, Qinglin Zhao, Chak Fong Cheang, Qiu Wang

Hong-Ning Dai

This paper concerns the eavesdropping attacks from the eavesdroppers’ perspective, which is new since most of current studies consider the problem from the good nodes’ perspective. In this paper, we originally propose an analytical framework to quantify the effective area and the probability of the eavesdropping attacks. This framework enables us to theoretically evaluate the impact of node density, antenna model, and wireless channel model on the eavesdropping attacks. We verify via extensive simulations that the proposed analytical framework is very accurate. Our results show that the probability of eavesdropping attacks significantly vary, depending on the wireless environments (such as …

Fault Tree Analysis For Safety/Security Verification In Aviation Software, Andrew J. Kornecki, Mingye Liu

Andrew J. Kornecki

The Next Generation Air Traffic Management system (NextGen) is a blueprint of the future National Airspace System. Supporting NextGen is a nation-wide Aviation Simulation Network (ASN), which allows integration of a variety of real-time simulations to facilitate development and validation of the NextGen software by simulating a wide range of operational scenarios. The ASN system is an environment, including both simulated and human-in-the-loop real-life components (pilots and air traffic controllers).Real Time Distributed Simulation (RTDS) developed at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University, a suite of applications providing low and medium fidelity en-route simulation capabilities, is one of the simulations contributing to the ASN. …

Development Of A Master Of Software Assurance Reference Curriculum, Andrew J. Kornecki, James Mcdonald, Julia H. Allen, Mark Ardis, Nancy Mead, Richard Linger, Thomas B. Hilburn

Andrew J. Kornecki

The Next Generation Air Traffic Management system (NextGen) is a blueprint of the future National Airspace System. Supporting NextGen is a nation-wide Aviation Simulation Network (ASN), which allows integration of a variety of real-time simulations to facilitate development and validation of the NextGen software by simulating a wide range of operational scenarios. The ASN system is an environment, including both simulated and human-in-the-loop real-life components (pilots and air traffic controllers).Real Time Distributed Simulation (RTDS) developed at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University, a suite of applications providing low and medium fidelity en-route simulation capabilities, is one of the simulations contributing to the ASN. …

Public Street Surveillance: A Psychometric Study On The Perceived Social Risk, David J. Brooks

David J Brooks Dr.

Public street surveillance, a domain of Closed Circuit Television (CCTV), has grown enormously and is becoming common place with increasing utilization in society as an all-purpose security tool. Previous authors (Ditton, 1999; Davies, 1998; Horne, 1998; Tomkins, 1998) have raised concern over social, civil and privacy issues, but there has been limited research to quantify these concerns. There are a number of core aspects that could relocate the risk perception and therefore, social support of public street surveillance. This study utilized the psychometric paradigm to quantitatively measure the social risk perception of public street surveillance. The psychometric paradigm is a …

Perceived Barriers For Implanting Microchips In Humans: A Transnational Study, Christine Perakslis, Katina Michael, M.G. Michael, Robert Gable

Professor Katina Michael

This quantitative, descriptive study investigated if there was a relationship between countries of residence of small business owners (N = 453) within four countries (Australia, India, UK, and the USA) with respect to perceived barriers to RFID (radio frequency identification) transponders being implanted into humans for employee ID. Participants were asked what they believed were the greatest barriers in instituting chip implants for access control in organizations. Participants had six options from which to select. There were significant chi-square analyses reported relative to respondents’ countries and: 1) a perceived barrier of technological issues (χ2 = 11.86, df = 3, p …

On The Security Of Auditing Mechanisms For Secure Cloud Storage, Yong Yu, Lei Niu, Guomin Yang, Yi Mu, Willy Susilo

Professor Willy Susilo

Cloud computing is a novel computing model that enables convenient and on-demand access to a shared pool of configurable computing resources. Auditing services are highly essential to make sure that the data is correctly hosted in the cloud. In this paper, we investigate the active adversary attacks in three auditing mechanisms for shared data in the cloud, including two identity privacy-preserving auditing mechanisms called Oruta and Knox, and a distributed storage integrity auditing mechanism. We show that these schemes become insecure when active adversaries are involved in the cloud storage. Specifically, an active adversary can arbitrarily alter the cloud data …

Security Pitfalls Of An Efficient Threshold Proxy Signature Scheme For Mobile Agents, Yong Yu, Yi Mu, Willy Susilo, Man Ho Au

Professor Willy Susilo

A (t,n) threashold proxy signature scheme enables an original signer to delegate his/her signing power to n proxy signers such that any t or more proxy signers can sign messages on behalf of the original signer, but t-1 or less of them cannot produce a valid proxy signature. Based on the RSA cryptosystem, Hong proposed an efficient (t,n) threshold proxy signature for mobile agents. Cai et al. found that the scheme due to Hong is proxy-unprotected , meaning that the original signer can generate a valid proxy signature by himself. However, it is unclear whether the scheme can be used …

The Future Of National And International Security On The Internet, Maurice Dawson, Marwan Omar, Jonathan Abramson, Dustin Bessette

Maurice Dawson

Hyperconnectivity is a growing trend that is driving cyber security experts to develop new security architectures for multiple platforms such as mobile devices, laptops, and even wearable displays. The futures of national and international security rely on complex countermeasures to ensure that a proper security posture is maintained during this state of hyperconnectivity. To protect these systems from exploitation of vulnerabilities it is essential to understand current and future threats to include the laws that drive their need to be secured. Examined within this chapter are the potential security-related threats with the use of social media, mobile devices, virtual worlds, …

Optimal Allocation Of Reactive Power Resources To Minimise Losses And Maintain System Security, Eknath Vittal, Lasantha Meegahapola, Damian Flynn, Andrew Keane

Dr Lasantha G Meegahapola

Modern doubly-fed induction generator (DFIG) wind turbines have significant reactive power control capability, even during low wind speed conditions. This can improve system security by providing terminal voltage control at buses in the system. Generally, such control employs the full range of reactive power production from the turbine which can lead to increased system losses. By utilizing optimal power flow analysis, and limiting the range of reactive power production at certain wind farms, system losses can be minimized. If the reactive power of the wind farms are optimized to achieve the minimum system losses this may adversely affect the voltage …

Voltage Security Constrained Reactive Power Optimization Incorporating Wind Generation, L G. Meegahapola, E Vittal, A Keane, D Flynn

Dr Lasantha G Meegahapola

This paper presents a comparative analysis between conventional optimal power flow (OPF) and voltage constrained OPF strategies with wind generation. The study has been performed using the New England 39 bus system with 12 doublyfed induction generator (DFIG) based wind farms installed across the network. A voltage security assessment is carried out to determine the critical wind farms for voltage stability enhancement. The power losses and individual wind farm reactive power generation have been compared with and without voltage stability constraints imposed on the OPF simulation. It is shown that voltage constrained OPF leads to much greater active power losses …

No Limits To Watching?, Katina Michael, M.G. Michael

M. G. Michael

Little by little, the introduction of new body-worn technologies is transforming the way people interact with their environment and one another, and perhaps even with themselves. Social and environmental psychology studies of human-technology interaction pose as many questions as answers. We are learning as we go: 'learning by doing' through interaction and 'learning by being'. Steve Mann calls this practice existential learning; wearers become photoborgs, a type of cyborg (cybernetic organism) whose primary intent is image capture from the domains of the natural and artificial. This approach elides the distinction between the technology and the human; they coalesce into one.

No Limits To Watching?, Katina Michael, M.G. Michael

Professor Katina Michael

Little by little, the introduction of new body-worn technologies is transforming the way people interact with their environment and one another, and perhaps even with themselves. Social and environmental psychology studies of human-technology interaction pose as many questions as answers. We are learning as we go: 'learning by doing' through interaction and 'learning by being'. Steve Mann calls this practice existential learning; wearers become photoborgs, a type of cyborg (cybernetic organism) whose primary intent is image capture from the domains of the natural and artificial. This approach elides the distinction between the technology and the human; they coalesce into one.

Eavesdropping Security In Wireless Ad Hoc Networks With Directional Antennas, Qiu Wang, Hong-Ning Dai, Qinglin Zhao

Hong-Ning Dai

The eavesdropping security of wireless ad hoc networks has attracted considerable attention recently. However, most of current studies only consider OMN networks, where each node is mounted with a single omni-directional antenna, which radiates radio signals in all directions and consequently leads to the high eavesdropping possibility. Compared with an omnidirectional antenna, a directional antenna can concentrate the radio signals on some desired directions so that it can potentially reduce the eavesdropping possibility. This paper investigates the eavesdropping security of wireless ad hoc networks equipped with directional antennas. In particular, we study the eavesdropping possibility of OMN networks, SDA networks …

On Eavesdropping Attacks In Wireless Sensor Networks With Directional Antennas, Hong-Ning Dai, Qiu Wang, Dong Li, Raymond Chi-Wing Wong

Hong-Ning Dai

The eavesdropping attack is a serious security threat to a wireless sensor network (WSN) since the eavesdropping attack is a prerequisite for other attacks. Conventional WSNs consist of wireless nodes equipped with omnidirectional antennas, which broadcast radio signals in all directions and are consequently prone to the eavesdropping attacks. Different from omnidirectional antennas, directional antennas radiate radio signals on desired directions and potentially reduce the possibility of the eavesdropping attacks. In this paper, we propose a model to analyze the eavesdropping probability in both single-hop WSNs and multihop WSNs with omnidirectional antennas and directional antennas. We verify the correctness of …

Wispernet: Anti-Jamming For Wireless Sensor Networks, Miroslav Pajic, Rahul Mangharam

Rahul Mangharam

Resilience to electromagnetic jamming and its avoidance are difficult problems. It is often both hard to distinguish malicious jamming from congestion in the broadcast regime and a challenge to conceal the activity patterns of the legitimate communication protocol from the jammer. In the context of energy-constrained wireless sensor networks, nodes are scheduled to maximize the common sleep duration and coordinate communication to extend their battery life. This results in well-defined communication patterns with possibly predictable intervals of activity that are easily detected and jammed by a statistical jammer. We present an anti-jamming protocol for sensor networks which eliminates spatio-temporal patterns …

Anti-Jamming For Embedded Wireless Networks, Miroslav Pajic, Rahul Mangharam

Rahul Mangharam

Resilience to electromagnetic jamming and its avoidance are difficult problems. It is often both hard to distinguish malicious jamming from congestion in the broadcast regime and a challenge to conceal the activity patterns of the legitimate communication protocol from the jammer. In the context of energy-constrained wireless sensor networks, nodes are scheduled to maximize the common sleep duration and coordinate communication to extend their battery life. This results in well-defined communication patterns with possibly predictable intervals of activity that are easily detected and jammed by a statistical jammer. We present an anti-jamming protocol for sensor networks which eliminates spatio-temporal patterns …

The Wireless Control Network: Monitoring For Malicious Behavior, Shreyas Sundaram, Miroslav Pajic, Christoforos Hadjicostis, Rahul Mangharam, George Pappas

Rahul Mangharam

We consider the problem of stabilizing a plant with a network of resource constrained wireless nodes. In a companion paper, we developed a protocol where each node repeatedly transmits a linear combination of the values in its neighborhood. For certain topologies, we showed that these linear combinations can be designed so that the closed loop system is stable (i.e., the wireless network itself acts as a controller for the plant). In this paper, we design a Intrusion Detection System (IDS) for this control scheme, which observes the transmissions of certain nodes in the network and uses that information to (a) …

Book Review: Handbook On Securing Cyber-Physical Critical Infrastructure: Foundations And Challenges (Written By Sajal K. Das, Krishna Kant, Nan Zhang), Katina Michael

Professor Katina Michael

This 800+ page handbook is divided into eight parts and contains thirty chapters, ideal for either an advanced undergraduate or graduate course in security. At the heart of this handbook is how we might go about managing both physical and cyber infrastructures, as they continue to become embedded and enmeshed, through advanced control systems, and new computing and communications paradigms.

Book Review Of Hacking: The Next Generation (Written By Nitesh Dhanjani, Billy Rios & Brett Hardin), Katina Michael

Professor Katina Michael

Hacking: The Next Generation demonstrates just how hackers continue to exploit “back doors”. New ways of working and new ways of communicating have meant that the number of attack vectors continue to rise rapidly. This provides hackers with a greater number of opportunities to penetrate systems using blended approaches while organizations struggle to come up to speed with the latest technology developments and commensurate security capabilities. Dealing with anticipated threats is a lot harder than dealing with known threats.

The Wireless Control Network: Monitoring For Malicious Behavior, Shreyas Sundaram, Miroslav Pajic, Christoforos N. Hadjicostis, Rahul Mangharam, George J. Pappas

George J. Pappas

We consider the problem of stabilizing a plant with a network of resource constrained wireless nodes. In a companion paper, we developed a protocol where each node repeatedly transmits a linear combination of the values in its neighborhood. For certain topologies, we showed that these linear combinations can be designed so that the closed loop system is stable (i.e., the wireless network itself acts as a controller for the plant). In this paper, we design a Intrusion Detection System (IDS) for this control scheme, which observes the transmissions of certain nodes in the network and uses that information to (a) …

The Wireless Control Network: Monitoring For Malicious Behavior, Shreyas Sundaram, Miroslav Pajic, Christoforos N. Hadjicostis, Rahul Mangharam, George J. Pappas

George J. Pappas

We consider the problem of stabilizing a plant with a network of resource constrained wireless nodes. In a companion paper, we developed a protocol where each node repeatedly transmits a linear combination of the values in its neighborhood. For certain topologies, we showed that these linear combinations can be designed so that the closed loop system is stable (i.e., the wireless network itself acts as a controller for the plant). In this paper, we design a Intrusion Detection System (IDS) for this control scheme, which observes the transmissions of certain nodes in the network and uses that information to (a) …

The Wireless Control Network: Monitoring For Malicious Behavior, Shreyas Sundaram, Miroslav Pajic, Christoforos N. Hadjicostis, Rahul Mangharam, George J. Pappas

George J. Pappas

We consider the problem of stabilizing a plant with a network of resource constrained wireless nodes. In a companion paper, we developed a protocol where each node repeatedly transmits a linear combination of the values in its neighborhood. For certain topologies, we showed that these linear combinations can be designed so that the closed loop system is stable (i.e., the wireless network itself acts as a controller for the plant). In this paper, we design a Intrusion Detection System (IDS) for this control scheme, which observes the transmissions of certain nodes in the network and uses that information to (a) …

Exploring Security Improvement Of Wireless Networks With Directional Antennas, Hong-Ning Dai, Dong Li, Raymond Chi-Wing Wong

Hong-Ning Dai

There are a number of studies on using directional antennas in wireless networks. Many of them concentrate on analyzing the theoretical capacity improvement by using directional antennas. Other studies focus on designing proper Medium Access Control (MAC) protocols to improve the practical network throughput. There are few works on the security improvement using directional antennas. In this paper, we explore the benefits of directional antennas in security improvements on both singlehop and multi-hop wireless networks. In particular, we found that using directional antennas in wireless networks can significantly reduce the eavesdropping probabilities of both single-hop transmissions as well as multi-hop …

The Kerf Toolkit For Intrusion Analysis, Javed A. Aslam, Sergey Bratus, David Kotz, Ron Peterson, Brett Tofel, Daniela Rus

Javed A. Aslam

To aid system administrators with post-attack intrusion analysis, the Kerf toolkit provides an integrated front end and powerful correlation and data-representation tools, all in one package.

Mitigation Of Control Channel Jamming Under Node Capture Attacks, Patrick Tague, Mingyan Li, Radha Poovendran

Patrick Tague

Availability of service in many wireless networks depends on the ability for network users to establish and maintain communication channels using control messages from base stations and other users. An adversary with knowledge of the underlying communication protocol can mount an efficient denial of service attack by jamming the communication channels used to exchange control messages. The use of spread spectrum techniques can deter an external adversary from such control channel jamming attacks. However, malicious colluding insiders or an adversary who captures or compromises system users are not deterred by spread spectrum, as they know the required spreading sequences. For …

Evaluating The Vulnerability Of Network Traffic Using Joint Security And Routing Analysis, Patrick Tague, David Slater, Jason Rogers, Radha Poovendran

Patrick Tague

Joint analysis of security and routing protocols in wireless networks reveals vulnerabilities of secure network traffic that remain undetected when security and routing protocols are analyzed independently. We formulate a class of continuous metrics to evaluate the vulnerability of network traffic as a function of security and routing protocols used in wireless networks. We develop two complementary vulnerability definitions using set theoretic and circuit theoretic interpretations of the security of network traffic, allowing a network analyst or an adversary to determine weaknesses in the secure network. We formalize node capture attacks using the vulnerability metric as a nonlinear integer programming …