Electrical and Computer Engineering Commons^™

Supporting Business Privacy Protection In Wireless Sensor Networks, Nan Feng, Zhiqi Hao, Sibo Yang, Harris Wu

Information Technology & Decision Sciences Faculty Publications

With the pervasive use of wireless sensor networks (WSNs) within commercial environments, business privacy leakage due to the exposure of sensitive information transmitted in a WSN has become a major issue for enterprises. We examine business privacy protection in the application of WSNs. We propose a business privacy-protection system (BPS) that is modeled as a hierarchical profile in order to filter sensitive information with respect to enterprise-specified privacy requirements. The BPS aims at solving a tradeoff between metrics that are defined to estimate the utility of information and the business privacy risk. We design profile, risk assessment, and filtration agents …

Behavior-Based Detection Of Application Layer Distributed Denial Of Service Attacks During Flash Events, Renukadevi Saravanan, Saraswathi Shanmuganathan, Yogesh Palanichamy

Turkish Journal of Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences

Distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks are ever threatening to the developers and users of the Internet. DDoS attacks targeted at the application layer are especially difficult to be detected since they mimic the legitimate users' requests. The situation becomes more serious when they occur during flash events. A more sophisticated algorithm is required to detect such attacks during a flash crowd. A few existing works make use of flow similarity for differentiating flash crowds and DDoS, but flow characteristics alone cannot be used for effective detection. In this paper, we propose a novel mechanism for discriminating DDoS and flash …

Product Authentication Using Hash Chains And Printed Qr Codes, Harshith R. Keni

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This thesis explores the usage of simple printed tags for authenticating products. Printed tags are a cheap alternative to RFID and other tag based systems and do not require specialized equipment. Due to the simplistic nature of such printed codes, many security issues like tag impersonation, server impersonation, reader impersonation, replay attacks and denial of service present in RFID based solutions need to be handled differently. An algorithm that utilizes hash chains to secure such simple tags while still keeping cost low is discussed. The security characteristics of this scheme as well as other product authentication schemes that use RFID …

Intrusion Detection System Of Industrial Control Networks Using Network Telemetry, Stanislav Ponomarev

Doctoral Dissertations

Industrial Control Systems (ICSs) are designed, implemented, and deployed in most major spheres of production, business, and entertainment. ICSs are commonly split into two subsystems - Programmable Logic Controllers (PLCs) and Supervisory Control And Data Acquisition (SCADA) systems - to achieve high safety, allow engineers to observe states of an ICS, and perform various configuration updates. Before wide adoption of the Internet, ICSs used "air-gap" security measures, where the ICS network was isolated from other networks, including the Internet, by a physical disconnect [1]. This level of security allowed ICS protocol designers to concentrate on the availability and safety of …

Pinpoint: Efficient And Effective Resource Isolation For Mobile Security And Privacy, Paul Ratazzi, Ashok Bommisetti, Nian Ji, Wenliang Du

Electrical Engineering and Computer Science - All Scholarship

Virtualization is frequently used to isolate untrusted processes and control their access to sensitive resources. However, isolation usually carries a price in terms of less resource sharing and reduced inter-process communication. In an open architecture such as Android, this price and its impact on performance, usability, and transparency must be carefully considered. Although previous efforts in developing general-purpose isolation solutions have shown that some of these negative sideeffects can be mitigated, doing so involves overcoming significant design challenges by incorporating numerous additional platform complexities not directly related to improved security. Thus, the general purpose solutions become inefficient and burdensome if …

Evaluation Of Security Vulnerabilities Of Popular Computer And Server Operating Systems Under Cyber Attacks, Rodolfo Baez Jr.

Theses and Dissertations - UTB/UTPA

Nowadays many operating systems are including security features in order to prevent network attacks, and since one of the roles of the OS is to manage the resources as efficient as possible. It is imperative to investigate the protection that is provided. Therefore, the scientific significance of this thesis was to evaluate, what type of built-in defense mechanisms that different OS’s had in place in order to mitigate these network attacks. In this thesis, we considered the security of the following globally deployed computer OS’s: Microsoft’s Windows 7, Apple’s OS X Lion, and Ubuntu 13.10. Furthermore, we also tested four …

Innovative Self-Organization Wireless Sensor Networks For Electrical Power Systems, Hiu Fai Chan, Heiko Rudolph

Staff Publications

Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) gather information for electrical power systems and help to manage demand Response and demand side strategies. Optimization of WSNs depends on their physical deployment, and it will bring to the fore a very focused number of parameters to be optimized. Selforganization of WSNs is an important issue to be considered, and it requires the nodes to form a network by collaboration with each other without using manual intervention. Moreover, the WSNs implemented in electrical power systems should be secured and energy efficient in order to provide highly reliable data for monitoring and control.

In this paper, …

An Empirical Comparison Of Widely Adopted Hash Functions In Digital Forensics: Does The Programming Language And Operating System Make A Difference?, Satyendra Gurjar, Ibrahim Baggili, Frank Breitinger, Alice E. Fischer

Electrical & Computer Engineering and Computer Science Faculty Publications

Hash functions are widespread in computer sciences and have a wide range of applications such as ensuring integrity in cryptographic protocols, structuring database entries (hash tables) or identifying known files in forensic investigations. Besides their cryptographic requirements, a fundamental property of hash functions is efficient and easy computation which is especially important in digital forensics due to the large amount of data that needs to be processed when working on cases. In this paper, we correlate the runtime efficiency of common hashing algorithms (MD5, SHA-family) and their implementation. Our empirical comparison focuses on C-OpenSSL, Python, Ruby, Java on Windows and …

Design And Implementation Of Ir And Laser-Based Electronic Ciphering Systems, Feyzi̇ Akar, Osman Aşkin

Turkish Journal of Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences

This paper describes the design and implementation of infrared (IR) and laser-based electronic ciphering systems for use in both indoor and outdoor wireless remote control applications. To communicate between a user and a lock module in a secure way, the proposed systems utilize IR and laser frequencies instead of radio frequencies. Each proposed system has its specific security design. A new communication protocol is also generated, which is compatible for use with IR and laser technologies. The proposed electronic ciphering systems' prototypes are realized together with software and hardware components. They are instrumented using the peripheral interface controller series microcontrollers. …

Rfid Card Security For Public Transportation Applications Based On A Novel Neural Network Analysis Of Cardholder Behavior Characteristics, Gürsel Düzenli̇

Turkish Journal of Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences

This paper proposes a novel approach that applies neural network forecasting to security for closed-loop prepaid cards based on low-cost technologies such as RFID and 1-Wire. The security vulnerability of low-cost RFID closed-loop prepaid card systems originates mostly from the card itself. Criminal organizations counterfeit or clone card data. Although high-security prepaid cards exist, they are often too expensive for transport ticketing, and even their security is not guaranteed for a well-defined period of time. Therefore, data encryption systems are used widely against counterfeiting with success. However, it has not been possible to develop countermeasures with comparable success against cloning. …

Blind Area Target Aiming System And Preference Selection Training System Design, Zhine Kang

Dissertations, Master's Theses and Master's Reports

A cyber-physical system (CPS) is a system of leveraging computational elements controlling physical entities that is widely applied in our daily life for all kinds of purpose. It helps us build smart devices and make life become much easier. In this report, two projects were designed to show the idea that how cyber-physical system works in human daily life. The first project is designed for personal security, especially for one of the most dangerous job: security service. It helps user defend his back while he/she is in a tough situation while he or she is alone. First there will be …

Evidentiary Power And Propriety Of Digital Identifiers And The Impact On Privacy Rights In The United States, Michael Losavio, Deborah Keeling

Journal of Digital Forensics, Security and Law

Media and network systems capture and store data about electronic activity in new, sometimes unprecedented ways; computational systems make for new means of analysis and knowledge development. These new forms offer new, powerful tactical tools for investigations of electronic malfeasance under traditional legal regulation of state power, particular that of Fourth Amendment limitations on police searches and seizures under the U.S. Constitution. But autonomy, identity and authenticity concerns with electronic data raise issues of public policy, privacy and proper police oversight of civil society. We examine those issues and their implications for digital and computational forensics

Detection And Control Of Small Civilian Uavs, Matthew Peacock

Theses : Honours

With the increasing proliferation of small civilian Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs), the threat to critical infrastructure (CI) security and privacy is now widely recognised and must be addressed. These devices are easily available at a low cost, with their usage largely unrestricted allowing users to have no accountability. Further, current implementations of UAVs have little to no security measures applied to their control interfaces. To combat the threat raised by small UAVs, being aware of their presence is required, a task that can be challenging and often requires customised hardware.

This thesis aimed to address the threats posed by the …

A Study On Countermeasures Against Steganography: An Active Warden Approach, Qilin Qi

Department of Computer Electronics and Engineering: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

Digital steganography is a method used for hiding information in digital images. It can be used for secure communication. There have been many robust digital steganography methods invented in recent decades. The steganographic message can be inserted in multimedia cover signal such as audio, image and video. However, this technique also may be used by malicious users to transmit dangerous information through the Internet beyond the control of security agencies. How to detect and/or block potentially dangerous information transmission on the Internet through billions of multimedia files while not affecting innocent multimedia communications becomes a challenging problem. Existing steganalysis methods …

Mitigating Event Confidentiality Violations In Smart Grids: An Information Flow Security-Based Approach, Thoshitha T. Gamage, Thomas P. Roth, Bruce M. Mcmillin, Mariesa L. Crow

Computer Science Faculty Research & Creative Works

Modern smart grids, by and large, merge physical interconnections and cyber controllers. Invariably, this tight coupling results in cyber commands manifesting in the physical layer as observable changes, leading to possible disclosure of sensitive system settings. Thus, cyber event confidentiality of the smart grid is violated. Attacks on confidentiality can ultimately lead to integrity and availability attacks; with adequate knowledge of the system topology, internal settings, and how the physical layer responds to cyber commands, a malicious adversary gains knowledge to attack the system. This work shows how to develop self-obfuscating systems based on information flow security properties that can …

Improved Channel Probing For Secret Key Generation With Multiple Antenna Systems, Britton T. Quist

Theses and Dissertations

Establishing secret keys from the commonly-observed randomness of reciprocal wireless propagation channels has recently received considerable attention. In this work we propose improved strategies for channel estimation between MIMO or beamforming systems for secret key generation. The amount of mutual information that can be extracted from the channel matrix estimates is determined by the quality of channel matrix estimates. By allocating increased energy to channel estimation for higher gain beamforming combinations at the expense of low-gain combinations, key establishment performance can be increased. Formalizing the notion of preferential energy allocation to the most efficient excitations is the central theme of …

Adaptive Encryption Techniques In Wireless Communication Channels With Tradeoffs Between Communication Reliability And Security, Walid Al Zibideh

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Encryption is a vital process to ensure the confidentiality of the information transmitted over an insecure wireless channel. However, the nature of the wireless channel tends to deteriorate because of noise, interference and fading. Therefore, a symmetrically encrypted transmitted signal will be received with some amount of error. Consequently, due to the strict avalanche criterion (sac), this error propagates during the decryption process, resulting in half the bits (on average) after decryption to be in error. In order to alleviate this amount of error, smart coding techniques and/or new encryption algorithms that take into account the nature of wireless channels …

Opacity Of Discrete Event Systems: Analysis And Control, Majed Mohamed Ben Kalefa

Wayne State University Dissertations

The exchange of sensitive information in many systems over a network can be manipulated

by unauthorized access. Opacity is a property to investigate security and

privacy problems in such systems. Opacity characterizes whether a secret information

of a system can be inferred by an unauthorized user. One approach to verify security

and privacy properties using opacity problem is to model the system that may leak confidential

information as a discrete event system. The problem that has not investigated

intensively is the enforcement of opacity properties by supervisory control. In other

words, constructing a minimally restrictive supervisor to limit the system's …

Security Evaluation Of Substation Network Architectures, Pingal Raj Sapkota

Dissertations, Master's Theses and Master's Reports - Open

In recent years, security of industrial control systems has been the main research focus due to the potential cyber-attacks that can impact the physical operations. As a result of these risks, there has been an urgent need to establish a stronger security protection against these threats. Conventional firewalls with stateful rules can be implemented in the critical cyberinfrastructure environment which might require constant updates. Despite the ongoing effort to maintain the rules, the protection mechanism does not restrict malicious data flows and it poses the greater risk of potential intrusion occurrence.

The contributions of this thesis are motivated by the …

Security, Privacy And Applications In Vehicular Ad Hoc Networks, Zhengming Li

Dissertations, Master's Theses and Master's Reports - Open

With wireless vehicular communications, Vehicular Ad Hoc Networks (VANETs) enable numerous applications to enhance traffic safety, traffic efficiency, and driving experience. However, VANETs also impose severe security and privacy challenges which need to be thoroughly investigated. In this dissertation, we enhance the security, privacy, and applications of VANETs, by 1) designing application-driven security and privacy solutions for VANETs, and 2) designing appealing VANET applications with proper security and privacy assurance.

First, the security and privacy challenges of VANETs with most application significance are identified and thoroughly investigated. With both theoretical novelty and realistic considerations, these security and privacy schemes are …

Computational Intelligence In Wireless Sensor Networks: A Survey, Raghavendra V. Kulkarni, Anna Förster, Ganesh K. Venayagamoorthy

Electrical and Computer Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

Wireless sensor networks (WSNs) are networks of distributed autonomous devices that can sense or monitor physical or environmental conditions cooperatively. WSNs face many challenges, mainly caused by communication failures, storage and computational constraints and limited power supply. Paradigms of computational intelligence (CI) have been successfully used in recent years to address various challenges such as data aggregation and fusion, energy aware routing, task scheduling, security, optimal deployment and localization. CI provides adaptive mechanisms that exhibit intelligent behavior in complex and dynamic environments like WSNs. CI brings about flexibility, autonomous behavior, and robustness against topology changes, communication failures and scenario changes. …

Network-Aware Active Wardens In Ipv6, Grzegorz Lewandowski

Electrical Engineering and Computer Science - Dissertations

Every day the world grows more and more dependent on digital communication. Technologies like e-mail or the World Wide Web that not so long ago were considered experimental, have first become accepted and then indispensable tools of everyday life. New communication technologies built on top of the existing ones continuously race to provide newer and better functionality. Even established communication media like books, radio, or television have become digital in an effort to avoid extinction. In this torrent of digital communication a constant struggle takes place. On one hand, people, organizations, companies and countries attempt to control the ongoing communications …

Smart Access Control System With Behavioral Profiling And Dynamic Pin Concept, Lohit Penubaku

LSU Master's Theses

Since ancient time, an access control device has been used for securing valuable properties as well as lives from threatening peoples. The most representative security device is Lock/Key. Recently, those security device technologies have been improved tremendously and provided various types of security methods. Nevertheless, these methods are not individually perfect to provide optimal security so that in recent years many such methods have been combined and used together to provide the required level of security. However, such combination can enhance security for limited number of users only but very difficult to provide scalable security with the number of users …

Autonomous Security Patrol System, Jake Erramouspe

Undergraduate Honors Capstone Projects

This project provides an efficient and cost-effective solution to building security and active monitoring. The security is monitored and controlled by autonomous patrol robots. Any indication of a security breach will result in an immediate alarm and activation of the robot group to subdue and tranquilize the intruder.

Secret Key Establishment Using Wireless Channels As Common Randomness In Time-Variant Mimo Systems, Chan Chen

Theses and Dissertations

Encryption of confidential data with a secret key has become a widespread technique for securing wireless transmissions. However, existing key distribution methods that either deliver the secret key with a key distribution center or exchange the secret key using public-key cryptosystems are unable to establish perfect secret keys necessary for symmetric encryption techniques. This research considers secret key establishment, under the broad research area of information theoretic security, using the reciprocal wireless channel as common randomness for the extraction of perfect secret keys in multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO)communication systems. The presentation discusses the fundamental characteristics of the time-variant MIMO wireless channel …

Generalized Neuron Based Secure Media Access Control Protocol For Wireless Sensor Networks, Raghavendra V. Kulkarni, Ganesh K. Venayagamoorthy, Abhishek V. Thakur, Sanjay Kumar Madria

Electrical and Computer Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

Security plays a pivotal role in most applications of wireless sensor networks. It is common to find inadequately secure networks confined only to controlled environments. The issue of security in wireless sensor networks is a hot research topic for over a decade. This paper presents a compact generalized neuron (GN) based medium access protocol that renders a CSMA/CD network secure against denial-of-service attacks launched by adversaries. The GN enhances the security by constantly monitoring multiple parameters that reflect the possibility that an attack is launched by an adversary. Particle swarm optimization, a popular bio-inspired evolutionary-like optimization algorithm is used for …

Novel Techniques In Iris Recognition, David Walker

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

Using Daugman's algorithm and comparable alternatives, we find that we are able to identify an iris with as little as less than half of the iris information available, and an equal error rate comparable with that of popular biometrics like the fingerprint and face recognition biometrics. Different experiments were done based on percentage of iris shown, the resolution of the iris, and the position of the iris covered to determine if partial iris recognition is a viable biometric. It was found after over 500,000 different iris comparisons amongst five different experiments that regardless of the model used and the resolution, …

Secure Distributed Detection In Wireless Sensor Networks Via Encryption Of Sensor Decisions, Venkata Sriram Siddhardh Nadendla

LSU Master's Theses

We consider the problem of binary hypothesis testing using a distributed wireless sensor network. Identical binary quantizers are used on the sensor's observations and the outputs are encrypted using a probabilistic cipher. The third party (enemy) fusion centers are unaware of the presence of the probabilistic encipher. We find the optimal (minimum-probability-of-error) fusion rule for the ally (friendly) fusion center subject to a lower bound on the the probability of error for the third-party fusion centers. To obtain the minimum probability of error, we first prove the quasi-convexity of error probability with respect to the sensor's threshold for a given …

Byzantine Fault Tolerance For Nondeterministic Applications, Bo Chen

ETD Archive

The growing reliance on online services accessible on the Internet demands highly reliable system that would not be interrupted when encountering faults. A number of Byzantine fault tolerance (BFT) algorithms have been developed to mask the most complicated type of faults - Byzantine faults such as software bugs,operator mistakes, and malicious attacks, which are usually the major cause of service interruptions. However, it is often difficult to apply these algorithms to practical applications because such applications often exhibit sophisticated non-deterministic behaviors that the existing BFT algorithms could not cope with. In this thesis, we propose a classification of common types …

Data Security Measures In The It Service Industry: A Balance Between Knowledge & Action, N. Mlitwa, Y. Kachala

Journal of Digital Forensics, Security and Law

That “knowledge is power” is fast becoming a cliché within the intelligentsia. Such power however, depends largely on how knowledge itself is exchanged and used, which says a lot about the tools of its transmission, exchange, and storage. Information and communication technology (ICT) plays a significant role in this respect. As a networked tool, it enables efficient exchanges of video, audio and text data beyond geographical and time constraints. Since this data is exchanged over the worldwide web (www), it can be accessible by anyone in the world using the internet. The risk of unauthorised access, interception, modification, or even …