Physical Sciences and Mathematics Commons^™

Dronescape:Distributed Rapid On-Site Network Self-Deploying Cellular Advanced Phone Environment, Daryl Johnson, Bill Stackpole

Presentations and other scholarship

When disasters happen, the speed with which first responders and emergency personnel can contact and be contacted by the people affected by the disaster during the first minutes or hours is critical. Early communications can make the difference between life and death. During a disaster communications infrastructure of the affected area is likely to be compromised. This project proposes an inexpensive, rapidly deployable cloud of autonomous drones, each coupled with a micro-cellular base station that deploys from a transportable deployment module. The goal is to temporarily restore communications for both first responders to communicate amongst themselves as well as for …

Advanced Security Analysis For Emergent Software Platforms, Mohannad Alhanahnah

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

Emergent software ecosystems, boomed by the advent of smartphones and the Internet of Things (IoT) platforms, are perpetually sophisticated, deployed into highly dynamic environments, and facilitating interactions across heterogeneous domains. Accordingly, assessing the security thereof is a pressing need, yet requires high levels of scalability and reliability to handle the dynamism involved in such volatile ecosystems.

This dissertation seeks to enhance conventional security detection methods to cope with the emergent features of contemporary software ecosystems. In particular, it analyzes the security of Android and IoT ecosystems by developing rigorous vulnerability detection methods. A critical aspect of this work is the …

Iomt Malware Detection Approaches: Analysis And Research Challenges, Mohammad Wazid, Ashok Kumar Das, Joel J.P.C. Rodrigues, Sachin Shetty, Youngho Park

VMASC Publications

The advancement in Information and Communications Technology (ICT) has changed the entire paradigm of computing. Because of such advancement, we have new types of computing and communication environments, for example, Internet of Things (IoT) that is a collection of smart IoT devices. The Internet of Medical Things (IoMT) is a specific type of IoT communication environment which deals with communication through the smart healthcare (medical) devices. Though IoT communication environment facilitates and supports our day-to-day activities, but at the same time it has also certain drawbacks as it suffers from several security and privacy issues, such as replay, man-in-the-middle, impersonation, …

Ldakm-Eiot: Lightweight Device Authentication And Key Management Mechanism For Edge-Based Iot Deployment, Mohammad Wazid, Ashok Kumar Das, Sachin Shetty, Joel J. P. C. Rodrigues, Youngho Park

VMASC Publications

In recent years, edge computing has emerged as a new concept in the computing paradigm that empowers several future technologies, such as 5G, vehicle-to-vehicle communications, and the Internet of Things (IoT), by providing cloud computing facilities, as well as services to the end users. However, open communication among the entities in an edge based IoT environment makes it vulnerable to various potential attacks that are executed by an adversary. Device authentication is one of the prominent techniques in security that permits an IoT device to authenticate mutually with a cloud server with the help of an edge node. If authentication …

Proximity Detection With Single-Antenna Iot Devices, Timothy J. Pierson, Travis Peters, Ronald Peterson, David Kotz

Dartmouth Scholarship

Providing secure communications between wireless devices that encounter each other on an ad-hoc basis is a challenge that has not yet been fully addressed. In these cases, close physical proximity among devices that have never shared a secret key is sometimes used as a basis of trust; devices in close proximity are deemed trustworthy while more distant devices are viewed as potential adversaries. Because radio waves are invisible, however, a user may believe a wireless device is communicating with a nearby device when in fact the user’s device is communicating with a distant adversary. Researchers have previously proposed methods for …

Using Vibrations From A Smartring As An Out-Of-Band Channel For Sharing Secret Keys, Sougata Sen, Varun Mishra, David Kotz

Dartmouth Scholarship

With the rapid growth in the number of Internet of Things (IoT) devices with wireless communication capabilities, and sensitive information collection capabilities, it is becoming increasingly necessary to ensure that these devices communicate securely with only authorized devices. A major requirement of this secure communication is to ensure that both the devices share a secret, which can be used for secure pairing and encrypted communication. Manually imparting this secret to these devices becomes an unnecessary overhead, especially when the device interaction is transient. In this work, we empirically investigate the possibility of using an out-of-band communication channel – vibration, generated …

Closetalker: Secure, Short-Range Ad Hoc Wireless Communication, Timothy J. Pierson, Travis Peters, Ronald Peterson, David Kotz

Dartmouth Scholarship

Secure communication is difficult to arrange between devices that have not previously shared a secret. Previous solutions to the problem are susceptible to man-in-the-middle attacks, require additional hardware for out-of-band communication, or require an extensive public-key infrastructure. Furthermore, as the number of wireless devices explodes with the advent of the Internet of Things, it will be impractical to manually configure each device to communicate with its neighbors. Our system, CloseTalker, allows simple, secure, ad hoc communication between devices in close physical proximity, while jamming the signal so it is unintelligible to any receivers more than a few centimeters away. CloseTalker …

Securing Our Future Homes: Smart Home Security Issues And Solutions, Nicholas Romano

Senior Honors Theses

The Internet of Things, commonly known as IoT, is a new technology transforming businesses, individuals’ daily lives and the operation of entire countries. With more and more devices becoming equipped with IoT technology, smart homes are becoming increasingly popular. The components that make up a smart home are at risk for different types of attacks; therefore, security engineers are developing solutions to current problems and are predicting future types of attacks. This paper will analyze IoT smart home components, explain current security risks, and suggest possible solutions. According to “What is a Smart Home” (n.d.), a smart home is a …

The Security Of Big Data In Fog-Enabled Iot Applications Including Blockchain: A Survey, Noshina Tariq, Muhammad Asim, Feras Al-Obeidat, Muhammad Zubair Farooqi, Thar Baker, Mohammad Hammoudeh, Ibrahim Ghafir

All Works

© 2019 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. The proliferation of inter-connected devices in critical industries, such as healthcare and power grid, is changing the perception of what constitutes critical infrastructure. The rising interconnectedness of new critical industries is driven by the growing demand for seamless access to information as the world becomes more mobile and connected and as the Internet of Things (IoT) grows. Critical industries are essential to the foundation of today’s society, and interruption of service in any of these sectors can reverberate through other sectors and even around the globe. In today’s hyper-connected world, the …

Scalable Containerized Security Training Environment, Robert Sauer

Mahurin Honors College Capstone Experience/Thesis Projects

The purpose of this project is to develop a portable application which is hosted on a server that provides an environment to safely conduct security training procedures and protocols. The project will be scalable to handle from a few to a multitude of users concurrently using a single server. For many users to perform security training simultaneously, each user must be directed to a sandbox environment, a container, where one user’s actions do not affect the website or database of other users. Furthermore, such an application should be readily deployable into any environment to provide the widest range of compatibility. …

Feasibility And Security Analysis Of Wideband Ultrasonic Radio For Smart Home Applications, Qi Xia

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

Smart home Internet-of-Things (IoT) accompanied by smart home apps has witnessed tremendous growth in the past few years. Yet, the security and privacy of the smart home IoT devices and apps have raised serious concerns, as they are getting increasingly complicated each day, expected to store and exchange extremely sensitive personal data, always on and connected, and commonly exposed to any users in a sensitive environment. Nowadays wireless smart home IoT devices rely on electromagnetic wave-based radio-frequency (RF) technology to establish fast and reliable quality network connections. However, RF has its limitations that can negatively affect the smart home user …

Frameup: An Incriminatory Attack On Storj: A Peer To Peer Blockchain Enabled Distributed Storage System, Xiaolu Zhang, Justin Grannis, Ibrahim Baggili, Nicole Lang Beebe

Electrical & Computer Engineering and Computer Science Faculty Publications

In this work we present a primary account of frameup, an incriminatory attack made possible because of existing implementations in distributed peer to peer storage. The frameup attack shows that an adversary has the ability to store unencrypted data on the hard drives of people renting out their hard drive space. This is important to forensic examiners as it opens the door for possibly framing an innocent victim. Our work employs Storj as an example technology, due to its popularity and market size. Storj is a blockchain enabled system that allows people to rent out their hard drive space …

Continuous Smartphone Authentication Using Wristbands, Shrirang Mare, Reza Rawassizadeh, Ronald Peterson, David Kotz

Dartmouth Scholarship

Many users find current smartphone authentication methods (PINs, swipe patterns) to be burdensome, leading them to weaken or disable the authentication. Although some phones support methods to ease the burden (such as fingerprint readers), these methods require active participation by the user and do not verify the user’s identity after the phone is unlocked. We propose CSAW, a continuous smartphone authentication method that leverages wristbands to verify that the phone is in the hands of its owner. In CSAW, users wear a wristband (a smartwatch or a fitness band) with built-in motion sensors, and by comparing the wristband’s motion with …

A New Network Model For Cyber Threat Intelligence Sharing Using Blockchain Technology, Daire Homan, Ian Shiel, Christina Thorpe

Conference Papers

The aim of this research is to propose a new blockchain network model that facilitates the secure dissemination of Cyber Threat Intelligence (CTI) data. The primary motivations for this study are based around the recent changes to information security legislation in the European Union and the challenges that Computer Security and Incident Response Teams (CSIRT) face when trying to share actionable and highly sensitive data within systems where participants do not always share the same interests or motivations. We discuss the common problems within the domain of CTI sharing and we propose a new model, that leverages the security properties …

Virtual Environments Testing As A Cloud Service: A Methodology For Protecting And Securing Virtual Infrastructures, Elhadj Benkhelifa, Anoud Bani Hani, Thomas Welsh, Siyakha Mthunzi, Chirine Ghedira Guegan

All Works

© 2013 IEEE. Testing is a vital component of the system development life cycle. As information systems infrastructure move from native computing to cloud-based and virtualized platforms, it becomes necessary to evaluate their effectiveness to ensure completion of organizational goals. However, the complexity and scale of virtualized environments make this process difficult. Additionally, inherited and novel issues further complicate this process, while relatively high costs can be constraining. Enabling service-driven environments to provide this evaluation is therefore beneficial for both providers and users. No such complete service offering currently exists. This paper is therefore aimed to benefit industry and academia …

Inception: Virtual Space In Memory Space In Real Space, Peter Casey, Rebecca Lindsay-Decusati, Ibrahim Baggili, Frank Breitinger

Electrical & Computer Engineering and Computer Science Faculty Publications

Virtual Reality (VR) has become a reality. With the technology's increased use cases, comes its misuse. Malware affecting the Virtual Environment (VE) may prevent an investigator from ascertaining virtual information from a physical scene, or from traditional “dead” analysis. Following the trend of antiforensics, evidence of an attack may only be found in memory, along with many other volatile data points. Our work provides the primary account for the memory forensics of Immersive VR systems, and in specific the HTC Vive. Our approach is capable of reconstituting artifacts from memory that are relevant to the VE, and is also capable …

"Anon What What?": Children's Understanding Of The Language Of Privacy, Stacy Black, Rezvan Joshaghani, Dhanush Kumar Ratakonda, Hoda Mehrpouyan, Jerry Alan Fails

Computer Science Faculty Publications and Presentations

Internet usage continues to increase among children ages 12 and younger. Because their digital interactions can be persistently stored, there is a need for building an understanding and foundational knowledge of privacy. We describe initial investigations into children’s understanding of privacy from a Contextual Integrity (CI) perspective by conducting semi-structured interviews. We share results – that echo what others have shown – that indicate children have limited knowledge and understanding of CI principles. We also share an initial exploration of utilizing participatory design theater as a possible educational mechanism to help children develop a stronger understanding of important privacy principles.

Security And Accuracy Of Fingerprint-Based Biometrics: A Review, Wencheng Yang, Song Wang, Jiankun Hu, Guanglou Zhang, Craig Valli

Research outputs 2014 to 2021

Biometric systems are increasingly replacing traditional password- and token-based authentication systems. Security and recognition accuracy are the two most important aspects to consider in designing a biometric system. In this paper, a comprehensive review is presented to shed light on the latest developments in the study of fingerprint-based biometrics covering these two aspects with a view to improving system security and recognition accuracy. Based on a thorough analysis and discussion, limitations of existing research work are outlined and suggestions for future work are provided. It is shown in the paper that researchers continue to face challenges in tackling the two …