Computer Sciences Commons^™

Static Malware Analysis For Incident Response: Developing A Tactical Aid With Ember, Joel Meoak, Shengjie Xu

Journal of Cybersecurity Education, Research and Practice

Incident responders face a variety of challenges when identifying malware using existing solutions, particularly when rapid tactical decisions are needed. Traditional malware detection methods are often signature-based, limiting their effectiveness to previously known threats detected by anti-virus (AV) engines. Online analysis tools introduce confidentiality risks, potentially alerting adversaries that their actions are under scrutiny. While free sandbox environments offer useful capabilities, they often require substantial setup time and hardware resources that may not be available in the field. This research leverages the Elastic Malware Benchmark for Empowering Researchers (EMBER) dataset to develop a lightweight, portable tactical decision aid that enables …

Adaptive Security Metric For Optimizing Post-Quantum Cryptography In Constrained Iot Devices, Aisha Nasser Ahmed

Theses

Quantum Computing poses real threat to Classical Public-Key Cryptography requiring the use of Post-Quantum Cryptography for all Internet of Things Devices. However, there are greater computational, memory and communication overheads in PQC algorithms that create additional burdens on resource constrained IoT devices. At this time, there are no standard measures for systems developers to determine optimal PQC settings for the various IoT Device Classes. This Thesis develops a new framework of metrics for determining the most suitable PQC settings based on Security Strength, Performance Indicators (Latency, Memory, Energy), Communication Overhead and Reliability for each IoT device class. The Research introduces …

Spd: Shallow Backdoor Protecting Deep Backdoor Against Backdoor Detection, Shunjie Yuan, Xinghua Li, Xuelin Cao, Haiyan Zhang, Mengyao Zhu, Robert H. Deng

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Backdoor attacks have revealed the vulnerability of deep neural networks (DNNs), which motivates the development of secure deep learning systems. However, existing backdoor attacks often fail to bypass backdoor detection and human visual inspection, resulting in the exposure of the backdoor implanted in DNNs, which can subsequently be significantly mitigated through pruning or fine-tuning on benign data. To address this issue, in this paper, we propose a novel backdoor attack called SPD (Shallow Protecting Deep), which consists of a deep backdoor in the frequency domain and a shallow backdoor in the pixel domain, where the shallow backdoor acts as a …

Conditional Attribute-Based Pre: Definition And Construction From Lwe, Lisha Yao, Jian Weng, Pengfei Wu, Guofeng Tang, Guomin Yang, Haiyang Xue, Robert H. Deng

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Attribute-based proxy re-encryption (AB-PRE) is a crucial variant of proxy re-encryption. It allows a proxy with a re-encryption key to transform a delegator’s ciphertext associated with an access policy into another ciphertext associated with a new access policy, enabling delegatees with matching attributes to decrypt the transformed ciphertext. However, a key limitation of AB-PRE is that the delegator cannot control which ciphertexts are transformed. As a result, the proxy, once given the re-encryption key, indiscriminately transforms all ciphertexts, effectively switching their underlying policies—an issue known as the all-or-nothing problem. It limits the system’s flexibility and practicality in real-world use cases.In …

A System Framework To Symbolically Explore Intel Tdx Module Execution, Pansilu Pitigalaarachchillage, Xuhua Ding

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

We present TDXplorer, the first dynamic symbolic analysis system for Intel's TDX Module, the software trusted computing base of TDX. Without using TDX hardware, an analyzer function on top of TDXplorer can not only apply dynamic analysis to control and instrument the TDX Module's execution, but also carry out symbolic execution for path exploration as well as security and functionality reasoning. The two types of analysis are seamlessly integrated in a way that symbolic execution is conducted directly upon the TDX Module's binary code and runtime states, which are shaped by using dynamic analysis techniques. We implement TDXplorer on Linux …

Ivycross: A Privacy-Preserving And Concurrency Control Framework For Blockchain Interoperability, Ming Li, Jian Weng, Jia-Si Weng, Yi Li, Yongdong Wu, Dingcheng Li, Guowen Xu, Deng, Robert H.

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Interoperability is a fundamental challenge for long-envisioned blockchain applications. A mainstream approach is using Trusted Execution Environment (TEE) to support interoperable off-chain execution. However, this incurs multiple TEE configured with non-trivial storage capabilities running on fragile concurrent processing environments, rendering current strategies based on TEE far from being practical. This paper aims to fill this gap and design a practical interoperability mechanism with simplified TEE as the underlying architecture. Specifically, we present IvyCross, a TEE-based framework that achieves low-cost, privacy-preserving, and race-free blockchain interoperability. IvyCross allows running arbitrary smart contracts across heterogeneous blockchains atop two distributed TEE-powered hosts. We design …

Better Digital Contracts With Prosocial Friction-In-Design, Brett Frischmann, Moshe Y. Vardi

Faculty Publications

Contract law is supposed to enable people to reach genuine agreements and cooperate. If this ideal was ever a reality, the rise of mass market contracts and boil­erplate rendered it pure fiction. Modern consumer contracts are incomprehensible to most people. No one reads them anyway.

Digital contracting involves design features that amplify traditional boilerplate harms and create others. For example, digital contracting is too cheap; low marginal costs lead to overexpansion in scale and scope. To make matters worse, the loss of autonomy from repeat engagement with digital contracting systems is pernicious. People become increasingly predictable and programmable as digital …

Experiential Learning: Innovative Approaches To Post-Secondary Cybersecurity Education, Brendan Bertone, Paul Wagner, Joshua Pauli

Journal of Cybersecurity Education, Research and Practice

The cybersecurity profession continues to face a significant shortfall of qualified professionals despite steady growth in degree programs. Employers consistently cite experience as the main barrier for entry-level cybersecurity hires. This paper argues that clinic-based experiential learning offers a scalable solution to that preparation gap. A systematic literature review spanning academic and professional literature was conducted to examine: (1) barriers to entry for aspiring cybersecurity professionals; (2) the effectiveness of experiential learning compared to traditional instruction; and (3) the viability and scalability of cybersecurity clinics. Screening emphasized workforce development, experiential pedagogy, and alignment with the NICE Cybersecurity Workforce Framework. Findings …

Information Security Awareness And Behavior Of Smartphone Users In The Ibadan Metropolis, Nigeria, Funmilola Olubunmi Omotayo

Journal of Cybersecurity Education, Research and Practice

Today, there is a rapid increase in the number of people using the Internet via smartphones and relying on them for most of their daily activities. Consequently, smartphones are becoming the target of criminals for atrocious purposes. This study investigated the information security awareness and behavior of smartphone users in the Ibadan metropolis, Nigeria. The study adopted a descriptive survey design. Data was collected with a questionnaire from 400 respondents who were conveniently selected. Findings revealed that most smartphone users knew about the smartphone security features available on their phones. However, most also engaged in behaviors that threatened their information …

Boosting Symbolic Execution For Vulnerability Detection, Haoxin Tu

Dissertations and Theses Collection (Open Access)

Software systems written by humans tend to be unreliable and insecure, hence, bugs or vulnerabilities in them are inevitable. Symbolic execution has shown considerable potential in detecting diverse types of software bugs and also vulnerabilities that have severe security implications. However, existing symbolic execution engines still suffer from at least three fundamental limitations in memory modeling, path exploration, and structured input generation, which significantly impede existing engines from efficiently and effectively detecting software bugs and vulnerabilities.

The objective of this dissertation is to boost existing symbolic execution engines by designing a new memory model, two new path exploration strategies, and …

An Efficient Security-Enhanced Accountable Access Control For Named Data Networking, Jianfei Sun, Yuxian Li, Xuehuan Yang, Guomin Yang, Robert H. Deng

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Named Data Networking (NDN) is embraced as the crucial implementation of Information-Centric Networking (ICN), enhancing content distribution and caching efficiency through edge routers. However, existing NDN architectures face significant security and privacy challenges, including: (a) a lack of secure and efficient access control; (b) inadequate support for flexible and selective content management by content publishers; (c) insufficient implementation of accountability and privilege revocation mechanisms. To handle these challenges, we propose ESAS, the first-ever Efficient Security-enhanced Accountable Access Control Scheme for NDN. Specifically, our ESAS incorporates anonymous authentication using group signatures at network routers to prevent unauthorized access, employs key-aggregation-based access …

Shortcuts Everywhere And Nowhere: Exploring Multi-Trigger Backdoor Attacks, Yige Li, Jiabo He, Hanxun Huang, Jun Sun, Xingjun Ma, Yu-Gang Jiang

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Backdoor attacks have become a significant threat to the pre-training and deployment of deep neural networks (DNNs). Although numerous methods for detecting and mitigating backdoor attacks have been proposed, most rely on identifying and eliminating the “shortcut” created by the backdoor, which links a specific source class to a target class. However, these approaches can be easily circumvented by designing multiple backdoor triggers that create shortcuts everywhere and therefore nowhere specific. In this study, we explore the concept of Multi-Trigger Backdoor Attacks (MTBAs), where multiple adversaries leverage different types of triggers to poison the same dataset. By proposing and investigating …

Privacy-Preserving Ridge Regression Over Encrypted Data Under Multiple Keys, Yanling Li, Junzuo Lai, Meng Sun, Beibei Song, Robert H. Deng

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

With the increase of private data being collected by data owners, it has been a trend for data owners to store the data on cloud computing platforms. The huge amounts of data in cloud servers bring fresh development opportunities to machine learning, which is applied to build a high-quality machine learning model based on a large training dataset. However, to ensure the privacy of data and facilitate retrieval, data owners often upload encrypted data under their public keys. But it creates new challenges for machine learning to learn a predictive model over these encrypted data under different keys. Most existing …

Cybersecurity And Intention To Use Mobile Banking Applications, Ishmael Chikoo, Salah Kabanda

African Conference on Information Systems and Technology

The adoption rate of mobile banking amongst consumers remains low, especially in developing countries where there is a knowledge gap in understanding why consumers do not engage in the frequent use of mobile banking applications. Given that most financial institutions see mobile banking as a strategy for their competitive advantage; it is important that they understand how best to address consumer’s fears brought about by cybersecurity threats. The purpose of this study is to investigate the perceived influence of cybersecurity on the user’s intentions to use mobile banking applications. Data collected from 90 participants was statistically analysed in Smart PLS …

A Study On Webassembly And Its Security, Thomas Crossman

Research from the Berry Summer Thesis Institute, 2025

This project studies WebAssembly, a binary language specification that enables non-native languages, such as C/C++ and Rust, to run efficiently on webpages, supporting complex tasks like gaming or data processing. It functions by translating a non-native language into a WebAssembly binary, which is natively supported by most browsers. Notably, WebAssembly uses a linear memory model, storing all non-code data in a single linear array. Unfortunately, this design compromises some security principles, introducing security risks and complications.

Our overall project goal is to investigate WebAssembly functionality, develop a test program, and address a critical security challenge to enhance the safety of …

A Comprehensive Review On Gamification In Neurocybersecurity, Ms. Kritika

Journal of Cybersecurity Education, Research and Practice

The research investigates gamification methods as it applies to the emerging interdisciplinary domain that brings together cybersecurity with neuroscience and psychology. Neurocybersecurity implements neural concepts to protect digital systems from security threats while targeting the human vulnerabilities that present as the strongest points of attack. Several researchers have examined gamification techniques which incorporate game design elements to enhance cybersecurity training outcomes by improving user participation and knowledge retention and user conduct compliance. The research incorporates Self-Determination Theory along with Cognitive Load Theory to explain the design principles for efficient gamified interventions. The implementation of both cognitive performance improvement and neuroplasticity …

Investigating Resilience Of Cyberattack Detection Using Lyapunov-Based Economic Model Predictive Control To Data Poisoning, Helen Durand, Akkarakaran Francis Leonard

Chemical Engineering and Materials Science Faculty Research Publications

Cyberattacks may be performed on process control systems due to their integration of networking and computing with physical systems. Prior work in our group has developed detection strategies for nonlinear systems under sensor, actuator, and combined sensor and actuator attacks which can ensure, under characterizable conditions, that attacks can be detected before they cause safety issues. However, this work did not take into account the potential that an attacker could attempt to provide data to a process that causes an attack to remain undetected but that also is consistent with different process dynamics than those which the process has. This …

Response Of Dynamic Processes With Control Implemented On A Noisy Quantum Computer, Shilpa Narashimhan, Dominic Messina, Henrique Oyama, Helen Durand

Chemical Engineering and Materials Science Faculty Research Publications

A major challenge to determining the applicability (and potential outperformance over classical computers) of a quantum computer (QC) within chemical manufacturing processes is quantum noise. Computations by a QC are error-prone due to the influence of quantum noise inherent to the hardware. Errors in control inputs may destabilize a chemical process and lead to unsafe conditions for manufacturing personnel and the environment. The response of a process with control implemented on a QC to errors due to noise must be investigated thoroughly. In this work, the impacts of control input errors due to quantum noise on a process are modeled …

Heuristic Strategies For Process Stabilization Using Proportional Control Implemented By A Noisy Quantum Simulator, Keshav Kasturi Rangan, Helen Durand

Chemical Engineering and Materials Science Faculty Research Publications

Processing and storage demands of industrial processes are causing fields such as optimization, scheduling, and control to assess the effectiveness of quantum devices in their applications. A key objective of control systems is to ensure process safety. This paper focuses on the potential of quantum devices to compute control inputs that maintain system safety despite sources of nondeterminism inherent to currently available quantum devices (quantum noise). In our previous work, we employed a quantum simulator to assess whether a quantum implementation of a proportional (P) control law could stabilize a single-input/single-output system under quantum noise approximated from a real quantum …

Tools To Design Algorithms For Implementing Control Over Quantum Computers, Shilpa Narashimhan, Jihan Abou Halloun, Kip Nieman, Helen Durand

Chemical Engineering and Materials Science Faculty Research Publications

Quantum computers (QCs) may find future applications within control systems that operate manufacturing processes. For application within control engineering, quantum algorithm development must be led by control engineers. However, control engineers may face challenges in designing quantum algorithms for control engineering problems. In this work, we provide several path-finding studies that leverage engineering tools such as optimization, encryption, and computational "short-cuts" toward making algorithm design for QC easier for control engineers.

Achilles: A Formal Framework Of Leaking Secrets From Signature Schemes Via Rowhammer, Junkai Liang, Zhi Zhang, Xin Zhang, Qingni Sheng, Yansong Gao, Xinliang Yuan, Haiyang Xue, Pengfei Wu, Zhonghai. Wu

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Signature schemes are a fundamental component of cyber-security infrastructure. While they are designed to be mathematically secure against cryptographic attacks, they are vulnerable to Rowhammer fault-injection attacks. Since all existing attacks are ad-hoc in that they target individual parameters of specific signature schemes, it remains unclear about the impact of Rowhammer on signature schemes as a whole.In this paper, we present Achilles, a formal framework that aids in leaking secrets in various real-world signature schemes via Rowhammer. Particularly, Achilles can be used to find potentially more vulnerable parameters in schemes that have been studied before and also new schemes that …

Collisionrepair: First‑Aid And Automated Patching For Storage Collision Vulnerabilities In Smart Contracts, Yu Pan, Wanjing Han, Yue Duan, Mu Zhang

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Storage collision vulnerabilities, a significant security risk in upgradeable smart contracts, often arise when a user-facing proxy contract and a backend logic contract share storage space. While static analysis techniques can detect such issues, they often over-approximate program states, leading to false positives and requiring developers to manually verify each issue, giving attackers time to exploit any overlooked vulnerabilities. To address this, we propose COLLISIONREPAIR, an automated patching technique for mitigating storage collision risks. COLLISIONREPAIR monitors storage access sequences between proxy and logic contracts by defining an "ownership" property for storage locations. It then replays historical transactions to recover existing …

Prism: To Fortify Widget Based User‑App Data Exchanges Using Android Virtualization Framework, Yingtat Ng, Zhe Chen, Haiqing Qiu, Xuhua Ding

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

We present Prism, an UI hardening technique for an Android app to safeguard its widgets against a corrupted kernel. Prism ensures secure interface rendering and allows for visual authentication, which developers could use to enable user intent confidentiality protection. Our design leverages the recent Android Virtualization Framework with minimal changes to the existing UI framework and graphics subsystem. It is much easier to deploy and use Prism on Android phones than TrustZone-based secure UI schemes, because the apps are not admitted to the Secure World and retain their full rights to manage and control their own interfaces. We have implemented …

Oblivious Digital Tokens, Mihael Liskij, Xuhua Ding, Gene Tsudik, David A. Basin

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

A computing device typically identifies itself by exhibiting unique measurable behavior or by proving its knowledge of a secret. In both cases, the identifying device must reveal information to a verifier. Considerable research has focused on protecting identifying entities (provers) and reducing the amount of leaked data. However, little has been done to conceal the fact that the verification occurred.We show how this problem naturally arises in the context of digital emblems, which were recently proposed by the International Committee of the Red Cross to protect digital resources during cyber-conflicts. To address this new and important open problem, we define …

Out-Of-Band Anomaly Detection For Real Time Operating Systems, Jeffrey K. Holifield

Graduate Theses and Dissertations (2019 - present)

Real Time Operating Systems (RTOS) are increasing present throughout the industrial, business, defense, and healthcare spaces. These lightweight and efficient operating systems are designed to run on embedded, resource constrained devices, often within cyber-physical systems (CPS). A defining characteristic ofRTOSs is that they are deterministic. Tasks are scheduled to run on fixed timelines within guaranteed execution windows. In Industry 4.0 applications for example, sensors must receive and process inputs within a fixed schedule to ensure products are properly manufactured. This requires guaranteed service at fixed time periods. To accomplish this, RTOSs must conform to worst case execution times (WCETs) as …

Authentication And Message Integrity Verification For Emerging Wireless Networks, Ebuka Philip Oguchi

Dissertations and Doctoral Documents, University of Nebraska-Lincoln, 2023–

This dissertation presents a comprehensive body of research on authentication and message integrity verification for emerging wireless networks, focusing on secret-free and physical layer security techniques across diverse, challenging, and unconventional environments.

It comprises four first-author contributions that span underground wireless systems, over-the-air (OTA) channels, vehicular communications, and nanoscale molecular networks.

The first contribution, Soil-Assisted Trust Establishment for Underground Wireless Networks (STUN), introduces a physical-layer trust bootstrapping protocol that achieves authentication and message integrity without pre-shared secrets. Leveraging underground-to-air propagation laws and trusted relay nodes, STUN resists active signal injection attacks and demonstrates security comparable to the unbalanced oil and …

Improved Secure Two-Party Computation From A Geometric Perspective, Hao Guo, Liqiang Peng, Haiyang Xue, Li Peng, Weiran Liu, Zhe Liu, Lei. Hu

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Multiplication and other non-linear operations are widely recognized as the most costly components of secure two-party computation (2PC) based on linear secret sharing. Moreover, the comparison protocol (or Wrap protocol) is essential for various operations such as truncation, signed extension, and signed non-uniform multiplication. This paper aims to optimize these protocols by avoiding invoking the costly comparison protocol, thereby improving their efficiency.We propose a novel approach to study 2PC from a geometric perspective. Specifically, we interpret the two shares of a secret as the horizontal and vertical coordinates of a point in a Cartesian coordinate system, with the secret itself …

Tetd: Trusted Execution In Trust Domains, Zhanbo Wang, Jiaxin Zhan, Xuhua Ding, Fengwei Zhang, Ning Hu

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Intel TDX empowers cloud service providers to construct confidential virtual machines called trust domains (TDs) on x86 platforms. Similar to its counterparts from AMD and Arm, TDX's hardware based protection over integrity and secrecy of virtual machine memory and vCPU states inevitably hinders legitimate virtual machine management such as introspection. At the presence of compromised high-privileged software (e.g., the guest kernel), neither the cloud service provider nor the TD owner can securely carry out a task within the TD. To tackle this problem, we propose TETD, an in-TD trusted execution technique without trusting any TD system software. Our design does …

A Comprehensive Analysis Of Evolving Permission Usage In Android Apps: Trends, Threats, And Ecosystem Insights, Ali Alkinoon, Trung Cuong Dang, Ahod Alghuried, Abdulaziz Alghamdi, Soohyeon Choi, Manar Mohaisen, An Wang, Saeed Salem, David Mohaisen

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

The proper use of Android app permissions is crucial to the success and security of these apps. Users must agree to permission requests when installing or running their apps. Despite official Android platform documentation on proper permission usage, there are still many cases of permission abuse. This study provides a comprehensive analysis of the Android permission landscape, highlighting trends and patterns in permission requests across various applications from the Google Play Store. By distinguishing between benign and malicious applications, we uncover developers’ evolving strategies, with malicious apps increasingly requesting fewer permissions to evade detection, while benign apps request more to …

A Review: The Beauty Of Serendipity Between Integrated Circuit Security And Artificial Intelligence, Chen Dong, Decheng Qiu, Bolun Li, Yang Yang, Chenxi Lyu, Dong Cheng, Hao Zhang, Zhenyi. Chen

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Integrated circuits are the core of a cyber-physical system, where tens of billions of components are integrated into a tiny silicon chip to conduct complex functions. To maximize utilities, the design and manufacturing life cycle of integrated circuits rely on numerous untrustworthy third parties, forming a global supply chain model. At the same time, this model produces unpredictable and catastrophic issues, threatening the security of individuals and countries. As for guaranteeing the security of ultra-highly integrated chips, detecting slight abnormalities caused by malicious behavior in the current and voltage is challenging, as is achieving computability within a reasonable time and …