Information Security Commons^™

Formally Designing And Implementing Cyber Security Mechanisms In Industrial Control Networks., Mehdi Sabraoui

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation describes progress in the state-of-the-art for developing and deploying formally verified cyber security devices in industrial control networks. It begins by detailing the unique struggles that are faced in industrial control networks and why concepts and technologies developed for securing traditional networks might not be appropriate. It uses these unique struggles and examples of contemporary cyber-attacks targeting control systems to argue that progress in securing control systems is best met with formal verification of systems, their specifications, and their security properties. This dissertation then presents a development process and identifies two technologies, TLA+ and seL4, that can be …

Suitability Of Finite State Automata To Model String Constraints In Probablistic Symbolic Execution, Andrew Harris

Boise State University Theses and Dissertations

Probabilistic Symbolic Execution (PSE) extends Symbolic Execution (SE), a path-sensitive static program analysis technique, by calculating the probabilities with which program paths are executed. PSE relies on the ability of the underlying symbolic models to accurately represent the execution paths of the program as the collection of input values following these paths. While researchers established PSE for numerical data types, PSE for complex data types such as strings is a novel area of research.

For string data types SE tools commonly utilize finite state automata to represent a symbolic string model. Thus, PSE inherits from SE automata-based symbolic string models …

Towards Understanding Android System Vulnerabilities: Techniques And Insights, Daoyuan Wu, Debin Gao, Eric K. T. Cheng, Yichen Cao, Jintao Jiang, Robert H. Deng

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

As a common platform for pervasive devices, Android has been targeted by numerous attacks that exploit vulnerabilities in its apps and the operating system. Compared to app vulnerabilities, systemlevel vulnerabilities in Android, however, were much less explored in the literature. In this paper, we perform the first systematic study of Android system vulnerabilities by comprehensively analyzing all 2,179 vulnerabilities on the Android Security Bulletin program over about three years since its initiation in August 2015. To this end, we propose an automatic analysis framework, upon a hierarchical database structure, to crawl, parse, clean, and analyze vulnerability reports and their publicly …

Decentralise Me, Paul Robert Griffin

MITB Thought Leadership Series

If you are in need of a reminder of the levels of hype surrounding blockchain, then look no further than Japan’s J-Pop sensation Kasotsuka Shojo, otherwise known as the Virtual Currency Girls who, with their debut track “The Moon and Cryptocurrencies and Me”, aim to educate fans about cryptocurrencies in an entertaining way.

Building Consumer Trust In The Cloud: An Experimental Analysis Of The Cloud Trust Label Approach, Lisa Van Der Werff, Grace Fox, Ieva Masevic, Vincent C. Emeakaroha, John P. Morrison, Theo Lynn

Department of Computer Science Publications

The lack of transparency surrounding cloud service provision makes it difficult for consumers to make knowledge based purchasing decisions. As a result, consumer trust has become a major impediment to cloud computing adoption. Cloud Trust Labels represent a means of communicating relevant service and security information to potential customers on the cloud service provided, thereby facilitating informed decision making. This research investigates the potential of a Cloud Trust Label system to overcome the trust barrier. Specifically, it examines the impact of a Cloud Trust Label on consumer perceptions of a service and cloud service provider trustworthiness and trust in the …

Automated Tool Support For Security Bug Repair In Mobile Applications, Larry Singleton

Computer Science Graduate Research Workshop

No abstract provided.

Flashlight In A Dark Room: A Grounded Theory Study On Information Security Management At Small Healthcare Provider Organizations, Gerald Auger

Masters Theses & Doctoral Dissertations

Healthcare providers have a responsibility to protect patient’s privacy and a business motivation to properly secure their assets. These providers encounter barriers to achieving these objectives and limited academic research has been conducted to examine the causes and strategies to overcome them. A subset of this demographic, businesses with less than 10 providers, compose a majority 57% of provider organizations in the United States. This grounded theory study provides exploratory findings, discovering these small healthcare provider organizations (SHPO) have limited knowledge on information technology (IT) and information security that results in assumptions and misappropriations of information security implementation, who is …

Evaluating The Impacts Of Detecting X.509 Covert Channels, Cody Welu

Masters Theses & Doctoral Dissertations

This quasi-experimental before-and-after study examined the performance impacts of detecting X.509 covert channels in the Suricata intrusion detection system. Relevant literature and previous studies surrounding covert channels and covert channel detection, X.509 certificates, and intrusion detection system performance were evaluated. This study used Jason Reaves’ X.509 covert channel proof of concept code to generate malicious network traffic for detection (2018). Various detection rules for intrusion detection systems were created to aid in the detection of the X.509 covert channel. The central processing unit (CPU) and memory utilization impacts that each rule had on the intrusion detection system was studied and …

Security Bug Report Classification Using Feature Selection, Clustering, And Deep Learning, Tanner D. Gantzer

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)

As the numbers of software vulnerabilities and cybersecurity threats increase, it is becoming more difficult and time consuming to classify bug reports manually. This thesis is focused on exploring techniques that have potential to improve the performance of automated classification of software bug reports as security or non-security related. Using supervised learning, feature selection was used to engineer new feature vectors to be used in machine learning. Feature selection changes the vocabulary used by selecting words with the greatest impact on classification. Feature selection was able to increase the F-Score across the datasets by increasing the precision. We also explored …

Russia Today, Cyberterrorists Tomorrow: U.S. Failure To Prepare Democracy For Cyberspace, Jonathan F. Lancelot

Journal of Digital Forensics, Security and Law

This paper is designed to expose vulnerabilities within the US electoral system, the use of cyberspace to exploit weaknesses within the information assurance strategies of the democratic and republican party organizations, and deficiencies within the social media communications and voting machine exploits. A brief history of discriminatory practices in voting rights and voting access will be set as the foundation for the argument that the system is vulnerable in the cyber age, and the need for reform at the local, state and national levels will be emphasized. The possibility of a foreign nation-state influencing the outcome of an election by …

Gradubique: An Academic Transcript Database Using Blockchain Architecture, Thinh Nguyen

Master's Projects

Blockchain has been widely adopted in the last few years even though it is in its infancy. The first well-known application built on blockchain technology was Bitcoin, which is a decentralized and distributed ledger to record crypto-currency transactions. All of the transactions in Bitcoin are anonymously transferred and validated by participants in the network. Bitcoin protocol and its operations are so reliable that technologists have been inspired to enhance blockchain technologies and deploy it outside of the crypto-currency world. The demand for private and non-crypto-currency solutions have surged among consortiums because of the security and fault tolerant features of blockchain. …

Privacy-Preserving Remote User Authentication With K-Times Untraceability, Yangguang Tian, Yingjiu Li, Binanda Sengupta, Robert H. Deng, Albert Ching, Weiwei Liu

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Remote user authentication has found numerous real-world applications, especially in a user-server model. In this work, we introduce the notion of anonymous remote user authentication with k-times untraceability (k-RUA) for a given parameter k, where authorized users authenticate themselves to an authority (typically a server) in an anonymous and k-times untraceable manner. We define the formal security models for a generic k-RUA construction that guarantees user authenticity, anonymity and user privacy. We provide a concrete instantiation of k-RUA having the following properties: (1) a third party cannot impersonate an authorized user by producing valid transcripts for the user while conversing …

Liboblivious: A C++ Library For Oblivious Data Structures And Algorithms, Scott D. Constable, Steve Chapin

Electrical Engineering and Computer Science - Technical Reports

Infrastructure as a service (IaaS) is an enormously beneficial model for centralized data computation and storage. Yet, existing network-layer and hardware-layer security protections do not address a broad category of vulnerabilities known as side-channel attacks. Over the past several years, numerous techniques have been proposed at all layers of the software/hardware stack to prevent the inadvertent leakage of sensitive data. This report discusses a new technique which integrates seamlessly with C++ programs. We introduce a library, libOblivious, which provides thin wrappers around existing C++ standard template library classes, endowing them with the property of memory-trace obliviousness.

Implementation Of Secure Dnp3 Architecture Of Scada System For Smart Grids, Uday Bhaskar Boyanapalli

Master of Science in Computer Science Theses

With the recent advances in the power grid system connecting to the internet, data sharing, and networking enables space for hackers to maliciously attack them based on their vulnerabilities. Vital stations in the smart grid are the generation, transmission, distribution, and customer substations are connected and controlled remotely by the network. Every substation is controlled by a Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition (SCADA) system which communicates on DNP3 protocol on Internet/IP which has many security vulnerabilities. This research will focus on Distributed Network Protocol (DNP3) communication which is used in the smart grid to communicate between the controller devices. We …

Function Risk Assessment Under Memory Leakage, Jianming Fu, Rui Jin, Yan Lin, Baihe Jiang, Zhengwei Guo

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Code reuse attack (CRA), specifically reusing and then reconstructing the codes (gadgets) already existed in programs and libraries, is widely exploited in software attacks. Admittedly, determination of the location of the gadgets consisted of target instructions along with control flow transfer instructions, is of critical importance. Address Space Randomization (ASR), which serves as an effective technique to mitigate CRA, increases the entropy by randomizing the location of the code or data, and baffles adversaries from figuring out the memory layout. Currently, variable randomization methods of high granularity are proposed by scholars to prevent adversaries from deducting memory layout. However, their …

Hawkeye: Towards A Desired Directed Grey-Box Fuzzer, Hongxu Chen, Yinxing Xue, Yuekang Li, Bihuan Chen, Xiaofei Xie, Xiuheng Wu, Yang Liu

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Grey-box fuzzing is a practically effective approach to test real-world programs. However, most existing grey-box fuzzers lack directedness, i.e. the capability of executing towards user-specified target sites in the program. To emphasize existing challenges in directed fuzzing, we propose Hawkeye to feature four desired properties of directed grey-box fuzzers. Owing to a novel static analysis on the program under test and the target sites, Hawkeye precisely collects the information such as the call graph, function and basic block level distances to the targets. During fuzzing, Hawkeye evaluates exercised seeds based on both static information and the execution traces to generate …

Exploring Confidentiality Issues In Hyperledger Fabric Business Applications, Shivam Bajpayi, Pedro Moreno-Sanchez, Donghang Lu, Sihao Yin

The Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship (SURF) Symposium

The rise of Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies over the last decade have made its underlying technology (blockchain) come into the spotlight. Blockchain is a secure ledger of linked records called blocks. These records are cryptographically immutable and any tampering with the block is evident through a change in the cryptographic signature of the block. Among the blockchains deployed in practice today, Hyperledger Fabric is a platform that allows businesses to make use of blockchains in their applications. However, confidentiality issues arise with respects to the blocks in this blockchain network due to the fact that blocks might contain sensitive information accessible …

Formal Verification Of A Modern Boot Loader, Scott D. Constable, Rob Sutton, Arash Sahebolamri, Steve Chapin

Electrical Engineering and Computer Science - Technical Reports

We introduce the Syracuse Assured Boot Loader Executive (SABLE), a trustworthy secure loader. A trusted boot loader performs a cryptographic measurement (hash) of program code and executes it unconditionally, allowing later-stage software to verify the integrity of the system through local or remote attestation. A secure loader differs from a trusted loader in that it executes subsequent code only if measurements of that code match known-good values. We have applied a rigorous formal verification technique recently demonstrated in practice by NICTA in their verification of the seL4 microkernel. We summarize our design philosophy from a high level and present our …

An Integrated Approach For Effective Injection Vulnerability Analysis Of Web Applications Through Security Slicing And Hybrid Constraint Solving, Julian Thome, Lwin Khin Shar, Domenico Bianculli, Lionel Briand

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Malicious users can attack Web applications by exploiting injection vulnerabilities in the source code. This work addresses the challenge of detecting injection vulnerabilities in the server-side code of Java Web applications in a scalable and effective way. We propose an integrated approach that seamlessly combines security slicing with hybrid constraint solving; the latter orchestrates automata-based solving with meta-heuristic search. We use static analysis to extract minimal program slices relevant to security from Web programs and to generate attack conditions. We then apply hybrid constraint solving to determine the satisfiability of attack conditions and thus detect vulnerabilities. The experimental results, using …

A Home Security System Based On Smartphone Sensors, Michael Mahler

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Several new smartphones are released every year. Many people upgrade to new phones, and their old phones are not put to any further use. In this paper, we explore the feasibility of using such retired smartphones and their on-board sensors to build a home security system. We observe that door-related events such as opening and closing have unique vibration signatures when compared to many types of environmental vibrational noise. These events can be captured by the accelerometer of a smartphone when the phone is mounted on a wall near a door. The rotation of a door can also be captured …

Learning From Mutants: Using Code Mutation To Learn And Monitor Invariants Of A Cyber-Physical System, Yuqi Chen, Christopher M. Poskitt, Jun Sun

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Cyber-physical systems (CPS) consist of sensors, actuators, and controllers all communicating over a network; if any subset becomes compromised, an attacker could cause significant damage. With access to data logs and a model of the CPS, the physical effects of an attack could potentially be detected before any damage is done. Manually building a model that is accurate enough in practice, however, is extremely difficult. In this paper, we propose a novel approach for constructing models of CPS automatically, by applying supervised machine learning to data traces obtained after systematically seeding their software components with faults ("mutants"). We demonstrate the …

Understanding Natural Keyboard Typing Using Convolutional Neural Networks On Mobile Sensor Data, Travis Siems

Computer Science and Engineering Theses and Dissertations

Mobile phones and other devices with embedded sensors are becoming increasingly ubiquitous. Audio and motion sensor data may be able to detect information that we did not think possible. Some researchers have created models that can predict computer keyboard typing from a nearby mobile device; however, certain limitations to their experiment setup and methods compelled us to be skeptical of the models’ realistic prediction capability. We investigate the possibility of understanding natural keyboard typing from mobile phones by performing a well-designed data collection experiment that encourages natural typing and interactions. This data collection helps capture realistic vulnerabilities of the security …

Modeling Security And Privacy Requirements: A Use Case-Driven Approach, Phu Xuan Mai, Arda Goknil, Lwin Khin Shar, Fabrizio Pastore, Lionel Briand, Shaban Shaame

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Context: Modern internet-based services, ranging from food-delivery to home-caring, leverage the availability of multiple programmable devices to provide handy services tailored to end-user needs. These services are delivered through an ecosystem of device-specific software components and interfaces (e.g., mobile and wearable device applications). Since they often handle private information (e.g., location and health status), their security and privacy requirements are of crucial importance. Defining and analyzing those requirements is a significant challenge due to the multiple types of software components and devices integrated into software ecosystems. Each software component presents peculiarities that often depend on the context and the devices …

Automated Man-In-The-Middle Attack Against Wi‑Fi Networks, Martin Vondráček, Jan Pluskal, Ondřej Ryšavý

Journal of Digital Forensics, Security and Law

Currently used wireless communication technologies suffer security weaknesses that can be exploited allowing to eavesdrop or to spoof network communication. In this paper, we present a practical tool that can automate the attack on wireless security. The developed package called wifimitm provides functionality for the automation of MitM attacks in the wireless environment. The package combines several existing tools and attack strategies to bypass the wireless security mechanisms, such as WEP, WPA, and WPS. The presented tool can be integrated into a solution for automated penetration testing. Also, a popularization of the fact that such attacks can be easily automated …

Obfuscation At-Source: Privacy In Context-Aware Mobile Crowd-Sourcing, Thivya Kandappu, Archan Misra, Shih-Fen Cheng, Randy Tandriansyah, Hoong Chuin Lau

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

By effectively reaching out to and engaging larger population of mobile users, mobile crowd-sourcing has become a strategy to perform large amount of urban tasks. The recent empirical studies have shown that compared to the pull-based approach, which expects the users to browse through the list of tasks to perform, the push-based approach that actively recommends tasks can greatly improve the overall system performance. As the efficiency of the push-based approach is achieved by incorporating worker's mobility traces, privacy is naturally a concern. In this paper, we propose a novel, 2-stage and user-controlled obfuscation technique that provides a trade off-amenable …

A Malware Analysis And Artifact Capture Tool, Dallas Wright, Josh Stroschein

Research & Publications

Malware authors attempt to obfuscate and hide their code in its static and dynamic states. This paper provides a novel approach to aid analysis by intercepting and capturing malware artifacts and providing dynamic control of process flow. Capturing malware artifacts allows an analyst to more quickly and comprehensively understand malware behavior and obfuscation techniques and doing so interactively allows multiple code paths to be explored. The faster that malware can be analyzed the quicker the systems and data compromised by it can be determined and its infection stopped. This research proposes an instantiation of an interactive malware analysis and artifact …

A Formally Verified Heap Allocator, Arash Sahebolamri, Scott D. Constable, Steve J. Chapin

Electrical Engineering and Computer Science - Technical Reports

We present the formal verification of a heap allocator written in C. We use the Isabelle/HOL proof assistant to formally verify the correctness of the heap allocator at the source code level. The C source code of the heap allocator is imported into Isabelle/HOL using CParser and AutoCorres. In addition to providing the guarantee that the heap allocator is free of bugs and therefore is suitable for use in security critical projects, our work facilitates verification of other projects written in C that utilize Isabelle and AutoCorres.

Software Safety And Security Risk Mitigation In Cyber-Physical Systems, Miklos Biro, Atif Mashkoor, Johannes Sametinger, Remzi Seker

Publications

Cyber-physical systems (CPSs) offer many opportunities but pose many challenges--especially regarding functional safety, cybersecurity, and their interplay, as well as the systems' impact on society. Consequently, new methods and techniques are needed for CPS development and assurance. This article [and issue] aims to address some of these challenges.

Secure Smart Metering Based On Lora Technology, Yao Cheng, Hendra Saputra, Leng Meng Goh, Yongdong Wu

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Smart metering allows Substation Automation System (SAS) to remotely and timely read smart meters. Despite its advantages, smart metering brings some challenges. a) It introduces cyber attack risks to the metering system, which may lead to user privacy leakage or even the compromise of smart metering systems. b) Although the majority of meters are located within a regional power supply area, some hard-to-reach nodes are geographically far from the clustered area, which account for a big portion of the entire smart metering operation cost. Facing the above challenges, we propose a secure smart metering infrastructure based on LoRa technology which …

Securing Display Path For Security-Sensitive Applications On Mobile Devices, Jinhua Cui, Yuanyuan Zhang, Zhiping Cai, Anfeng Liu, Yangyang Li

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

While smart devices based on ARM processor bring us a lot of convenience, they also become an attractive target of cyber-attacks. The threat is exaggerated as commodity OSes usually have a large code base and suffer from various software vulnerabilities. Nowadays, adversaries prefer to steal sensitive data by leaking the content of display output by a security-sensitive application. A promising solution is to exploit the hardware visualization extensions provided by modern ARM processors to construct a secure display path between the applications and the display device. In this work, we present a scheme named SecDisplay for trusted display service, it …