Information Security Commons^™

Securing Fog Federation From Behavior Of Rogue Nodes, Mohammed Saleh H. Alshehri

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

As the technological revolution advanced information security evolved with an increased need for confidential data protection on the internet. Individuals and organizations typically prefer outsourcing their confidential data to the cloud for processing and storage. As promising as the cloud computing paradigm is, it creates challenges; everything from data security to time latency issues with data computation and delivery to end-users. In response to these challenges CISCO introduced the fog computing paradigm in 2012. The intent was to overcome issues such as time latency and communication overhead and to bring computing and storage resources close to the ground and the …

Characteristic Reassignment For Hardware Trojan Detection, Noah Waller

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

With the current business model and increasing complexity of hardware designs, third-party Intellectual Properties (IPs) are prevalently incorporated into first-party designs. However, the use of third-party IPs increases security concerns related to hardware Trojans inserted by attackers. A core threat posed by Hardware Trojans is the difficulty in detecting such malicious insertions/alternations in order to prevent the damage. This thesis work provides major improvements on a soft IP analysis methodology and tool known as the Structural Checking tool, which analyzes Register-Transfer Level (RTL) soft IPs for determining their functionalities and screening for hardware Trojans. This is done by breaking down …

On The Explanation And Implementation Of Three Open-Source Fully Homomorphic Encryption Libraries, Alycia Carey

Computer Science and Computer Engineering Undergraduate Honors Theses

While fully homomorphic encryption (FHE) is a fairly new realm of cryptography, it has shown to be a promising mode of information protection as it allows arbitrary computations on encrypted data. The development of a practical FHE scheme would enable the development of secure cloud computation over sensitive data, which is a much-needed technology in today's trend of outsourced computation and storage. The first FHE scheme was proposed by Craig Gentry in 2009, and although it was not a practical implementation, his scheme laid the groundwork for many schemes that exist today. One main focus in FHE research is the …

Secure And Efficient Models For Retrieving Data From Encrypted Databases In Cloud, Sultan Ahmed A Almakdi

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Recently, database users have begun to use cloud database services to outsource their databases. The reason for this is the high computation speed and the huge storage capacity that cloud owners provide at low prices. However, despite the attractiveness of the cloud computing environment to database users, privacy issues remain a cause for concern for database owners since data access is out of their control. Encryption is the only way of assuaging users’ fears surrounding data privacy, but executing Structured Query Language (SQL) queries over encrypted data is a challenging task, especially if the data are encrypted by a randomized …

Dynamic Fraud Detection Via Sequential Modeling, Panpan Zheng

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The impacts of information revolution are omnipresent from life to work. The web services have signicantly changed our living styles in daily life, such as Facebook for communication and Wikipedia for knowledge acquirement. Besides, varieties of information systems, such as data management system and management information system, make us work more eciently. However, it is usually a double-edged sword. With the popularity of web services, relevant security issues are arising, such as fake news on Facebook and vandalism on Wikipedia, which denitely impose severe security threats to OSNs and their legitimate participants. Likewise, oce automation incurs another challenging security issue, …

Data Breach Consequences And Responses: A Multi-Method Investigation Of Stakeholders, Hamid Reza Nikkhah

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The role of information in today’s economy is essential as organizations that can effectively store and leverage information about their stakeholders can gain an advantage in their markets. The extensive digitization of business information can make organizations vulnerable to data breaches. A data breach is the unauthorized access to sensitive, protected, or confidential data resulting in the compromise of information security. Data breaches affect not only the breached organization but also various related stakeholders. After a data breach, stakeholders of the breached organizations show negative behaviors, which causes the breached organizations to face financial and non-financial costs. As such, the …

Countering Cybersecurity Vulnerabilities In The Power System, Fengli Zhang

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Security vulnerabilities in software pose an important threat to power grid security, which can be exploited by attackers if not properly addressed. Every month, many vulnerabilities are discovered and all the vulnerabilities must be remediated in a timely manner to reduce the chance of being exploited by attackers. In current practice, security operators have to manually analyze each vulnerability present in their assets and determine the remediation actions in a short time period, which involves a tremendous amount of human resources for electric utilities. To solve this problem, we propose a machine learning-based automation framework to automate vulnerability analysis and …

Hardware Ip Classification Through Weighted Characteristics, Brendan Mcgeehan

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Today’s business model for hardware designs frequently incorporates third-party Intellectual Property (IP) due to the many benefits it can bring to a company. For instance, outsourcing certain components of an overall design can reduce time-to-market by allowing each party to specialize and perfect a specific part of the overall design. However, allowing third-party involvement also increases the possibility of malicious attacks, such as hardware Trojan insertion. Trojan insertion is a particularly dangerous security threat because testing the functionality of an IP can often leave the Trojan undetected. Therefore, this thesis work provides an improvement on a Trojan detection method known …

Learning-Based Analysis On The Exploitability Of Security Vulnerabilities, Adam Bliss

Computer Science and Computer Engineering Undergraduate Honors Theses

The purpose of this thesis is to develop a tool that uses machine learning techniques to make predictions about whether or not a given vulnerability will be exploited. Such a tool could help organizations such as electric utilities to prioritize their security patching operations. Three different models, based on a deep neural network, a random forest, and a support vector machine respectively, are designed and implemented. Training data for these models is compiled from a variety of sources, including the National Vulnerability Database published by NIST and the Exploit Database published by Offensive Security. Extensive experiments are conducted, including testing …

The Role Of Information Communication Technologies (Icts) In Shaping Identity Threats And Responses, Mary Macharia

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

With the rising use of social media, people are increasingly experiencing, and responding to, identity threats online. This sometimes leads to online backlash via “cybermobs” or the creation of online social movements that traverse offline. Prior information systems (IS) research on identity threats and responses largely focuses on information communication technology (ICT) implementations within organizations in an offline context. Therefore, we lack understanding of ICT-mediated identity threats and responses and ways to promote healthier and productive interactions online. This two-essay dissertation seeks to fill this gap. Essay 1 combines a review of ICT-mediated identity threats with a qualitative study (based …

Privacy-Preserving Photo Taking And Accessing For Mobile Phones, Ang Li

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Today, we are living in environments that are full of cameras embedded in devices such as smart phones and wearables. These mobile devices and as well as apps installed on them are designed to be extremely convenient for users to take, store and share photos. In spite of the convenience brought by ubiquitous cameras, users' privacy may be breached through photos that are taken and stored with mobile devices. For example, when users take a photo of a scenery, a building or a target person, a stranger may also be unintentionally captured in the photo. Such photos expose the location …

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 …

Low Latency Intrusion Detection In Smart Grids, Israel Zairi Akingeneye

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The transformation of traditional power grids into smart grids has seen more new technologies such as communication networks and smart meters (sensors) being integrated into the physical infrastructure of the power grids. However, these technologies pose new vulnerabilities to the cybersecurity of power grids as malicious attacks can be launched by adversaries to attack the smart meters and modify the measurement data collected by these meters. If not timely detected and removed, these attacks may lead to inaccurate system state estimation, which is critical to the system operators for control decisions such as economic dispatch and other related functions.

This …

Designing Secure Access Control Model In Cyber Social Networks, Katanosh Morovat

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Nowadays, information security in online communication has become an indisputable topic. People prefer pursuing their connection and public relations due to the greater flexibility and affordability of online communication. Recently, organizations have established online networking sites concerned with sharing assets among their employees. As more people engage in social network, requirements for protecting information and resources becomes vital. Over the years, many access control methods have been proposed. Although these methods cover various information security aspects, they have not provided an appropriate approach for securing information within distributed online networking sites. Moreover, none of the previous research provides an access …

Enforcing Database Security On Cloud Using A Trusted Third Party Based Model, Victor Fuentes Tello

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Cloud computing offers a considerable number of advantages to clients and organizations that use several capabilities to store sensitive data, interact with applications, or use technology infrastructure to perform daily activities. The development of new models in cloud computing brings with it a series of elements that must be considered by companies, particularly when the sensitive data needs to be protected. There are some concerns related to security that need to be taken into consideration when a service provider manage and store the data in a location outside the company. In this research, a model that uses a trusted third …

Dpweka: Achieving Differential Privacy In Weka, Srinidhi Katla

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Organizations belonging to the government, commercial, and non-profit industries collect and store large amounts of sensitive data, which include medical, financial, and personal information. They use data mining methods to formulate business strategies that yield high long-term and short-term financial benefits. While analyzing such data, the private information of the individuals present in the data must be protected for moral and legal reasons. Current practices such as redacting sensitive attributes, releasing only the aggregate values, and query auditing do not provide sufficient protection against an adversary armed with auxiliary information. In the presence of additional background information, the privacy protection …

Exploring Privacy Leakage From The Resource Usage Patterns Of Mobile Apps, Amin Rois Sinung Nugroho

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Due to the popularity of smart phones and mobile apps, a potential privacy risk with the usage of mobile apps is that, from the usage information of mobile apps (e.g., how many hours a user plays mobile games in each day), private information about a user’s living habits and personal activities can be inferred. To assess this risk, this thesis answers the following research question: can the type of a mobile app (e.g., email, web browsing, mobile game, music streaming, etc.) used by a user be inferred from the resource (e.g., CPU, memory, network, etc.) usage patterns of the mobile …

Hardware Trojan Detection Via Golden Reference Library Matching, Lucas Weaver

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Due to the proliferation of hardware Trojans in third party Intellectual Property (IP) designs, the issue of hardware security has risen to the forefront of computer engineering. Because of the miniscule size yet devastating effects of hardware Trojans, few detection methods have been presented that adequately address this problem facing the hardware industry. One such method with the ability to detect hardware Trojans is Structural Checking. This methodology analyzes a soft IP at the register-transfer level to discover malicious inclusions. An extension of this methodology is presented that expands the list of signal functionalities, termed assets, in addition to introducing …

Mobile Banking Security Using Gps And Ldpc Codes, Matthew Francis Moccaro

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Mobile Banking is becoming a major part of our world's financial system. Being able to manage one's finances on a mobile device can provide services that can make users more productive. It can also serve as a means of financial freedom to those who are unable to access physical banking facilities due to distance, or other problems. However, with such freedom also comes the need for security. A person's financial information is one of the most targeted groups of information by attackers. To secure these mobile freedoms, this paper presents a system to secure mobile banking procedures using global positioning …

Distortion Tolerant Source Code Using Viterbi Algorithm, Christopher Hankins

Electrical Engineering Undergraduate Honors Theses

Convolutional codes are used in digital communication systems in order to protect information from distortion and increase system reliability. One of the most efficient methods for decoding convolutional codes is based on the Viterbi Algorithm. Considering the fundamental similarities between these channel codes and source codes, it is logical to postulate that the Viterbi Algorithm may also provide a basis for the implementation of an efficient lossy source code. In this thesis, the Viterbi Algorithm is used to used to compress digital data from a symmetric Bernoulli source. The Viterbi source code is simulated and shown to produce results which …

A Secure And Fair Resource Sharing Model For Community Clouds, Santhosh S. Anand

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Cloud computing has gained a lot of importance and has been one of the most discussed segment of today's IT industry. As enterprises explore the idea of using clouds, concerns have emerged related to cloud security and standardization. This thesis explores whether the Community Cloud Deployment Model can provide solutions to some of the concerns associated with cloud computing. A secure framework based on trust negotiations for resource sharing within the community is developed as a means to provide standardization and security while building trust during resource sharing within the community. Additionally, a model for fair sharing of resources is …

Locating And Protecting Facilities Subject To Random Disruptions And Attacks, Hugh Medal

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Recent events such as the 2011 Tohoku earthquake and tsunami in Japan have revealed the vulnerability of networks such as supply chains to disruptive events. In particular, it has become apparent that the failure of a few elements of an infrastructure system can cause a system-wide disruption. Thus, it is important to learn more about which elements of infrastructure systems are most critical and how to protect an infrastructure system from the effects of a disruption. This dissertation seeks to enhance the understanding of how to design and protect networked infrastructure systems from disruptions by developing new mathematical models and …

Recognizing Patterns In Transmitted Signals For Identification Purposes, Baha' A. Alsaify

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The ability to identify and authenticate entities in cyberspace such as users, computers, cell phones, smart cards, and radio frequency identification (RFID) tags is usually accomplished by having the entity demonstrate knowledge of a secret key. When the entity is portable and physically accessible, like an RFID tag, it can be difficult to secure given the memory, processing, and economic constraints. This work proposes to use unique patterns in the transmitted signals caused by manufacturing differences to identify and authenticate a wireless device such as an RFID tag. Both manufacturer identification and tag identification are performed on a population of …

Insider Threat Mitigation Models Based On Thresholds And Dependencies, Harini Ragavan

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Insider threat causes great damage to data in any organization and is considered a serious issue. In spite of the presence of threat prevention mechanisms, sophisticated insiders still continue to attack a database with new techniques. One such technique which remains an advantage for insiders to attack databases is the dependency relationship among data items. This thesis investigates the ways by which an authorized insider detects dependencies in order to perform malicious write operations. The goal is to monitor malicious write operations performed by an insider by taking advantage of dependencies. A term called `threshold' is associated with every data …

Mitigating Insider Threat In Relational Database Systems, Qussai Yaseen

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The dissertation concentrates on addressing the factors and capabilities that enable insiders to violate systems security. It focuses on modeling the accumulative knowledge that insiders get throughout legal accesses, and it concentrates on analyzing the dependencies and constraints among data items and represents them using graph-based methods. The dissertation proposes new types of Knowledge Graphs (KGs) to represent insiders' knowledgebases. Furthermore, it introduces the Neural Dependency and Inference Graph (NDIG) and Constraints and Dependencies Graph (CDG) to demonstrate the dependencies and constraints among data items. The dissertation discusses in detail how insiders use knowledgebases and dependencies and constraints to get …

Portable Network Analyzer, Tyler Warren

Computer Science and Computer Engineering Undergraduate Honors Theses

With networks expanding into all areas of business, both network and security engineers are finding it more difficult to attend directly to issues. In many cases, a physical presence is still necessary on site to troubleshoot and identify issues, but on site, even carrying a bulky laptop is a hindrance. With today's advances in embedded systems, the answer to this problem is presented. A device running an embedded Computer on Module was built with a portable footprint, in both size and power requirements. A device of this type running an operating system like Linux is a powerful tool. In this …

Analysis Of A Database Insider Threat Model, Andrea Samuel

Computer Science and Computer Engineering Undergraduate Honors Theses

According to Silicon.com's CIO Insight - Beware the Insider Security Threat, insiders are bigger threats to corporate security than external threats such as denial of service attacks or malware. Statistics show that 70% of fraud is perpetrated by staff and that the main data security threat comes from poorly trained or disgruntled employees who are authorized to have access to data and file stores [4]. This research project focuses specifically on the problem of insider threat in relational database systems. The project involves simulating research conducted in Qussai Yaseen and Brajendra Panda's research paper, Predicting and Preventing Insider Threat in …

An Efficient Hardware Implementation Of Target Recognition Algorithms And Investigation Of Secure Wireless Communication For A Modified Manet, Stephen Barnes

Computer Science and Computer Engineering Undergraduate Honors Theses

This paper presents a scheme for effective wireless security of a open broadcast mobile ad-hoc network, MANET, network without significant loss of bandwidth and data integrity through a double tiered encryption scheme, and the feasibility of reducing the target tracking algorithm in [1] into a compact and efficient hardware package. Due to the open nature of MANET, modifications are necessary to secure wireless data in a potential hostile environment. Furthermore, due to power and processing limitations of small unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) and the processing intensive calculations of image processing, a sample hardware implementation of key functions of the target …

Biometric Security: Are Inexpensive Biometric Devices Reliable Enough To Gain Wide-Spread Security Usage?, Brian Thanh Tran

Inquiry: The University of Arkansas Undergraduate Research Journal

The ever growing need for security in today' s world requires exploring the feasibility of various security methods to ensure the safety of the world's population. With the tremendous growth of technology, e-commerce, and business globalization, society implements new methods to try to battle security problems. Technology advances has resulted in a number of inexpensive biometric devices to the marketplace. Two questions surface regarding this devices-are they reliable enough for general usage and will people be willing to use them? This research conducted a repeated design experiment to determine the effectiveness of four inexpensive biometric devices-three fingerprint readers and an …