Information Security Commons^™

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 …

Ensuring Data Confidentiality Via Plausibly Deniable Encryption And Secure Deletion – A Survey, Qionglu Zhang, Shijie Jia, Bing Chang, Bo Chen

Michigan Tech Publications, Part 1

Ensuring confidentiality of sensitive data is of paramount importance, since data leakage may not only endanger dataowners’ privacy, but also ruin reputation of businesses as well as violate various regulations like HIPPA andSarbanes-Oxley Act. To provide confidentiality guarantee, the data should be protected when they are preserved inthe personal computing devices (i.e.,confidentiality duringtheirlifetime); and also, they should be rendered irrecoverableafter they are removed from the devices (i.e.,confidentiality after their lifetime). Encryption and secure deletion are usedto ensure data confidentiality during and after their lifetime, respectively.This work aims to perform a thorough literature review on the techniques being used to protect …

Deaddrop: Message Passing Without Metadata Leakage, Davis Mike Arndt

Computer Science and Software Engineering

Even when network data is encrypted, observers can make inferences about content based on collected metadata. DeadDrop is an exploratory API designed to protect the metadata of a conversation from both outside observers and the facilitating server. To do so, DeadDrop servers are passed no recipient address, instead relying upon the recipient to check for messages of their own volition. In addition, the recipient downloads a copy of every encrypted message on the server to prevent even the server from knowing to whom each message is intended. To these purposes, DeadDrop is mostly successful. However, it does not obscure all …

Analyzing Global Cyber Attack Correlates Through An Open Database, Brady Benjamin Aiello

Master's Theses

As humanity becomes more reliant on digital storage and communication for every aspect of life, cyber attacks pose a growing threat. However, cyber attacks are generally understood as individual incidents reported in technological circles, sometimes tied to a particular vulnerability. They are not generally understood through the macroscopic lens of statistical analysis spanning years over several countries and sectors, leaving researchers largely ignorant of the larger trends and correlates between attacks. This is large part due to the lack of a coherent and open database of prominent attacks. Most data about cyber attacks has been captured using a repository of …

Verifiably Encrypted Cascade-Instantiable Blank Signatures To Secure Progressive Decision Management, Yujue Wang, Hwee Hwa Pang, Robert H. Deng

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

In this paper, we introduce the notion of verifiably encrypted cascade-instantiable blank signatures (CBS) in a multi-user setting. In CBS, there is a delegation chain that starts with an originator and is followed by a sequence of proxies. The originator creates and signs a template, which may comprise fixed fields and exchangeable fields. Thereafter, each proxy along the delegation chain is able to make an instantiation of the template from the choices passed down from her direct predecessor, before generating a signature for her instantiation. First, we present a non-interactive basic CBS construction that does not rely on any shared …

Modern Cryptography, Samuel Lopez

Electronic Theses, Projects, and Dissertations

We live in an age where we willingly provide our social security number, credit card information, home address and countless other sensitive information over the Internet. Whether you are buying a phone case from Amazon, sending in an on-line job application, or logging into your on-line bank account, you trust that the sensitive data you enter is secure. As our technology and computing power become more sophisticated, so do the tools used by potential hackers to our information. In this paper, the underlying mathematics within ciphers will be looked at to understand the security of modern ciphers.

An extremely important …

To Detect Stack Buffer Overflow With Polymorphic Canaries, Zhilong Wang, Xuhua Ding, Chengbin Pang, Jian Guo, Jun Zhu, Bing Mao

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Stack Smashing Protection (SSP) is a simple and highly efficient technique widely used in practice as the front line defense against stack buffer overflow attacks. Unfortunately, SSP is known to be vulnerable to the so-called byte-by-byte attack. Although several remedy schemes are proposed in the recent literature, their security is achieved at the price of practicality, because their complex logics ruin SSP's simplicity and high-efficiency. In this paper, we present an elegant solution named as Polymorphic SSP (P-SSP) that attains the same security without sacrificing SSP's strengths. We also propose three extensions of the basic scheme for better compatibility, stronger …

Fimce: A Fully Isolated Micro-Computing Environment For Multicore Systems, Siqi Zhao, Xuhua Ding

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Virtualization-based memory isolation has been widely used as a security primitive in various security systems to counter kernel-level attacks. In this article, our in-depth analysis on this primitive shows that its security is significantly undermined in the multicore setting when other hardware resources for computing are not enclosed within the isolation boundary. We thus propose to construct a fully isolated micro-computing environment (FIMCE) as a new primitive. By virtue of its architectural niche, FIMCE not only offers stronger security assurance than its predecessor, but also features a flexible and composable environment with support for peripheral device isolation, thus greatly expanding …

Towards Dynamically Monitoring Android Applications On Non-Rooted Devices In The Wild, Xiaoxiao Tang, Daoyuan Wu, Yan Lin, Debin Gao

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Dynamic analysis is an important technique to reveal sensitive behavior of Android apps. Current works require access to the code-level and system-level events (e.g., API calls and system calls) triggered by the running apps and consequently they can only be conducted on in-lab running environments (e.g., emulators and modified OS). The strict requirement of running environment hinders their deployment in scale and makes them vulnerable to anti-analysis techniques. Furthermore, current dynamic analysis of Android apps exploits input generators to invoke app behavior, which, however, cannot provide sufficient code coverage. We propose to dynamically analyze app behavior on non-rooted devices used …

Security And Privacy In Smart Health: Efficient Policy-Hiding Attribute-Based Access Control, Yinghui Zhang, Dong Zheng, Robert H. Deng

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

With the rapid development of the Internet of Things (IoT) and cloud computing technologies, smart health (s-health) is expected to significantly improve the quality of health care. However, data security and user privacy concerns in s-health have not been adequately addressed. As a well-received solution to realize fine-grained access control, ciphertext-policy attribute-based encryption (CP-ABE) has the potential to ensure data security in s-health. Nevertheless, direct adoption of the traditional CP-ABE in s-health suffers two flaws. For one thing, access policies are in cleartext form and reveal sensitive health-related information in the encrypted s-health records (SHRs). For another, it usually supports …

Mobiceal: Towards Secure And Practical Plausibly Deniable Encryption On Mobile Devices, Bing Chang, Fengwei Zhang, Bo Chen, Yingjiu Li, Wen Tao Zhu, Yangguang Tian, Zhan Wang, Albert Ching

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

We introduce MobiCeal, the first practical Plausibly Deniable Encryption (PDE) system for mobile devices that can defend against strong coercive multi-snapshot adversaries, who may examine the storage medium of a user's mobile device at different points of time and force the user to decrypt data. MobiCeal relies on 'dummy write' to obfuscate the differences between multiple snapshots of storage medium due to existence of hidden data. By incorporating PDE in block layer, MobiCeal supports a broad deployment of any block-based file systems on mobile devices. More importantly, MobiCeal is secure against side channel attacks which pose a serious threat to …

H-Securebox: A Hardened Memory Data Protection Framework On Arm Devices, Zhangkai Zhang, Zhoujun Li, Chunhe Xia, Jinhua Cui, Jinxin Ma

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

ARM devices (mobile phone, IoT devices) are getting more popular in our daily life due to the low power consumption and cost. These devices carry a huge number of user's private information, which attracts attackers' attention and increase the security risk. The operating systems (e.g., Android, Linux) works out many memory data protection strategies on user's private information. However, the monolithic OS may contain security vulnerabilities that are exploited by the attacker to get root or even kernel privilege. Once the kernel privilege is obtained by the attacker, all data protection strategies will be gone and user's private information can …

Survey Of Randomization Defenses On Cloud Computing, Jianming Fu, Yan Lin, Xiuwen Liu, Xu Zhang

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Cloud computing has changed the processing mode on resources of individuals and industries by providing computing and storage services to users. However, existing defenses on cloud, such as virtual machine monitoring and integrity detection, cannot counter against attacks result from the homogeneity and vulnerability of services effectively. In this paper, we have investigated the threats on cloud computing platform from the perspective of cloud service, service interface and network interface, such as code reuse attack, side channel attack and SQL injection. Code reuse attack chains code snippets (gadgets) located in binaries to bypass Data Execution Prevention (DEP). Side channel attack …

Position Manipulation Attacks To Balise-Based Train Automatic Stop Control, Yongdong Wu, Zhuo Wei, Jian Weng, Robert H. Deng

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Balise is a popular wayside device to provide accurate location information for subway station parking by sending telegrams to passing trains. By craftily disturbing wireless signals of balise telegrams, this paper proposes three attacks that may make passengers fall and even cause injury. Concretely, the first attack is to jam telegrams such that balises cannot be detected by a passing train; the second attack changes the location of transmitting telegrams by jamming and replaying; and the third attack is to change the total time of transmitting telegrams. All the attacks exploit the train localization mechanism such that a passing train …

Fimce: A Fully Isolated Micro-Computing Environment For Multicore Systems, Siqi Zhao, Xuhua Ding

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Virtualization-based memory isolation has been widely used as a security primitive in various security systems to counter kernel-level attacks. In this article, our in-depth analysis on this primitive shows that its security is significantly undermined in the multicore setting when other hardware resources for computing are not enclosed within the isolation boundary. We thus propose to construct a fully isolated micro-computing environment (FIMCE) as a new primitive. By virtue of its architectural niche, FIMCE not only offers stronger security assurance than its predecessor, but also features a flexible and composable environment with support for peripheral device isolation, thus greatly expanding …

Contents, Adfsl

Annual ADFSL Conference on Digital Forensics, Security and Law

No abstract provided.

Front Matter, Adfsl

Annual ADFSL Conference on Digital Forensics, Security and Law

No abstract provided.

A Survey Of Lawyers’ Cyber Security Practises In Western Australia, Craig Valli, Mike Johnstone, Rochelle Fleming

Annual ADFSL Conference on Digital Forensics, Security and Law

This paper reports on the results of a survey that is the initial phase of an action research project being conducted with the Law Society of Western Australia. The online survey forms a baseline for the expression of a targeted training regime aimed at improving the cyber security awareness and posture of the membership of the Society. The full complement of over 3000 members were given the opportunity to participate in the survey, with 122 members responding in this initial round. The survey was designed to elicit responses about information technology use and the awareness of good practices with respect …

Analysis Of Data Erasure Capability On Sshd Drives For Data Recovery, Andrew Blyth

Annual ADFSL Conference on Digital Forensics, Security and Law

Data Protection and Computer Forensics/Anti-Forensics has now become a critical area of concern for organizations. A key element to this is how data is sanitized at end of life. In this paper we explore Hybrid Solid State Hybrid Drives (SSHD) and the impact that various Computer Forensics and Data Recovery techniques have when performing data erasure upon a SSHD.

Knowledge Expiration In Security Awareness Training, Tianjian Zhang

Annual ADFSL Conference on Digital Forensics, Security and Law

No abstract provided.

Positive Identification Of Lsb Image Steganography Using Cover Image Comparisons, Michael Pelosi, Nimesh Poudel, Pratap Lamichhane, Devon Lam, Gary Kessler, Joshua Macmonagle

Annual ADFSL Conference on Digital Forensics, Security and Law

In this paper we introduce a new software concept specifically designed to allow the digital forensics professional to clearly identify and attribute instances of LSB image steganography by using the original cover image in side-by-side comparison with a suspected steganographic payload image. The “CounterSteg” software allows detailed analysis and comparison of both the original cover image and any modified image, using sophisticated bit- and color-channel visual depiction graphics. In certain cases, the steganographic software used for message transmission can be identified by the forensic analysis of LSB and other changes in the payload image. The paper demonstrates usage and typical …

Exploring The Use Of Graph Databases To Catalog Artifacts For Client Forensics, Rose Shumba

Annual ADFSL Conference on Digital Forensics, Security and Law

Cloud computing has revolutionized the methods by which digital data is stored, processed, and transmitted. It is providing users with data storage and processing services, enabling access to resources through multiple devices. Although organizations continue to embrace the advantages of flexibility and scalability offered by cloud computing, insider threats are becoming a serious concern as cited by security researchers. Insiders can use authorized access to steal sensitive information, calling for the need for an investigation. This concept paper describes research in progress towards developing a Neo4j graph database tool to enhance client forensics. The tool, with a Python interface, allows …

Df 2.0: Designing An Automated, Privacy Preserving, And Efficient Digital Forensic Framework, Robin Verma, Jayaprakash Govindaraj, Gaurav Gupta

Annual ADFSL Conference on Digital Forensics, Security and Law

The current state of digital forensic investigation is continuously challenged by the rapid technological changes, the increase in the use of digital devices (both the heterogeneity and the count), and the sheer volume of data that these devices could contain. Although it is not directly related to the performance of Digital Forensic Investigation process, preventing data privacy violations during the process is also a big challenge. The investigator gets full access to the forensic image including suspect's private data which may be sensitive at times as well as entirely unrelated to the given case under investigation. With a notion that …

Precognition: Automated Digital Forensic Readiness System For Mobile Computing Devices In Enterprises, Jayaprakash Govindaraj, Robin Verma, Gaurav Gupta

Annual ADFSL Conference on Digital Forensics, Security and Law

Enterprises are facing an unprecedented risk of security incidents due to the influx of emerging technologies, like smartphones and wearables. Most of the current Mobile security systems are not maturing in pace with technological advances. They lack the ability to learn and adapt from the past knowledge base. In the case of a security incident, enterprises find themselves underprepared for the lack of evidence and data. The systems are not designed to be forensic ready. There is a need for automated security analysis and forensically ready solution, which can learn and continuously adapt to new challenges, improve efficiency and productivity …

Non-Use Of A Mobile Phone During Conducting Crime Can Also Be Evidential, Vinod Polpaya Bhattathiripad Ph D

Annual ADFSL Conference on Digital Forensics, Security and Law

Cyber-clever criminals who are aware of the consequence of using mobile phones during conducting crimes often stay away from their phones while involved in crimes. Some of them even change their handset and SIM card, subsequently. This article looks into how, intentional disassociation (and even unintentional non-use) of mobile phone in (non-cyber) crimes, can become evidential clues of the perpetrators’ involvement in criminal acts. With the help of a recent judicial episode, this article reveals how extremely careful and masterful handling of extensive and voluminous Call Details Records and tower dumps by a cyber-savvy investigating official can unearth evidential clues …

Live Gpu Forensics: The Process Of Recovering Video Frames From Nvidia Gpu, Yazeed M. Albabtain, Baijian Yang

Annual ADFSL Conference on Digital Forensics, Security and Law

The purpose of this research is to apply a graphics processing unit (GPU) forensics method to recover video artifacts from NVIDIA GPU. The tested video specs are 512 x 512 in resolution for video 1 and 800 x 600 in resolution for video 2. Both videos are mpeg4 video codec. A VLC player was used in the experiment. A special program has been developed using OpenCL to recover 1) patterns that are frames consist of pixel values and 2) dump data from the GPU global memory. The dump data that represent the video frame were located using simple steps. The …

Unmanned Aerial Vehicle Forensic Investigation Process: Dji Phantom 3 Drone As A Case Study, Alan Roder, Kim-Kwang Raymond Choo, Nhien-A Le-Khac

Annual ADFSL Conference on Digital Forensics, Security and Law

Drones (also known as Unmanned Aerial Vehicles – UAVs) are a potential source of evidence in a digital investigation, partly due to their increasing popularity in our society. However, existing UAV/drone forensics generally rely on conventional digital forensic investigation guidelines such as those of ACPO and NIST, which may not be entirely fit-for-purpose. In this paper, we identify the challenges associated with UAV/drone forensics. We then explore and evaluate existing forensic guidelines, in terms of their effectiveness for UAV/drone forensic investigations. Next, we present our set of guidelines for UAV/drone investigations. Finally, we demonstrate how the proposed guidelines can be …

Detection And Recovery Of Anti-Forensic (Vault) Applications On Android Devices, Michaila Duncan, Umit Karabiyik

Annual ADFSL Conference on Digital Forensics, Security and Law

Significant number of mobile device users currently employ anti-forensics applications, also known as vault or locker applications, on their mobile devices in order to hide files such as photos. Because of this, investigators are required to spend a large portion of their time manually looking at the applications installed on the device. Currently, there is no automated method of detecting these anti-forensics applications on an Android device. This work presents the creation and testing of a vault application detection system to be used on Android devices. The main goal of this work is twofold: (i) Detecting and reporting the presence …

Hypervisor-Based Active Data Protection For Integrity And Confidentiality Of Dynamically Allocated Memory In Windows Kernel, Igor Korkin

Annual ADFSL Conference on Digital Forensics, Security and Law

One of the main issues in the OS security is providing trusted code execution in an untrusted environment. During executing, kernel-mode drivers dynamically allocate memory to store and process their data: Windows core kernel structures, users’ private information, and sensitive data of third-party drivers. All this data can be tampered with by kernel-mode malware. Attacks on Windows-based computers can cause not just hiding a malware driver, process privilege escalation, and stealing private data but also failures of industrial CNC machines. Windows built-in security and existing approaches do not provide the integrity and confidentiality of the allocated memory of third-party drivers. …

Malware Image Classification Using Machine Learning With Local Binary Pattern, Jhu-Sin Luo, Dan Lo

Master of Science in Computer Science Theses

Malware classification is a critical part in the cybersecurity.

Traditional methodologies for the malware classification

typically use static analysis and dynamic analysis to identify malware.

In this paper, a malware classification methodology based

on its binary image and extracting local binary pattern (LBP)

features are proposed. First, malware images are reorganized into

3 by 3 grids which is mainly used to extract LBP feature. Second,

the LBP is implemented on the malware images to extract features

in that it is useful in pattern or texture classification. Finally,

Tensorflow, a library for machine learning, is applied to classify

malware images with …