In Press
Anonymous communication systems have been extensively studied by the research community to prevent the disclosure of sensitive information from the analysis of individuals' traffic patterns. Many remarkable solutions have been developed in this area, most of which have proven to be effective in the protection of user privacy against different types of attacks. Recently, the privacy preservation problem has also been considered in the realm of wireless sensor networks (WSNs) due to their imminent adoption in real-world scenarios. A special challenge that arises from the analysis of the flow of sensor nodes' communications is the location privacy problem. In this work we concentrate on analyzing the suitability of traditional anonymous communication systems originally designed for the Internet to the original scenario of sensor networks. The results show that, in most cases, traditional solutions do not provide the adequate protection means for the particular problem of location privacy, while other solutions are too resource-consuming for the restricted capabilities of sensor nodes.
2012
Wireless sensors are battery-powered devices which are highly constrained in terms of computational capabilities, memory and communication bandwidth. While battery life is their main limitation, they require considerable energy to communicate data. Due to this, it turns out that the energy saving of computationally inexpensive primitives (like symmetric key cryptography (SKC)) can be nullified by the bigger amount of data they require to be sent. In this work, we study the energy cost of key agreement protocols between peers in a network using asymmetric key cryptography. Our main concern is to reduce the amount of data to be exchanged, which can be done by using special cryptographic paradigms like identity-based and self-certified cryptography. The main news is that an intensive computational primitive for resource-constrained devices, such as non-interactive identity-based authenticated key exchange, performs comparably or even better than traditional authenticated key exchange (AKE) in a variety of scenarios. Moreover, protocols based in this primitive can provide better security properties in real deployments than other simple protocols based on symmetric cryptography. Our findings illustrate to what extent the latest implementation advancements push the efficiency boundaries of public key cryptography (PKC) in wireless sensor networks (WSNs).
2011
The wireless sensor networks (WSN) paradigm is especially vulnerable against external and internal attacks. Therefore, it is necessary to develop security mechanisms and protocols to protect them. These mechanisms must become an integral part of the software architecture and network stack of a sensor node. A question that remains is how to achieve this integration. In this paper we check how both academic and industrial solutions tackle this issue, and we present the concept of a transversal layer, where all the different security mechanisms could be contained. This way, all the elements of the architecture can interact with the security mechanisms, and the security mechanisms can have a holistic point of view of the whole architecture. We discuss the advantages of this approach, and also present how the transversal layer concept was applied to a real middleware architecture.
The source-location privacy problem in Wireless Sensor Networks has been traditionally tackled by the creation of random routes for every packet transmitted from the source nodes to the base station. These schemes provide a considerable protection level at a high cost in terms of message delivery time and energy consumption. This overhead is due to the fact that the data routing process is done in a blind way, without knowledge about the location of the attacker. In this work we propose the Context-Aware Location Privacy (CALP) approach, which takes advantage of the ability of sensor nodes to perceive the presence of a mobile adversary in their vicinity in order to transmit data packets in a more energy-efficient and privacy-preserving manner. In particular, we apply the concepts of CALP to the development of a shortest-path CALP routing algorithm. A permissive and a strict version of the protocol are studied for different adversarial models and the proposed schemes are evaluated through simulation experiments in terms of privacy protection and energy consumption. Finally, we present the conclusions of the paper as well as possible extensions of this work.
This paper presents security of Internet of things. In the Internet of Things vision, every physical object has a virtual component that can produce and consume services Such extreme interconnection will bring unprecedented convenience and economy, but it will also require novel approaches to ensure its safe and ethical use. The Internet and its users are already under continual attack, and a growing economy-replete with business models that undermine the Internet's ethical use-is fully focused on exploiting the current version's foundational weaknesses.
Most of energy control or SCADA (Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition) systems are very dependent on advanced technologies and on traditional security mechanisms for protecting the a system against anomalous events. Security mechanisms are not enough to be used in critical systems, since they can only detect anomalous events occurring at a certain moment in time. For this reason it becomes of paramount importance the usage of intelligent systems with capability for preventing anomalous situations and reacting against them on time. This type of systems are, for example, Early Warning Systems (EWS). In this paper, we propose an EWS based on Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) (under the ISA100.11a standard) and reputation for controling the network behaviour. The WSN are organized into clusters where a Cluster Head (CH) is designated. This CH will contain a Reputation Manager Module. The usability of this approach is also analyzed considering a Smart Grid scenario.} keywords = {Critical Information Infrastructures, Sensor Networks, Early Warning Systems, Reputation, SCADA Systems, Smart Grid.
RFID technology meets identification and tracking requirements in healthcare environments with potential to speed up and increase reliability of involved processes. Due to this, high expectations for this integration have emerged, but hospital and medical centers interested in adoption of RFID technology require prior knowledge on how to squeeze RFID capabilities, real expectations and current challenges. In this paper, we show our lab tested solutions in two specific healthcare scenarios. On the one hand, we analyze the case of a medical equipment tracking system for healthcare facilities enabling both real-time location and theft prevention. Worth-noting aspects such as possible EMI interferences, technology selection and management of RFID data from hospital information system are analyzed. Lab testing of system reliability based on passive UHF RFID is provided for this case. On the other hand, we analyze and provide a solution for care and control of patients in a hospital based on passive HF RFID with the result of a fully functional demonstrator. Our prototype squeezes RFID features in order to provide a backup data source from patient's wristband. It also provides an offline working mode aiming to increase application reliability under network fail down and therefore, improving patient's safety. Considerations regarding lessons learned and challenges faced are exposed.
Energy distribution systems are becoming increasingly widespread in today's society.
One of the elements that is used to monitor and control these systems are the SCADA
(Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition) systems. In particular, these control systems
and their complexities, together with the emerging use of the Internet and wireless
technologies, bring new challenges that must be carefully considered. Examples of such
challenges are the particular bene¯ts of the integration of those new technologies, and
also the e®ects they may have on the overall SCADA security. The main task of this
paper is to provide a framework that shows how the integration of di®erent state-of-the-
art technologies in an energy control system, such as Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs),
Mobile Ad-Hoc Networks (MANETs), and the Internet, can bring some interesting
bene¯ts such as status management and anomaly prevention, while maintaining the
security of the whole system.
If a wireless sensor network (WSN) is to be completely integrated into the Internet as part of the Internet of Things (IoT), it is necessary to consider various security challenges, such as the creation of a secure channel between an Internet host and a sensor node. In order to create such a channel, it is necessary to provide key management mechanisms that allow two remote devices to negotiate certain security credentials (e.g. secret keys) that will be used to protect the information flow. In this paper we will analyse not only the applicability of existing mechanisms such as public key cryptography and pre-shared keys for sensor nodes in the IoT context, but also the applicability of those link-layer oriented key management systems (KMS) whose original purpose is to provide shared keys for sensor nodes belonging to the same WSN.
Mobile Grid, is a full inheritor of the Grid with the additional feature that it supports mobile users andresources. Security is an important aspect in Grid based systems, and it is more complex to ensure thisin a mobile platform owing to the limitations of resources in these devices. A Grid infrastructure that supportsthe participation of mobile nodes and incorporates security aspects will thus play a significant rolein the development of Grid computing. The idea of developing software through systematic developmentprocesses to improve software quality is not new. However, many information systems such as those ofGrid Computing are still not developed through methodologies which have been adapted to their mostdifferentiating features. The lack of adequate development methods for this kind of systems in whichsecurity is taken into account has encouraged us to build a methodology to develop them, offering adetailed guide for their analysis, design and implementation. It is important to use software V&V techniques,according to IEEE Std. 1012 for Software Verification and Validation, to ensure that a software systemmeets the operational needs of the user. This ensures that the requirements for the system arecorrect, complete, and consistent, and that the life-cycle products correctly design and implement systemrequirements. This paper shows part of a development process that we are elaborating for the constructionof information systems based on Grid Computing, which are highly dependent on mobile devices inwhich security plays a highly important role. In the design activity of the process, we design a securityarchitecture which serves as a reference for any mobile Grid application that we wish to build since thissecurity architecture defines a complete set of security services which will be instantiated depending onthe requirements and features found in previous activities of the process. A V&V task is also defined in thedesign activity to validate and verify both the architecture built and the traceability of the artifacts generatedin this activity. In this paper, we will present the service-oriented security architecture for MobileGrid Systems which considers all possible security services that may be required for any mobile Grid application.
Grid computing has arisen as an evolution of distributed systems mainly focused on the sharing of and remote access to resources in a uniform, transparent, secure, efficient and reliable manner. It is possible to join Grid technology and mobile technology in order to create one of the most promising technologies and developments to appear in recent years, in that they enrich one another and provide new solutions that solve many of the limitations and problems found in different technologies. Security is a very important factor in Mobile Grid Computing and is also difficult to achieve owing to the open nature of wireless networks and heterogeneous and distributed environments. Success in obtaining a secure system originates in incorporating security from the first stages of the development process. It has therefore been necessary to define a development process for this kind of systems in which security is incorporated in all stages of the development and the features and particularities of the Mobile Grid systems are taken into consideration. This paper presents one of the activities of this development process, the design activity, which consists of defining and designing a security software architecture. This architecture will be built from a security architecture, defined as reference architecture, in which security services, interfaces and operations are defined with the purpose of defining a reference security architecture which covers the majority of security requirements identified in the analysis activity. The design activity will build the system architecture that will be the input artefact for the subsequent activity in the process, which is the construction activity.
The systematic processes exactly define the development cycle and help the development team follow the same development strategies and techniques, thus allowing a continuous improvement in the quality of the developed products. Likewise, it is important that the development process used integrates security aspects from the first stages at the same level as other functional and non-functional requirements. Grid systems allow us to build very complex information systems with different and remarkable features (interoperability between multiple security domains, cross-domain authentication and authorization, dynamic, heterogeneous and limited mobile devices, etc). With the development of wireless technology and mobile devices, the Grid becomes the perfect candidate for letting mobile users make complex works that add new computational capacity to the Grid. A methodology of development for secure mobile Grid systems is being defined. One of the activities of this methodology is the requirements analysis which is based in reusable use cases. In this paper, we will present a UML-extension for security use cases and Grid use case which capture the behaviour of this kind of systems. A detailed description of all these new use cases defined in the UML extension is necessary, describing the stereotypes, tagged values, constraints and graphical notation. We show an example of how to apply and use this extension for building the diagram of use cases and incorporating common security aspects for this kind of systems. Also, we will see how the diagrams built can be reused in the construction of others diagrams saving time and effort in this task.
In this work, we introduce an assurance methodology that integrates assurance case creation with system development. It has been developed in order to provide trust and privacy assurance to the evolving European project PICOS (Privacy and Identity Management for Community Services), an international research project focused on mobile communities and community-supporting services, with special emphasis on aspects such as privacy, trust, and identity management. The leading force behind the approach is the ambition to develop a methodology for building and maintaining security cases throughout the system development life cycle in a typical system engineering effort, when much of the information relevant for assurance is produced and feedback can be provided to system developers. The first results of the application of the methodology to the development of the PICOS platform are presented.
Extensive work has been done on the protection of Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) from the hardware to the application layer. However, only recently, the privacy preservation problem has drawn the attention of the research community because of its challenging nature. This problem is exacerbated in the domain of WSNs due to the extreme resource limitation of sensor nodes. In this paper we focus on the location privacy problem in WSNs, which allows an adversary to determine the location of nodes of interest to him. We provide a taxonomy of solutions based on the power of the adversary and the main techniques proposed by the various solutions. In addition, we describe and analyse the advantages and disadvantages of different approaches. Finally, we discuss some open challenges and future directions of research.
2010
When interactions among users of a system have to take place, for example, over the internet, establishing trust relationships among these users becomes crucial. However, the way this trust is established depends to a certain extent on the context where the interactions take place. Most of the time, trust is encoded as a numerical value that might not be very meaningful for a not very experienced user. In this paper we propose a model that takes into account the semantic and the computational sides of trust. This avoids users having to deal directly with the computational side; they instead deal with meaningful labels such as Bad or Good in a given context.
There are many technologies for identity management available in the form of open specifications, open source tools and commercial applications. Currently, there are some competing standards for identity management. At the beginning SAML was the only viable choice with a higher enough acceptance level. Recently, another technology called WS-Federation has also gain some attention from the community. Although this technology is not as mature as SAML, it modular design gives it some advantages over SAML. It this work we mainly focus on the WS-Federation and the family of specifications that surround it.
The idea of developing software through systematic development processes toimprove software quality is not new. Nevertheless, there are still many information systemssuch as those of Grid Computing which are not developed through methodologies that areadapted to their most differentiating features. A systematic development process for Gridsystems that supports the participation of mobile nodes and incorporates security aspects intothe entire software lifecycle will thus play a significant role in the development of systemsbased on Grid computing. We are creating a development process for the construction ofinformation systems based on Grid Computing, which is highly dependent on mobile devices,in which security plays a highly important role. One of the activities in this process is that ofanalysis which is focused on ensuring that the system's security and functional requirements areelicited, specified and modelled. In our approach, this activity is driven by use cases andsupported by the reusable repository. This obtains, builds, defines and refines the use cases ofthe secure Mobile Grid systems which represent the functional and non-functional requirementsof this kind of systems. In this paper, we present the proposed development process throughwhich we introduce the main aspects of the UML profile defined for building use case diagramsin the mobile Grid context through which it is possible to represent specific mobile Gridfeatures and security aspects, showing in detail how to build use case diagrams for a real mobile Grid application by using our UML profile, denominated as GridUCSec-Profile.
This paper describes the security framework that is to be developed for the generic grid platform created for the project GREDIA. This platform is composed of several components that need to be secured. The platform uses the OGSA standards, so that the security framework will follow GSI, the portion of Globus that implements security. Thus, we will show the security features that GSI already provides and we will outline which others need to be created or enhanced.
Network and device heterogeneity, nomadic mobility, intermittent connectivity and, more generally, extremely dynamic operating conditions, are major challenges in the design of security infrastructures for pervasive computing. Yet, in a ubiquitous computing environment, limitations of traditional solutions for authentication and authorization can be overcome with a pervasive public key infrastructure (pervasive-PKI). This choice allows the validation of credentials of users roaming between heterogeneous networks, even when global connectivity is lost and some services are temporarily unreachable. Proof-of-concept implementations and testbed validation results demonstrate that strong security can be achieved for users and applications through the combination of traditional PKI services with a number of enhancements like: (i) dynamic and collaborative trust model, (ii) use of attribute certificates for privilege management, and (iii) modular architecture enabling nomadic mobility and enhanced with reconfiguration capabilities.
El paradigma de la Internet de los Objetos, donde todos aquellos objetos físicos que nos rodean tendrán la capacidad de generar y consumir información en el ámbito de un mundo virtual, se encuentra cada vez más cerca. Es ahora un buen momento para llamar la atención sobre sus principales desafíos de seguridad, tanto desde un punto de vista global como asociados a sus elementos más importantes (la tecnología RFID y las redes de sensores). Así, este paradigma puede ser plenamente comprendido y protegido, evolucionando hacia uno de los nuevos pilares del futuro.
Wireless sensor networks (WSNs) have been proven a useful technology for perceiving information about the physical world and as a consequence has been used in many applications such as measurement of temperature, radiation, flow of liquids, etc. The nature of this kind of technology, and also their vulnerabilities to attacks make the security tools required for them to be considered in a special way. The decision making in a WSN is essential for carrying out certain tasks as it aids sensors establish collaborations. In order to assist this process, trust management systems could play a relevant role. In this paper, we list the best practices that we consider are essential for developing a good trust management system for WSN and make an analysis of the state of the art related to these practices.
The idea of developing software through systematic development processes toimprove software quality is not new. Nevertheless, there are still many information systemssuch as those of Grid Computing which are not developed through methodologies that areadapted to their most differentiating features. A systematic development process for Gridsystems that supports the participation of mobile nodes and incorporates security aspects intothe entire software lifecycle will thus play a significant role in the development of systemsbased on Grid computing. We are creating a development process for the construction ofinformation systems based on Grid Computing, which is highly dependent on mobile devices,in which security plays a highly important role. One of the activities in this process is that ofanalysis which is focused on ensuring that the system's security and functional requirements areelicited, specified and modelled. In our approach, this activity is driven by use cases andsupported by the reusable repository. This obtains, builds, defines and refines the use cases ofthe secure Mobile Grid systems which represent the functional and non-functional requirementsof this kind of systems. In this paper, we present the proposed development process throughwhich we introduce the main aspects of the UML profile defined for building use case diagramsin the mobile Grid context through which it is possible to represent specific mobile Gridfeatures and security aspects, showing in detail how to build use case diagrams for a realmobile Grid application by using our UML profile, denominated as GridUCSec-Profile.
Our society is becoming increasingly more IT-oriented, and the images and sounds that reflect our daily life are being stored mainly in a digital form. This digital personal life can be part of the home multimedia contents, and users demand access and possibly share these contents (such as photographs, videos, and music) in an ubiquitous way: from any location and with any device. The purpose of this article is twofold. First, we introduce the Feel@Home system, whose main objective is to enable the previously mentioned vision of an ubiquitous digital personal life. Second, we describe the security architecture of Feel@Home, analyzing the security and privacy requirements that identify which threats and vulnerabilities must be considered, and deriving the security building blocks that can be used to protect both IMS-based and VPN-based solutions.
Developing software through systematic processes is becoming more and more important due to the growing complexity of software development. It is important that the development process used integrates security aspects from the first stages at the same level as other functional and non-functional requirements. Systems which are based on Grid Computing are a kind of systems that have clear differentiating features in which security is a highly important aspect. The Mobile Grid, which is relevant to both Grid and Mobile Computing, is a full inheritor of the Grid with the additional feature that it supports mobile users and resources. A development methodology for Secure Mobile Grid Systems is proposed in which the security aspects are considered from the first stages of the life-cycle and in which the mobile Grid technological environment is always present in each activity. This paper presents the analysis activity, in which the requirements (focusing on the grid, mobile and security requirements) of the system are specified and which is driven by reusable use cases through which the requirements and needs of these systems can be defined. These use cases have been defined through a UML-extension for security use cases and Grid use cases which capture the behaviour of this kind of systems. The analysis activity has been applied to a real case.
Nowadays, critical control systems are a fundamental component contributing to the overall performance of critical infrastructures in our society, most of which belong to the industrial sector. These complex systems include in their design different types of information and communication technology systems, such as wireless (mesh) sensor networks, to carry out control processes in real time. This fact has meant that several communication standards, such as Zigbee PRO, WirelessHART, and ISA100.11a, have been specified to ensure coexistence, reliability, and security in their communications. The main purpose of this paper has been to review these three standards and analyze their security. We have identified a set of threats and potential attacks in their routing protocols, and we consequently provide recommendations and countermeasures to help Industry protect its infrastructures.
2009
Concurrent access control is an old problem in many fields in Computer Science. It has been solved in many languages and systems, using mechanisms like monitors or priority queues. Nowadays computers implement multi-core capabilities. This means that they are virtually capable of execution of processes in parallel. This requires new techniques and open new issues in the field of concurrent access control. Moreover, most operating systems are multi-user; thus, we have to focus on a multi-processor multi-user scenario. Trust becomes a paramount aspect when building distributed applications; the same applies on a lower scale in modern computers. We propose the use of a trust graph that keeps record of the trust relationships of the system and helps in deciding on concurrent access requests. The information encoded in the graph will be used both in order to decide on the access requests and to order granted requests in terms of their associated trust level
Traditional paper documents are not likely to disappear in the near future as they are present everywhere in daily life, however, paper-based documentation lacks the link with the digital world for agile and automated processing. At the same time it is prone to cloning, alteration and counterfeiting attacks. E-passport defined by ICAO and implemented in 45 countries is the most relevant case of hybrid documentation (i.e. paper format with electronic capabilities) to date, but, as the advantages of hybrid documentation are recognized more and more will undoubtedly appear. In this paper, we present the concept and security requirements of general-use e-documents, analyze the most comprehensive security solution (i.e. ePassport security mechanisms) and its suitability for general-purpose e-documentation. Finally, we propose alternatives for the weakest and less suitable protocol from ePassports: the BAC (Basic Access Control). In particular, an appropriate key management infrastructure for access control to document memory is discussed in conjunction with a prototype implementation.
Certified electronic mail is an added value to traditional electronic mail. In the definition of this service some differences arise: a message in exchange for a reception proof, a message and a non repudiation of origin token in exchange for a reception proof, etc. It greatly depends on whether we want to emulate the courier service or improve the service in the electronic world. If the definition of the service seems conflictive, the definition of the properties and requirements of a good certified electronic mail protocol is even more difficult. The more consensuated features are the need of a fair exchange and the existence of a trusted third party (TTP). Each author chooses the properties that considers the most important, and many times the list is conditioned by the proposal. Which kind of TTP must be used? Must it be verifiable, transparent and/or stateless? Which features must the communication channel fulfil? Which temporal requirements must be established? What kind of fairness is desired? What efficiency level is required? Are confidentiality or transferability of the proofs compulsory properties? In this paper we collect the definitions, properties and requirements related with certified electronic mail. The aim of the paper is to create a clearer situation and analyze how some properties cannot be achieved simultaneously. Each protocol designer will have to decide which properties are the most important in the environment in where the service is to be deployed.
Mobile Grid includes the characteristics of the Gridsystems together with the peculiarities of Mobile Computing, withthe additional feature of supporting mobile users and resources ina seamless, transparent, secure and efficient way. Security ofthese systems, due to their distributed and open nature, isconsidered a topic of great interest. We are elaborating amethodology of development to build secure mobile grid systemsconsidering security on all life cycle. In this paper we present thepractical results applying our methodology to a real case,specifically we apply the part of security requirements analysis toobtain and identify security requirements of a specific applicationfollowing a set of tasks defined for helping us in the definition,identification and specification of the security requirements onour case study. The methodology will help us to build a securegrid application in a systematic and iterative way.
Purpose: This paper aims to analyze the security issues that arise when integrating wireless sensor networks (WSN) and the internet. Also, it seeks to review whether existing technology mechanisms are suitable and can be applied in this context.
Design/methodology/approach: The paper considers the possible approaches that can be used to connect a WSN with the internet, and analyzes the security of their interactions.
Findings: By providing the services of the network through a front-end proxy, a sensor network and the internet can interact securely. There are other challenges to be solved if the sensor nodes are integrated into the internet infrastructure, although there exists interesting advances on his matter.
Research limitations and implications: The complete integration of sensor networks and the internet still remains as an open issue.
Practical implications: With the current state of the art, it is possible to develop a secure sensor network that can provide its services to internet hosts with certain security properties.
Originality/value: The paper studies the interactions between sensor networks and the internet from the point of view of security. It identifies both solutions and research challenges.
2008
When delegation is implemented using the attribute certificates in a Privilege Management Infrastructure (PMI), it is possible to reach a considerable level of distributed functionality. However, the approach is not flexible enough for the requirements of ubiquitous environments. The PMI can become a too complex solution for devices such as smartphones and PDAs, where resources are limited. In this work we present an approach to solve the previous limitations by defining a second class of attributes, called domain attributes, which are managed directly by users and are not right under the scope of the PMI, thus providing a light solution for constrained devices. However, we relate the two classes of attributes are related by defining a simple ontology. While domain attribute credentials are defined using SAML notation, global attributes are defined using X.509 certificates. For this reason, we additionally introduce XSAML so that both kinds of credentials are integrated. We also introduce the concept of Attribute Federation which is responsible for supporting domain attributes and the corresponding ontology.
Anonymity has been formalized and some metrics have been defined in the scope of anonymizing communication channels. In this paper, such formalization has been extended to cope with anonymity in those scenarios where users must anonymously prove that they own certain privileges to perform remote transactions. In these types of scenarios, the authorization policy states the privileges required to perform a given remote transaction. The paper presents a framework to analyze the actual degree of anonymity reached in a given transaction and allows its comparison with an ideal anonymity degree as defined by the authorization policy, providinga tool to model, design and analyze anonymous systems in different scenarios.
En el momento que se introduce en el mercado nuevas tecnologías basadas en entornos distribuidos comienzan a surgir en paralelo nuevos problemas de seguridad en los sistemas SCADA (Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition), los cuales monitorizan y gestionan otras infraestructuras de gran complejidad y escala. Un fallo o una interrupción en uno de sus componentes podría suponer un impacto negativo sobre la funcionalidad de otras infraestructuras, por lo que se hace necesario realizar frecuentes análisis de seguridad para así mantener actualizado el conocimiento y proveer recomendaciones y/o soluciones para mitigar o evitar futuras ocurrencias, garantizando una gestión de red fiable y siempre disponible.
Nonrepudiation is a security service that plays an important role in many Internet applications. Traditional two-party nonrepudiation has been studied intensively in the literature. This survey focuses on multiparty scenarios and provides a comprehensive overview. It starts with a brief introduction of fundamental issues on nonrepudiation, including the types of nonrepudiation service and cryptographic evidence, the roles of trusted third-party, nonrepudiation phases and requirements, and the status of standardization. Then it describes the general multiparty nonrepudiation problem, and analyzes state-of-the-art mechanisms. After this, it presents in more detail the 1-N multiparty nonrepudiation solutions for distribution of different messages to multiple recipients. Finally, it discusses advanced solutions for two typical multiparty nonrepudiation applications, namely, multiparty certified email and multiparty contract signing.
When a Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition (SCADA) system monitors and manages other complex infrastructures through the use of distributed technologies, it becomes a critical infrastructure by itself: A failure or disruption in any of its components could implicate a serious impact on the performance of the other infrastructures. The connection with other systems makes a SCADA system more vulnerable against attacks, generating new security problems. As a result, it is essential to perform diverse security analysis frequently in order to keep an updated knowledge and to provide recommendations and/or solutions to mitigate or avoid anomalous events. This will facilitate the existence of a suitable, reliable, and available control network.
A wireless sensor network should be able to operate for long periods of time with little or no external management. There is a requirement for this autonomy: the sensor nodes must be able to configure themselves in the presence of adverse situations. Therefore, the nodes should make use of situation awareness mechanisms to determine the existence of abnormal events in their surroundings. This work approaches the problem by considering the possible abnormal events as diseases, thus making it possible to diagnose them through their symptoms, namely, their side effects. Considering these awareness mechanisms as a foundation for high-level monitoring services, this article also shows how these mechanisms are included in the blueprint of an intrusion detection system.
2007
This paper explains the evolution of the concept of delegation since its first references in the context of distributed authorization to the actual use as a fundamental part of a privilege management architecture. The work reviews some of the earliest contributions that pointed out the relevance of delegation when dealing with distributed authorization, in particular we comment on PolicyMaker and Keynote, and also on SDSI/SPKI. Then, we elaborate on Federation as a particular case of delegation, and remark the importance given to federation by the industry. Finally, the paper discusses about privilege management infrastructures, introducing a new mechanism to extend their functionality using advanced delegation services.
Spam is a big problem for email users. The battle between spamming and anti-spamming technologies has been going on for many years. Though many advanced anti-spamming technologies are progressing significantly, spam is still able to bombard many email users. The problem worsens when some anti-spamming methods unintentionally filtered legitimate emails instead! In this paper, we first review existing anti-spam technologies, then propose a layered defense framework using a combination of anti-spamming methods. Under this framework, the server-level defense is targeted for common spam while the client-level defense further filters specific spam for individual users. This layered structure improves on filtering accuracy and yet reduces the number of false positives. A sub-system using our pre-challenge method is implemented as an add-on in Microsoft Outlook 2002. In addition, we extend our client-based pre-challenge method to a domain-based solution thus further reducing the individual email users' overheads.
In a wireless sensor network environment, a sensor node is extremely constrained in terms of hardware due to factors such as maximizing lifetime and minimizing physical size and overall cost. Nevertheless, these nodes must be able to run cryptographic operations based on primitives such as hash functions, symmetric encryption and public key cryptography in order to allow the creation of secure services. Our objective in this paper is to survey how the existing research-based and commercial-based sensor nodes are suitable for this purpose, analyzing how the hardware can influence the provision of the primitives and how software implementations tackles the task of implementing instances of those primitives. As a result, it will be possible to evaluate the influence of provision of security in the protocols and applications/scenarios where sensors can be used.
Temporal logics of knowledge are useful for reasoning about situations where the knowledge of an agent or component is important, and where change in this knowledge may occur over time. Here we investigate the application of temporal logics of knowledge to the specification and verification of security protocols. We show how typical assumptions relating to authentication protocols can be specified. We consider verification methods for these logics, in particular, focusing on proofs using clausal resolution. Finally we present experiences from using a resolution based theorem prover applied to security protocols specified in temporal logics of knowledge.
Critical Infrastructures, such as energy, banking, and transport, are an essential pillar to the well-being of the national and international economy, security and quality of life. These infrastructures are dependent on a spectrum of highly interconnected information infrastructures for their smooth, reliable and continuous operation. The field of protecting such Critical Information Infrastructures, or CIIP, faces numerous challenges, such as managing the secure interaction between peers, assuring the resilience and robustness of the overall system, and deploying warning and alert systems, amongst others. In this tapestry of CIIP, Wireless Sensor Networks can be used as an invaluable tool due to their intelligent distributed control capabilities, alongside with their capability to work under severe conditions. In this paper, we justify why Wireless Sensor Networks technology is suitable for providing security for these scenarios, describing both their advantages and research issues and their role in the overall scheme of protecting the Critical Information Infrastructures.
In any kind of electronic transaction, it is extremely important to assure that any of the parties involved can not deny their participation in the information exchange. This security property, which is called non-repudiation, becomes more important in Digital Rights Management (DRM) scenarios, where a consumer can freely access to certain contents but needs to obtain the proper Right Object (RO) from a vendor in order to process it. Any breach in this process could result on financial loss for any peer, thus it is necessary to provide a service that allows the creation of trusted evidence. Unfortunately, non-repudiation services has not been included so far in DRM specifications due to practical issues and the type of content distributed. In this paper we analyze how to allow the integration of non-repudiation services to a DRM framework, providing a set of protocols that allows the right objects acquisition to be undeniable, alongside with a proof-of-concept implementation and a validation process.
2006
Unsolicited Commercial Email, or Spam, is nowadays an increasingly serious problem to email users. A number of anti-spam schemes have been proposed in the literature and some of them have been deployed in email systems, but the problem has yet been well addressed. One of those schemes is challenge-response, in which a challenge, ranging from a simple mathematical problem to a hard-AI problem, is imposed on an email sender in order to forbid machine-based spam reaching receivers' mailboxes. However, such a scheme introduces new problems for the users, e.g., delay of service and denial of service. In this paper, we introduce the pre-challenge scheme, which is based on the challenge-response mechanism and takes advantage of some features of email systems. It assumes each user has a challenge that is defined by the user himself/herself and associated with his/her email address, in such a way that an email sender can simultaneously retrieve a new receiver's email address and challenge before sending an email in the first contact. Some new mechanisms are employed in our scheme to reach a good balance between security against spam and convenience to normal email users. Our scheme can be also used for protecting other messaging systems, like Instant Messaging and Blog comments.
In this paper we have defined an open framework to support open distributed applications where anonymous transactions based on user privileges play an important role. The goal of the framework is to provide a basis to the application level, and is presented from an open and general perspective where many different implementation schemes can fit. Moreover, we have presented a set of requirements that implementation schemes must fulfill to conform a fully anonymous privilege system, which guarantees to supported applications that anonymity will be preserved in remote transactions. Finally, we present an application scenario using the services provided by the framework in order to better show the possibilities of what this type of systems offers.
In Benjumea et. al (Benjumea, 2004) we introduced the concept of anonymousattribute certificates in order to integrate anonymity capabilities in the standardizedX.509 attribute certificates. That solution was based on the use of fair-blind signatures(Stadler, 1995), but did not explore further possibilities of constructing similar datastructures based on more advanced signature schemes. In this new work, we propose anew type of anonymous attribute certificates that is based on the more recently proposedtraceable signature scheme (Kiayias, 2004a), providing a new anonymous authorizationsolution with interesting features that were not covered in the aforementioned scheme.Thus, this new solution allows users to make use of their attribute certificates in ananonymous way, but under certain circumstances it allows to disclose the users’ identities,trace the transactions carried out by any specific user, or revoke any anonymousattribute certificate. An additional contribution of this work is that it pays special attentionto the preservation of the unlinkability property between transactions, makingimpossible the creation of anonymous user profiles.
2005
Virtual Private Networks (VPNs) provide a cost-effective way for securing communications using public and insecure networks like the Internet. The main purpose of a VPN is to securely and transparently connect two or more remote networks to form virtually a single network, using centralized security policies for better management and protection. However, in certain scenarios, users may not require such a transparent access to the resources within their networks, but only want temporary secure access to internal services based on their own demands. We call the network architecture with such a feature as Casual VPN. In this paper, we present the notion of Casual VPN, and explain why traditional VPN architectures and protocols are unable to offer Casual VPN services. We also propose and define the operation of a particular Casual VPN architecture, C-VPN, which additionally allows the management of TCP and UDP-based protocols.
A challenging task in security engineering concerns the specification and integration of security with other requirements at the top level of requirements engineering. Empirical studies show that it is common at the business process level that customers and end users are able to express their security needs. Among the security needs of Internet applications, authentication and authorization services are outstanding and, sometimes, privacy becomes a parallel requirement. In this paper, we introduce a methodology for the specification of security requirements and use a case study to apply our solution. We further detail the resulting system after extending it with an Authentication and Authorization Infrastructure.
An important aspect of e-business is the area of e-commerce. According to recent surveys, one of the most severe restraining factors for the proliferation of e-commerce, as measured by the gap between predicted market value and actual development is the (lack of) security measures required to assure both businesses and customers that their business relationship and transactions will be carried out in privacy, correctly, and timely. A large number of individuals are not willing to engage in e-commerce (or are only participating at a reduced level) simply because they do not trust the e-commerce sites and the underlying information and communication technologies to be secure enough. This paper first considers privacy and security requirements for e-commerce applications; it then discusses methods and technologies that can be used to fulfil these requirements.
Organizations need to develop formally analyzed systems in order to achieve well-known formal method benefits. In order to study the security of communication systems, we have developed a methodology for the application of the formal analysis techniques, commonly used in communication protocols, to the analysis of cryptographic protocols. In particular, we have extended the design and analysis phases with security properties. Our proposal uses a specification notation based on one of the most used standard requirement languages HMSC/MSC, which can be automatically translated into a generic SDL specification. The SDL system obtained can then be used for the analysis of the addressed security properties, by using an observer process schema. Besides our main goal to provide a notation for describing the formal specification of security systems, our proposal also brings additional benefits, such as the study of the possible attacks to the system, and the possibility of re-using the specifications produced to describe and analyse more complex systems.
Since public key cryptography is a fundamental technology for electronic commerce, people have often argued that public key infrastructures and corresponding certification services are the gold-mines of the information age. Contrary to these relatively high expectations, public key infrastructures have not really taken off and many certification service providers have even gone out of business. In this paper, we overview and discuss the technical, economical, legal, and social reasons why public key infrastructures have failed so far, summarize the lessons learnt, and give our expectations about the future development of the field.
First-order temporal logic, the extension of first-order logic with operators dealing with time, is a powerful and expressive formalism with many potential applications. This expressive logic can be viewed as a framework in which to investigate problems specified in other logics. The monodic fragment of first-order temporal logic is a useful fragment that possesses good computational properties such as completeness and sometimes even decidability. Temporal logics of knowledge are useful for dealing with situations where the knowledge of agents in a system is involved. In this paper we present a translation from temporal logics of knowledge into the monodic fragment of first-order temporal logic. We can then use a theorem prover for monodic first-order temporal logic to prove properties of the translated formulas. This allows problems specified in temporal logics of knowledge to be verified automatically without needing a specialized theorem prover for temporal logics of knowledge. We present the translation, its correctness, and examples of its use.
It is a characteristic of swarm robotics that specifying overall emergent swarm behaviours in terms of the low-level behaviours of individual robots is very difficult. Yet if swarm robotics is to make the transition from the laboratory to real-world engineering realisation we need such specifications. This paper explores the use of temporal logic to formally specify, and possibly also prove, the emergent behaviours of a robotic swarm. The paper makes use of a simplified wireless connected swarm as a case study with which to illustrate the approach. Such a formal approach could be an important step toward a disciplined design methodology for swarm robotics.
As a value-added service to deliver important data over the Internet with guaranteed receipt for each successful delivery, certified email has been discussed for years and a number of research papers appeared in the literature. But most of them deal with the two-party scenarios, i.e., there are only one sender and one recipient. In some applications, however, the same certified message may need to be sent to a set of recipients. In this paper, we presents two optimized multi-party certified email protocols. They have three major features. (1) A sender could notify multiple recipients of the same information while only those recipients who acknowledged are able to get the information. (2) Both the sender and the recipients can end a protocol run at any time without breach of fairness. (3) The exchange protocols are optimized, each of which have only three steps.
2004
In this article, we argue that traditional approaches for authorization and access control in computer systems (i.e., discretionary, mandatory, and role-based access controls) are not appropriate to address the requirements of networked or distributed systems, and that proper authorization and access control requires infrastructural support in one way or another. This support can be provided, for example, by an authentication and authorization infrastructure (AAI). Against this background, we overview, analyze, discuss, and put into perspective some technologies that can be used to build and operate AAIs. More specifically, we address Microsoft .NET Passport and some related activities (e.g. the Liberty Alliance Project), Kerberos-based solutions, and AAIs that are based on digital certificates and public key infrastructures (PKIs). We conclude with the observation that there is no single best approach for providing an AAI, that every approach has specific advantages and disadvantages, and that a comprehensive AAI must combine various technologies and approaches.
The protection of software applications is one of the most important problems to solve in information security because it has a crucial effect on other security issues.We can find in the literature many research initiatives that have tried to solve this problem, many of them based on the use of tamperproof hardware tokens. This type of solutions depends on two basic premises: (i) to increase the physical security by using tamperproof devices, and (ii) to increase the complexity of the analysis of the software. The first premise is reasonable. The second one is certainly related to the first one. In fact, its main goal is that the pirate user can not modify the software to bypass an operation that is crucial: checking the presence of the token. However, the experience shows that the second premise is not realistic because the analysis of the executable code is always possible. Moreover, the techniques used to obstruct the analysis process are not enough to discourage an attacker with average resources.
In this paper, we review the most relevant works related to software protection, present a taxonomy of those works and, most important, we introduce a new and robust software protection scheme. This solution, called SmartProt, is based on the use of smart cards and cryptographic techniques, and its security relies only on the first of previous premises; that is, Smartprot has been designed to avoid attacks based on code analysis and software modification. The entire system is described following a lifecycle approach, explaining in detail the card setup, production, authorization, and execution phases. We also present some interesting applications of Smart- Prot as well as the protocols developed to manage licenses. Finally, we provide an analysis of its implementation details.
Non-repudiation is a security service that provides cryptographic evidence to support the settlement of disputes. In this paper, we introduce the state-of-the-art of non-repudiation protocols for multiple entities. We extend an existing multi-party non-repudiation (MPNR) protocol to allow an originator to send different messages to many recipients in a single transaction. We further propose an optimistic multi-party non-repudiation protocol for exchange of different messages. The performance of our protocols with enhanced functionalities is still promising in comparison with existing MPNR protocols.
Non-repudiation is a security service that provides cryptographic evidence to support the settlement of disputes in electronic commerce. In commercial transactions, an intermediary (or agent) might be involved to help transacting parties to conduct their business. Nevertheless, such an intermediary may not be fully trusted. In this paper, we propose agent-mediated non-repudiation protocols and analyze their security requirements. We first present a simple scenario with only one recipient, followed by a more complicated framework where multiple recipients are involved and collusion between them is possible. We also identify applications that could take advantage of these agent-mediated non-repudiation protocols.
Public-Key Infrastructures (PKIs) are considered the basis of the protocols and tools needed to guarantee the security demanded for new Internet applications like electronic commerce, government-citizen relationships and digital distribution. This paper introduces a new infrastructure design, Cert'eM, a key management and certification system that is based on the structure of the electronic mail service and on the principle of near-certification. Cert'eM provides secure means to identify users and distribute their public-key certificates, enhances the efficiency of revocation procedures, and avoids scalability and synchronization problems. Because we have considered the revocation problem as priority in the design process, and with a big influence in the rest of the PKI components, we have developed an alternative solution to the use of Certificate Revocation Lists (CRLs), which has become one of the strongest points in this new scheme.
2003
The certificate paradigm is applied recursively to obtain the public keys of a number of Certification Authorities and, accordingly, to obtain the public keys of a number of final entities. Thus, validation of the authorized public key of a party in a network transaction is commonly based on processing the certificate chain descended from a trusted root issuer, involving non-negligible time and cost. Those chains become long in communications between large organizations, which is the typical case of e-commerce and e-government applications. The process of validation of extensive chains introduces performance problems in two aspects: signature verification and revocation checking. That is, the repeated processing of long chains of certificates creates severe efficiency problems. This fact causes that most of the advantages provided by Public Key Infrastructures (PKIs) are not conveniently exploited. In this paper we analyze the scenarios in which large volumes of digitally signed transactions between commercial entities exist. These cases require of interoperation among PKIs. We show that solutions available in those scenarios still involve processing of too long chains of certificates, either at the receiving computer or by an outsourced entity. For this reason, we propose new concepts of virtual certificate and synthetic certificate for faster and less costly processing of certificate chains. In this way, communications in a certificate-based intercommunity can be highly improved. We also show how these types of certificates can be applied in practice.
We present the adaptation of our model for the validation of key distribution and authentication protocols to address some of the specific needs of protocols for electronic commerce. The two models defer in both the threat scenario and in the protocol formalization. We demonstrate the suitability of our adaptation by analyzing a specific version of the Internet Billing Server protocol introduced by Carnegie MellonUniversity. Our analysis shows that, while the security properties a key distribution or authentication protocol shall provide are well understood, it is often not clear which properties an electronic commerce protocol can or shall provide. We use the automatic theorem proving software ``Otter'' developed at Argonne National Laboratories for state space exploration.
Application-level access control is an important requirement in many distributed environments. For instance, in new scenarios such as e-commerce, access to resources by previously unknown users is an essential problem to be solved. The integration of Privilege Management Infrastructure (PMI) services in the access control system represents a scalable way to solve this problem. Within the CORBA standards, the Resource Access Decision (RAD) facility is a mechanism used by security-aware applications to obtain authorization decisions and to manage access decision policies. This paper presents PMI-RAD, an approach to integrate the services of an external PMI into CORBA applications using the RAD facility. In particular, the integration of the external PMI in the access control system is based on the semantic description of the PMI services. Our RAD implementation requests and verifies attribute certificates from the PMI in a transparent way for CORBA objects.
2002
The transition from traditional commerce to electronic and mobile commerce is fostered by aspects like convenience, speed and ease of use. However, security issues remain unsolved. Smart cards open new possibilities for the development of security schemes and protocols that can provide security in applications such as electronic payments or software protection where traditional cryptographic tools are not useful. The GISUM group is involved in several research projects that make use of smart cards. Current applications include a secure electronic forms framework for government-citizen relations, electronic ticketing systems for GMS phones and Internet, a PDA-based digital signature environment, public transport, access control systems, software protection and banking applications. This report focuses on two recent projects: the eTicket electronic ticketing project (1FD97 1269 C02 02 (TAP)), a coordinated project with the Carlos III University of Madrid; and the Alcance project, consisting of the development of a secure electronic forms framework for secure Internet-based communication between citizens and the public administration (1FD97 0850 (TIC)).
2000
El comercio electrónico está llamado a ser el fenómeno de mayor importancia en el futuro de Internet. Entre sus aplicaciones se encuentran las compras en línea, la banca electrónica, la tele-educación, los casinos virtuales, los servicios de pago por visión y vídeo bajo demanda, etc. Desde el punto de vista de la Seguridad, estas aplicaciones presentan una serie de nuevos requisitos que van a imponer un gran esfuerzo investigador a corto y medio plazo. En este artículo se presentan algunos de los más importantes, como la administración de la confianza, la utilización de pagos electrónicos, la necesidad de la protección de la propiedad intelectual, los servicios de protección de privacidad y anonimato, y la autonomía de código y la detección de fraudes, identificándose las áreas de investigación relacionadas.
1999
1998
La seguridad es uno de los aspectos más conflictivos del uso de Internet. La falta de una política de seguridad global está frenando el desarrollo de Internet en áreas tan interesantes y prometedoras como el comercio electrónico o la interacción con las administraciones públicas. Las técnicas criptográficas actuales proporcionan un alto grado de confidencialidad; no obstante, es difícil garantizar la identificación segura de los usuarios y, además, la gestión de las claves de los mismos es poco eficiente y presenta graves problemas de escalabilidad y seguridad. En este trabajo se describe una solución a ambos problemas basada en una Infraestructura de Clave Pública que proporciona una administración simple y eficiente de las claves de los usuarios y posibilita la autenticación segura de los mismos. El sistema se ha probado con éxito de forma local y, en breve, será instalado para su prueba por parte de la comunidad de usuarios de RedIris.
this paper we first compare Parikh’s condition to various pumping conditions - Bar- Hillel’s pumping lemma, Ogden’s condition and Bader-Moura’s condition; secondly, to interchange condition; and finally, to Sokolowski’s and Grant“s conditions. In order to carry out these comparisons we present some properties of Parikh’s languages. The main result is the orthogonality of the previously mentioned conditions and Parikh’s condition.
In
In Press
Covert channels are a form of hidden communication that may violate the integrity of systems. Since their birth in multilevel security systems in the early 70's they have evolved considerably, such that new solutions have appeared for computer networks mainly due to vague protocols specifications. We analyze a protocol extensively used today, the Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol (DHCP), in search of new forms of covert communication. From this analysis we observe several features that can be effectively exploited for subliminal data transmission. This results in the implementation of HIDE_DHCP, which integrates three covert channels that accommodate to different stealthiness and bandwidth requirements
2012
Trust has become essential in computer science as a way of assisting the process of decision-making, such as access control. In any system, several tasks may be performed, and each of these tasks might pose different associated trust values between the entities of the system. For instance, in a file system, reading and overwriting a file are two tasks that pose different trust values between the users who can carry out these tasks. In this paper, we propose a simple model for automatically establishing trust relationships between entities considering an established order among tasks.
Motivated by the growing convergence of diverse types of networks and the raise of new concepts such as Future Internet (FI), in this paper we present an analysis of current research on the development of security mechanisms in a tradeoff with Quality of Service (QoS) mechanisms. More precisely, we pay attention to the Security and QoS problems in resource-constrained networks that are candidates to be an important part of the FI due to their proximity to the user or because of their contribution to the information society. We analyse the current state of the research on security and QoS in the integration of sensors, MANET and cellular networks, with the aim of providing a critical point of view, allowing us to assess whether it is possible that such integration of networks is both secure and efficient.
Wireless Sensor Networks (WSN) are networks composed of autonomous devices manufactured to solve a specific problem, with limited computational capabilities and resource-constrained (e.g. limited battery). WSN are used to monitor physical or environmental conditions within an area (e.g. temperature, humidity). The popularity of the WSN is growing, precisely due to the wide range of sensors available. As a result, these networks are being deployed as part of several infrastructures. However, sensors are designed to collaborate only with sensors of the same type. In this sense, taking advantage of the heterogeneity of WSN in order to provide common services, like it is the case of routing, has not been sufficiently considered. For this reason, in this paper we propose a routing protocol based on traffic classification and role-assignment to enable heterogeneous WSN for cooperation. Our approach considers both QoS requirements and lifetime maximization to allow the coexistence of different applications in the heterogeneous network infrastructure.
As the Future Internet arrives, more complex, service-based applications are spreading. These applications pose several challenges, including the huge amount of entities that must interact and their het- erogeneity. The success of these applications depends on the collaboration and communication of these entities, that might belong to different or- ganizations and administrative domains. Therefore, trust and reputation become two crucial issues. We propose the specification and design of a service-based security architecture that stresses the delivery of trust and reputation services to any application that might require them.
The secure integration of RFID technology into the personal network paradigm, as a context-aware technology which complements body sensor networks, would provide notable benefits to applications and potential services of the PN. RFID security as an independent technology is reaching an adequate maturity level thanks to research in recent years; however, its integration into the PN model, interaction with other network resources, remote users and service providers requires a specific security analysis and a PN architecture prepared to support these resource-constrained pervasive technologies. This paper provides such PN architecture and analysis. Aspects such as the management of personal tags as members of the PN, the authentication and secure communication of PN nodes and remote users with the context-aware technologies, and the enforcement of security and privacy policies are discussed in the architecture.
The ubiquity of positioning devices poses a natural security challenge: users want to take advantage of location-related services as well as social sharing of their position but at the same time have security concerns about how much information should be shared about their exact position. This paper discusses different location-privacy problems, their formalization and the novel notion of indistinguishability regions that allows one to proof that a given obfuscation function provides a good trade-off between location sharing and privacy.
2011
Today we live in an environment surrounded with networked converging devices. Human computer interactions are becoming personalized and a new concept of a global and cross-domain platform is emerging to exploit the full potential of the network in all business areas. In this convergence process, the software platform should be able to personalize itself dynamically in devices according to the context. OSAmI-Commons, an ITEA2 project for developing an open-source common approach to such a dynamic service-based platform, allows any type of device to connect and exchange information and services. OSAMI consortium is contributing to defining the foundations of a cross-platform open-services ecosystem. The sustainability of this platform is an objective beyond the project duration.
In this paper we analyze the need and the opportunity forestablishing a discipline for engineering secure Future Internet Services,typically based on research in the areas of software engineering, of serviceengineering and security engineering. Generic solutions that ignore thecharacteristics of Future Internet services will fail, yet it seems obviousto build on best practices and results that have emerged from variousresearch communities.The paper sketches various lines of research and strands within each lineto illustrate the needs and to sketch a community wide research plan. Itwill be essential to integrate various activities that need to be addressedin the scope of secure service engineering into comprehensive softwareand service life cycle support. Such a life cycle support must deliverassurance to the stakeholders and enable risk and cost management forthe business stakeholders in particular. The paper should be considereda call for contribution to any researcher in the related sub domains inorder to jointly enable the security and trustworthiness of Future Internetservices.
Intercloud notion is gaining a lot of attention lately from both enterprise and academia, not only because of its benefits and expected results but also due to the challenges that it introduces regarding interoperability and standardisation. Identity management services are one of the main candidates to be outsourced into the Intercloud, since they are one of the most common services needed by companies and organisations. This paper addresses emerging identity management challenges that arise in intercloud formations, such as naming, identification, interoperability, identity life cycle management and single sign-on.
Cognitive Radio Networks (CRNs) arise as a promising solution to the scarcity of spectrum. By means of cooperation and smart decisions influenced by previous knowledge, CRNs are able to detect and profit from the best spectrum opportunities without interfering primary licensed users. However, besides the well-known attacks to wireless networks, new attacks threat this type of networks. In this paper we analyze these threats and propose a set of intrusion detection modules targeted to detect them. Provided method will allow a CRN to identify attack sources and types of attacks, and to properly react against them.
Key Management Schemes (KMS) are a very important security mechanism for Wireless Sensor Networks (WSN), as they are used to manage the credentials (i.e. secret keys) that are needed by the security primitives. There is a large number of available KMS protocols in the literature, but it is not clear what should network designers do to choose the most suitable protocol for the needs of their applications. In this paper, we consider that given a certain set of application requirements, the network designer can check which properties comply with those requirements and select the KMS protocols that contains those particular properties. Therefore, we study the relationship between requirements and properties, and we provide a web tool, the SenseKey tool, that can be used to automatically obtain an optimal set of KMS protocols.
El paradigma de red personal (PN) permitirá la interacción y colaboración del creciente abanico de dispositivos personales. Con tal fin la PN ha de integrar en su seno múltiples tecnologías heterogéneas con diversas capacidades computacionales y de comunicación de forma segura. En particular, la incorporación de la tecnología RFID en objetos personales conlleva múltiples riesgos de seguridad y privacidad que han suscitado un elevado interés de la comunidad investigadora en los últimos años. Más allá de su seguridad de forma aislada, su integración en la PN y la interacción de ésta con redes de área extensa como Internet of Things requieren una arquitectura de red personal adecuada para tal contexto. Este artículo proporciona los fundamentos de tal arquitectura segura incluyendo el análisis de aspectos como la incorporación e inicialización de las restringidas etiquetas RFID en la red personal, la autenticación tanto de miembros de la PN como de usuarios y servicios remotos en su acceso a las tecnologías de contexto, el control de las políticas de privacidad y el establecimiento de canales seguros de comunicación supervisados.
During the last decade, the Cloud Computing paradigm has emerged as a panacea for many problems in traditional IT infrastructures. Much has been said about the potential of Cloud Computing in the Smart Grid context, but unfortunately it is still relegated to a second layer when it comes to critical systems. Although the advantages of outsourcing those kind of applications to the cloud is clear, data confidentiality and operational privacy stand as mayor drawbacks. In this paper, we try to give some hints on which security mechanisms and more specific, which cryptographic schemes, will help a better integration of Smart Grids and Clouds. We propose the use of Virtual SCADA in the Cloud (VS-Cloud) as a mean to improve reliability and efficiency whilst maintaining the same protection level as in traditional SCADA architectures.
In this paper we identify some areas where cryptography can help a rapid adoption of cloud computing. Although secure storage has already captured the attention of many cloud providers, offering a higher level of protection for their customer’s data, we think that more advanced techniques such as searchable encryption and secure outsourced computation will become popular in the near future, opening the doors of the Cloud to customers with higher security requirements.
2010
Las Infraestructuras Críticas (ICs) son monitorizadas por sistemas altamente complejos, conocidos como sistemas SCADA (Sistemas de Control y Adquisición de Datos), cuyo principal soporte se encuentra en las subestaciones, las cuales miden de primera instancia el estado real de tales ICs. Para mejorar este control, la industria está actualmente demandando la integración en el modelo tradicional de dos avances tecnológicos: Internet y las redes de sensores inalámbricas. Sin embargo, su incorporación requiere analizar los requisitos de seguridad que surgen en dicho contexto, así como diversos aspectos correlacionados (ej. mantenimiento, rendimiento, seguridad y optimización) y, en base a estos, la estrategia de integración más adecuada para satisfacer dichos requisitos. Este artículo proporciona dicho análisis en profundidad con el fin de ofrecer un modelo de integración seguro adecuado para entornos críticos.
Mobile Grid systems allow us to build highly complex information systems with various and remarkable features (interoperability between multiple security domains, cross-domain authentication and authorization, dynamic, heterogeneous and limited mobile devices, etc), which demand secure development methodologies to build quality software, offering methods, techniques and tools that facilitate the work of the entire team involved in software development. These methodologies should be supported by Grid security architectures that define the main security aspects to be considered, and by solutions to the problem of how to integrate mobile devices within Grid systems. Some approaches regarding secure development methodologies of Grid security architectures and of the integration of mobile devices in the Grid have been found in literature, and these are analyzed and studied in this paper, offering a comparison framework of all the approaches related to security in Mobile Grid environments.
Wireless sensor networks (WSN) behave as a digital skin, providing a virtual layer where the information about the physical world can be accessed by any computational system. As a result, they are an invaluable resource for realizing the vision of the Internet of Things (IoT). However, it is necessary to consider whether the devices of a WSN should be completely integrated into the Internet or not. In this paper, we tackle this question from the perspective of security. While we will mention the different security challenges that may arise in such integration process, we will focus on the issues that take place at the network level.
En la actualidad, cada vez son más frecuentes los ataques software mediante la utilización de malware o sustitución de programas (o componentes) en los repositorios a los cuales los usuarios finales (o máquinas) acceden. Esta situación se ve de alguna manera acentuada con el dinamismo existente en la programación y ejecución de estos componentes, en la que distintos desarrolladores pueden participar para desplegar un determinado servicio o parte de él. Por ello, en este artículo se presenta una solución para la distribución de código de forma segura usando OpenID y firmas con certificados de clave pública de corta duración. De esta forma, se consigue un compromiso de seguridad que permite distribuir código firmado sin la necesidad de que los desarrolladores dispongan a priori de un certificado específico. Presentamos además algunos detalles acerca de la implementación realizada para hacer realidad este diseño.
Las aplicaciones basadas en localización proporcionan a los usuarios servicios personalizados dependiendo de su ubicación. Las estimaciones prevén que estos servicios se extenderán enormemente en los próximos años reportando grandes beneficios tanto a la industria como a los usuarios finales. Sin embargo, para que estos avances sean posibles se hace necesario analizar en profundidad las distintas implicaciones de seguridad y privacidad que la utilización de tales servicios pueden traer consigo a los usuarios. En este trabajo proponemos un sistema de localización que da soporte a la provisión de servicios basados en localización para entornos indoor y que se fundamenta en la tecnología de redes de sensores inalámbricos. En este esquema hemos tenido en cuenta diversos aspectos de seguridad y privacidad, prestando especial atención a la limitación extrema de recursos característica de las redes de sensores. Finalmente hemos desarrollado una prueba de concepto para comprobar la viabilidad de nuestro esquema dentro del ámbito del proyecto OSAmI.
Wireless Sensor Networks are considered to be one of the cornerstones of Ambient Intelligence since they can be used in countless applications, where sensors are unobtrusively embedded into the environment to perform operations like monitoring, tracking and reporting. In such scenarios, privacy issues must be carefully considered since the mere observation of the network operation might reveal great amounts of private information to unauthorised parties. One of the problems that is gaining more attention in the realm of privacy, is the location privacy problem, which aims to prevent an attacker from obtaining the location of specific nodes of interest to him. In this paper we provide a general overview of the proposed solutions to counter this threat. Finally, we will also discuss some open challenges and future directions of research for a convenient management of privacy issues in smart environments.
A way of controlling a cascading effect caused by a failure or a threat in a critical system is using intelligent mechanisms capable of predicting anomalous behaviours and also capable of reacting against them in advance. These mechanisms are known as Early Warning Systems (EWS) and this will be precisely the main topic of this paper. Specially, we present an EWS design based on a Wireless Sensor Network (using the ISA100.11a standard) that constantly supervise the application context. This EWS is also based on forensic techniques to provide dynamic learning capacities. As a result, this new approach will aid to provide a reliable control of incidences by offering a dynamic alarm management, identification of the most suitable field operator to attend an alarm, reporting of causes and responsible operators, and learning from new anomalous situations.
La confidencialidad ha pasado de ser un requisito de seguridad a ser considerado como requisito funcional y de obligado cumplimiento e inclusión en todos los sistemas de comunicaciones. Un inconveniente que presenta las técnicas criptográficas, utilizadas para obtener la confidencialidad de la información, surge cuando varias entidades se ven forzadas a compartir información secreta para realizar tareas puntuales de colaboración, ya que las primitivas tradicionales utilizadas para conseguir la confidencialidad resultan poco flexibles. La situación ideal permitiría hacer posible dicha colaboración sin que ninguna de las partes revele la información aportada. En este escenario entra en juego la tecnología de Computación Segura Multiparte (CSM) que posibilita realizar operaciones con la información compartida sin tener que hacerla pública. Este trabajo muestra una solución CSM aplicada a una subasta electrónica que permite la realización de la subasta sin que las apuestas sean reveladas a ningún participante, incluyendo el subastador, por lo que no necesita el estableciendo de ninguna autoridad confiable. Aunque la literatura ofrece una amplia variedad de propuestas teóricas de CSM desde su creación en la década de los ochenta, no es común su aplicacion práctica en situaciones reales.
2009
Due to the growing complexity of softwaredevelopment, developing software through systematicprocesses is becoming more and more important.Likewise, it is important that the development processused integrates security aspects from the first stages atthe same level as other functional and non-functionalrequirements. In the last years, GRID technology hasshown to be the most important one and it allows us tobuild very complex information systems with differentand remarkable features (interoperability betweenmultiple security domains, cross-domainauthentication and authorization, dynamic,heterogeneous and limited mobile devices, etc).Traditionally, systems based on GRID Computing havenot been developed through adequate methodologiesand have not taken into account security requirementsthroughout their development, only offering securitytechnical solutions at the implementation stages. Thispaper shows part of a development methodology thatwe are elaborating for the construction of informationsystems based on Grid Computing highly dependent onmobile devices where security plays a very importantrole. Specifically, in this paper, we will present theanalysis phase, managed by reusable use casesthrough which we can define the requirements andneeds of these systems obtaining an analysis modelthat can be used as input to the following phase of themethodology, the design phase of mobile Grid systems.
Wireless sensor networks are considered as an integral part of the Internet of Things paradigm. Not only they provide a virtual presence to elements of the real world, but also allow any computationalsystem to know about the physical state of those elements thanks to the use of embedded sensors. In order to belong to the Internet of Things, the elements of a sensor network can implement Internet protocols and services such as the TCP/IP stack and web services. Still, a question that must be raised at this point of time is whether all sensor network applications should be completely integrated into the Internet or not. The purpose of this paper is to analyze this question, reviewing the challenges and security requirements of Internet-enabled sensor networks.
Deciding who to trust in the internet of services paradigm is an important and open question. How to do it in an optimal way is not always easy to determine. Trust is usually referred to a particular context whereas a single user may interact in more than one given context. We are interested in investigating how a Federated Reputation System can help exporting trust perceptions from one context to another. We propose a model for deriving trust in online services. In this context, trust is defined as the level of confidence that the service provider holds on the subject interacting with it to behave in a proper way while using the service. Thus, we derive trust by using the reputation values that those users have gained for interacting with these services.
Grid móvil incluye las características de los sistemas Grid junto conlas peculiaridades de la computación móvil, añadiendo la propiedad de soportarusuarios y recursos móviles de forma homogénea, transparente, segura yeficiente. La seguridad de estos sistemas, debido a su naturaleza abierta ydistribuida, es un tema de gran interés. Una arquitectura de seguridad basada enSOA proporciona una arquitectura distribuida diseñada para interoperabilidadde servicios, fácil integración, y acceso seguro, simple y extensible. Por tanto,una arquitectura orientada a servicios de seguridad es construida para entornosGrid móviles, ofreciendo servicios de seguridad a usuarios móviles quienesusan servicios Grid y recursos para ejecutar sus trabajos y tareas. Estaarquitectura es integrada con otras arquitecturas existentes proporcionandomayor seguridad y permitiendo que los usuarios móviles puedan acceder aservicios Grid existentes ofreciendo nuevos y necesarios servicios de seguridadpara Grid móviles. Hemos definido un conjunto de servicios de seguridad, quejunto a protocolos, políticas y estándares de seguridad forman una arquitecturade seguridad orientada a servicios para entornos Grid móviles. Esta arquitecturaes abierta, escalable, dinámica, interoperable y flexible.
The increasing presence of embedded devices with internet access capabilities constitutes a new challenge in software development. These devices are now cooperating in a distributed manner towards what has been called as "Internet of Things". In this new scenario the client-server model is sometimes not adequate and dynamic ad-hoc networks are more common than before. However, security poses as a hard issue as these systems are extremely vulnerable. In this paper, we introduce SMEPP project, which aims at developing a middleware designed for P2P systems with a special focus on embedded devices and security. SMEPP is designed to be deployed in a wide range of devices. It tries to ease the development of applications hiding platforms details and other aspects such as scalability, adaptability and interoperability. A full implementation of this middleware is already available that incorporates security features specially designed for low-resource devices. Moreover, we describe two business applications being developed using this middleware in the context of "Digital Home" and "Environmental Monitoring in Industrial Environments".
Los sistemas Grid nos permiten construir sistemas complejos concaracterísticas diferenciadoras (interoperabilidad entre múltiples dominios deseguridad, autenticación y autorización a través de dominios, sistema dinámicoy heterogéneo, etc.). Con el desarrollo de la tecnología wireless y losdispositivos móviles, el Grid llega a ser el candidato perfecto para que losusuarios móviles puedan realizar trabajos complejos, a la vez que añaden nuevacapacidad computacional al Grid. Estamos construyendo un proceso completode desarrollo para sistemas Grid móviles seguros, y una de las actividades es elanálisis de requisitos, que está basado en casos de uso reutilizables. En esteartículo, presentaremos una extensión UML para casos de uso de seguridad yGrid, los cuales capturan el comportamiento de este tipo de sistemas. Estaextensión UML está siendo aplicado a un caso real para construir diagramas decasos de uso de la aplicación, incorporando los aspectos de seguridadnecesarios.
Systems based on Grid computing have not traditionally beendeveloped through suitable methodologies and have not taken into accountsecurity requirements throughout their development, offering technical securitysolutions only during the implementation stages. We are creating a developmentmethodology for the construction of information systems based on GridComputing, which is highly dependent on mobile devices, in which securityplays a highly important role. One of the activities in this methodology is therequirements analysis which is use-case driven. In this paper, we build use casediagrams for a real mobile Grid application by using a UML-extension, calledGridUCSec-Profile, through which it is possible to represent specific mobileGrid features and security aspects for use case diagrams, thus obtainingdiagrams for secure mobile Grid environments.
SCADA systems represent a challenging scenario where the management of critical alarms is crucial. Their response to these alarms should be efficient and fast in order to mitigate or contain undesired effects. This work presents a mechanism, the Adaptive Assignment Manager (AAM) that will aid to react to incidences in a more efficient way by dynamically assigning alarms to the most suitable human operator. The mechanism uses various inputs for identifying the operators such as their availability, workload and reputation. In fact, we also define a reputation component that stores the reputation of the human operators and uses feedback from past experiences.
Los sistemas críticos de control representan un componente fundamental para el correcto funcionamiento de muchas de las infraestructuras críticas existentes en nuestra sociedad. Actualmente, estos sistemas incluyen en su dise{\ño infraestructuras y tecnologías de última generación para mejorar los procesos de control, como por ejemplo las redes de sensores. Por ello, varios organismos internacionales están trabajando activamente con el objeto de estandarizar las comunicaciones a este nivel, así como para garantizar la conservación de energía de sus nodos, la coexistencia con las demás redes, y la fiabilidad y seguridad de tales comunicaciones. Desafortunadamente, y tal y como se pone de relieve en este artículo, la seguridad no está totalmente garantizada dado que existen diversas vulnerabilidades asociadas, que ponen en riesgo la funcionalidad general del sistema. En este artículo se realiza un análisis pormenorizado a este respecto, estableciendo además un conjunto de recomendaciones y consideraciones con el fin de mejorar tales especificaciones en los mencionados esfuerzos de estandarización.
2008
An out-of-band (OoB) channel can be defined as an extra channel, different from the main wireless channel, that has additional security properties. They are specially suitable for protecting spontaneous interactions and exchanging sensitive data between previously unknown devices. Due to the vulnerable nature of wireless sensor networks (WSN), these kind of channels might be useful for protecting certain sensor network operations. In this paper we analyze the applicability of out-of-band channels to wireless sensor networks, and specify why an optical channel should be a good candidate for implementing an extra channel in sensor nodes. Also, we analyze how the existing security threats may affect this type of channel. Finally, the suitability and usability of optical channels for sensor networks is demonstrated by means of a prototype.
This paper presents a service oriented architecture for real-time integration of services, how to distribute them in a local domain and how to define a secure way of accessing resources using users' and services' authorization and authentication. This work take advantage of previous European R amp;D projects focused on del.ivering applications and utilities in embedded real-time environments and the convergence of different worlds like Internet and digital TV.
When delegation in real world scenarios is considered, the delegator (the entity that posses the privileges) usually passes the privileges on to the delegatee (the entity that receives the privileges) in such a way that the former looses these privileges while the delegation is effective. If we think of a physical key that opens a door, the privilege being delegated by the owner of the key is opening the door. Once the owner of the key delegates this privilege to another entity, by handing over the key, he is not able to open the door any longer. This is due to the fact that the key is not copied and handed over but handed over to the delegatee. When delegation takes place in the electronic world, the delegator usually retains also the privileges. Thus, both users have them simultaneously. This situation, which in most cases is not a problem, may be undesirable when dealing with certain kind of resources. In particular, if we think of finite resources, those in which the number of users accessing simultaneously is finite, we can not allow that a user delegating his access privilege is also granted access when the delegation if effective. In this paper we propose an approach where each user is delegated an access quota for a resource. If further delegating of the delegated quota occurs, this is subtracted from his quota. That is, when delegating, part of the quota remains with the delegator and another part goes to the delegatee. This allows a more fairly access to the resource. Moreover, we show that this approach can also be applied to any kind of resources by defining appropriate authorization policies.
This paper presents fair traceable multi-group signatures (FTMGS) which have enhanced capabilities compared to group and traceable signatures that are important in real world scenarios combining accountability and anonymity. The main goal of the primitive is to allow multi groups that are managed separately (managers are not even aware of the other ones), yet allowing users (in the spirit of the Identity 2.0 initiative) to manage what they reveal about their identity with respect to these groups by themselves. This new primitive incorporates the following additional features: (a) While considering multiple groups it discourages users from sharing their private membership keys through two orthogonal and complementary approaches. In fact, it merges functionality similar to credential systems with anonymous type of signing with revocation. (b) The group manager now mainly manages joining procedures, and new entities (called fairness authorities and consisting of various representatives, possibly) are involved in opening and revealing procedures. In many systems scenario assuring fairness in anonymity revocation is required.We specify the notion and implement it with a security proof of its properties (in the ROM).
Trust is an important factor in any kind of network essential, for example, in the decision-making process. As important as the definition of trust is the way to compute it. In this paper we propose a model for defining trust based on graph theory and show examples of some simple operators and functions that will allow us to compute trust.
In this paper we propose a trust model, where besides considering trust and distrust, we also consider another parameter that measures the reliability on the stability of trust or distrust. The inclusion of this new parameter will allow us to use trust in a more accurate way. We consider trust is not static but dynamic and trust values can change along time. Thus, we will also take time into account, using it as a parameter of our model. There is very little work done about the inclusion of time as an influence on trust. We will show the applicability of our model in the scenario of the process of reviewing papers for a conference. Sometimes for these kind of processes the Chair of the conference should first find the suitable reviewers. He can make this selection by using our model. Once the reviewers are selected they send out their reviews to the Chair who can also use our model in order to make the final decision about acceptance of papers.
Seamless human identification and authentication in the information system is a fundamental step towards the transparent interaction between the user and its context proposed in ambient intelligence. In this context, the IDENTICA project is aimed to the design and implementation of a distributed authentication platform based on biometrics (i.e. voice and facial image) and personal documentation. In this paper, we present our work in this project focused on the secure integration of RFID technology in personal documentation in order to provide seamless identity validation. Our actual work status, first results and future directions are described in detail.
Los sistemas distribuidos en dispositivos embebidos representan un nuevo reto en el desarrollo de software. Estos sistemas han supuesto una importante revolución en el paradigma de la computación distribuida donde se intenta fragmentar un problema grande en múltiples problemas más pequeños. El nuevo escenario tiende entonces hacia sistemas en los cuales todos los elementos de la red se consideran iguales y los mecanismos de comunicación estãn basados en redes ad-hoc que se forman dinámicamente. De esta forma cualquier usuario de la red (en realidad cualquier elemento, hasta el más simple dispositivo) adquiere valor, a mayor colaboración, mayor éxito del sistema. Sin embargo, desde el punto de vista de la seguridad, estos sistemas son extremadamente vulnerables. En este artículo se presenta SMEPP, un middleware diseñado especialmente para sistemas P2P incluyendo aspectos de seguridad. SMEPP está diseñado para poder ser ejecutado en un amplio rango de dispositivos (desde redes de sensores hasta PC), y trata de facilitar el desarrollo de aplicaciones ocultando los detalles de la plataforma y otros aspectos tales como escalabilidad, adaptabilidad e interoperabilidad. Además el artículo presenta dos aplicaciones de alto nivel que utilizando este middleware pasan a ser más personales, más sociales y más baratas, haciendo que todos los usuarios de la red cobren mayor importancia.
A Grid computing system is defined as a platformthat supports distributed system applications which require fastaccess to a large quantity of distributed resources in acoordinated manner. With the development of wirelesstechnology and mobile devices, the Grid becomes the perfectcandidate so that mobile users can make complex works that addnew computational capacity to the Grid. Security of thesesystems, due to their distributed and open nature, receives greatinterest. The growing size and profile of the grid requirecomprehensive security solutions as they are critical to thesuccess of the endeavour. A formal approach to security in thesoftware life cycle is essential to protect corporate resources.However, little thought has been given to this aspect of softwaredevelopment. Due to its criticality, security should be integratedas a formal approach in the software life cycle. A methodology ofdevelopment for secure mobile Grid computing based systems isdefined, that is to say, an engineering process that defines thesteps to follow so that starting from the necessities to solve, wecan design and construct a secure Grid system with support formobile devices that is able to solve and cover these necessities.
Wireless sensors are low power devices which are highly constrained in terms of computational capabilities, memory, and communication bandwidth. While battery life is their main limitation, they require considerable energy to communicate data. The latter is specially dramatic in underwater wireless sensor networks (UWSN), where the acoustic transmission mechanisms are less reliable and more energy-demanding. Saving in communication is thus the primary concern in underwater wireless sensors. With this constraint in mind, we argue that non-interactive identity-based key agreement built on pairings provides the best solution for key distribution in large UWSN when compared to the state of the art. At first glance this claim is surprising, since pairing computation is very demanding. Still, pairing-based non-interactive key establishment requires minimal communication and at the same time enjoys excellent properties when used for key distribution.
The interest to incorporate mobile devices into Grid systems has arisen with two main purposes. The firstone is to enrich users of these devices while the other is that of enriching the own Grid infrastructure.Security of these systems, due to their distributed and open nature, is considered a topic of great interest. Aformal approach to security in the software life cycle is essential to protect corporate resources. However,little attention has been paid to this aspect of software development. Due to its criticality, security should beintegrated as a formal approach into the software life cycle. We are developing a methodology ofdevelopment for secure mobile Grid computing based systems that helps to design and build secure Gridsystems with support for mobile devices directed by use cases and security use cases and focused onservice-oriented security architecture. In this paper, we will present one of the first steps of ourmethodology consisting of analyzing security requirements of mobile grid systems. This analysis will allowus to obtain a set of security requirements that our methodology must cover and implement.
Los canales encubiertos son una forma de comunicación oculta que puede vulnerar la integridad de los sistemas. Desde sus inicios en sistemas de seguridad multinivel a principios de los ańos 70 han evolucionado considerablemente, apareciendo soluciones para redes de computadores debido a la especificación de algunos protocolos. Por este motivo, se hace un estudio sobre las técnicas que se han utilizado para crear los canales, así como sobre las distintos obstáculos que han tratado de mermar su actividad. Asimismo, se presenta una nueva clasificación que trata de albergar la mayor cantidad de canales encubiertos existentes en la actualidad. Por último, se analiza un protocolo ampliamente extendido en la actualidad, DHCP, en busca de posibilidades de albergar información encubierta. A partir de este análisis se implementan distintas versiones de un canal encubierto haciendo uso de este protocolo.
Wireless sensors are battery-powered devices which are highly constrained in terms of computational capabilities, memory, and communication bandwidth. While battery life is their main limitation, they require considerable energy to communicate data. Due to this, the energy saving of computationally inexpensive security primitives (like those using symmetric key cryptography) can be nullified by the bigger amount of data they require to be sent. In this work we study the energy cost of key agreement protocols between peers in a network using public key cryptography techniques. Our concern is to reduce the amount of data to be exchanged. Our main news is that a computationally very demanding security primitive, such as identity-based authenticated key exchange, can present energy-wise a better performance than traditional public key based key exchange in realistic scenarios such as Underwater Wireless Sensor Networks. Such a result is not to be expected in wired networks.
Las infraestructuras críticas, como el sector energético, la banca, el transporte, y muchas otras, son un pilar esencial para en bienestar de la sociedad y la economía de un país. Estas infraestructuras dependen a su vez de ciertas infraestructuras de información, las cuales permiten su correcto funcionamiento. La tarea de proteger esas infraestructuras (de información) críticas es compleja y multidimensional, con una gran cantidad de desafíos por resolver. Precisamente, las redes de sensores pueden ser de gran ayuda para esta tarea, debido a suscapacidades de control distribuidas y a su habilidad de funcionar en situaciones extremas. Este artículo analiza la utilidad de las redes de sensores en este contexto, describiendo tanto sus capacidades como sus posibles roles y mecanismos de integración para la protección de infraestructuras (de información) críticas.
2007
Wireless Sensor Networks (WSN) are becoming a key technology in the support of pervasive and ubiquitous services. The previous notion of PKC is too expensive for WSN has changed partially due to the existence of new hardware and software prototypes based on Elliptic Curve Cryptography and other PKC primitives. Then, it is necessary to analyze whether it is both feasible and convenient to have a Public Key Infrastructure for sensor networks that would allow the creation of PKC-based services like Digital Signatures.
Security in wireless sensor networks is very limited due to highly-constrained hardware of sensor nodes. To protect services is necessary to use secure foundations, known as security primitives, like part of a protocol. Theses primitives must assure at least confidentiality in the communication channel, authentication of the peers involved in an information exchange, and integrity of the messages. There are many primitives such as symmetric encryption, hash functions and public key cryptography, but not all of them can be supported by sensor nodes since require high resource levels, for example memory. This paper contains a deep analysis of available and suitable security primitives for sensor nodes, as well as an analysis of hardware and software implementations. Besides, it has been developed an experiment with two implementations, and it has been created a new and improved version using the optimizations of each.
Research on trust management systems for wireless sensor networks is still at a very early stage and few works have done so far. It seems that for those works which deal with the topic general features of how these systems should be are not clearly identified. In this paper we try to identify the main features that a trust management system should have and justify their importance for future developments.
We present a semantic extension to X.509 certificates that allows incorporating new anonymity signature schemes into the X.509 framework. This fact entails advantages to both components. On the one hand, anonymous signature schemes benefit from all the protocols and infrastructure that the X.509 framework provides. On the other hand, the X.509 framework incorporates anonymity as a very interesting new feature. This semantic extension is part of a system that provides user’s controlled anonymous authorization under the X.509 framework. Additionally, the proposal directly fits themuch active Identity 2.0 effort,where anonymity is a major supplementary feature that increases the self-control of one’s identity and privacy which is at the center of the activity.
Trust plays an important role in human life environments and virtual organizations. In the context of a network, trust may help its elements to decide whether another member of the same network is being uncooperative or malicious. Trust becomes quite important in self-configurable and autonomous systems, such as wireless sensor networks (WSN). However, very little effort has been done in the field of trust management in WSN. On the other hand, some efforts have been made in quite related fields such as Ad-hoc and P2P networks. In this paper we give an overview of existing trust management solutions, mainly those developed for Ad-Hoc and P2P networks and, more importantly, investigate their suitability to WSN. We also provide some guidelines to aid the development of trust management systems for WSN according to the nature of these networks.
In this paper we simulate an authorization and delegation system using knowledge based technology. This proposal is part of a visual tool that is intended to be an implementation of the theoretical model weighted trust graph (WTG). A brief description of WTG Model and its associated tool is included in the text. In essence, the model is based on the inclusion of real numbers between zero and one in certificates to represent the trust level between the entities involved in them. This trust level is used to control delegation. Moreover, attributes from di_erent domains may be interrelated, so attribute delegation is also taken into account. The proposed Simulation Engine supports one directional and bidirectional search algorithms.
When delegation is implemented using the attribute certificates in a Privilege Management Infrastructure (PMI), this one reaches a considerable level of distributed functionality. However, the approach is not flexible enough for the requirements of ubiquitous environments. Additionally, the PMI can become a too complex solution for devices such as smartphones and PDAs, where resources are limited. In this work, we solve the previous limitations by defining a second class of attributes, called domain attributes, which are managed directly by users and are not right under the scope of the PMI, thus providing a light solution for constrained devices. The two classes of attributes are related by defining a simple ontology. We also introduce in the paper the concept of Attribute Federation which is responsible for supporting domain attributes and the corresponding ontology.
Sets of ideal properties are defined for different kinds of protocols designed for e-commerce applications. These sets are used as a start point in the design and then as a tool to evaluate the quality of the protocols. This is the case of fair exchange protocols and their application to electronic contract signing and certified electronic mail. However, in this area does not exist an agreement about which properties are ideal. Instead we can find properties described by different authors to his convenience. We illustrate the contradictions that appear between some of these properties.
In order to achieve a high performance in a real implementation of the non-repudiation service it is necessary to estimate timeouts, TTP features, publication key time, number of originators and recipients, and other relevant parameters. An initial work of the authors focused on a basic event-oriented simulation model for the estimation of timeouts. In the actual work, we present a set of extensions to that basic model for the estimation of the TTP features (storage capacity and ftp connection capacity). We present and analyze the new and valuable results obtained.
2006
La tecnología RFID, que permite la identificación única de cualquier ser u objeto sin necesidad de contacto ni línea de visión directa, se está adoptando ampliamente en todo tipo de campos al producir un salto cualitativo en la integración de la informática con el entorno. En este artículo se muestra su estado del arte y se afrontan dos soluciones orientadas a paliar las necesidades en entornos sanitarios. Por un lado, un sistema de seguimiento de dispositivos en el interior de un centro médico que permite su localización inmediata y la prevención de hurtos usando RFID pasivo UHF con un testeo de fiabilidad, y por otro, una solución de control y atención de pacientes ingresados en planta usando RFID pasivo HF obteniéndose un demostrador plenamente funcional
The increased heterogeneity and dynamism of new computing paradigms and especially of ubiquitous computing models is boosting the need for auto-configurable systems. In these new scenarios, heterogeneity and dynamism are inherent properties and applications are built by aggregating distributed information and services that are not under the control of a single entity. Furthermore, the current trend towards distributed computing poses important problems related to the need to transmit large amounts of data between the distributed nodes of the computing system; the control over the information; and the flexibility to adapt to heterogeneous client requirements. These characteristics are difficult to manage by traditional computing models. For these reasons, the mobile agent paradigm is gaining momentum and the interest of researchers and industry in this paradigm is increasing. In this paper we present a solution to provide a secure and auto-configurable environment for mobile agents in ubiquitous computing scenarios. Our approach is based on two main building blocks: trusted platforms and profiles.
The realization of the Ambient Intelligence concept entails many important challenges, but the most important barriers to this realization is the lack of adequate support for security. In this paper we present a conceptual model of our solution for building secure systems for AmI environments, taking as basis the concept of Security and Dependability (S&D) Pattern as a precise representation of validated S&D solutions and mechanisms. The main elements embedded in our solution framework (S&D library, monitoring interface and S&D Manager) are presented both conceptually, and also using a simple example scenario based on an hospital AmI environment.
Contract signing is a fundamental service in doing business. The Internet has facilitated the electronic commerce, and it is necessary to find appropriate mechanisms for contract signing in the digital world. A number of two-party contract signing protocols have been proposed with various features. Nevertheless, in some applications, a contract may need to be signed by multiple parties. Less research has been done on multi-party contract signing. In this paper, we propose a new synchronous multi-party contract signing protocol that, with n parties, it reaches a lower bound of 3(n − 1) steps in the all-honest case and 4n − 2 steps in the worst case (i.e., all parties contact the trusted third party). This is so far the most efficient synchronous multi-party contract signing protocol in terms of the number of messages required. We further consider the additional features like timeliness and abuse-freeness in the improved version.
The research of Intrusion Detection Systems (IDS) is a mature area in wired networks, and has also attracted many attentions in wireless ad hoc networks recently. Nevertheless, there is no previous work reported in the literature about IDS architectures in wireless sensor networks. In this paper, we discuss the general guidelines for applying IDS to static sensor networks, and introduce a novel technique to optimally watch over the communications of the sensors' neighborhood on certain scenarios.
The extraordinary growth of the Information Society is originating a high dependency on ICT. This provokes that those strongly interrelated technological infrastructures, as well as the information systems that underpin them, become highly critical, since their disruption would lead to high economical, material and, sometimes, human loss. As a consequence, the protection of these Critical Information Infrastructures is becoming a major objective for governments and companies. In this paper, we give an overview of the main challenges and open research issues on Critical Information Infrastructure security, and introduce an on-going research project that, using wireless sensor networks as an underlying technology, is dealing with those problems. Our research project focuses on the development of protection, control, evaluation, maintenance and verification mechanisms, integrated into a secure service-oriented architecture.
Digital Rights Management (DRM) es un término general para cualesquiera de las soluciones que permite a un vendedor de contenido en forma electrónica controlar el material y restringir su uso de distintas maneras. Estas soluciones son posibles, por un lado gracias a técnicas de la Seguridad de la Información, principalmente cifrado de datos, y por otro a la distribución, de manera independiente, de contenido y derechos digitales. Esto permite que los consumidores puedan acceder libremente al contenido, pero sólo aquellos que adquieran el derecho digital apropiado (RO) podrán procesarlo. Como servicio de seguridad considerado en diversas capas del marco de seguridad definido por la recomendación ITU X.805, casi todas las aplicaciones necesitan considerar la propiedad de no repudio en las etapas iniciales de su diseño. Desafortunadamente, esto no ha sido as{\'ı en general, y más concretamente en especificaciones DRM; debido a consideraciones en la práctica y al tipo de contenido a distribuir. Analizamos este servicio para un marco de DRM y proporcionamos una solución que permita que la adquisición de derechos digitales sea un operación que no pueda repudiarse.
This paper elaborates on a solution to represent authorization and delegation in a graphical way, allowing users to better interpret delegation relationships. We make use of Weighted Trust Graph (WTG) as an instrument to represent delegation and authorization, extending it to cope with more complicated concepts, and providing a graphical representation of the level of confidence that exists between two entities regarding a resource or attribute. We represent the level of confidence for each pair of entities as a point in an axis diagram, as a set of points, or as a set of triangular regions depending on the accuracy we need. Then, we use the same diagram to represent the set of acceptable confidence level, that we call authorization policy set. In this way, a single diagram can be used to decide about authorization, thus providing a powerful tool for systems in which interaction of users is needed.
It is commonly agreed that Wireless Sensor Networks (WSN) is one of the technologies that better fulfills features like the ones required by Critical (Information) Infrastructures. However, a sensor network is highly vulnerable against any external or internal attacks, thus network designers must know which are the tools that they can use in order to avoid such problems. In this paper we describe in detail a procedure (the KMS Guidelines), developed under our CRISIS project, that allows network designers to choose a certain Key Management System, or at least to know which protocol need to improve in order to satisfy the network requirements.
This paper presents a model for delegation based on partial orders, proposing the subclass relation in OWL as a way to represent the partial orders. Delegation and authorization decisions are made based on the context. In order to interact with the context, we define the Type of a credential as a way to introduce extra information regarding context constraints. When reasoning about delegation and authorization relationships, our model benefits from partial orders, defining them over entities, attributes and the credential type. Using these partial orders, the number of credentials required is reduced. It also classifies the possible criteria for making authorization decisions based on the context, in relation to the necessary information.
2005
An important aspect of e-business is the area of e-commerce. One of the most severe restraining factors for the proliferation of e-commerce, is the lack of trust between customers and sellers, consumer privacy concerns and the lack of security measures required to assure both businesses and customers that their business relationship and transactions will be carried out in privacy, correctly, and timely. This paper considers trust privacy and security issues in e-commerce applications and discusses methods and technologies that can be used to fulfil the pertinent requirements.
Contract signing is a fundamental service in doing business. The Internet has facilitated the electronic commerce, and it is necessary to find appropriate mechanisms for contract signing in the digital world. From a designing point of view, digital contract signing is a particular form of electronic fair exchange. Protocols for generic exchange of digital signatures exist. There are also specific protocols for two-party contract signing. Nevertheless, in some applications, a contract may need to be signed by multiple parties. Less research has been done on multi-party contract signing. In this paper, we analyze an optimistic N-party contract signing protocol, and point out its security problem, thus demonstrating further work needs to be done on the design and analysis of secure and optimistic multi-party contract signing protocols.
Los sistemas electrónicos de pago permiten que un comprador adquiera a un vendedor una serie de productos y servicios de forma virtual. Sin embargo, estos sistemas no tienen en cuenta el escenario en el que un comprador se convierte en donante, accediendo al servicio de forma gratuita. En este artículo se presenta el concepto y características de las microdonaciones, o la donación de cantidades tan pequeñas como un céntimo de euro en el contexto del comercio electrónico. También se muestra como la microdonación es algo necesario en el contexto actual de Internet, y como es posible su implementación basándose en sistemas de micropago.
In spite of the fact that there are several companies that (try to) sell public key certificates, there is still no unified or standardized classification scheme that can be used to compare and put into perspective the various offerings. In this paper, we try to start filling this gap and propose a four-dimensional scheme that can be used to uniformly describe and classify public key certificates. The scheme distinguishes between (i) who owns a certificate, (ii) how the certificate owner is registered, (iii) on what medium the certificate (or the private key, respectively) is stored, and (iv) what type of functionality the certificate is intended to be used for. We think that using these or similar criteria to define and come up with unified or even standardized classes of public key certificate is useful and urgently needed in practice.
Digital Rights Management (DRM) is an umbrella term for any of several arrangements which allows a vendor of content in electronic form to control the material and restrict its usage in various ways that can be specified by the vendor. These arrangements are provided through security techniques, mainly encryption, and the distribution, in a detached manner, of content and rights. This allows free access to the content by the consumers, but only those carrying the proper Right Object (RO) will be able to process such content. As a security service considered in different layers of the security framework defined by ITU X.805, almost all applications need to consider non-repudiation in the very beginning of their design. Unfortunately this has not been done so far in DRM specifications due to practical issues and the type of content distributed. We analyze this service for the a DRM framework and provide a solution which allows the right objects acquisition to be undeniable.
Spam is considered to be one of the biggest problems in messaging systems. In the area of email Spam, A high number of anti-spam schemes have been proposed and deployed, but the problem has yet been well addressed. In this paper, we introduce a new scheme, called pre-challenge scheme, which avoids problems that exists in other schemes such as delay of service and denial of service. Some new mechanisms are employed to reach a good balance between security against Spam and convenience to email users. In addition, our scheme can be used for protecting other types of messaging systems, such as Instant Messaging (IM) and Blogs, against Spam.
Los sistemas de detección de intrusiones (IDS) son una herramienta imprescindible de seguridad a la hora de proteger una red. Recientemente se han investigado y desarrollado arquitecturas de IDS para redes inalámbricas, en concreto para redes "Ad Hoc". No obstante, no existe un trabajo previo que desarrolle una arquitectura de IDS para una red de sensores. En este artículo, analizamos porque los sistemas IDS de redes "Ad Hoc" no pueden aplicarse a redes de sensores, e introducimos una arquitectura de IDS para redes de sensores que incorpora una nueva técnica para vigilar las comunicaciones de la red en ciertos escenarios.
Spam turns out to be an increasingly serious problem to email users. A number of anti-spam schemes have been proposed and deployed, but the problem has yet been well addressed. One of those schemes is challenge-response, in which a challenge is imposed on an email sender. However, such a scheme introduces new problems for the users, e.g., delay of service and denial of service attacks. In this paper, we introduce a pre-challenge scheme that avoids those problems. It assumes each user has a challenge that is defined by the user himself/herself and associated with his/her email address, in such a way that an email sender can simultaneously retrieve a new receiver's email address and challenge before sending an email in the first contact. Some new mechanisms are employed to reach a good balance between security against spam and convenience to email users.
Wireless Sensor Networks are extremely vulnerable against any kind of internal or external attacks, due to several factors such as resource-constrained nodes and lack of tamper-resistant packages. As a result, security must be an important factor to have in mind when designing the infrastructure and protocols of sensor networks. In this paper we survey the state-of-the-art security issues in sensor networks and highlight the open areas of research.security issues in sensor networks and highlight the open areas of research.
Los escenarios de comercio móvil existentes en la actualidad presentan muchas deficiencias. La mayor{\'ıa de estos escenarios, como no podr{\'ıa ser de otra forma, tienen en cuenta aspectos relativos a la seguridad, prestando especial atención a las propiedades de Autenticación y Autorización. De entre los elementos esenciales que se utilizan para proporcionar estos servicios de seguridad, los perfiles son un elemento común que permiten la personalización de los servicios del usuario móvil. Sin embargo, los perfiles también precisan de una administración segura. En este trabajo presentamos unas consideraciones iniciales respecto a los distintos tipos de perfiles, sus niveles de seguridad para cada tipo, as{\'ı como indicaciones para el almacenamiento de manera segura. Por lo tanto, analizaremos las distintas alternativas como medio de almacenamiento, discutiéndolas y prestando especial atención a las tarjetas inteligentes.
El no repudio es un requisito de seguridad cuya importancia se ha hecho evidente con el crecimiento del comercio electrónico. Muchos protocolos se han desarrollado como solución a este requisito. La gran mayor{\'ıa incluye en su especificación parámetros cuyos valores no son fáciles de especificar pues dependen de las condiciones reales de implementación del mismo como los tiempos l{\'ımites, las caracter{\'ısticas de la TTP, tiempo de publicación de las claves, etc. En este trabajo proponemos un modelo que nos ayudará en la estimación de esos parámetros basado en la simulación del escenario real. Para la explicación y prueba del modelo mostramos un conjunto de experimentos.
Ubiquitous environments have several drawbacks to be solved. Most of them are focused on security, and relevant ones are authorization and authentication. Amongst the essential elements to adequately provide solutions, we can find profiles. A profile can be defined as a repository to store structured data from users, networks, devices, applications, etc. As profiles are needed in ubiquitous environments, and these need of secure management as well, in this paper, we provide some initial guidance on the security storage of profiles and on security levels needed for each type of profile. Additionally, we review different alternatives to bear profiles, concluding that smartcards are the most suitable devices.
The design and development of security infrastructures and protocols for Wireless Sensor Networks is a difficult task, due to several factors like the constraints of the sensor nodes and the public nature of the communication channels. The intrinsic features of these networks create numerous security problems. In this paper, we analyze and put into perspective those problems.
Logic languages establish a formal framework to solve authorization and delegation conflicts. However, we consider that a visual representation is necessary since graphs are more expressive and understandable than logic languages. In this paper, and after overviewing previous works using logic languages, we present a proposal for graph representation of authorization and delegation statements. Our proposal is based on Varadharajan et al. solution, though improve several elements of that work. We also discuss about the possible implementation of our proposal using attribute certificates.
2004
Mobile agents are especially useful in electronic commerce, for both wired and wireless environments. Nevertheless, there are still many security issues on mobile agents to be addressed, for example, data confidentiality, non-repudiability, forward privacy, publicly verifiable forward integrity, insertion defense, truncation defense, etc. One of the hardest security problems for free roaming agents is truncation defense where two visited hosts (or one revisited host) can collude to discard the partial results collected between their respective visits. We present a new scheme satisfying those security requirements, especially protecting free roaming agents against result-truncation attack.
This paper focus on two security services for internet applications:authorization and anonymity. Traditional authorization solutionsare not very helpful for many of the Internet applications; however,attribute certificates proposed by ITU-T seems to be well suited andprovide adequate solution. On the other hand, special attention is paidto the fact that many of the operations and transactions that are part ofInternet applications can be easily recorded and collected. Consequently,anonymity has become a desirable feature to be added in many cases. Inthis work we propose a solution to enhance the X.509 attribute certificatein such a way that it becomes a conditionally anonymous attributecertificate. Moreover, we present a protocol to obtain such certificatesin a way that respects users’ anonymity by using a fair blind signaturescheme. We also show how to use such certificates and describe a fewcases where problems could arise, identifying some open problems.
Certified email is a value-added service of ordinary email, in which a sender wants to obtain a receipt from a recipient. Fair exchange protocols are a key component for certified email service to ensure fairness, i.e., the items held by two parties are exchanged without one party obtaining an advantage. We can find in the literature simple and fast optimistic protocols for fair electronic exchange and, more specifically, for certified electronic mail (CEM) and electronic contract signing (ECS). We have observed that some aspects of those protocols could be substantially improved. This paper presents two major contributions. Firstly, we provide a solution that allows both parties to end the protocol timely in an asynchronous way. Then, we extend the certified email service to the multicast scenario.
Temporal logics of knowledge are useful for reasoning about situations where the knowledge of an agent or component is important, and where change in this knowledge may occur over time. Here we use temporal logics of knowledge to reason about security protocols. We show how to specify part of the Needham-Schroeder protocol using temporal logics of knowledge and prove various properties using a clausal resolution calculus for this logic.
With the grown of internet and distributed applications, security requirements are going inherent to the software development process. Each time one communicates with some other one there are relevant security risk that must be taken in account. This is what is happening in the new soft-ware applications using client/server architecture. We propose including security requirements at the top level of development process, together with functional requirements because they are much related. With this information we are able to extract all communication protocols that are involved in our application and their associated security goals. This is the input to a verification phase in which we look for security flaws. The last step, and the more useful (and the not yet finished) is to use this information to modify our initial specification at the top level of the development process
Mobile agents play an important role in electronic commerce. Security in free-roaming agents is especially hard to achieve when the mobile code is executed in hosts that may behave maliciously. Some schemes have been proposed to protect agent data (or computation results). However, a known vulnerability of these techniques is the truncation attack where two visited hosts (or one revisited host) can collude to discard the partial results collected between their respective visits. Cheng and Wei proposed a scheme in ICICS'02 to defense against the truncation of computation results of free-roaming agents. Cheng-Wei scheme is effective against such an attack in most cases. However, we demonstrate that it still suffers from the truncation attack when a special loop is established on the path of a free-roaming agent. We further propose two amendments to Cheng-Wei scheme to avoid such an attack.
El correo electrónico certificado es un servicio añadido al correo electrónico estándar, en el cual el remitente desea obtener un recibo procedente del destinatario. Para este servicio, encontramos que los protocolos de intercambio (justo) son un componente principal para asegurar la corrección en la ejecución de los servicios de correo electrónico certificado, ya que los {\'ıtems que ambas partes presentan (en este caso espec{\'ıfico, el mensaje de correo y el recibo del mismo) deben ser intercambiados sin que ninguna de las partes obtenga una ventaja durante el proceso sobre la otra. Podemos encontrar en esta l{\'ınea de investigación protocolos optimistas eficientes para el intercambio electrónico, y mas concretamente para Correo Electrónico Certificado (CEC) y Firma Electrónica de Contratos (FEC). Realizando un estudio adecuado hemos observado que algunos aspectos de dichos protocolos podr{\'ıan ser mejorados. En este art{\'ıculo proponemos una solución que permite a ambas entidades terminar el protocolo de forma as{\'ıncrona. También extendemos el protocolo a múltiples usuarios.
Este trabajo muestra los detalles de una implementacion prototipo del marco de trabajo de Certificados de Atributos X.509 (Xac), propuesto por la recomendacion ITU-T. La implementacion utiliza como base de la plataforma la librer
In this work we elaborate on a taxonomy of systems that provide either joint solutions for both authentication and authorization problems, or solutions for only one of the problems. Basically, we do not focus our work on theoretical systems that have been proposed only in the literature. On the other hand, we focus on: (i) systems that are already developed; (ii) systems that are under development or deployment; and (iii) systems that are still in the initial stages of design but are supported by international working groups or bodies. More precisely, we elaborate on a taxonomy of systems that are (or will be soon) available to final users.
An essential issue for the best operation of non-repudiation protocols is to figure out their timeouts. In this paper, we propose a simulation model for this purpose since timeouts depend on specific scenario features such as network speed, TTP characteristics, number of originators and recipients, etc. Based on a one-to-many Markowicth's protocol simulation model as a specific example, we have worked out various simulation experiments.
2003
In order to more effectively deal with certificate management issues in PKIs, there is growing interest in supplementing offline X.509 PKI models with online services. An analysis of the security requirements of online models will be presented. Proposed online and delegated processing models will be evaluated in relation to these requirements.
Non-repudiation is a security service that provides cryptographic evidence to support the settlement of disputes. In this paper, we introduce the state-of-the-art of multi-party non-repudiation protocols, and analyze the previous work where one originator is able to send the same message to many recipients. We propose a new multi-party non-repudiation protocol for sending different messages to many recipients. We also discuss the improvements achieved with respect to the multiple instances of a two-party non-repudiation protocol, and present some applications that would benefit from them.
In order to study the security systems, we have developed a methodology for the application to the analysis of cryptographic protocols of the formal analysis techniques commonly used in communication protocols. In particular, we have extended the design and analysis phases with security properties. Our proposal uses a specification notation based on HMSC/MSC, which can be automatically translated into a generic SDL specification.
n commercial transactions, an intermediary might be involved to help transacting parties to conduct their business. Nevertheless, the intermediary may not be fully trusted. In this paper, we introduce the concept of intermediary (or agent) in a non-repudiation protocol, define the aims of intermediary non-repudiation protocols, and analyze their security requirements. We present a simple scenario with only one recipient, followed by a more complicated framework where multiple recipients are involved and collusion between them is possible.
Security services are essential for ensuring secure communications. Typically no consideration is given to security requirements during the initial stages of system development. Security is only added latter as an afterthought in function of other factors such as the environment into which the system is to be inserted, legal requirements, and other kinds of constraints. In this work we introduce a methodology for the specification of security requirements intended to assist developers in the design, analysis, and implementation phases of protocol development. The methodology consists of an extension of the ITU-T standard requirements language MSC and HMSC, called SRSL, defined as a high level language for the specification of security protocols. In order to illustrate it and evaluate its power, we apply the new methodology to a real world example, the integration of an electronic notary system into a web-based multi-users service platform.
A challenging task in security engineering concerns the specification and integration of security with other requirements at the top level of requirements engineering. Empirical studies show that it is commonly at the business process level that customers and end users are able to express their security needs. In addition, systems are often developed by automating existing manual business processes. Since many security notions belongs conceptually to the world of business processes, it is natural to try to capture and express them in the context of business models in which moreover customers and end users feel most comfortable. In this paper, based on experience drawn from an ongoing work within the CASENET project \cite{CASENET}, we propose a UML-based business process-driven framework for the development of security-critical systems.
With emerging decentralized technologies, peer-to-peer (P2P) content distribution arises as a new model for storage and transmission of data. In this scenario, one peer can be playing different roles, either as a distributor or as a receiver of digital contents. In order to incentivize the legal distribution of these contents and prevent the network from free riders, we propose a charging model where distributors become merchants and receivers become customers. To help in the advertisement of digital contents and collection of payment details, an intermediary agent is introduced. An underlying P2P payment protocol presented in [1] is applied to this scenario without total trust on the intermediary agent.
The combined use of authorization and authentication infrastructures has led to AAIs (authorization and authentication infrastructures). These new infrastructures supply identification and authorization services to a distributed environment There are many possibilities of linkages to get AAIs; one of them is to include the PMI (privilege management infrastructure) as authorization infrastructure and an authentication infrastructure that can be a PKI (public key infrastructure) or kerberos. This symbiosis gives service to applications and servers. However, in physical environments where the physical presence of an individual is required, it is necessary to use biometric systems. This paper describes the development of a solution that combines the relationship between the biometric based systems and the PMIs to finally obtain the biometric AAI.
Nowadays, it is widely accepted that critical systems have to be formally analysed in order to achieve well-known formal method benefits. In order to study the security of communication systems, we have developed a methodology for the application of the formal analysis techniques commonly used in communication protocols to the analysis of cryptographic ones. In particular, we have extended the design and analysis phases with security properties. Our proposal uses a specification notation based on MSC, which can be automatically translated into a generic SDL specification. This SDL system can then be used for the analysis of the desired security properties, by using an observer process schema. Apart from our main goal of providing a notation for describing the formal specification of security systems, our proposal also brings additional benefits, such as the study of the possible attacks to the system, and the possibility of re-using the specifications produced to describe and analyse more complex systems.
2002
Interaction of citizens and private organizations with Public Administrations can produce meaningful benefits in the accessibility, efficiency and availability of documents, regardless of time, location and quantity. Although there are some experiences in the field of e-government there are still some technological and legal difficulties that avoid a higher rate of communications with Public Administrations through Internet, not only from citizens, but also from private companies. We have studied two of the technological problems, the need to work in a trustful environment and the creation of tools to manage electronic versions of the paper-based forms.
Every communication system requiring security properties is certainly critical. In order to study the security of communication systems, we have developed a methodology for the application of the formal analysis techniques of communication protocols to the analysis of cryptographic ones. We have extended the design and analysis phases with security properties. Our methodology uses a specification technique based on the HMSC/MSC requirement languages, and translates it into a generic schema for the SDL specification language, which is used for the analysis. Thus, the technique allows the specification of security protocols using a standard formal language and uses Object-Orientation for reusability purposes. The final goal is not only the formal specification of a security system, but to examine the possible attacks, and later use the specification in more complex systems.
La aplicación de los métodos formales para el diseño y análisis de sistemas críticos está ampliamente aceptada en el desarrollo de estos sistemas. Los protocolos de seguridad abordan el objetivo de garantizar servicios y derechos como el de la confidencialidad de los datos personales o el de garantizar la identidad de acceso a un sistema. Por lo tanto, ya que un protocolo de seguridad es un sistema crítico, es necesario utilizar métodosformales para su diseño y análisis. Debido a las características especiales que presentan este tipo de protocolos, se deben utilizar métodos que no son los tradicionales utilizados para los protocolos de comunicaciones, sino que deben utilizarse otros específicos. En este artículo vamos a hacer un estudio de las principales propiedades de seguridad que poseen los protocolos criptográficos y de la manera de aplicar los métodos formales en su diseño y análisis.
Clausal temporal resolution is characterised by a translation of the formulae whose satisfiability is to be established to a normal form, step resolution (similar to classical resolution) on formulae occurring at the same states and temporal resolution between formulae describing properties over a longer period. The most complex part of the method occurs in searching for candidates for the temporal resolution operation, something that may need to be carried out several times. In this paper we consider a new technique for finding the candidates for the temporal resolution operation. Although related to the previously developed external search procedure, this new approach not only allows the temporal resolution operation to be carried out at any moment, but also simplifies any subsequent search required for similar temporal formulae. Finally, in contrast with previous approaches, this search can be seen as an inherent part of the resolution process, rather than an external procedure that is only called in certain situations.} year = {2002
Authentication services provided by Public Key Infrastructures (PKI) do not satisfy the needs of many e-commerce applications. These applications require additional use of authorization services in order for users to prove what they are allowed to do. Attribute certificates have changed the way in which the authorization problem has been considered until now, and Privilege Management Infrastructures (PMI) provide the necessary support for a wide use of those certificates. Although both types of infrastructures, PKIs and PMIs, keep some kind of relation, they can operate autonomously. This fact is specially interesting for companies who have taken or will take the decision to outsource PKI services. However, outsourcing PMI services is not a good option for many companies because sometimes information contained in attribute certificates is confidential. Therefore attribute certificates must be managed very carefully and, preferably, only inside the company. In this paper we present a new design of PMI that is specially suited for those companies that outsource PKI services but still need to manage the PMI internally. The scheme provides additional advantages that satisfy the needs of intra-company attribute certification, and eliminates some of the problems associated with the revocation procedures.
The use of attribute certificates and the concept of mobile policies have been proposed to overcome some of the limitations of the role based access control (RBAC) paradigm and to implement security requirements such as the ``originator controlled'' (ORCON) policy. Mobile policies are attached to the data that they control and enforced by their execution in trusted servers. In this paper we extend this idea to allow the execution of the policies in untrusted systems. Our extension allows that policies are bound to the data but not attached to it. By this modification security administrators are able to change policies dynamically and transparently. Additionally, we introduce X-ACS, an XML-based language designed to express policies in a simple and unambiguous way overcoming the limitations of other approaches. Important features of X-ACS are that it can be used by processors with limited capabilities such as smart cards while allowing the automated validation of policies.
The main aims of Virtual Private Network (VPN) are to isolate a distributed network from outsiders, as well as to protect the confidentiality and integrity of sensitive information traversing a non-trusted network such as the Internet. However, some problems arise when security is considered as the unique problem because VPN users suffer from restrictions in their access to the network. They are not free to use traditional Internet services such as electronic mail exchange with non-VPN users, and to access Web and FTP servers external to the organization. This paper presents a new solution that allows the open use of traditional network services running over TCP and UDP layers, while maintaining strong security features. The new scheme works at the TCP/IP transport layer and does not require the addition of new hardware because it is a totally software solution. As a consequence, the application is totally portable. Moreover, and because of its implementation at the transport layer, there is no need to modify any traditional communication applications previously installed in the network system.
A digital certificate may be used to inform the world of the public key of its owner. To guard against impersonations and fraud, the receiver needs to perform a series of checks. When a hierarchy of certificates is involved, and when there are large volumes of messages between two parties, as is frequent in commerce, the repeated validation of the same chain of certificates consume significant resources. This paper presents new concepts of virtual certificate and synthetic certificate which can be used to speed up repetitive processing of a chain with improved efficiency.
Distributed systems usually contain objects with heterogeneous security requirements that pose important challenges on the underlying security mechanisms and especially in access control systems. Access control in distributed systems often relies on centralized security administration. Existing solutions for distributed access control do not provide the flexibility and manageability required. This paper presents the XML-based Secure Content Distribution (XSCD) infrastructure is based on the production of self-protected software objects that convey contents (software or data) and can be distributed without further security measures because they embed the access control enforcement mechanism. It also provides means for integrating Privilege Management Infrastructures (PMIs). Semantic information is used in the dynamic instantiation and semantic validation of policies. XSCD is scalable, facilitates the administration of the access control system, guarantees the secure distribution of the contents, enables semantic integration and interoperability of heterogeneous sources, solves the “originator retained control” issue and allows activities (such as payment) to be bound to the access to objects.
Interaction of organizations and their clients by using the Internet can produce meaningful benefits in the accessibility, efficiency and availability of documents, regardless of time and location. However, some types of problems hinder a higher degree of communication. This paper presents some of the results of a Research Project that focuses on the influence of typical open networks risks in electronic interactions and on the need of creating software tools to manage electronic versions of the paper-based forms, as this is the traditional way of interaction through the Web.
Authentication between protocol agents is widely studied in the cryptographic protocol analysis area. It is essential in a virtual environment to rely on protocol parties' identity. In the academic literature there are many protocols that provide the authentication property. We present in this paper a new mechanism to verify authentication using SDL, general purpose specification language. We have defined a generic schema in SDL that allow us to specify a security system and check system behavior when a malicious agent ( the intruder ) is present. We have used the EKE authentication protocol to illustrate how the mechanism works.
The important role of Public Key Infrastructures (PKIs) inside the general scope of Internet communication, and more precisely, inside electronic commerce, has driven us to the revision of actual procedures followed in the development of software of these elements that provide security and trust to the digital certification environment. In this work we introduce the actual results of a joint research project of the Security Group of the University of Malaga and the Department of Technology Innovation of Banesto regarding a PKI implementation. The originality of this work is that we have paid attention not only to functional aspects of the infrastructure, but also to the programming techniques used. Basically, we have developed a solution in which implementation has been guided by the increase in the study of software architectures and those paradigms that have emerged in parallel, as component orientation, software frameworks, and design patterns. The correct use of these techniques provide a different point of view that allows the development of every PKI building block in a modular and independent way.
2001
The clausal resolution method developed for discrete temporal log- ics involves translation to a normal form, classical resolution on formulae within states (termed step resolution) and temporal resolution between states. Step res- olution may generate an unnecessarily large set of clauses. In addition, the most expensive part of the method is the application of the temporal resolution oper- ation. In this paper we develop an algorithm to guide the search for the set of clauses needed for the application of temporal resolution. The algorithm is based on the outputs of a refined temporal resolution rule which allows us to generate temporal resolvents earlier within the process. In particular, this can also help us to avoid unnecessary step resolution and focus search for the most relevant clauses.
La confianza en el comercio electrónico se ha reforzado, sin duda, gracias a la difusión de las tarjetas inteligentes. Estos elementos clave, que mejoran en gran medida la seguridad de los sistemas informáticos, tienen usos que van desde la simple identificación del usuario hasta complejos mecanismos de pago. Dentro del comercio electrónico, uno de los servicios de valor añadido más interesantes para cualquier usuario es el de ticketing. La seguridad de este sistema puede beneficiarse del uso de las tarjetas inteligentes en los procesos de venta, almacenamiento y uso de los tickets electrónicos. Uno de los puntos críticos para conseguir una amplia aceptación de este servicio será su capacidad de llegar a la gran mayoría de usuarios. En esta línea, parece apropiado pensar en los teléfonos móviles como la mejor plataforma sobre la que implantar el sistema. Este trabajo presenta los resultados del proyecto GSM-ticket, en el que se introducen, por una parte, un esquema de tickets electrónicos seguros, eficientes y fáciles de usar, y por otra el conjunto de servicios adicionales de venta, pago y distribución junto con sus protocolos correspondientes.
La presente ponencia aborda el desarrollo de un entorno seguro escalable para el Comercio Electrónico. Se ha tratado la cuestión en dos fases: primero, idear un prototipo generalizado distribuido seguro formado por diferentes entidades genéricas con el objetivo de permitir que los clientes realicen sus compras y transacciones bancarias con un nivel de seguridad escalable; y en segundo lugar, implantar en la práctica un prototipo de grado de escalabilidad reducido como modelo empírico.
Virtual Private Network (VPN) solutions mainly focus on security aspects. However, when security is considered the unique problem, some collateral ones arise. VPN users suffer from restrictions in their access to the network. They are not free to use traditional Internet services such as electronic mail exchange and audio/video conference with non-VPN users, and to access Web and Ftp servers external to the organization. In this paper we present a new solution, located at the TCP/IP transport layer and oriented to UDP applications that, while maintaining strong security features, allows the open use of traditional network services. The solution does not require the addition of new hardware because it is an exclusively software solution. As a consequence, the application is totally portable.
We present the adaptation of our model for the validation ofkey distribution and authentication protocols to address speci c needsof protocols for electronic commerce. The two models defer in both thethreat scenario and in the formalization. We demonstrate the suitabilityof our adaptation by analyzing a speci c version of the Internet BillingServer protocol introduced by Carnegie Mellon University. Our analysisshows that, while the security properties a key distribution or authenticationprotocol shall provide are well understood, it is often not clearwhat properties an electronic commerce protocol can or shall provide.Our methods rely on automatic theorem proving tools. Speci cally, weused \Otter", an automatic theorem proving software developed at ArgonneNational Laboratories.
2000
Public-key cryptography is fast becoming the foundation for those applications that require security and authentication in open networks. But the widespread use of a global public-key cryptosystem requires that public-key certificates are always available and up-to-date. Problems associated to digital certificates management, like storage, retrieval, maintenance, and, specially, revocation, require special procedures that ensure reliable features because of the critical significance of inaccuracies. Most of the existing systems use a Certificate Revocation List, a repository of certificates that have been revoked before their expiration date. The need to access CRLs in order to check certificate revocations becomes a performance handicap. Furthermore, they introduce a source of vulnerability in the whole security infrastructure, as it is impossible to produce a new CRL each time a revocation takes place. This paper introduces an alternative for the storage of digital certificates that avoids the use of CRLs. The system is designed to provide a distributed management of digital certificates by using Certification Authorities that, while being part of a whole Public-Key Infrastructure, operate over local certificates databases. Communication protocols between local databases have been designed to minimize network traffic without a lack of security and efficiency.
La seguridad es uno de los aspectos más conflictivos del uso de Internet. La falta de una política de seguridad global está frenando el desarrollo de Internet en áreas tan interesantes y prometedoras como el comercio electrónico o la interacción con las administraciones públicas. Las técnicas criptográficas actuales proporcionan un alto grado de confidencialidad; no obstante, es difícil garantizar la identificación segura de los usuarios y, además, la gestión de las claves de los mismos es poco eficiente y presenta graves problemas de escalabilidad. Este trabajo describe las características de implementación de una solución a ambos problemas basada en una Infraestructura de Clave Pública (PKI) que proporciona una administración simple y eficiente de las claves de los usuarios y posibilita la autenticación segura de los mismos.
La presente comunicación presenta un mecanismo de micropagos flexible, de bajo costo que puede utilizarse para realizar pagos en línea entre el cliente y el vendedor y fuera de línea con el agente de negocios. Este mecanismo evita grandes almacenamientos de datos y cálculos largos. Se puede implantar en software para el cliente y en hardware/software para el vendedor.
1999
The design of key distribution and authentication protocols has been shown to be error-prone. These protocols constitute the part of more complex protocols used for electronic commerce transactions. Consequently, these new protocols are likely to contain flaws that are even more difficult to find. In this paper, we present a search method for detecting potential security flaws in such protocols. Our method relies on automatic theorem proving tools. Among others we present our analysis of a protocol recently standardized by the German standardization organization DIN to be used in digital signature applications for smartcards. Our analysis resulted in the standard being supplemented with comments that explain the possible use of cryptographic keys.
While there is wide agreement on the immense potential of Internet, its growth and performance are adversely affected by security issues. Despite its impressive size, scope and reach, the Internet has not yet become a common vehicle for many of these new possibilities. Progress in fields as electronic commerce and government-citizen relationships have been limited by the open design of the network itself. Today, Public-Key Infrastructures are the basis of the protocols and tools needed to guarantee the security demanded in those fields. Trust management and user identification are also important issues that remain unresolved. This paper introduces a key management and user identification system, named Cert’eM, that is based on the electronic mail service. Cert'eM provides important advantages over existing Public-Key Infrastructures and user identification proposals.
An Extranet is used to connect businesses with their suppliers, customers or other businesses that share common goals in a way that automates their administrative interactions using Internet technology. The security of the communications over Internet is considered an essential feature. To guarantee secure operation the aid of some user authentication infrastructure is needed. This paper introduces a Public Key Infrastructure (PKI) and user identification scheme to be used in extranet applications. The flexibility of the system allows it to fit the usual hierarchical organization structure.
Public-Key Infrastructures are considered the basis of the protocols and tools needed to guarantee the security demanded for new Internet applications like electronic commerce, government-citizen relationships and digital distribution. This paper introduces a new infrastructure design, Cert'eM, a key management and certification system that is based on the structure of the electronic mail service and on the principle of near-certification. Cert'eM provides secure means to identify users and distribute their public-key certificates, enhances the efficiency of revocation procedures, and avoids scalability and synchronization problems. The system, developed and tested at the University of Malaga, was recently selected by RedIRIS, the National Research and Academic Network in Spain, to provide the public key service for its secure electronic mail.
Uno de los servicios que cada día cobra más importancia y que promete un cambio radical para las empresas es el comercio electrónico en Internet, pero tradicionalmente las empresas relacionadas con el turismo sólo han empleado la red para darse a conocer y ofertar sus productos. La razón esencial es la desconfianza que existe sobre la seguridad de las transacciones llevadas a cabo en la red. La criptografía de clave pública proporciona servicios adecuados para garantizar la seguridad de esas transacciones. Pero en la actualidad, algunos de esos servicios están menos desarrollados que otros; un ejemplo de ellos es el servicio de No-Repudio. En este artículo se estudian distintas formas de ofrecer servicios de no-repudio y se analizan sus ventajas y desventajas en función de las necesidades del entorno en que se utilicen.
1998
The objective of the present work is to present a solution to the problem of simultaneously examining groups of students in different computer laboratories while each student uses a computer with Internet access. The system presented focus on security and ease of use, being, at the same time, transparent to the users (students) and providing added services to the main objective of simultaneous examinations in several rooms with just one teacher.
We present in this paper a first approach to the use of artificial neural as a tool to determine the orientation of objects moving on a conveyor belt in a car assembly line. The capability of neural networks to generalise is a key element in the calculation of an object’s orientation. In this sense, a neural network with Competitive Hebbian Learning can identify the angle of a part never used in its training process. The equilibrium between exactitude and processing time is also studied.
1997
This paper is a first approach to the use of artificial neural networks as a tool to estimate the orientation of an object, and is mainly directed towards industrial applications. The capability of neural networks to generalise is a key element in the calculation of an object’s orientation. In this sense, a neural network can identify the angle of a part never seen before. To evaluate the efficiency of this method we have performed a series of tests with the different parts used in a car assembly line.
This paper is a first approach in the use of Neural Networks for security. We apply it for electronic mail private systems in Local Area Networks. Some of these systems use public keys directories which must be protected suitably. This task is very complicated because all users in the systems must be able to change their public keys in those directories. We see the advantage of using Neural Networks versus other classical methods to resolve this problem.
A pesar del gran esfuerzo investigador llevado a cabo, el ataque al DES ha sido infructuoso desde que a mediados de los setenta fue adoptado como estándar por el U. S. National Bureau of Standards. El criptoanálisis diferencial constituye la base de las primeras técnicas capaces de acabar con tal invulnerabilidad. Las técnicas de criptoanálisis basadas en modelos de fallos y su adaptación a DES, el criptoanálisis de fallos diferencial, son dos de esas técnicas que han conseguido recientemente romper sistemas DES (aunque el ataque está limitado a ciertos casos especiales, en particular implementaciones hardware). En este artículo se presenta un punto débil de DES sobre el cual puede aumentarse la seguridad y se propone una modificación de la estructura interna de DES con objeto de mejorar su resistencia ante el criptoanálisis diferencial y por ende de los ataques derivados de este. La modificación introducida no supone un coste adicional elevado
1996
Uno de los campos más prometedores dentro del estudio de la ambigüedad es el del aprendizaje, tanto por su importancia consusntacial como por su relación con la Inteligencia Artificial. Esta relación se hace evidente cuando intentamos resolver, desde una perspectiva borrosa, el problema de la adquisición automática del conocimiento en sistemas expertos. El algoritmo ID3, el más relevante de los utilizados para la inducción de árboles de decisión, no es utilizable tal cual con un concepto borroso del concepto de pertenencia. Además se muestra ineficiente cuando no existe un experto humano que defina correctamente los subrangos de actuación para los atributos que junto a las clases expresan las relaciones entre situaciones que este algoritmo de aprendizaje intenta descubrir. Proponemos como solución un nuevo algoritmo, el ID3f+A, que posee la capacidad de tratamiento borroso del concepto de pertenencia, gracias a una modificación del concepto de entropía, y además realiza la división intervalar automática de los atributos, merced al control del proceso inductivo por medio de la utilización de experiencias de control.
Nowadays cryptography is present in nearly every aspect of our everyday life, in particular public-key cryptosystems. Some of them have a mathematical foundation of number theory working with big integer numbers. Factoring these numbers is more complex and time-consuming than generating and testing prime numbers; this is the main reason for the strenght of some public key cryptosystems. This paper presents three different probabilistic methods for testing big prime numbers in a reasonable amount of time. A comparison of their efficiency to test prime numbers is also introduced.
In this paper we first compare Parikh’s condition to various pumping conditions - Bar-Hillel’s pumping lemma, Ogden’s condition and Bader-Moura’s condition; secondly, to interchange condition; and finally, to Sokolowski’s and Grant’s conditions. In order to carry out these comparisons we present some properties of Parikh’s languages. The main result is the orthogonality of the previously mentioned conditions and Parikh’s condition.
1995
1994
2012
|
"Advances in Critical Infrastructure Protection: Information Infrastructure Models, Analysis, and Defense",
In LNCS, LNCS 6715, 2012.
| ![]() |
2011
|
Digital Home Networking
, 2011.
| ![]() |
2009
|
"Secure Multi-Party Non-Repudiation Protocols and Applications",
In Advances in Information Security, vol. 43, 2009.
| ![]() |
2008
|
"Wireless Sensor Networks Security",
In Cryptology and Information Security Series, vol. 1, 2008.
| ![]() |
In Press
2012
SCADA Systems can be seen as a fundamental component in Critical Infrastructures, having an impact in the overall performance of other Critical Infrastructures interconnected. Currently, these systems include in their network designs different types of Information and Communication Technology systems (such as the Internet and wireless technologies), not only to modernize operational processes but also to ensure automation and real-time control. Nonetheless, the use of these new technologies will bring new security challenges, which will have a significant impact on both the business process and home users. Therefore, the main purpose of this Chapter is to address these issues and to analyze the interdependencies of Process Control Systems with ICT systems, to discuss some security aspects and to offer some possible solutions and recommendations.
2011
2009
The concept of trust has become very relevant in the late years as a consequence of the growth of fields such as internet transactions or electronic commerce. In general, trust has become of paramount importance for any kind of distributed networks, such as wireless sensor networks (WSN in the following). In this chapter of the book, we try to give a general overview of the state of the art on trust management systems for WSN and also try to identify the main features of the architectures of these trust management systems.
As sensor networks are more and more being implemented in real world settings, it is necessary to analyze how the different requirements of these real-world applications can influence the security mechanisms. This paper offers both an overview and an analysis of the relationship between the different security threats, requirements, applications, and security technologies. Besides, it also overviews some of the existing sensor network standards, analyzing their security mechanisms.
2008
Security has been proven a crucial factor in the provision of data services and especially in the computer-related environments. While wired and wireless networks come to all sectors of everyday life, security tries to satisfy the growing needs for confidentiality, integrity and non-repudiation. There are many instances of security primitives and each one of them has different requirements in terms of processing power, word size, etc. Therefore, it is important to review the functionality of the less resource-demanding encryption algorithms in order to analyze their theoretical suitability to the existent sensor node hardware. Still, the constraints inherent to the sensor nodes advise against the total dependence on software-based implementations, even more in the case of expensive primitives.
2007
Critical Infrastructures are complex and highly interconnected systems that are crucial for the well-being of the society. Any type of failure can cause significant damage, affecting one or more sectors due to their inherent interdependency. Not only the infrastructures are critical, but also the information infrastructures that manage, control and supervise them. Due to the seriousness of the consequences, the protection of these critical (information) infrastructures must have the highest priority. It is the purpose of this book chapter to review and discuss about these infrastructures, to explain their elements, and to highlight their research and development issues. This chapter will also discuss the role of Wireless Sensor Network (WSN) technology in the protection of these infrastructures.
2011
|
"9th International Conference on Applied Cryptography and Network Security", ACNS 2011
, Lecture Notes in Computer Science 6715, 2011.
| ![]() |
2010
|
"Trust, Privacy and Security in Digital Business, 7th International Conference, TrustBus 2010, Bilbao, Spain, August 30-31, 2010. Proceedings",
In TrustBus, Lecture Notes in Computer Science 6264, 2010.
| ![]() |
|
""Security and Trust Management"",
In 6th International Workshop, STM 2010, Athens, Greece, September 23-24, 2010. Proceedings, LNCS 6710, 2010.
| ![]() |
2009
2008
|
"Information Security Theory and Practices. Smart Devices, Convergence and Next Generation Networks",
In Workshop in Information Security Theory and Practices, Lecture Notes in Computer Science 5019, Springer Verlag, 2008.
| ![]() |
|
"Computer Security - ESORICS 2008, 13th European Symposium on Research in Computer Security, Málaga, Spain, October 6-8, 2008. Proceedings",
In ESORICS, Lecture Notes in Computer Science 5283, 2008.
| ![]() |
2007
|
"Critical Information Infrastructures Security, Second International Workshop, CRITIS 2007, Málaga, Spain, October 3-5, 2007. Revised Papers",
In CRITIS, Lecture Notes in Computer Science 5141, 2007.
| ![]() |
|
"Computer Security - ESORICS 2007, 12th European Symposium On Research In Computer Security, Dresden, Germany, September 24-26, 2007, Proceedings",
In ESORICS, Lecture Notes in Computer Science 4734, 2007.
| ![]() |
|
"Public Key Infrastructure, 4th European PKI Workshop: Theory and Practice, EuroPKI 2007, Palma de Mallorca, Spain, June 28-30, 2007, Proceedings",
In EuroPKI, Lecture Notes in Computer Science 4582, 2007.
| ![]() |
2006
|
"Critical Information Infrastructures Security, First International Workshop, CRITIS 2006, Samos, Greece, August 31 - September 1, 2006, Revised Papers",
In CRITIS, Lecture Notes in Computer Science 4347, 2006.
| ![]() |
|
"Information Security, 9th International Conference, ISC 2006, Samos Island, Greece, August 30 - September 2, 2006, Proceedings",
In ISC, Lecture Notes in Computer Science 4176, 2006.
| ![]() |
2005
|
"Information and Communications Security, 7th International Conference, ICICS 2005, Beijing, China, December 10-13, 2005, Proceedings",
In ICICS, Lecture Notes in Computer Science 3783, 2005.
| ![]() |
|
"Information Security, 8th International Conference, ISC 2005, Singapore, September 20-23, 2005, Proceedings",
In ISC, Lecture Notes in Computer Science 3650, 2005.
| ![]() |
|
"Trust, Privacy and Security in Digital Business: Second International Conference, TrustBus 2005, Copenhagen, Denmark, August 22-26, 2005, Proceedings",
In TrustBus, Lecture Notes in Computer Science 3592, 2005.
| ![]() |
2004
|
"Information and Communications Security, 6th International Conference, ICICS 2004, Malaga, Spain, October 27-29, 2004, Proceedings",
In ICICS, Lecture Notes in Computer Science 3269, 2004.
| ![]() |
|
"Trust and Privacy in Digital Business, First International Conference, TrustBus 2004, Zaragoza, Spain, August 30 - September 1, 2004, Proceedings",
In TrustBus, Lecture Notes in Computer Science 3184, 2004.
| ![]() |
|
"Public Key Infrastructure, First European PKIWorkshop: Research and Applications, EuroPKI 2004, Samos Island, Greece, June 25-26, 2004, Proceedings",
In EuroPKI, Lecture Notes in Computer Science 3093, 2004.
| ![]() |
2003
1998
Nothing found





















