@article {rios2022cpa, title = {Constrained Proximity Attacks on Mobile Targets}, journal = {ACM Transactions on Privacy and Security (TOPS)}, volume = {25}, number = {10}, year = {2022}, month = {05/2022}, pages = {1 - 29}, publisher = {Association for Computer Machinery (ACM)}, abstract = {

Proximity attacks allow an adversary to uncover the location of a victim by repeatedly issuing queries with fake location data. These attacks have been mostly studied in scenarios where victims remain static and there are no constraints that limit the actions of the attacker. In such a setting, it is not difficult for the attacker to locate a particular victim and quantifying the effort for doing so is straightforward. However, it is far more realistic to consider scenarios where potential victims present a particular mobility pattern. In this paper, we consider abstract (constrained and unconstrained) attacks on services that provide location information on other users in the proximity. We derive strategies for constrained and unconstrained attackers, and show that when unconstrained they can practically achieve success with theoretically optimal effort. We then propose a simple yet effective constraint that may be employed by a proximity service (for example, running in the cloud or using a suitable two-party protocol) as countermeasure to increase the effort for the attacker several orders of magnitude both in simulated and real-world cases.

}, keywords = {Location Privacy, mobility pattern, proximity attacks, quantification}, issn = {2471-2566}, doi = {10.1145/3498543}, author = {Xueou Wang and Xiaolu Hou and Ruben Rios and Nils Ole Tippenhauer and Martin Ochoa} } @article {rios2022pmec, title = {Personal IoT Privacy Control at the Edge}, journal = {IEEE Security \& Privacy }, volume = {20}, year = {2022}, month = {01/2022}, pages = {23 - 32}, publisher = {IEEE}, abstract = {

This article introduces a privacy manager for IoT data based on Edge Computing. This poses the advantage that privacy is enforced before data leaves the control of the user, who is provided with a tool to express data sharing preferences based on a novel context-aware privacy language.

}, issn = {1540-7993}, doi = {10.1109/MSEC.2021.3101865}, author = {Ruben Rios and Jose A. Onieva and Rodrigo Roman and Javier Lopez} } @article {onieva2019vec, title = {Edge-Assisted Vehicular Networks Security}, journal = {IEEE Internet of Things Journal}, volume = {6}, year = {2019}, month = {10/2019}, pages = {8038-8045}, publisher = {IEEE Computer Society}, abstract = {

Edge Computing paradigms are expected to solve some major problems affecting current application scenarios that rely on Cloud computing resources to operate. These novel paradigms will bring computational resources closer to the users and by doing so they will not only reduce network latency and bandwidth utilization but will also introduce some attractive context-awareness features to these systems. In this paper we show how the enticing features introduced by Edge Computing paradigms can be exploited to improve security and privacy in the critical scenario of vehicular networks (VN), especially existing authentication and revocation issues. In particular, we analyze the security challenges in VN and describe three deployment models for vehicular edge computing, which refrain from using vehicular- to-vehicular communications. The result is that the burden imposed to vehicles is considerably reduced without sacrificing the security or functional features expected in vehicular scenarios.

}, keywords = {Critical Infrastructures, Internet of Things, privacy, security, Vehicular Networks}, issn = {2327-4662}, doi = {10.1109/JIOT.2019.2904323}, author = {Jose A. Onieva and Ruben Rios and Rodrigo Roman and Javier Lopez} } @article {roman2018VIS, title = {Immune System for the Internet of Things using Edge Technologies}, journal = {IEEE Internet of Things Journal}, volume = {6}, year = {2019}, month = {06/2019}, pages = {4774-4781}, publisher = {IEEE Computer Society}, abstract = {

The Internet of Things (IoT) and Edge Computing are starting to go hand in hand. By providing cloud services close to end-users, edge paradigms enhance the functionality of IoT deployments, and facilitate the creation of novel services such as augmented systems. Furthermore, the very nature of these paradigms also enables the creation of a proactive defense architecture, an immune system, which allows authorized immune cells (e.g., virtual machines) to traverse edge nodes and analyze the security and consistency of the underlying IoT infrastructure. In this article, we analyze the requirements for the development of an immune system for the IoT, and propose a security architecture that satisfies these requirements. We also describe how such a system can be instantiated in Edge Computing infrastructures using existing technologies. Finally, we explore the potential application of immune systems to other scenarios and purposes.

}, keywords = {Edge computing, Immune Systems, Internet of Things, security}, issn = {2327-4662}, doi = {10.1109/JIOT.2018.2867613}, url = {https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/8449989/}, author = {Rodrigo Roman and Ruben Rios and Jose A. Onieva and Javier Lopez} } @inproceedings {rios2018mob, title = {Location Proximity Attacks against Mobile Targets: Analytical Bounds and Attacker Strategies}, booktitle = {23rd European Symposium on Research in Computer Security (ESORICS 2018)}, series = {LNCS}, volume = {11099}, year = {2018}, pages = {373-392}, publisher = {Springer}, organization = {Springer}, address = {Barcelona}, abstract = {

Location privacy has mostly focused on scenarios where users remain static. However, investigating scenarios where the victims present a particular mobility pattern is more realistic. In this paper, we consider abstract attacks on services that provide location information on other users in the proximity. In that setting, we quantify the required effort of the attacker to localize a particular mobile victim. We prove upper and lower bounds for the effort of an optimal attacker. We experimentally show that a Linear Jump Strategy\ (LJS) practically achieves the upper bounds for almost uniform initial distributions of victims. To improve performance for less uniform distributions known to the attacker, we propose a Greedy Updating Attack Strategy\ (GUAS). Finally, we derive a realistic mobility model from a real-world dataset and discuss the performance of our strategies in that setting.

}, isbn = {978-3-319-98988-4}, doi = {10.1007/978-3-319-98989-1}, author = {Xueou Wang and Xiaolu Hou and Ruben Rios and Per Hallgren and Nils Ole Tippenhauer and Martin Ochoa} } @inproceedings {Ruben2017smog, title = {From Smog to Fog: A Security Perspective}, booktitle = {2nd IEEE International Conference on Fog and Edge Mobile Computing (FMEC 2017)}, year = {2017}, month = {06/2017}, pages = {56-61}, publisher = {IEEE Computer Society}, organization = {IEEE Computer Society}, address = {Valencia, Spain. 8-11 May 2017}, abstract = {

Cloud computing has some major limitations that hinder its application to some specific scenarios (e.g., Industrial IoT, and remote surgery) where there are particularly stringent requirements, such as extremely low latency. Fog computing is a specialization of the Cloud that promises to overcome the aforementioned limitations by bringing the Cloud closer to end-users. Despite its potential benefits, Fog Computing is still a developing paradigm which demands further research, especially on security and privacy aspects. This is precisely the focus of this paper: to make evident the urgent need for security mechanisms in Fog computing, as well as to present a research strategy with the necessary steps and processes that are being undertaken within the scope of the SMOG project, in order to enable a trustworthy and resilient Fog ecosystem.

}, isbn = {978-1-5386-2859-1}, doi = {10.1109/FMEC.2017.7946408}, author = {Ruben Rios and Rodrigo Roman and Jose A. Onieva and Javier Lopez} }