Biblio

La privacidad contextual se refiere a la protección de toda aquella información que puede desprenderse de la interacción entre usuarios y/o servicios, exceptuando los datos que el propio usuario elige transmitir. La localización, el tiempo, los patrones de uso y los diferentes parámetros necesarios para realizar la comunicación son algunos ejemplos. Este tipo de privacidad es extremadamente importante en la computación edge debido al acercamiento de los recursos de la infraestructura a los usuarios. Por ello, el objetivo de este trabajo es ofrecer un análisis y clasificación de las diferentes soluciones propuestas en la literatura respecto a la privacidad contextual en entornos edge, mostrando tanto las capacidades de los mecanismos actuales como los desafíos en este campo.

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.

For various reasons, the cloud computing paradigm is unable to meet certain requirements (e.g. low latency and jitter, context awareness, mobility support) that are crucial for several applications (e.g. vehicular networks, augmented reality). To fulfil these requirements, various paradigms, such as fog computing, mobile edge computing, and mobile cloud computing, have emerged in recent years. While these edge paradigms share several features, most of the existing research is compartmentalised; no synergies have been explored. This is especially true in the field of security, where most analyses focus only on one edge paradigm, while ignoring the others. The main goal of this study is to holistically analyse the security threats, challenges, and mechanisms inherent in all edge paradigms, while highlighting potential synergies and venues of collaboration. In our results, we will show that all edge paradigms should consider the advances in other paradigms.

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.

This paper analyzes the secure access delegation problem, which occurs naturally in the cloud, and postulate that Proxy Re-Encryption is a feasible cryptographic solution, both from the functional and efficiency perspectives. Proxy re-encryption is a special type of public-key encryption that permits a proxy to transform ciphertexts from one public key to another, without the proxy being able to learn any information about the original message. Thus, it serves as a means for delegating decryption rights, opening up many possible applications that require of delegated access to encrypted data. In particular, sharing information in the cloud is a prime example. In this paper, we review the main proxy re-encryption schemes so far, and provide a detailed analysis of their characteristics. Additionally, we also study the efficiency of selected schemes, both theoretically and empirically, based on our own implementation. Finally, we discuss some applications of proxy re-encryption, with a focus on secure access delegation in the cloud. 

In this paper we tackle the problem of privacy and confidentiality in Identity Management as a Service (IDaaS). The adoption of cloud computing technologies by organizations has fostered the externalization of the identity management processes, shaping the concept of Identity Management as a Service. However, as it has happened to other cloud-based services, the cloud poses serious risks to the users, since they lose the control over their data. As part of this work, we analyze these concerns and present a model for privacy-preserving IDaaS, called BlindIdM, which is designed to provide data privacy protection through the use of cryptographic safeguards.

Among Big Data technologies, Hadoop stands out for its capacity to store and process large-scale datasets. However, although Hadoop was not designed with security in mind, it is widely used by plenty of organizations, some of which have strong data protection requirements. Traditional access control solutions are not enough, and cryptographic solutions must be put in place to protect sensitive information. In this paper, we describe a cryptographically-enforced access control system for Hadoop, based on proxy re-encryption. Our proposed solution fits in well with the outsourcing of Big Data processing to the cloud, since information can be stored in encrypted form in external servers in the cloud and processed only if access has been delegated. Experimental results show that the overhead produced by our solution is manageable, which makes it suitable for some applications.

Cloud applications entail the provision of a huge amount of heterogeneous, geographically-distributed resources managed and shared by many different stakeholders who often do not know each other beforehand. This raises numerous security concerns that, if not addressed carefully, might hinder the adoption of this promising computational model. Appropriately dealing with these threats gains special relevance in the social cloud context, where computational resources are provided by the users themselves. We argue that taking trust and reputation requirements into account can leverage security in these scenarios by incorporating the notions of trust relationships and reputation into them. For this reason, we propose a development framework onto which developers can implement trust-aware social cloud applications. Developers can also adapt the framework in order to accommodate their application-specific needs.

The advent of cloud computing has provided the opportunity to externalize the identity management processes, shaping what has been called Identity Management as a Service (IDaaS). However, as in the case of other cloud-based services, IDaaS brings with it great concerns regarding security and privacy, such as the loss of control over the outsourced data. As part of this PhD thesis, we analyze these concerns and propose BlindIdM, a model for privacy-preserving IDaaS with a focus on data privacy protection through the use of proxy re-encryption.

The inclusion of identity management in the cloud computing landscape represents a new business opportunity for providing what has been called Identity Management as a Service (IDaaS). Nevertheless, IDaaS introduces the same kind of problems regarding privacy and data confidentiality as other cloud services; on top of that, the nature of the outsourced information (users’ identity) is critical. Traditionally, cloud services (including IDaaS) rely only on SLAs and security policies to protect the data, but these measures have proven insufficient in some cases; recent research has employed advanced cryptographic mechanisms as an additional safeguard. Apart from this, there are several identity management schemes that could be used for realizing IDaaS systems in the cloud; among them, OpenID has gained crescent popularity because of its open and decentralized nature, which makes it a prime candidate for this task. In this paper we demonstrate how a privacy-preserving IDaaS system can be implemented using OpenID Attribute Exchange and a proxy re-encryption scheme. Our prototype enables an identity provider to serve attributes to other parties without being able to read their values. This proposal constitutes a novel contribution to both privacy and identity management fields. Finally, we discuss the performance and economical viability of our proposal.

The paper describes the experience with integration of automatic cyber identity technology with policy controlled virtualisation environment. One identity technology has been used to enable strong authentication of users (human beings) as well as machines (host systems) to the virtualization management system. The real experimental evaluation has been done in PASSIVE project (Policy-Assessed system-level Security of Sensitive Information processing in Virtualised Environments - SEVENTH FRAMEWORK PROGRAMME THEME ICT-2009.1.4 INFORMATION AND COMMUNICATION TECHNOLOGIES - Small or medium-scale focused research project - Grant agreement no.: 257644).

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.

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.

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.