Chamseddine Talhi

Formal Verification and Validation of UML 2.0 Sequence Diagrams using Source and Destination of Messages

A major challenge in software development process is to advance error detection to early phases of the software life cycle. For this purpose, the Verification and Validation (V&V) of UML diagrams play a very important role in detecting flaws at the design phase. It has a distinct importance for software security, where it is crucial to detect security flaws before they can be exploited. This paper presents a formal V&V technique for one of the most popular UML diagrams: sequence diagrams. The proposed approach creates a PROMELA-based model from UML interactions expressed in sequence diagrams, and uses SPIN model checker to simulate the execution and to verify properties written in Linear Temporal Logic (LTL). The whole technique is implemented as an Eclipse plugin, which hides the model-checking formalism from the user. The main contribution of this work is to provide an efficient mechanism to be able to track the execution state of an interaction, which allows designers to write relevant properties involving send/receive events and source/destination of messages using LTL. Another important contribution is the definition of the PROMELA structure that provides a precise semantics of most of the newly UML 2.0 introduced combined fragments, allowing the execution of complex interactions. Finally, we illustrate the benefits of our approach through a security-related case study in a real world scenario.

Execution monitoring enforcement under memory-limitation constraints

Recently, attention has been given to formally characterize security policies that are enforceable by different kinds of security mechanisms. A very important research problem is the characterization of security policies that are enforceable by execution monitors constrained by memory limitations. This paper contributes to give more precise answers to this research problem. To represent execution monitors constrained by memory limitations, we introduce a new class of automata, bounded history automata. Characterizing memory limitations leads us to define a precise taxonomy of security policies that are enforceable under memory-limitation constraints.

Security evaluation of J2ME CLDC embedded java platform

Java 2 Micro-Edition Connected Limited Device Configuration (J2ME CLDC) is the platform of choice when it comes to running mobile applications on resourceconstrained devices (cell phones, set-top boxes, etc.). The large deployment of this platform makes it a target for security attacks. The intent of this paper is twofold: First, we study and evaluate the security model of J2ME CLDC. Second, we provide a vulnerability analysis of this Java platform. The evaluated components are: Virtual machine, CLDC API and MIDP (Mobile Information Device Profile) API. The analysis covers the specifications, the reference implementation (RI) as well as several other widely-deployed implementations of this platform. The aspects targeted by this security analysis encompass: Networking, record management system, virtual machine, multi-threading and digital rights management. This work identifies security weaknesses in J2ME CLDC that may represent sources of security exploits. Moreover, the results reported in this paper are valuable for any attempt to test or harden the security of this platform.

Smartphone malware detection: From a survey towards taxonomy

Smartphone malwares are serious threat. Malware detector is the primary tool to protect Smartphones against malwares. The malware detector efficiency is based on the technique it uses. In this paper, we survey the current state of the art of Smartphone malware detection techniques. Those techniques have been classified into a structured taxonomy based on 3 rules. Those rules are inferred and compiled from literature review. The rules are: reference behaviour, analysis approach and malware behaviour representation. According to reference behaviour rule, Smartphone malware detection techniques divided into two main classes: signature-based and anomaly-based. In side these classes, ramifications are then derived according to analysis approach rule and malware behaviour representation rule.

Java for mobile devices: a security study

Java 2 Micro-Edition connected limited device configuration (J2ME CLDC) is the platform of choice when it comes to running mobile applications on resource-constrained devices (cell phones, set-top boxes, etc.). The large deployment of this platform makes it a target for security attacks. The intent of this paper is twofold: first, we study the security architecture of J2ME CLDC; and second, we provide a vulnerability analysis of this Java platform. The analyzed components are: virtual machine, CLDC API and MIDP (mobile information device profile) API. The analysis covers the specifications, the reference implementation (RI) as well as several other widely deployed implementations of this platform. The aspects targeted by this security analysis encompass: networking, record management system, virtual machine, multi-threading and digital right management. This work identifies security weaknesses in J2ME CLDC that may represent sources of security exploits. Moreover, the results reported in this paper are valuable for any attempt to test or harden the security of this platform

Usability of Security Specification Approaches for UML Design: A Survey.

Since it is the de facto language for software specification and design, UML is the target language used by almost all state of the art contributions handling security at specification and design level. However, these contributions differ in the covered security requirements, specification approaches, verification tools, etc. This paper investigates the main approaches adopted for specifying and enforcing security at UML design and surveys the related state of the art. The main contribution of this paper is a discussion of these approaches from usability viewpoint. A set of criteria has been defined and used in this usability discussion. The discussed UML approaches are stereotypes and tagged values, OCL, and behavior diagrams. Extending the UML meta-language or creating new meta-languages for security specification are also covered by this study.

Weaving security aspects into UML 2.0 design models

Security plays a predominant role in software engineering. Nowadays, security solutions are generally added to existing software either as an afterthought, or manually injected into software applications. However, given the complexity and pervasiveness of todays software systems, the current practices might not be completely satisfactory. In most cases, security features remain scattered and tangled throughout the entire software, resulting in complex applications that are hard to understand and maintain. In this paper, we propose an aspect-oriented modeling approach to systematically integrate security solutions into software during the early phases of the software development life cycle. First, we present the security design weaving approach, as well as the UML profile needed for specifying security aspects. Then, we illustrate the approach through an example for injecting the design-level security aspects into base models.

Aspect-Oriented Modeling for Representing and Integrating Security Concerns in UML

Security is a challenging task in software engineering. Enforcing security policies should be taken care of during the early phases of the software development process to more efficiently integrate security into software. Since security is a crosscutting concern that pervades the entire software, integrating security at the software design level may result in the scattering and tangling of security features throughout the entire design. To address this issue, we present in this paper an aspect-oriented modeling approach for specifying and integrating security concerns into UML design models. In the proposed approach, security experts specify high-level and generic security solutions that can be later instantiated by developers, then automatically woven into UML design. Finally, we describe our prototype implemented as a plug-in in a commercial software development environment.

Security Analysis of Mobile Java

Java 2 Micro-Edition Connected Limited Device Configuration (J2ME CLDC) is the platform of choice when it comes to running mobile applications on resource-constrained devices (cell phones, set-top boxes, etc.). The large deployment of this platform makes it a target for security attacks. The intent of this paper is twofold: first, we study the security architecture of J2ME CLDC, then we provide a vulnerability analysis of this Java platform. The analyzed components are: virtual machine, CLDC API and MIDP (Mobile Information Device Profile) API. The analysis covers the specifications, the reference implementation (RI) as well as several other widely-deployed implementations of this platform

E-Bunny: A Dynamic Compiler for Embedded Java Virtual Machines

A new acceleration technology for Java embedded virtual machines is presented in this paper. Based on the selective dynamic compilation technique, this technology addresses the J2ME/CLDC (Java 2 Micro Edition for Connected Limited Device Configuration) platform. The primary objective of our work is to come up with an ecient, lightweight and low-footprint accelerated embedded Java Virtual Machine. This is achieved by the means of integrating a selective dynamic compiler that we called E-Bunny into the J2ME/CLDC virtual machine KVM. This paper presents the motivations, the architecture, the design and the implementation issues of E-Bunny and how we addressed them. Experimental results on the performance of our modified KVM demonstrate that we accomplished a speedup of 400% with respect to the Sun’s latest version of KVM. This experimentation was carried on using standard J2ME benchmarks.