Gaeil An

Trusted P2P computing environments with role-based access control

A P2P computing environment can be an ideal platform for resource-sharing services in an organisation if it provides trust mechanisms. Current P2P technologies offer content-sharing services for non-sensitive public domains in the absence of trust mechanisms. The lack of sophis- ticated trust mechanisms in the current P2P environment has become a serious constraint for broader applications of the technology although it has great potential. Therefore in this work an approach for securing transactions in the P2P environment is introduced, and ways to incorporate an effective and scalable access control mechanism - role-based access control (RBAC) - into current P2P computing environments has been investigated, proposing two different architectures: requesting peer-pull (RPP) and ultrapeer-pull (UPP) architectures. To provide a mobile, session- based authentication and RBAC, especially in the RPP architecture, lightweight peer certificates (LWPCs) are developed. Finally, to prove the feasibility of the proposed ideas, the RPP and UPP RBAC architectures are implemented and their scalability and performance are evaluated.

Active access control (AAC) with fine-granularity and scalability

Strong access control mechanisms become most critical when we need security services in large-scale computing environments of sensitive organizations. Furthermore, if users join or leave such computing environment frequently, requiring different access control decisions based on their current job responsibilities and contexts, the need for advanced access control is pressing. Although the currently available access control approaches have a great potential for providing reliable service, there are still critical obstacles to be solved, especially in large-scale, dynamic computing environments. In this paper we introduce an advanced access control mechanism, Active Access Control (AAC), which accounts for the ability to make dynamic access control decisions based not only on pre-defined privileges, but also on the current situation of the user. The framework of the proposed AAC approach provides fine-grained access control, by considering a variety of attributes about the user and the current computing environment, especially, when the users contexts are frequently changed. Although the outputs of the AAC approach can be integrated with any other existing access control mechanisms and improve the overall fine-granularity, as a full demonstration of our approach for fine-granularity as well as scalability, in this particular paper we focus on large-scale computing environments and integrate the AAC results with the role-based approach. Finally, in order to prove the feasibility of our proposed idea we implement the AAC approach with roles and discuss the evaluation results with existing approaches. Copyright

Context-Aware Dynamic Security Configuration for Mobile Communication Device

A mobile communication device is a small size of portable computer which provides communication service. One of the biggest barriers in developing the mobile communication device is security. To protect itself against security threats, the mobile communication device need to be loaded with various kinds of security functions such as firewall, access control, and so on. However because the mobile communication device has relatively poor computing power and inconvenient user interface, it may experience performance deterioration and user inconveniency in case that it employs all the security functions. This paper proposes a context-aware dynamic security configuration scheme for effective security management of the mobile communication device. Our scheme can maximize the performance of the mobile communication device in terms of computing resource efficiency and user convenience without degrading security level by automatically optimizing its security configuration based on its security context. The performance of our scheme is measured and evaluated through experiments.

Analysis of SEND Protocol through Implementation and Simulation

Neighbor Discovery (ND) protocol has been proposed to discover neighboring hosts and routers in IPv6 wired or wireless local networks. Even though ND protocol is very useful, it has a weakness to security because it allows a malicious user to impersonate a legitimate host or a router by forging ND protocol messages. To address the security problem, IETF (Internet Engineering Task Force) has proposed SEcure Neighbor Discovery (SEND) protocol. The key functions of SEND protocol include address ownership proof mechanism, ND protocol message protection mechanism, reply attack prevention mechanism, and router authentication mechanism. In this paper, we analyze SEND protocol in the view point of security through several experiments. For this, we implement SEND protocol in IPv6 real system and develop a simulation environment. Based on the experimental results, we also propose a monitoring-based ND message differentiation scheme which is able to make up for security vulnerability of SEND protocol effectively.

Packet marking based cooperative attack response service for effectively handling suspicious traffic

The security vulnerabilities in a network environment and their corresponding countermeasures have become more critical issues than ever. Although many researchers and vendors have introduced powerful mechanisms such as Intrusion Detection System (IDS) or Intrusion Prevention System (IPS) for network security, the packet-based decision is not always correct, especially when those systems are involved in network traffics across multiple organizations under different security policies. In fact, some legitimate (normal) network traffics produce a similar pattern to that of malicious traffics such as Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS), and vice versa. We call those traffics suspicious. Suspicious traffic cannot be clearly designated as malicious or normal traffic. Since traditional IDS or IPS approaches make a simple binary decision (i.e., allow or reject) based on pre-defined rules, there is a high possibility that suspicious/legitimate packets are rejected or suspicious/malicious packets are allowed. To enhance the quality of service in a network environment, we propose in this paper a Packet Marking-Based Cooperative Attack Response Service (pm-CARS) that is able to effectively deal with suspicious network traffic. pm-CARS nodes cooperate with each other by using packet-marking. These pm-CARS nodes mark suspicious packets instead of dropping them. All the marked packets are forwarded to the next node using a low priority of service designation, which indicates the drop probability is very high. Our pm-CARS includes two schemes: abnormal IP address detection and abnormal excess traffic detection schemes. Our pm-CARS can reduce the false-positive rate and can protect the quality of service for innocent traffic from attacks. Finally, we simulate our ideas in a network environment and discuss the evaluation results.

A Framework of Multiple-Aspect Component-Testing for Trusted Collaboration in Mission-Critical Systems

Although we need software-component sharing in a large distributed system, we cannot simply trust those components provided by participating organizations, especially when malicious groups or competitors are involved in the collaboration. When a wide range of malicious activity needs to be tested, a large overhead is incurred in scanning for malicious code and checking internal failures. Large projects also have multi-functional teams working and any lack of communication or overlooks in design can lead to unchecked security holes when the system is integrated. Moreover, it is not always easy to test the whole system for security and accuracy in preventing attacks because one can never develop a test plan for that which one is unaware of, such as a specialized attack by a hacker that compromises a system. Therefore, in this paper we develop a dynamic approach for testing software components in using multiple aspects of testing with high accuracy. We also present new techniques that provide for an automated system architecture that provides for a scalable and flexible distributed testing mechanism capable of handling newer threats at very short notice. We have considered the use of Microsofts .Net and C# as the platform to describe and prototype the testing mechanisms

Real-Time IP Checking and Packet Marking for Preventing ND-DoS Attack Employing Fake Source IP in IPv6 LAN

IPv6 has been proposed as a basic Internet protocol for realizing a ubiquitous computing service. An IPv6 LAN may suffer from a Neighbor Discovery-Denial of Service (ND-DoS) attack, which results in network congestion on the victim IPv6 LAN by making a great number of Neighbor Discovery protocol messages generated. A ND-DoS attacker may use a fake source IP address to hide his/her identity, which makes it more difficult to handle the attack. In this paper, we propose an IP checking and packet marking scheme, which is applied to an IPv6 access router. The proposed scheme can effectively protect IPv6 LAN from ND-DoS attack employing fake source IP by providing the packets suspected to use fake source and/or destination IP addresses with a poor QoS.

Context-based remote security control for Mobile Communication Device

Recently, as smartphone is becoming more and more popular, concern about security threats against Mobile Communication Device (MCD) is getting higher. The MCD can not only become the target of the cyber attacks, but also be used as the tool of the cyber attacks. This paper proposes a context-based remote security control scheme for MCD. The proposed scheme consists of two systems: Context-based Mobile Security (CMS) client and server. The proposed scheme can automatically not only protect the MCD from cyber attacks, but also prevent the MCD from being used as an attack tool, by help of CMS server. As an additional advantage, the proposed scheme can maximize performance of the MCD in terms of computing resource efficiency and user convenience because it automatically manages the security of the MCD.

Detection of Rogue Devices in WLAN by Analyzing RF Features and Indoor Location of the Device

In this paper, we present rogue device detection mechanism in WLAN Wireless Local Area Network by analyzing radio frequency RF features and estimating indoor location of the device. The presented mechanism analyzes error vector magnitude EVM as a RF feature and it also utilizes indoor location to improve detection rates. To estimate location, we use the triangulation method with Gauss---Seidel iterative technique to find approximate coordinate. We developed the proposed mechanism in the wireless sensor hardware and wireless intrusion prevention server platform, and we provide experimental results.

Design and Implementation of Security Reconfiguration for Effective Security Management of Mobile Communication Device

A mobile communication device is a small size of portable computer which provides communication service, such as smart phone and PDA. Currently, one of the biggest barriers in developing the mobile communication device is security issue. Even though there are excellent security functions which can remove the security issues, there is a problem that the mobile communication device can not be loaded with all the functions because it has low storage, poor computational power, and inconvenient user interface, compared to the desktop personal computer. This paper proposes a context-aware security reconfiguration scheme for effective security management of the mobile communication device. The scheme can provide the mobile communication device with the optimized security service which is most adapted to its current security context. Through the prototype implementation and the experiments of the proposed scheme, we have confirmed that the proposed scheme is excellent in terms of computing resource efficiency and usability, without degrading security level.