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Security & Privacy
PrePrint: Deterring Strategic Cyber Attack
Sat, 04/16/2011 - 02:58Protecting critical infrastructure from interstate cyberattack is a matter of considerable concern. Can deterrence play a role in such protection? This article examines the elements of nuclear deterrence—the most elaborated and successful version of deterrence—and looks for lessons that might be adapted to the cyber case. It finds little overlap under current circumstances, though that might change in the aftermath of an extensive, destructive cyberattack. The most effective, but challenging, means of protecting the cyber-dependent infrastructure is comprehensive defense (deterrence by denial), which was impractical in the nuclear regime. Existing legal norms, particularly those related to controlling collateral damage, may have some deterrent effect, and a new international agreement may be an option, but one with several difficult issues.
Categories: IEEE Online
PrePrint: Provable Security in the Real World
Sat, 04/16/2011 - 02:58Provable Security is sometimes portrayed as having revolutionised Cryptography, transforming it from an art into a science. Three decades after the inception of Provable Security, is this transition complete? Are cryptanalysts out of business? If so, why do we still hear about attacks against real-world cryptographic systems?
Categories: IEEE Online
PrePrint: A Vision for Scalable Trustworthy Computing
Sat, 04/16/2011 - 02:58The cybersecurity landscape consists of an ad hoc patchwork of solutions [1]. Optimal cybersecurity is considered “hard,” for various reasons: complexity, immense data and processing requirements, resource-agnostic cloud computing, practical time-space-energy constraints, inherent flaws in “Maginot Line” defenses as well as the growing number and sophistication of attacks. We begin by defining and abstracting the high priority problems including a crosswalk of the potential and co-opted solution space. Within that space, we claim that achieving scalable trustworthy computing and communications is possible via real-time knowledge-based decisions about cyber trust. Our vision is based on the human-physiology-immunity (HPI) metaphor and the human brain’s ability to extract knowledge from data and information. We outline some future steps toward scalable trustworthy systems requiring a long-term commitment to solve the well-known “hard problems.”
Cloud computing - Computing - Technology - Maginot Line - Data
Categories: IEEE Online
PrePrint: Thresholds for Cyberwarfare
Sat, 04/16/2011 - 02:58The use of network technologies and the exploitation of cyberspace for intelligence and attack has become a normal part of military activity. Questions persist as to the appropriate framework for considering this new mode of conflict, but to a degree these questions result from weak data, imprecise terminology and a certain reluctance to abandon the notion that cyber conflict is unique and sui generis, rather than being just another mode of attack. This essay will review the utility and use of cyber attack in armed conflicts, thresholds for considering a cyber exploit as the use of force, the applicability of existing laws of armed conflict to cyber attack, and the political implications of “strategic” versus “tactical” applications of cyber exploits during conflict.
Categories: IEEE Online
PrePrint: Security Modeling and Analysis
Sat, 04/16/2011 - 02:58This article describes a uniform approach for evaluating the security of systems and illustrates the approach by summarizing three past case studies. Security modeling centers on identifying the behavior of the system of interest (including any security defenses), the power of the system adversary, and the properties that constitute security of the system. Once a security model is clearly defined, security analysis proceeds by evaluating whether the adversary, interacting with the system, is able to defeat the desired security properties. While we illustrate security analysis using model checking, various forms of analysis methods and tools can be used to evaluate system security, including manual and automated theorem proving tools that provide assurance about absence of attacks within a specified threat model. Security modeling and analysis also provide a basis for comparative evaluation and some forms of security metrics.
Categories: IEEE Online
PrePrint: On Adversary Models and Compositional Security
Sat, 04/16/2011 - 02:58We outline a theory of compositional security, addressing a recognized scientific challenge. Contemporary systems are built up from smaller components. However, even if each component is secure in isolation, the composed system may not achieve the desired security property: an adversary may exploit complex interactions between components to compromise security. The goal of a theory of compositional security is to identify relationships among systems, adversaries and properties such that precisely defined composition operations over systems and adversaries preserve security properties. In presenting our theory, we describe our model for general classes of systems, adversaries and security properties. We then present composition results (relationships) in this model. We also discuss how our theory explains a number of specific attacks found in the wild and how it can serve as the basis for predicting whether security properties of systems will be preserved as adversaries come up with new attacks.
Categories: IEEE Online
PrePrint: Secure Software Installation on Smartphones
Sat, 04/16/2011 - 02:58We look at the four main smartphone platforms (Symbian, Apple iOS, Android, Blackberry) and how each achieves software installation through their respective app markets (app stores), with focus on the security- related issues. We also provide a generic classification of (3) software installation approaches that they fit into, and a detailed (but still high-level) overview of the steps involved in vetting applications, by those controlling the markets (Apple, Symbian, etc.).
Categories: IEEE Online
PrePrint: Building An Active Computer Security Ethics Community
Sat, 04/16/2011 - 02:58The profound statements of the Declaration of Helsinki and Belmont Report motivated a rich and active discipline of bioethics growing alongside traditional biomedical research. Unfortunately, no equivalently active ethics discipline has parallelled the growth of computer security research, where serious ethical challenges are regularly raised by studies of increasingly sophisticated security threats (e.g., worms, botnets, phishing). In this absence, program committees and funding agencies are routinely asked to judge the acceptability of our research studies. Such judgments are often difficult due to a lack of community consensus on ethical standards, disagreement about who should enforce standards and how, and limited experience applying ethical decision-making methods. This article motivates the need for such a community, touching on the extensive field of ethical decision making, examining existing ethical guidelines and enforcement mechanisms used by the computer security research community, and calling our community to joint action to address this broad challenge.
Categories: IEEE Online
PrePrint: Comparative Analysis of Intrusion-Tolerant System Architectures
Sat, 04/16/2011 - 02:58Today, institutions want to build open systems and provide services to the public via the Internet. Such systems would potentially expose security vulnerabilities, and become susceptible to attacks. Therefore, security is critical in order to ensure confidentiality, integrity, and availability for system data and services. With increasing sophistication of security attacks the protection of open system is more challenging. Intrusion tolerance should be part of the overall defense in-depth security solution. In this paper, we will study and compare different approaches to intrusion-tolerant system architectures, focusing on three different lines of approach. The case study of an Open Archival Information System will be used to illustrate the security features of those architectures in the face of malicious attacks. We also include a qualitative and comparative analysis with respect to confidentiality, integrity, availability, and data ex-filtration.
Security - Open Archival Information System - Confidentiality - Data - Intrusion Detection Systems
Categories: IEEE Online
IEEE Security and Privacy - March/April 2011 (Vol. 9, No. 2)
Sat, 04/16/2011 - 02:58Categories: IEEE Online