Search

The Internet of Things (IoT) market has expanded significantly, encompassing various sectors like home, retail, manufacturing, and transportation, with millions of devices and servers dedicated to monitoring real-world aspects. Regardless of the field, all IoT devices share the characteristic of transitioning from initial ownership to target application ownership to fulfill their intended functions, a process known as onboarding, which requires fast, reliable, and secure interaction between devices and servers. Two distinct approaches to onboarding, trusted and untrusted installers, exist, with trusted installers employing configurator tools to establish trust between devices and servers, while untrusted installers rely on mechanisms like ownership vouchers for authentication, offering scalability and parallel device onboarding.

The Transport Layer Security (TLS) protocol supports various authentication modes, key exchange methods, and protocol extensions. Confusingly, each combination may prescribe a different message sequence between the client and the server, and thus a key challenge for TLS implementations is to define a composite state machine that correctly handles these combinations. If the state machine is too restrictive, the implementation may fail to interoperate with others; if it is too liberal, it may allow unexpected message sequences that break the security of the protocol. We systematically test popular TLS implementations and find unexpected transitions in many of their state machines that have stayed hidden for years. We show how some of these flaws lead to critical security vulnerabilities, such as FREAK. While testing can help find such bugs, formal verification can prevent them entirely. To this end, we implement and formally verify a new composite state machine for OpenSSL, a popular TLS library. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Current network use is dominated by content distribution and retrieval yet current networking protocols are designed for conversations between hosts. Accessing content and services requires mapping from the what that users care about to the network's where. We present Content-Centric Networking (CCN) which uses content chunks as a primitive---decoupling location from identity, security and access, and retrieving chunks of content by name. Using new approaches to routing named content, derived from IP, CCN simultaneously achieves scalability, security, and performance. We describe our implementation of the architecture's basic features and demonstrate its performance and resilience with secure file downloads and VoIP calls. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents information on security risks of WiFi connectivity. While many users may know that WiFi is vulnerable to hacking, far fewer know why. The genesis of the wireless insecurity problem was the 802.11 standard. The vulnerabilities were built into the protocols. Nowhere is this more evident than in the bungled implementation of the RC4 symmetric, stream cipher algorithm in the implementation of Wired Equivalent Privacy (WEP). The WEP implementation of RC4 is flawed in several ways. It should be noted that even if the implementation of RC4 was corrected, WEP would still be vulnerable to replay attacks, checksum forging, message integrity check forging, and sundry authentication attacks resulting from the fact that both the plaintext challenge and cipher text response are broadcast. IEEE standard for IV selection was ambiguous, so many wireless vendors use sequential IV generators that begin with 00:00:00 and wrap with FF:FF:FF. Other WEP weaknesses that may be exploited include defective key-generation implementations. INSET: URL Pearls.

This article assesses the extent of the security risks involved in wireless networking technology by considering three possible scenarios demonstrating vulnerabilities. The Service Set ID (SSID) is a 32 byte or less network name of a service set. This name is used by other network devices to initiate a connection. Wireless Application Protocols (WAP) may be configured as "open" or "closed." In the open mode, the WAP broadcasts its SSID to the world, while in closed mode, it does not. A computer with a WiFi card set to SSID=ANY will attempt to authenticate with the open WAPs with the strongest signals. This is called association polling and is built into Windows XP by default when wireless is enabled. The goal of Wired Equivalent Privacy (WEP) was to bring some of the security available in wired networks to WiFi. Unfortunately, the designers bungled the job. WEP suffers from two fundamental deficiencies — it was poorly designed and it was poorly implemented. Other than that, it's fine. A key WEP vulnerability results from the implementation of the RC4 symmetric stream cipher algorithm. INSET: URL Pearls.

This article presents the author's comments on the authenticity of standards meant for the computer industry. It is informed that standards play a significant and vital role for the industry by enforcing security baselines and enabling compatibilities among various products. However, the author holds that, they should not be relied on blindly. According to the author, despite the creation of a standard through an open process, transparency in the certification process is not guaranteed.

This article investigates the security problems in the 802.11-based data link protocol, Wireless Equivalent Privacy (WEP). It is evident that anyone with a radio receiver can eavesdrop on a wireless local area network (WLAN), and therefore widely acknowledged that a WLAN needs a mechanism to counter this threat. The IEEE 802.11 standard defines a data confidentiality mechanism known as WEP. The security goal of WEP is data confidentiality equivalent to that of a wired LAN. WEP falls short of this objective, which is an intuitively appealing but vague security goal. As a consequence, WEP was insufficiently thought through, and numerous flaws quickly appeared. The discovery of shortcomings led to a process to replace WEP by more robust security protocols. The study of WEP flaws illustrates the difficulties in security protocol design. An understanding of these flaws helps clarify the choices made by the designers of the new protocols. WEP has several serious inherent problems. It does not meet its fundamental goals of wired-equivalent confidentiality.

The article discusses that cookies can be beneficial in electronic commerce but can invade personal privacy. The modern Websites' medium is defined, enabled, and constrained by a pair of Internet protocols, HTTP and HTML. HTTP is a platform-independent, client/server protocol defined for any packet-switched digital network that supports the lower-level Transmission Control Protocol /Internet Protocol suite. HTTP is an application layer protocol that sits directly a top Transmission Control Protocol, which in turn sits atop Internet Protocol. HTTP is rather unique, in that it is stateless. Once the transaction cycle is complete, the connection between client and server is disconnected. HTTP needs transaction persistence. The persistence would take the form of depositing digital information on the client's hard disk. This persistent state object came to be known as cookies. In any case, the technical description of a cookie is a piece of transaction state information left on the client before the HTTP transaction cycle is concluded. Included in this state Cookies are virtually unlimited in the range of information they can store. When such information gets stored in cookies, it is most likely the result of an end user unwisely volunteering this information in the first place. INSET: Berghel's URL Pearls..

The Internet can bring down physical barriers to commerce, almost immediately giving even the smallest business access to untapped markets around the world. By the same token, consumers can conduct business and make purchases from organizations previously unavailable to them. Armed with these goals, individuals have flocked to the Internet, and most businesses have set out to set up storefronts on the Internet and its World Wide Web. Just about every major business in the U.S., perhaps in the world, has a home page on the Internet on which can be found information about their services and products. As the Internet grew, the community expanded, and the existing security framework was found lacking. Over the past few years, people have seen evidence of this fact, in the form of Internet-based attacks on commercial systems. Awareness of these attacks has spawned the use of network security tools, such as firewalls, to protect individual networks from attack. More sophisticated attacks can take advantage of basic flaws in the Internet's infrastructure. INSET: Basic Flaws in Internet Infrastructure..

The article describes a research on distributing trust among a group of nodes. Central to this effort is a toolkit of group communication protocols called Rampart. The Rampart group communication protocols are designed to distribute trust among a group of nodes in a distributed system so while individual nodes need not be fully trusted, the group can be. An overarching goal of computer security mechanisms is to limit the extent to which each component of a system must be trusted to implement a desired security policy. This goal leads to system designs in which components are labeled trusted or untrusted. Rampant supports distributed process groups, a programming paradigm shown to simply construction of distributed programs tolerant of simple failures. Rampart has been adapted for two notable applications: sealed-bid auctions and cryptographic key management. Initial experiences with the system indicate that it can greatly simplify the task of distributing trust among multiple nodes in a system, and that it performs sufficiently well to support a wide range of applications.

The development, and especially deployment, of security technologies has not kept space of the heightened threats a distributed connected environment presents. Distributed systems make commercial environments more vulnerable than ever before, and hence the demand for security technologies by this sector of the marketplace is rapidly increasing. The growth of technologies such as electronic commerce mandates the duplication of security paradigms implicit in the paper world. Among the attacks that can often be mounted in a low-tech fashion are denial of service attacks. In these attacks, an intruder does not necessarily steal information but instead, for profit or for pure malicious delight, disrupts all your operations. A seemingly secure protocol can have extremely subtle problems that compromise the security of the system in a very unsubtle and dramatic function. It is also a stark reminder to all that the state of the art in proving or certifying security properties is at best an inexact science.

This article presents examples of protocol failures in cryptographic operations. In many protocols, the security of the cryptographic portion is progressively weakened as a result of the protocol being exercised, for example, by reducing the size of the key space that one would have to search to identify an active cryptographic key but these are not considered examples of true protocol failures, even though they are clearly examples of potential sources of failure in the intended security function of a protocol. Finding and fixing failures of the latter type is the function of conventional analysis of cryptoalgorithms. An algorithm or protocol can be unconditionally secure, computationally secure, provably secure, or, of course, insecure. A scheme is said to be unconditionally secure if the probability of breaking it is independent of the computing resources and time an opponent is able or willing to spend. A scheme is said to be computationally secure if breaking it requires an attacker to carry out some computation that is possible in principle but for which all known methods of execution require an infeasible amount of computation.

Randomized protocols for signing contracts, certified mail, and flipping a coin are presented. The protocols use a 1-out-of-2 oblivious transfer subprotocol which is axiomatically defined. The l-out-of-2 oblivious transfer allows one party to transfer exactly one secret, out of two recognizable secrets to his counterpart. The first (second) secret is received with probability one half while the sender is ignorant of which secret has been received. An implementation of the 1-out-of-2 oblivious transfer, using any public key cryptosystem, is presented. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The distribution of keys in a computer network using single key or public key encryption is discussed. We consider the possibility that communication keys may be compromised, and show that key distribution protocols with timestamps prevent replays of compromised keys. The timestamps have the additional benefit of replacing a two-step handshake. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The author focuses on the Code Red worm, a computer virus which has traveled the Internet and has caused considerable consternation among users of Internet Information Server of Microsoft Corp. These worms work their way through self generated lists of Internet protocol addresses and contact each address's port 80, the standard Hyper Text Transfer Protocol (HTTP) port. The problem is created by the companies embedding network servers into products without making them sufficiently robust. The rise of HTTP as a communications common denominator comes from ease of use, fix programmer and customer alike. HTTP traffic is usually allowed through firewalls and other network traffic barriers. Numerous non-HTTP protocols are tunneled via HTTP in order to ease their passage. Given the ease of implementation and small code size of a lightweight web server, it is disturbing that such software is not engineered with greater care. HTTP is easy to implement, easy to use and easy to co-opt. With some diligence and forethought, it is also easy to secure.

The article focuses on an addressing system called IP address and relates it with the privacy of personal computers. A proposal to improve the way information flows across the Internet has caused worries for privacy advocates that the design could be used to trace a person's identity. The proposal, an addressing system called IPv6, was created by the Internet Engineering Task Force, an international standards body, and would include a unique serial number for each computer's network connection as part of its expanded new IP address. Critics warn that, if adopted, the move could strip the anonymity and security of Internet users over traditional phone lines, allowing commercial sites to correlate these embedded serial numbers against a consumer's name, address, and other personal details, from clothing size to political affiliation. Today, most home computers are assigned a different IP address each time they connect. According to a lawyer of Washington-based Electronic Privacy Information Center, Marc Rotenberg, although IPv6 would not be widely used for years, there is no doubt there are serious privacy concerns.

The article presents information about the Internet sabotage. A new type of Internet sabotage is spreading and has now occurred at more than a dozen Web sites around the U.S. Attacks which tie up network computers so that other users cannot gain access have created nuisance. Hackers bombard an Internet server with more than 100 requests per second for service, each coming from a randomly generated false address while shutting out legitimate users. The Computer Emergency Response Team formed by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency conducts research for improving computing security and drafted an advisory detailing the nature of the attack and its impact on the Internet community. Security officials are concerned because this type of hacking exploits the basic scheme of the Internet, software protocols, routing instructions, on which the Internet has based and they were not designed to prevent message flooding.