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Health care applications based on sensors are gaining popularity. In wireless body area networks (WBANs), sensing data are gathered from a set of nodes deployed on the patient's body and sent to a central server. In such environments, security and privacy must be top priorities. Moreover, since decision-making is performed on the basis of the collected data, it can be important to maintain the chronological order of events in a secure way. In view of this, this paper proposes a system for secure logging of events in sensor networks by gathering in a secure and reliable way all information at one central point. The system guarantees the chronological order of logged events sent by the different sensors. It also allows one to detect the modification, deletion, and addition of logged data. As a proof of concept, we have designed a prototype of the gateway sensor on an FPGA platform that is responsible for the secure logging and the secure transmission of this information. Our prototype is based on the low-cost Spartan-6 FPGA which is equipped with several hard IP-cores such as Ethernet and CompactFlash, which makes it suitable for event storage. As it turns out, the FPGA board (SP-605) is able to store 20,830 logged events, computes digests in 2.51 @ms and only uses 56% of the LUTs of the FPGA. Thus, the reconfigurable nature of FPGAs makes them suitable for use in extending the capabilities of commercial gateways, in order to provide secure logging in a WSN.

The modern distribution of the euryhaline ostracod Cyprideis torosa (Jones, 1850) is illustrated on three geographical maps, visualizing its occurrence in Europe, Africa and Asia. The presence of other Cyprideis species, within the distribution area of C. torosa, is discussed. The species has also been recorded from Australia, but it appears now that its presence and that of other Cyprideis species, is a complex issue, that requires new research. Passive transport by migratory birds is briefly dealt with, by mentioning some interesting new examples from the literature, and by linking the distribution in China to the Central Asian Flyway of waterfowl. Cyprideis torosa is a single, highly variable, polymorphic and widely distributed species, with locally different populations. This variability is commented upon and put in a broader context. An imaginary line, connecting the peripheral records, delineates the distribution area of the species. The most interesting aspect is the very pronounced north–south distribution. The species occurs above the Arctic Circle in Europe and Asia but also in South Africa, illustrating that it is a eurythermal species that has adapted to very divergent temperature regimes.Supplementary material: The literature on which the figures are based is available at: https://doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.c.3149791.v1

Summary 1. The Pleistocene glaciations during the Quaternary appear to have resulted in an impoverished groundwater fauna in northern Europe. Re-colonisation may have occurred either through long-distance dispersal from unglaciated southern areas or from local refugia. 2. The Belgian groundwater fauna was sampled at multiple sites, and its habitats characterised, to assess whether the composition of present-day stygobiotic assemblages can be attributed to either of these mechanisms. 3. A total of 202 sampling sites were selected in four hydrogeographic units of the Meuse River catchment. Sites were equally divided among the saturated and unsaturated zones of fractured aquifers (karst) and within the hyporheic and phreatic zones of porous aquifers. Seventeen environmental parameters were determined in parallel. 4. More than 140 species were recorded, including representatives of the Amphipoda, Cladocera, Copepoda, Hydrachnidia, Isopoda, Oligochaeta, Ostracoda, Mollusca, Syncarida and Nematoda. Thirty stygobiont species were identified, of which 10 species were new to the Belgian fauna, raising the total number of stygobiotic species in Belgium to 41. 5. The frequency of occurrences of stygobiotic species was always low, with 37% of the sampled sites lacking stygobionts. A few species were exclusive to one hydrological zone, although no statistically significant differences were detected in species richness at any of the four hierarchial levels considered (Meuse catchment = region, hydrogeographic units, aquifer type and hydrological zone). 6. Overall, results suggest that the stygobiotic fauna of Belgium is species-poor and mostly comprises widely distributed species with broad ecological tolerances. This supports the view that eurytopic species re-colonised the area by long-distance dispersal from refugia in southern Europe. The virtual absence of endemic species further suggests that the scenario of an ancient fauna that survived in local refugia is of minor importance.

The 1st International Symposium on Ostracoda (ISO) was held in Naples (1963). The philosophy behind this symposium and the logical outcome of what is now known as the International Research Group on Ostracoda (IRGO) are here reviewed, namely ostracodology over the last 50 years is sociologically analysed. Three different and important historic moments for the scientific achievements of this domain are recognised. The first one, between about 1963 and 1983, is related to applied research for the oil industry as well as to the great interest in the better description of the marine environment by both zoologists and palaeontologists. Another important aspect during this period was the work by researchers dealing with Palaeozoic ostracods, who had their own discussion group, IRGPO. Gradually, the merger of this latter group with those dealing with post-Palaeozoic ostracods at various meetings improved the communication between the two groups of specialists. A second period was approximately delineated between 1983 and 2003. During this time-slice, more emphasis was addressed to environmental research with topics such as the study of global events and long-term climate change. Ostracodologists profited also from the research “politics” within national and international programmes. Large international research teams emerged using new research methods. During the third period (2003–2013), communication and collaborative research reached a global dimension. Amongst the topics of research we cite the reconstruction of palaeoclimate using transfer functions, the building of large datasets of ostracod distributions for regional and intercontinental studies, and the implementation of actions that should lead to taxonomic harmonisation. Projects within which molecular biological techniques are routinely used, combined with sophisticated morphological information, expanded now in their importance. The documentation of the ostracod description improved through new techniques to visualise morphological details, which stimulated also communication between ostracodologists. Efforts of making available ostracod information through newsletters and electronic media are evoked.

Marine species of the ostracod genus Microceratina Swanson (Cytheruridae, Eucytherurinae) were until now known only from their hard parts, the valves and carapaces, as no living animals have been described. Here we report the first living population, from a tropical anchialine cave. The description of the limbs and hard parts of this new taxon, M. martensi sp. nov., enhances our understanding of the origin and evolution of the cave-dwelling Microceratina – the new species and M. pseudoamfibola (Barbeito-Gonzalez) from an anchialine cave in Southern Italy – and clarifies their affinities with other Eucytherurinae species. Microceratina is known from both Recent and fossil species (Quaternary, Tertiary and Late Cretaceous) from shelf and deep-sea habitats and/or sedimentary facies, located in the Pacific Ocean (along the Australian and New Zealand coasts), the Mediterranean (Greece and Italy), the North Atlantic (British Isles) and the Baltic Sea (Rügen Island). This suggests that the Microceratina group spread through the expanding Tethys Ocean. The morphological traits of the two cave-dwelling species reflect their ecological conditions. Cave-dwelling Microceratina species appear to have originated from epigean shallow water species predisposed to colonize subterranean habitats.

Four new species, belonging to three genera, of ostracods from Lake Tanganyika are described: Mesocyprideis nitida sp.nov., Romecytheridea belone sp.nov., R. plegma sp. nov. and Cyprideis loricata sp. nov. The Cyprideis species flock of Lake Tanganyika now consists of 17 formally described species (16 endemic) in 6 genera (4 endemic). The geographical and ecological distribution of the four species is briefly discussed and some supplementary remarks on the radiation of the Cyprideis species flock in Lake Tanganyika are offered.

We present a transparency-enhancing tool in the form of a cryptographic scheme that enables data processors to inform users about the actual data processing that takes place on their personal data. Our proposed solution can handle arbitrary processes while offloading storage and interactions with users to dedicated log servers. On top of strong integrity and confidentiality properties, our scheme takes users' privacy one step further by making it impossible to link multiple log entries for the same user or user identifiers across multiple data processors (for distributed processes). Our proposed solution has several applications, e.g., it can make access to electronic health records transparent to the patients to whom the records relate. Furthermore, we are the first to formalise the required security and privacy properties in this setting in a general manner (not specifically for our scheme) and prove that our scheme fulfils these. Finally, we show that our scheme is applicable in practice, providing performance results for a prototype implementation.

Transparency of data processing is often a requirement for compliance to legislation and/or business requirements. Furthermore, it has recognised as a key privacy principle, for example in the European Data Protection Directive. At the same time, transparency of the data processing should be limited to the users involved in order to minimise the leakage of sensitive business information and privacy of the employees (if any) performing the data processing.

In the online world, service providers allow users to upload data to be stored or processed. In some cases, privacy will become an essential feature. Sensitive content can be the data provided to or the services used at the service provider. Logging of the actions of the service providers can therefore also generate privacy-sensitive content. However, to enhance transparency towards users, logging can be a very useful tool. In this paper, we build upon the concept of distributed privacy-preserving log trails. The trust in such a system lies in the storage of a vector in a certain register stored in software. With a piece of malicious software, a hacker or curious user could misuse this register to learn about a certain process or to learn for whom a service is performed, although the scheme ensures forward-unlinkability and forward-integrity. In this paper, we strengthen the conventional software approach by implementing the vector in external hardware. This hardens the scheme further, and reduces the level to which the log server has to be trusted, at the cost of additional but solvable security threats.

This paper presents the implementation of a home banking solution for mobile phones, using a secure micro-SD card. This card is used to implement a strong online authentication with the bank server, based on a public key infrastructure, providing a flexible way to add entities --- users as well as banks --- to the ecosystem. The implemented system is running on Android mobile phones, taking into account the possible weaknesses at operating system level. The microSD card is running Java Card 2.2.1. Different security features are discussed that considerably improve upon existing mobile banking systems and allow for seamless integration of our system in the current smart phone context.

This paper describes the protocol, architecture, and implementation details of an FPGA-based embedded system that is able to remotely reconfigure the FPGA, using a TCP/IP connection, in a secure way. When considering the security aspects, we imply data confidentiality, explicit key authentication and data origin authentication. Since these aspects are overhead for the main application, the system is to be as small as possible. Therefore we have focused on compactness rather than on speed for the implementation. The implemented solution exists out of 2 components: a communication part and a cryptographic part. The system can be easily integrated at any point in the design of an FPGA-based embedded system, due to the simple and modular architecture. © 2011 IEEE. ispartof: pages:74-79 ispartof: Workshop on Reconfigurable Communication-centric Systems-on-Chip 2011 pages:74-79 ispartof: RECOSOC 2011 date:20 Jun - 22 Jun 2011 status: published

Privacy protection tools can be characterised by the number of parties that have to cooperate so that the tools work and achieve the desired effect [Pfi01]: Some privacy protection tools can be used stand-alone, without the need for the cooperation of other parties. Others require that the communication partners use the same tools. Some tools only function when being supported by an appropriate infrastructure that quite often is currently not in place.

In 2008, Wan et al. presented an anonymous ID-based group key agreement scheme for wireless networks, for which they claim that it ensures anonymity and unlinkability of the group members, as well as forward and backward secrecy of the group session key. In this paper, we show that forward and backward secrecy do not hold for the protocol. We propose a correction that introduces a shielding factor that protects each member's input to the group key. we also introduce a new feature that assures the correctness of the key as computed by all group members. This results in an increased computation cost, due to extra public key operations, and a similar communication cost. We also show in which practical setting the protocol can be deployed. © 2011 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg. ispartof: pages:214-222 ispartof: Lecture Notes in Computer Science vol:6543 pages:214-222 ispartof: SOFSEM 2011 location:SLOVAKIA, Novy Smokovec date:22 Jan - 28 Jan 2011 status: published

In this paper a practical offline payment system based on digital vouchers using Near Field Communication (NFC) in mobile phones is presented. This work was performed within the scope of the IBBT NFC-Voucher project. The goal of the project is to assess the feasibility of such a system, from a technical and security perspective, using tangible NFC devices such as the Nokia 6131 NFC mobile phone. This involved an in-depth technical and security analysis of all actors in the system and a rigorous elaboration of the practical security requirements and assumptions. In the architecture implementing and connecting all the different actors of this voucher payment system, no compromises regarding security were made. At device level all sensitive data is stored in a Secure Element (SE) with limited access for non-authorised users. The backbone and voucher transfer system uses a classical Public Key Infrastructure (PKI), such that only trusted and registered parties can handle and transfer vouchers. After having implemented this system, we conclude that it is possible to build an off-line payment system for mobile phones without compromising security, but that it remains quite challenging, given the current limitations on speed, available memory and security functionality.

EVAWEB is a Web-based assessment system that has been developed to evaluate the learning enhancement produced by the use of X.509 Public Key Infrastructure (X.509/PKIX)-based digital signatures in a real environment. EVAWEB allows the students to experience main X.509/PKIX processes related to the digital signature mechanism. In this paper, EVAWEB and its assessment by the students are described. Publicado

The technique of electronic time-stamping allows a client to get an electronic proof of the existence of a document at a speci.c point in time. A simple way to achieve this is to produce a digital signature over the pair (document,time). Linked time-stamps have an advantage over these simple time-stamps because they construct a veri.able link between time-stamps. In this paper, we discuss how to include linked time-stamps in the OASIS Digital Signature Services standard. We highlight the problem points when introducing a sub-pro.le of this standard, and we describe some additional structures that are needed to accommodate a broad range of linked time-stamping schemes.

In the last couple of years, several European countries have started projects which intend to provide their citizens with electronic identity cards, driven by the European Directive on Electronic Signatures. One can expect that within a few years, these smart cards will be used in a wide variety of applications. In this paper, we describe the common threats that can be identified when using security tokens such as smart cards in web applications. We illustrate each of these threats with a few attack scenarios. This paper is part of a series of papers, written by several academic teams. Each paper focuses on one particular technological building block for web applications.

This article gives a brief introduction to the Belgian EID card project commonly referred to as “Belpic.” This introduction includes an overview of the history of the project, details on the visual and cryptographic aspects of the EID cards, a discussion of the different sub-CAs involved, together with the card issuing process.

The stratigraphy of the quaternary deeper marine and terrestnal deposits of the North Sea coastal plain in France is descnbed from the profile of the excavation of west outer-harbour of Dunkerque at Loon-Plage (Nord) The age - holocene or pleistocene - of the mollusc fauna of the lower manne pebbly and shelly sands is discussed , it is actually asenbed to an interglacial. The recent regional data incite also to consider as Eemian this Loon Formation, widely preserved m depths, underlying Weichselian eolian loams overlain by Boreal basal peat which marks the beginning of the manne holocene sequence, La stratigraphie des dépôts quaternaires profonds, marins et continentaux, de la plaine maritime de la mer du Nord en France est décrite a partir du profil de l'ancienne excavation du Port-Rapide de Dunkerque à Loon-Plage (Nord). L'âge - holocène ou pléistocène - de la faune malacologique des sables marins graveleux et coquilliers inférieurs était reste discuté , elle se rapporte en fait a un interglaciaire. Les données régionales récentes incitent aussi à attribuer un âge eemien à cette Formation de Loon, largement conservée en profondeur, sous-jacente à des limons weichseliens, lesquels sont surmontés par la Tourbe de base boréale qui marque le début de la séquence marine holocène., Sommé Jean, Cunat-Bogé Nicole, Vanhoorne Roger, Wouters Karel. La Formation de Loon : les dépôts pléistocènes marins profonds de la plaine maritime du Nord de la France [ The Loon formation : the marine pleistocene deep deposits in the coastal plain of northern France ]. In: Quaternaire, vol. 15, n°4, 2004. pp. 319-327.

XML has become a well-established format for information exchange. Several formats have been defined to secure XML data, such as XML Digital Signatures, XML Encryption and XKMS. In recent work by ETSI on XML digital signatures conforming to European legislation, time-stamps play a key role for qualified digital signatures. Some ASN.1-based formats for time-stamp protocols have been defined within IETF and ISO/IEC. In this paper, we investigate how the wide range of time-stamping protocols in the literature can be embedded into a single XML format; our work is based on existing standardisation efforts. We present our ideas in the form of a concrete XML structure, which can be used as the starting point to develop a mature XML-based time-stamping protocol.

Wireless sensor networks are gaining popularity. They are used in consumer and industrial applications, including home automation, healthcare applications, industrial process monitoring and control, environment and habitat monitoring, and traffic control. The sensor nodes in a network can capture sensitive and valuable information. This information is collected in a central server for further analysis. The transmission of these data needs to be secured and therefore, the research community is focusing on the security protocols to achieve this, and on the underlying threat model. In this paper we focus on the secure logging of the information gathering from the different nodes. The goal is to prove the chronological order, in a reliable way, of the observations and events in nodes. It can be useful to prove that a certain event at node x happened before another event at node y. For instance, consider the setting of a wireless body area sensor network (WBAN) in a hospital. A secure logging of the outputs of sensors from different patients enable the study of the flow and effects from the hospital bacteria, and leave no possibility to re-order events afterwards. Our proposal is based on the notion of linked time-stamps, in which a mes- sage digest chain is formed through events to be logged. The linking takes place at so-called gateway nodes, acting as communication hubs, and the central server node. Consequently, the gateway node becomes responsible for ordering the in- formation from the sensors of its network, while the central server orders the information of the different gateways.