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- All Subjects: Access control
- Creators: Zhang, Yanchao
Description
Smartphones are pervasive nowadays. They are supported by mobile platforms that allow users to download and run feature-rich mobile applications (apps). While mobile apps help users conveniently process personal data on mobile devices, they also pose security and privacy threats and put user's data at risk. Even though modern mobile platforms such as Android have integrated security mechanisms to protect users, most mechanisms do not easily adapt to user's security requirements and rapidly evolving threats. They either fail to provide sufficient intelligence for a user to make informed security decisions, or require great sophistication to configure the mechanisms for enforcing security decisions. These limitations lead to a situation where users are disadvantageous against emerging malware on modern mobile platforms. To remedy this situation, I propose automated and systematic approaches to address three security management tasks: monitoring, assessment, and confinement of mobile apps. In particular, monitoring apps helps a user observe and record apps' runtime behaviors as controlled under security mechanisms. Automated assessment distills intelligence from the observed behaviors and the security configurations of security mechanisms. The distilled intelligence further fuels enhanced confinement mechanisms that flexibly and accurately shape apps' behaviors. To demonstrate the feasibility of my approaches, I design and implement a suite of proof-of-concept prototypes that support the three tasks respectively.
ContributorsJing, Yiming (Author) / Ahn, Gail-Joon (Thesis advisor) / Doupe, Adam (Committee member) / Huang, Dijiang (Committee member) / Zhang, Yanchao (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2015
Description
Wireless communication technologies have been playing an important role in modern society. Due to its inherent mobility property, wireless networks are more vulnerable to passive attacks than traditional wired networks. Anonymity, as an important issue in mobile network environment, serves as the first topic that leads to all the research work presented in this manuscript. Specifically, anonymity issue in Mobile Ad hoc Networks (MANETs) is discussed with details as the first section of research.
To thoroughly study on this topic, the presented work approaches it from an attacker's perspective. Under a perfect scenario, all the traffic in a targeted MANET exhibits the communication relations to a passive attacker. However, localization errors pose a significant influence on the accuracy of the derived communication patterns. To handle such issue, a new scheme is proposed to generate super nodes, which represent the activities of user groups in the target MANET. This scheme also helps reduce the scale of monitoring work by grouping users based on their behaviors.
The first part of work on anonymity in MANET leads to the thought on its major cause. The link-based communication pattern is a key contributor to the success of the traffic analysis attack. A natural way to circumvent such issue is to use link-less approaches. Information Centric Networking (ICN) is a typical instance of such kind. Its communication pattern is able to overcome the anonymity issue with MANET. However, it also comes with its own shortcomings. One of them is access control enforcement. To tackle this issue, a new naming scheme for contents transmitted in ICN networks is presented. This scheme is based on a new Attribute-Based Encryption (ABE) algorithm. It enforces access control in ICN with minimum requirements on additional network components.
Following the research work on ABE, an important function, delegation, exhibits a potential security issue. In traditional ABE schemes, Ciphertext-Policy ABE (CP-ABE), a user is able to generate a subset of authentic attribute key components for other users using delegation function. This capability is not monitored or controlled by the trusted third party (TTP) in the cryptosystem. A direct threat caused from this issue is that any user may intentionally or unintentionally lower the standards for attribute assignments. Unauthorized users/attackers may be able to obtain their desired attributes through a delegation party instead of directly from the TTP. As the third part of work presented in this manuscript, a three-level delegation restriction architecture is proposed. Furthermore, a delegation restriction scheme following this architecture is also presented. This scheme allows the TTP to have full control on the delegation function of all its direct users.
To thoroughly study on this topic, the presented work approaches it from an attacker's perspective. Under a perfect scenario, all the traffic in a targeted MANET exhibits the communication relations to a passive attacker. However, localization errors pose a significant influence on the accuracy of the derived communication patterns. To handle such issue, a new scheme is proposed to generate super nodes, which represent the activities of user groups in the target MANET. This scheme also helps reduce the scale of monitoring work by grouping users based on their behaviors.
The first part of work on anonymity in MANET leads to the thought on its major cause. The link-based communication pattern is a key contributor to the success of the traffic analysis attack. A natural way to circumvent such issue is to use link-less approaches. Information Centric Networking (ICN) is a typical instance of such kind. Its communication pattern is able to overcome the anonymity issue with MANET. However, it also comes with its own shortcomings. One of them is access control enforcement. To tackle this issue, a new naming scheme for contents transmitted in ICN networks is presented. This scheme is based on a new Attribute-Based Encryption (ABE) algorithm. It enforces access control in ICN with minimum requirements on additional network components.
Following the research work on ABE, an important function, delegation, exhibits a potential security issue. In traditional ABE schemes, Ciphertext-Policy ABE (CP-ABE), a user is able to generate a subset of authentic attribute key components for other users using delegation function. This capability is not monitored or controlled by the trusted third party (TTP) in the cryptosystem. A direct threat caused from this issue is that any user may intentionally or unintentionally lower the standards for attribute assignments. Unauthorized users/attackers may be able to obtain their desired attributes through a delegation party instead of directly from the TTP. As the third part of work presented in this manuscript, a three-level delegation restriction architecture is proposed. Furthermore, a delegation restriction scheme following this architecture is also presented. This scheme allows the TTP to have full control on the delegation function of all its direct users.
ContributorsLi, Bing (Author) / Huang, Dijiang (Thesis advisor) / Xue, Guoliang (Committee member) / Ahn, Gail-Joon (Committee member) / Zhang, Yanchao (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2016