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1. On Runtime Software Security of TrustZone-M Based IoT Devices

   https://doi.org/10.1109/GLOBECOM42002.2020.9322370  

   Luo, Lan ; Zhang, Yue ; Zou, Cliff ; Shao, Xinhui ; Ling, Zhen ; Fu, Xinwen ( December 2020 , GLOBECOM 2020 - 2020 IEEE Global Communications Conference)

   Internet of Things (IoT) devices have been increasingly integrated into our daily life. However, such smart devices suffer a broad attack surface. Particularly, attacks targeting the device software at runtime are challenging to defend against if IoT devices use resource-constrained microcontrollers (MCUs). TrustZone-M, a TrustZone extension for MCUs, is an emerging security technique fortifying MCU based IoT devices. This paper presents the first security analysis of potential software security issues in TrustZone-M enabled MCUs. We explore the stack-based buffer overflow (BOF) attack for code injection, return-oriented programming (ROP) attack, heap-based BOF attack, format string attack, and attacks against Non-secure Callable (NSC) functions in the context of TrustZone-M. We validate these attacks using the Microchip SAM L11 MCU, which uses the ARM Cortex-M23 processor with the TrustZone-M technology. Strategies to mitigate these software attacks are also discussed.
2. Two-factor Password-authenticated Key Exchange with End-to-end Security

   https://doi.org/10.1145/3446807  

   Jarecki, Stanislaw ; Jubur, Mohammed ; Krawczyk, Hugo ; Saxena, Nitesh ; Shirvanian, Maliheh ( August 2021 , ACM Transactions on Privacy and Security)

   We present a secure two-factor authentication (TFA) scheme based on the user’s possession of a password and a crypto-capable device. Security is “end-to-end” in the sense that the attacker can attack all parts of the system, including all communication links and any subset of parties (servers, devices, client terminals), can learn users’ passwords, and perform active and passive attacks, online and offline. In all cases the scheme provides the highest attainable security bounds given the set of compromised components. Our solution builds a TFA scheme using any Device-enhanced Password-authenticated Key Exchange (PAKE), defined by Jarecki et al., and any Short Authenticated String (SAS) Message Authentication, defined by Vaudenay. We show an efficient instantiation of this modular construction, which utilizes any password-based client-server authentication method, with or without reliance on public-key infrastructure. The security of the proposed scheme is proven in a formal model that we formulate as an extension of the traditional PAKE model. We also report on a prototype implementation of our schemes, including TLS-based and PKI-free variants, as well as several instantiations of the SAS mechanism, all demonstrating the practicality of our approach. Finally, we present a usability study evaluating the viability of our protocol contrasted with the traditionalmore »PIN-based TFA approach in terms of efficiency, potential for errors, user experience, and security perception of the underlying manual process. 1« less
3. Securing Time in Untrusted Operating Systems with TimeSeal

   https://doi.org/10.1109/RTSS46320.2019.00018  

   Anwar, Fatima M. ; Garcia, Luis ; Han, Xi ; Srivastava, Mani ( December 2019 , 2019 IEEE Real-Time Systems Symposium (RTSS))

   An accurate sense of elapsed time is essential for the safe and correct operation of hardware, software, and networked systems. Unfortunately, an adversary can manipulate the system's time and violate causality, consistency, and scheduling properties of underlying applications. Although cryptographic techniques are used to secure data, they cannot ensure time security as securing a time source is much more challenging, given that the result of inquiring time must be delivered in a timely fashion. In this paper, we first describe general attack vectors that can compromise a system's sense of time. To counter these attacks, we propose a secure time architecture, TIMESEAL that leverages a Trusted Execution Environment (TEE) to secure time-based primitives. While CPU security features of TEEs secure code and data in protected memory, we show that time sources available in TEE are still prone to OS attacks. TIMESEAL puts forward a high-resolution time source that protects against the OS delay and scheduling attacks. Our TIMESEAL prototype is based on Intel SGX and provides sub-millisecond (msec) resolution as compared to 1-second resolution of SGX trusted time. It also securely bounds the relative time accuracy to msec under OS attacks. In essence, TIMESEAL provides the capability of trusted timestampingmore »and trusted scheduling to critical applications in the presence of a strong adversary. It delivers all temporal use cases pertinent to secure sensing, computing, and actuating in networked systems.« less
4. A Survey of DDOS Attack Detection Techniques for IoT Systems Using BlockChain Technology

   https://doi.org/10.3390/electronics11233892  

   Khan, Zulfiqar Ali ; Namin, Akbar Siami ( December 2022 , Electronics)

   The Internet of Things (IoT) is a network of sensors that helps collect data 24/7 without human intervention. However, the network may suffer from problems such as the low battery, heterogeneity, and connectivity issues due to the lack of standards. Even though these problems can cause several performance hiccups, security issues need immediate attention because hackers access vital personal and financial information and then misuse it. These security issues can allow hackers to hijack IoT devices and then use them to establish a Botnet to launch a Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attack. Blockchain technology can provide security to IoT devices by providing secure authentication using public keys. Similarly, Smart Contracts (SCs) can improve the performance of the IoT–blockchain network through automation. However, surveyed work shows that the blockchain and SCs do not provide foolproof security; sometimes, attackers defeat these security mechanisms and initiate DDoS attacks. Thus, developers and security software engineers must be aware of different techniques to detect DDoS attacks. In this survey paper, we highlight different techniques to detect DDoS attacks. The novelty of our work is to classify the DDoS detection techniques according to blockchain technology. As a result, researchers can enhance their systems by usingmore »blockchain-based support for detecting threats. In addition, we provide general information about the studied systems and their workings. However, we cannot neglect the recent surveys. To that end, we compare the state-of-the-art DDoS surveys based on their data collection techniques and the discussed DDoS attacks on the IoT subsystems. The study of different IoT subsystems tells us that DDoS attacks also impact other computing systems, such as SCs, networking devices, and power grids. Hence, our work briefly describes DDoS attacks and their impacts on the above subsystems and IoT. For instance, due to DDoS attacks, the targeted computing systems suffer delays which cause tremendous financial and utility losses to the subscribers. Hence, we discuss the impacts of DDoS attacks in the context of associated systems. Finally, we discuss Machine-Learning algorithms, performance metrics, and the underlying technology of IoT systems so that the readers can grasp the detection techniques and the attack vectors. Moreover, associated systems such as Software-Defined Networking (SDN) and Field-Programmable Gate Arrays (FPGA) are a source of good security enhancement for IoT Networks. Thus, we include a detailed discussion of future development encompassing all major IoT subsystems.« less
5. P-HIP: A Lightweight and Privacy-Aware Host Identity Protocol for Internet of Things

   https://doi.org/10.1109/JIOT.2020.3009024  

   Hossain, Mahmud ; Hasan, Ragib ( July 2020 , IEEE Internet of Things Journal)

   The Host Identity Protocol (HIP) has emerged as the most suitable solution to uniquely identify smart devices in the mobile and distributed Internet of Things (IoT) systems, such as smart cities, homes, cars, and healthcare. The HIP provides authentication methods that enable secure communications between HIP peers. However, the authentication methods provided by the HIP cannot be adopted by the IoT devices with limited processing power because of the computation-intensive cryptographic operations involved in hash generation, signature validation, and session key establishment. Moreover, IoT devices cannot utilize the HIP as is to communicate securely in the low power and lossy networks as there is a considerable communication overhead, such as packet fragmentation and reassembly, for exchanging certificates over a lossy link. Additionally, the use of static host identifiers makes IoT devices vulnerable to cyber espionage and user-targeted attacks. In this article, we propose an authentication scheme, P-HIP, that protects the identity privacy of an IoT device by enabling the device to compute and use unique host identifiers from networks to networks and sessions to sessions. To make the HIP suitable for resource-constrained IoT devices, P-HIP provides methods that unburden IoT devices from computation-intensive operations, such as modular exponentiation, involved inmore »authentication and session-key exchange. Additionally, P-HIP minimizes the communication overheads for exchanging certificates in lossy networks. We implement a prototype of P-HIP on Contiki enabled IoT that shows P-HIP can reduce computation costs, communication overheads, and the session-key establishment time when used by low-powered devices in a lossy network.« less