Thesis proposals IS
Extended Attack Tree
Background
Attack trees provide a semi-formal mechanism for identifying attack pathways for computer systems and networks; their origin lies in the fault tree analysis techniques developed for safety and reliability during the 1960s. As with fault trees, attack trees permit the identification of security problems at design time as well as the assessment of a system’s reliability during operation. The technique can also serve to identify individual components that may contain vulnerabilities and either require testing or can be used for an attack pathway.
Objectives
The objective of this thesis project is the investigation of extensions to the basic attack tree mechanism as proposed by Schneier in the form of conditials and logical connectives. To this end, a formalization of the semantics of extended attack trees (EAT) is to be developed which is subsequently to be translated into an interactive tool which permits the semi-automated formulation and evaluation of complex EATs. Given the potential complexity of nontrivial attack trees and the frequent need for documentation, another area of emphasis in addition to interactive exploration is the generation of visually compelling hardcopy output. Using the thus created extended attack tree mechanism, case studies are to be used for a qualitative evaluation.
Faculty contact
Dr. Stephen D.Wolthusen
Email:stephen.wolthusen@hig.no
Phone: +47 61 13 52 89
Fax: +47 61 13 52 40
Office: A124C
Secure Topographic Routing in Mobile Ad-Hoc Networks
Background
Mobile ad-hoc networks (MANETs) are confronted with additional requirements besides ensuring connectivity through multihop routing among all participating nodes in a number of application areas. One particularly relevant factor in this is the propagation of radio waves and the interactions of signal propagation with terrain or enclosed space. Given knowledge of a node’s own position, that of friendly and possibly also of hostile nodes, and of the local topography, it becomes possible to both develop effective routing algorithms and taking security aspects such as the minimization of broadcast energy and plausibility checks for position reports into account.
Objectives
During the course of this thesis prpoject, a modeling and simulation mechanism for the integration of topographic data and simple radio signal propagation characteristics is to be developed. Based on this mechanism, an algorithm is to be designed and implemented which, based on known geolocation and topographical data, can compute an approximation of radio signal propagation and reachability. The simulation shall be based on a scenario in which a small number of nodes (10-20) are communicating via IEEE 802.11 radio modules that can be tuned in their broadcast energy over a wide band. Nodes shall be assumed to have knowledge of their own geolocation via services such as GPS as well as topographical mapping material. The simulation itself shall be conducted using the NS2 network simulator.
Faculty contact
Dr. Stephen D.Wolthusen
Email:stephen.wolthusen@hig.no
Phone: +47 61 13 52 89
Fax: +47 61 13 52 40
Office: A124C
Authentication by means of brain-computer interfaces
Recently, significant advances in the development of brain-computer interfaces have been achieved. Although the majority of devices of this type serve to interpret brain signals in order to control mechanical equipment, robots etc., some applications in the field of authentication have also been proposed. The goal of these devices in the authentication environment would be to extract repeatable features from the signals originating from the human brain (such as EEG signals) without any interpretation. Thus, maximum entropy of the authentication material could be achieved. An authentication system that uses a brain-computer interface would be two-dimensional: what one knows (a password that is presented to the system by means of a brain-computer interface) and what one is (the same password is presented to the system in different ways, which are unique for every human). In such a way, it would be possible to approach the ideal authentication system, resistant to so called shoulder surfing, theft, user non-compliance and changeable at the same time (unlike biometrics).
The goal of the work on this thesis would be to simulate a system of this kind and to describe its basic characteristics. The focus would be on the analysis of brain signals and their feasibility for application in an authentication system. Such a work includes acquiring knowledge from the field of signal processing, pattern recognition, feature extraction, as well as simulation on a computer and statistical analysis of the results regarding authentication security metrics. This is an interesting advanced topic intended for ambitious students.
Contact
Slobodan Petrovic, slobodanp(at)hig.no, http://www.hig.no/~slobodanp
Semantic Clustering of Textual Data
Background
There exist a number of technical controls for handling and processing classified documents, which restrict access of staff members to documents for which both clearance and need to know are appropriate. These measures are, however, severely restricted in their granularity both because of technical constraints and because of the administrative overhead that would be incurred at higher levels of granularity. As a result, staff members have access to considerably more information than for which a true demonstrable need to know exists. This leads to a considerable potential for inflicting damage. Particularly in the intelligence sector it is also frequently only possible to determine the legitimacy of accessing marginally related material a posteriori, restricting access too far would impede an analyst’s ability to conduct his or her inquiries.
Objectives
Objective of this thesis is to extract and identify semantic concepts from large and amorphous collections of textual data and to form these concepts info homogenized hierarchies or clusters for subsequent investigation in a companion thesis (“Semantic Anomaly Detection for Textual Data”). During the course of the thesis, techniques for thesaurus and synonym database creation and multiple techniques for cluster forming and analysis in multidimensional spaces are to be investigated and implemented. In particular, Boosted Bayesian Networks shall be investigated to this end. The results of the investigation are to be validated empirically and justified against results from the literature. The system shall be developed in a high level language (C or Ada 95) and must be operable on both Unix derivatives and Microsoft Windows 2000/XP.
Faculty contact
Dr. Stephen D.Wolthusen
Email: stephen.wolthusen@hig.no
Phone: +47 61 13 52 89
Fax: +47 61 13 52 40
Office: A124C
Semantic Anomaly Detection for Textual Data
Background
There exist a number of technical controls for handling and processing classified documents, which restrict access of staff members to documents for which both clearance and need to know are appropriate. These measures are, however, severely restricted in their granularity both because of technical constraints and because of the administrative overhead that would be incurred at higher levels of granularity. As a result, staff members have access to considerably more information than for which a true demonstrable need to know exists. This leads to a considerable potential for inflicting damage. Particularly in the intelligence sector it is also frequently only possible to determine the legitimacy of accessing marginally related material a posteriori, restricting access too far would impede an analyst’s ability to conduct his or her inquiries.
Objectives
Given conceptual clusters (derived from document collections in a companion thesis “Semantic Clustering of Textual Data”) extracted from textual data consisting of interrelated documents, the objective of this thesis is to investigate patterns of document accesses occurring during normal and abnormal operating behavior of both human operators and automated facilities. These patterns are to be investigated regarding recurring and related concepts identified within documents as well as for disjoint semantic concepts found in documents processed. Moreover, temporal patterns are also to be considered during these processing steps. Once baselines for stipulated behavioral patterns have been identified, the main objective of the thesis is the investigation and implementation of techniques for the statistical identification of anomalies within said access patterns. The choice of signal processing or statistical analysis techniques is then to be justified either empirically or theoretically. The system shall be developed in a high level language (C or Ada 95) and must be operable on both Unix derivatives and Microsoft Windows 2000/XP.
Faculty contact
Dr. Stephen D.Wolthusen
Email: stephen.wolthusen@hig.no
Phone: +47 61 13 52 89
Fax: +47 61 13 52 40
Office: A124C
Standardized attacks and adversary capabilities
Engineers in other fields are often able to assess resistance of some object against stress or attacks, e.g., walls resisting a standardized fire for a certain amount of time or doors resisting a certain number of standardized axe strokes. In information security, no comprehensive collection of standardized attacker capabilities and attack methods exist. Evaluation of systems, hence, is still a largely creative process. One of last year’s MSc theses examined adversary models of different domains and was a first step towards a common treatment of these. A model was developed to describe adversary capabilities as regards communication channels. It is desired to use this model as a starting point and extend it to include a unified description of attacker capabilities and resources. More work is required to adapt the framework to domains where communication channels are not necessarily prevalent, e.g., access control, malicious software, and data bases.
Contact
Hanno Langweg, hanno.langweg(at)hig.no, www.hig.no/~hannol
Analysing security decisions using simulations
Background
In order to make better security decisions we need to increase our understanding of the security consequences of decisions. Typical decisions include ‘buy new security equipment’, ‘train staff’, give staff responsibility, write a security policy, etc. Simulation tools for analyzing consequences of security decisions can also be used as a training tool.
Objective
Develop a simulation model for security decisions from scratch or by using a tool. Investigate the utility of the tool as a training tool. The student should investigate to what extent the tool can improve the quality of security relevant decisions.
Faculty contact
Professor Einar Snekkenes
Email: einar.snekkenes@hig.no
Phone: +47 982 11 222
Office: A124I
Certificateless Authenticated Two Party key Agreement Protocols
The main difficulty today in developing public key cryptography is not the problem of choosing appropriate public key cryptosystems, but it is rather the development of building public key infrastructure (PKI) for the authenticity of a user public key. On the other hand, an identity-based (ID-Based) cryptography does not require building a public key infrastructure, but the problem is that a master key generation center will know every user private key. Hence, it is also loss the privacy of a user if the master key generation center is not trusted or the master key generation can trace every transaction of a user. The certificateless public key cryptography is try to overcome the problem of PKI and ID-based cryptography, which is only proposed in 2003, which is a solution between PKI and ID-based cryptography. The other solution is the self-certified cryptography which was proposed in late 80s, but only a few cryptosystems were proposed so far. In this research project, certificateless authenticated two party key agreement protocols will be designed. The main advantage of this protocol is that it does not require having a PKI and will save the communication cost. This may be more suitable for a wireless communications environment. The approach of this research project is first study the ID-based two party key agreement protocols and then proceeds to design a new protocol.
Faculty Contact:
Dr. Chik How Tan
Email: Chik.tan@hig.no
Phone: +47 61 13 52 51
Fax: +47 61 13 52 40
Office: A124G
Authentication in Mobile Ad Hoc Network
In the mobile ad hoc network, there is no fixed infrastructure for the network. Any user can join and leave the network anytime. It is unlike a GSM network which is a fixed network. When a user switches on the GSM phone, it is immediately authenticated by the mobile switching center (MSC) as MSC have all the information of a user. But, it is different from a mobile ad hoc network as there is no center control the authentication process; hence, it is more difficult to authenticate a new user when joining the network. The other problem is when a user moves to other cell, how the new cell authenticates the user. It is unlike the GSM, when a user moves to other cell, the MSC will know the location of the user, and hence, it is automatically authenticated. Therefore, the authentication of a user in a mobile ad hoc network is quite a challenging problem. The approach of this research project is first to study a mobile ad hoc network environment and other existing authentication mechanisms. To analyze those various existing authentication mechanisms or protocols, if there are any weaknesses found, a new authentication protocol will proposed.
Faculty Contact
Dr. Chik How Tan
Email: Chik.tan@hig.no
Phone: +47 61 13 52 51
Fax: +47 61 13 52 40
Office: A124G
Access Control in USB
As many devices can connect to computer (PC) through USB port, hence data is easily retrieved from these devices (in particular, thumb drive) through USB port. But, there will be no protection mechanism currently to control the access of data from computer to the thumb drive. Therefore, it is easy for anyone to access data through USB on an unattended computer. This is particular important when working in the more sensitive environment. For example, a taller may lead his desk to consult his/her supervisor for some matters, but a cleaner just walk by and plug in a thumb drive to access some sensitive information or planting some trojan horse software to retrieve information later on. Therefore, it is important to have some access control mechanism on accessing data through USB port. In this research project, the various access control mechanisms student will be studied and an access control mechanism or policy to control the access right of using of USB port needs to be proposed. After the mechanism is formalized, the student may implement his/her access control techniques for controlling access of data either through thumb drive or other connecting devices to PCs through USB port. The mechanism used is through access control policy or authentication mechanism.
Faculty Contact
Dr. Chik How Tan
Email: Chik.tan@hig.no
Phone: +47 61 13 52 51
Fax: +47 61 13 52 40
Office: A124G
Identity Based SSL
In recent year, the parameters in elliptic curve cryptosystems have been standardised, for example, an elliptic curve and size of a based finite field, etc. Many researches have been proposed to use elliptic curve cryptosystem in many applications to provide a better security and short public key length which in term will save communications bandwidth. Most of the identity based (ID-based) cryptosystem are built from elliptic curve cryptosystem. This research project is to explore building an ID-based cryptosystem in Secure Socket Layer (SSL); or rather, proposing an ID-based key agreement protocol. The potential of this application is to provide implicit authentication of server on unauthenticated server setting. The approach of this research project is to study the original secure sockets layer (SSL) and ID-based cryptosystem. Then, a ID-based key agreement protocol will proposed. It is good that the student could fully implement ID-based SSL based on elliptic curve cryptosystem.
Faculty Contact
Dr. Chik How Tan
Email: Chik.tan@hig.no
Phone: +47 61 13 52 51
Fax: +47 61 13 52 40
Office: A124G
Security in Personal Data Assistant (PDA)
Those lower power devices, for example, PDA and GMS, are easily stolen or loss. If the PDA is being stolen, then the data stored in the device can be retrieved by the attacker. The other problem of this device often store some personal data (bank account, password) or sometime sensitive data that retrieve from e-mail. Furthermore, there is a security threat reported recently on how to scan data store in mobile phone and related PDA devices. This means that the data can be retrieve easily from mobile phone or PDA devices. Hence, there is a need to protect data stored in the PDA. The goals of this project are built an access control mechanism and protect data stored in the device through cryptography techniques. The approach of this research project is to come out the security framework of PDA and mechanism used for access control and protection of data. Based on this framework, the actual implementation will be carrying out to realize the framework.
Faculty Contact
Dr. Chik How Tan
Email: Chik.tan@hig.no
Phone: +47 61 13 52 51
Fax: +47 61 13 52 40
Office: A124G
Analysis of Key Agreement Protocols
Currently, there are many key agreement protocols have been proposed in the literature. But these were mostly insecure. The problems of these protocols are mostly without security proof; or without careful analysis of the protocol; or lack of knowledge of attacking methods in key agreement protocols. The goal of this research project is to carry out an analysis of some (five or six) key agreement protocols published in the literature recently and try to find their weaknesses and possibly attacks them. The approach of this research project is first understood various attacks methods on key agreement protocols and the design criteria of key agreement protocols. Secondly, carefully analyze some (five or six) protocols and identify their weaknesses; hopefully, it can launch an attack on some key agreement protocols. As this research project is cryptography based this requires student who are really interested and good background of cryptography, especially on key agreement protocols. Those attacks techniques can be learnt through this project by reading other papers’ attack method.
Faculty Contact
Dr. Chik How Tan
Email: Chik.tan@hig.no
Phone: +47 61 13 52 51
Fax: +47 61 13 52 40
Office: A124G
Performance Comparisons of Pairing-based Cryptography
In recent year, many pairing-based cryptographic primitives are proposed. The pairing technique is part of the properties of elliptic curve. Sometimes, it refers to as a more generic term as bilinear map. Some cryptographic primitives were constructed using a bilinear map, their performances are either not analyzed or not closely related to the actual pairing computation (for example, Weil pairing or Tate pairing). Hence, it sometimes leads to misleading conclusion of their performance. Furthermore, some of the cryptographic primitives may have constraint on a particular type of elliptic curve. In this project, some of the cryptographic primitives’ performance will be examined, comparisons will be made under what conditions one primitive might be better than other, and any constraints of the cryptographic primitives will also be identified, etc. As this project required in dept knowledge of graduate level of mathematics, the supervisor will provide some trainings on the required mathematics background (on Weil pairing, Tate pairing and other parings, etc) in order to carry out the research of this project. Furthermore, the student is required to have a good C/C++ programming language in order to carry out this project.
Faculty Contact
Dr. Chik How Tan
Email: Chik.tan@hig.no
Phone: +47 61 13 52 51
Fax: +47 61 13 52 40
Office: A124G
Security Analysis of Pass-based Key Exchange Protocols
Recently, there are many password-based key exchange protocols have been proposed in the literature. Some of these were not analysed in detail, which may leads to insecurity. The problems of these protocols are mostly without security proof; or without careful analysis of the protocol; or lack of knowledge of attacking methods in key exchange protocols. The goal of this research project is to carry out an analysis of some (five or six) password-based key exchange protocols published in the literature recently and try to find their weaknesses and possibly attacks them. The approach of this research project is first understood various attacks methods on key exchange protocols and the design criteria of key exchange protocols. Secondly, carefully analyze some (five or six) protocols and identify their weaknesses; hopefully, it can launch an attack on some password-based key exchange protocols. As this research project is a cryptography research, this requires student who are really interested and have a good background of cryptography, especially on key exchange protocols. Those attacks techniques can be learnt through this project by reading other papers’ attack method.
Faculty Contact
Dr. Chik How Tan
Email: Chik.tan@hig.no
Phone: +47 61 13 52 51
Fax: +47 61 13 52 40
Office: A124G
Performance Comparisons of Authenticated Group Key Agreement Protocols
In recent year, many authenticated group key agreement protocols are proposed. The authenticated group key agreement is basically used to establish the common key used by a group of users (more than two). This is different from the two-party key agreement protocol. The group key agreement is very useful in multicast and wireless ad hoc network environment. But, it is hard to compare the performance among the group key agreement protocols, this is due to its complexity and sometime many messages are transmitted in the protocol, therefore the performance should take this into consideration. This project is basically to explore a method for better comparison and also implement the result in C/C++ language. Hence, the student is required to have a good C/C++ programming language in order to carry out this project.
Faculty Contact
Dr. Chik How Tan
Email: Chik.tan@hig.no
Phone: +47 61 13 52 51
Fax: +47 61 13 52 40
Office: A124G
Password-based SSL/TLS
SSL/TLS is widely used in secure Web applications. The security of SSL/TLS provides at the transport layer. Recently, there are many phishing attacks on web to steal password or sensitive personal information even through SSL/TLS. Although SSL/TLS is claimed to be secured, it is still subjected to phishing attack due to its weaknesses in handshake protocol. One method to overcome the phishing attacks is to modify the handshake protocol based on password. This project is to design a password-based protocol and implement a password-based SSL/TLS. The student is required to have a good C/C++ programming language as well as knowledge of the source code of OpenSSL and modifying the protocol to be password-based SSL/TLS.
Faculty Contact
Dr. Chik How Tan
Email: Chik.tan@hig.no
Phone: +47 61 13 52 51
Fax: +47 61 13 52 40
Office: A124G
Access Control in USB
As many devices can connect to computer (PC) through USB port, hence data is easily retrieved from these devices (in particular, thumb drive) through USB port. But, there will be no protection mechanism currently to control the access of data from computer to the thumb drive. Therefore, it is easy for anyone to access data through USB on an unattended computer. This is particular important when working in the more sensitive environment. For example, a taller may lead his desk to consult his/her supervisor for some matters, but a cleaner just walk by and plug in a thumb drive to access some sensitive information or planting some trojan horse software to retrieve information later on. Therefore, it is important to have some access control mechanism on accessing data through USB port. In this research project, the various access control mechanisms student will be studied and an access control mechanism or policy to control the access right of using of USB port needs to be proposed. After the mechanism is formalized, the student may implement his/her access control techniques for controlling access of data either through thumb drive or other connecting devices to PCs through USB port. The mechanism used is through access control policy or authentication mechanism.
Faculty Contact
Dr. Chik How Tan
Email: Chik.tan@hig.no
Phone: +47 61 13 52 51
Fax: +47 61 13 52 40
Office: A124G
Security in Personal Data Assistant (PDA)
Those lower power devices, for example, PDA and GMS, are easily stolen or loss. If the PDA is being stolen, then the data stored in the device can be retrieved by the attacker. The other problem of this device often store some personal data (bank account, password) or sometime sensitive data that retrieve from e-mail. Furthermore, there is a security threat reported recently on how to scan data store in mobile phone and related PDA devices. This means that the data can be retrieve easily from mobile phone or PDA devices. Hence, there is a need to protect data stored in the PDA. The goals of this project are built an access control mechanism and protect data stored in the device through cryptography techniques. The approach of this research project is to come out the security framework of PDA and mechanism used for access control and protection of data. Based on this framework, the actual implementation will be carrying out to realize the framework.
Faculty Contact
Dr. Chik How Tan
Email: Chik.tan@hig.no
Phone: +47 61 13 52 51
Fax: +47 61 13 52 40
Office: A124G
Generating IDS benchmarking Data Sets by Means of Event Sequencing
There is a need to generate test data set(s) for intrusion detection systems (IDS) benchmarking, which are based on real data from an academic network environment. In this thesis, a method of so called 'sequencing of events' will be used to determine which features of the traffic are relevant for intrusion detection and, because of that, should be included in such data sets. Sequences of events can be defined as data describing the behaviour and actions of users or systems. These sequences can be collected as 'frequent episodes' or 'generalized episodes'. These episodes will be used in a methodology intended to produce test data sets for IDS benchmarking. Work on this thesis includes some programming in one of the modern object-oriented programming languages (C++, Java, C#).
Contact:
Slobodan Petrovic,
slobodanp(at)hig.no
http://www.hig.no/~slobodanp
A minimalist implementation of the McEliece-type cryptosystem
Code based cryptography is an interesting alternative to number theoretic cryptography. Many basic cryptographic functions such as encryption, signing, hashing, etc. can be realized using code theoretic concepts. The advantage of the code based approach over the number theoretic approach to public key cryptography is in its low time complexity. The problem with such systems is a substantial amount of storage space needed for implementation, since long keys are needed (typically ~100 kb for encryption and ~600 kb for signing). But the rapidly increasing amount of storage space on small devices like USB tokens, PDAs and mobile phones indicates a possibility of implementation of public key cryptography (PKC) based on McEliece-type cryptosystem nowadays.
The goal of this thesis is to implement such a PKC in a minimalist way (the smallest possible memory footprint) and to determine the level of security that this implementation offers. Work on this thesis includes programming in C/C++.
Contact:
Slobodan Petrovic,
slobodanp(at)hig.no
http://www.hig.no/~slobodanp
The use of homogeneous Groebner bases in cryptanalysis
A general mathematical framework behind algebraic cryptanalytic attacks against any cryptographic system includes finding a set of non-linear equations induced by so called vectorial Boolean functions. The polynomials defining such induced algebraic equations form an ideal in the ring of binary multivariate polynomials. Having this property, finding the Groebner basis of the system of equations assigned to the given cryptosystem would be a method to solve it. However, the problem of breaking cryptosystems in such a way efficiently is in finding the set of non-linear equations of low algebraic degree assigned to the given system. One of the possibilities is to use so called homogeneous ideals and compute the Groebner basis degree by degree. This would enable generating equations starting from low algebraic degrees. The methods of homogenization of the given ideal are known and simple, and the methods of finding homogeneous Groebner bases are also known (for example, the homogeneous Buchberger algorithm).
The goal of the thesis is to implement the homogeneous Buchberger algorithm and apply it in cryptanalysis of some simple cryptographic schemes like the LILI-II algorithm. There is an implementation in C# of the ordinary Buchberger algorithm at HiG. Various systems for solving problems from computational commutative algebra are available at HiG as well (Magma, Singular, Macaulay-2, etc.) Work on this thesis requires basic knowledge of C#.
Contact:
Slobodan Petrovic,
slobodanp(at)hig.no
http://www.hig.no/~slobodanp
Social Engineering
Background
A 2004 study by the Gartner Research Group concluded: «The greatest security risk facing large companies and individual Internet users over the next 10 years will be the increasingly sophisticated use of social engineering to bypass IT security defenses.» Yes scientific studies of social engineering are quite rare and incomplete.
Objectives
The recent paper by Gonzalez, Sarriegi and Gurrutxaga “A Framework for Conceptualizing Social Engineering Attacks” (to appear in the Fall of 2006 in Critical Information Infrastructures Security, Springer’s Lecture Notes in Computer Science) suggests that social engineering attacks can be classified as system archetypes, and the authors give examples for the four types of system archetypes. The master thesis project should do an in depth analysis of the literature on cases of social engineering and provide examples and counterexamples to the claim in the paper by Gonzalez, Sarriegi and Gurrutxaga. The project should also enhance the description of system archetypes by deriving dynamic behaviour patterns and simulatable system dynamic models of the archetypes. Suggestions for controls and policies to prevent and mitigate social engineering attacks should be derived.
Faculty contact
Professor Jose J. Gonzalez
Email: joseg@hig.no
Phone: +47 37 25 32 40 (office)
Office: A122
Insider Threat
Background
Insiders, by virtue of legitimate access to their organizations’ information, systems, and networks, pose a significant risk to organizations. In January 2002 the Carnegie Mellon University Software Engineering Institute’s CERT Program (CERT) and the United States Secret Service (USSS) National Threat Assessment Center (NTAC) started a joint project, the Insider Threat Study. Two reports have been published to date as part of the Insider Threat Study, one analyzing malicious insider incidents in the banking and finance sector (Randazzo et al. 2004), and one analyzing insider attacks across all critical infrastructure sectors where the insider’s intent was to harm the organization, an individual, or the organization’s data, information system, or network (Keeney et al. 2005). Two additional reports will be published in 2006: one specific to the information technology and telecommunications sector, and one for the government sector.
Objectives
To develop high-level system dynamic models of insider threat with an emphasis on deriving proposals for controls and policies to prevent and mitigate insider attacks.
Faculty contact
Professor Jose J. Gonzalez
Email: joseg@hig.no
Phone: +47 37 25 32 40 (office)
Office: A122
Incident Reporting
Background
Industries such as chemical processing, aviation, railway, shipping and nuclear have for many years systematically collected safety incident / accident data. Systematic collection allows scientific research and investigation into causes of incidents / accidents, ultimately allowing organizations to introduce more effective safeguards. Several authors, including Schneier and Gonzalez, have suggested that similar incident reporting systems should be used to collect information security incident data. In other words, an information security reporting system.
A recent paper by Rich, Sveen and Jager, "Identifying Organizational Challenges to Secure Knowledge Management", presents a system dynamics model of a (safety) incident reporting system. The paper suggests that an incident reporting system is subject to many forces that govern whether the system is going to be successful. This includes factors that either dissuade or encourage reporting of incidents.
Objectives
The thesis would investigate to what extent an existing organization collects information security incident data. Using the model in Rich, Sveen and Jager as a starting point, first a qualitative system dynamics model would be developed, followed by quantitative simulation model. The thesis should analyze to which extent existing procedures are adequate and suggest improvements based on the developed system dynamics model(s).
Faculty contact
Professor Jose J. Gonzalez
Email: joseg@hig.no
Phone: +47 37 25 32 40 (office)
Office: A122
Masteroppgaver fra NorSIS
1. Hva er lovstridig? Her er det mange aspekter. Hva med:
- Når er det et datainnbrudd. Mange pinger maskiner, noen sjekker eksterne maskiner for sårbarheter. Når er det innenfor det lovlige og når er det ulovlig, og hva kan den som blir angrepet gjøre?
- Overvåkning av ansattes bruk av IKT systemer (spesielt Internett og E-post tjenester). Når har arbeidsgiver gått for langt? Når har den ansatte tråkket over?
2. Oppfølging fra mørketallsundersøkelsen. Datakrimutvalget har gjennomført en mørketallsundersøkelse. Den er en kvantitativ undersøkelse av mange forhold knyttet til informasjonssikkerhet.
- Kvalitativt vurdere spesielle resultater fra undersøkelsen.
- Vurdere forskjellen fra undersøkelsen i 2003 til 2006? Hva har skjedd i Norge knyttet til informasjonssikkerhet?
3. Holdninger til informasjonssikkerhet.
Dette er et av de temaene NorSIS er mest opptatt av.
- Hvilke holdninger har barn og unge til informasjonssikkerhet. En dr.grad på UiO er i gang om dette temaet.
- Hvordan klare å selge inn informasjonssikkerhet til SMB i Norge?
- Hvordan få informasjonssikkerhet på norske styrerom?
- Mest mulig effektiv måte å påvirke til gode holdninger?
4. Hvor sikre er små bedrifter 1-10 ansatte, gjøre en undersøkelse der målet er å teste hypotesen om at de små bedriftene ikke har god nok sikkerhet.
- Gjøre både en kvantitativ og kvalitativ undersøkelse.
- Sjekke både teknisk, og administrativt.
- Finne svar på hvor mye ressurser /tid og penger de bruker) evt hvorfor de ikke bruker.
5. Se på regjeringens satsing på informasjonssikkerhet, riksrevisjonens rapport, andre råd og utvalg som har kommet med forslag.
- Se på om dette har virket og beskrive NorSIS opp i dette
- Hva gjør man i utlandet.
- Finnes det helhetlige satsninger på informasjonssikkerhet - og virker de.
6. Hva er god nok sikkerhet for en liten bedrift.
- Hvilken risikoprofil bør en liten bedrift med færre enn 5 ansatte legge seg på i forhold til lovverk, bransje og økonomiske aspekter
- Hvordan bør informasjonssikkerhet administreres og organiseres i en slik bedrift
- Kan det utarbeides metodikk og metrikker som beskriver og måler dette?
7. Gjennomføre en metastudie på besparelser og kostnader ved å ha en tilstrekkelig informasjonssikkerhet.
- Vil en gjennomsnitts liten bedrift tjene på å ha god informasjonssikkerhet. Det bør forsøkes å sette tall på risiko ved tapt renome, markedstiltak og kostnader ved innføring.
- Hvor vil det lønne seg for en liten bedrift å sette inn ressursene (Teknologi, prosesser eller opplæring holdninger hos de ansatte)
- På hvilke måte bør dette gjennomføres i en liten bedrift?
Kontakt
Espen Torseth
E-post: espen@torseth.net
Telefon: 916 90 629
Rom: A122
Security Infrastructure in Hikernet
http://publications.nr.no/hikernet.pdf
Contact
Dr. Wolfgang Leister
Sjefsforsker
Norsk Regnesentral
External contact
Tom Østensen
Scandinavian Backup Center AS
Kapp Næringshage P.B 113
2858 Kapp
Tlf: 61164270
Mobil: 92097799
Mail: post@webbackup.no
Web: www.webbackup.no
Oppgaver relatert til smartkort (JavaCard)
Sikker applet eksekvering i multi-applikasjons JavaCard/UICC
Dagens smartkort får bedre kapasitet mht. minne, lagring og prosesseringskraft. Dette brukes til å lage flerbruker applikasjonskort (JavaCard). Normalt har det vært en eller 2 leverandører involvert i produksjon av smartkort chip og applikasjon. Det blir flere leverandører av programvare til smartkortet og muligheter for innlastning av applikasjoner fra ”vilkårlige” tredje part.
Oppgaven består av trusselanalyse av personalisering av JavaCard og hvordan flere leverandører av software til JavaCard kan påvirke total sikkerheten. Formålet er at personalisering av JavaCard kan settes ut til ikke tiltrodde partner for personalisering og distribusjon av JavaCARD. Utarbeide forslag til metodikk for hvordan å minimalisere disse truslene, samt konseptuelt forslag til sikker personalisering av JavaCARD.
Code Obfuscation technich (for Java)
Evaluering av alternative metoder, hyllevareprodukter, mm for å vanskeliggjøre reverse engineering av programvare (som inneholder nøkler og kryptoalgoritmer). Dette kan typisk være programvare av typen Cloakware som gjør "tilfeldige" transformasjoner på kildekoden slik at den funksjonelt har samme oppførsel som før men tilfører en rekke beregninger og endringer i kontrollflyt slik at lokale data (typisk kryptografiske nøkler) og betingelser i kontrollflyten spres utover i koden. Dette er en metode der forbetingelsen er at programvaren må kjøres i en relativt åpen (usikret) omgivelse.
Høyhastighets smartkort I/O driver
Trenden innen smartkort er nå bruk av MMC, SDIO eller USB grensesnitt for høyhastighet (1Mbps) kommunikasjon med smartkortet. Dette kan brukes til prosessering av komplett DVB-H stream (maks 500Kbps) innen på smartkortet. Oppgaven består av analyse av hvilke SW driver som finnes for de forskjellige Mobiltelefon og PDA enheter. I tillegg praktisk oppgave med å lage en prototype av felles høyhastighets smartkort I/O driver for mobiltelefon/PDA.
Matrise av smartkort som Hardware Security Module (HSM)
Se på bruk av smartkort med høyhastighets IO (USB) i matrise som alternativ til dedikert HSM. Se på ytelse og skalering. Nøkler vil være lagret som krypterte “blob” i en database. Programmeringsgrensesnittet vil være f.eks. Java Crypto API.
Faculty contact
Tor Arne Folkestad
E-mail: tor.folkestad@hig.no
External contact
Abel DRM Systems AS
Rådhusgate 4
NO-0151 Oslo Norway
www.abeldrm.com
E-mail: contact@abeldrm.com
Approximate search in misuse detection based IDS
The number and versatility of known attacks make the attack signatures databases of modern misuse detection-based intrusion detection systems (IDS) large and difficult to consult in real time. There are two possible solutions to this problem: first, given a search query, it is sometimes possible to reduce the number of records of the database to be browsed to a smaller set, in which the probability of finding a match is higher. Second, it is possible to improve the search algorithms and many efforts of the researchers go in this direction.
The goal of the work on this thesis would be to apply various methods of approximate search in misuse detection-based IDS signature database querying. This would serve in the first phase of an improved search algorithm intended for application in IDS signature database search. Various methods of this kind would be compared for efficiency and a report presenting this comparison would constitute the main contribution of the thesis. Some programming knowledge is required as implementation of various methods is necessary. The knowledge about SNORT IDS is also desirable, since the majority of the tests would be performed on SNORT's signature database(s).
Contact:
Slobodan Petrovic, slobodanp(at)hig.no
http://www.hig.no/~slobodanp
Validating the new formal model of intrusion detection
In 2005, Di Crescenzo, Ghosh and Talpade proposed a formal model of intrusion detection that captures and generalizes well known methodologies, such as misuse-based and anomaly-based intrusion detection, and formulates security requirements based on complexity theoretic and cryptographic concepts.
The task of the student would be to validate this model on some publicly available IDS, such as SNORT and BRO (some hints on validating the model on SNORT are already available). Basic programming skills are needed, as well as basic knowledge about intrusion detection systems in general and SNORT and BRO in particular.
Contact:
Slobodan Petrovic, slobodanp(at)hig.no
http://www.hig.no/~slobodanp
Privacy, health monitoring and alarm generation
By monitoring the movement of humans one may be able to determine what a person is doing and his/her health status. For example, one may be able to detect when a person has fallen. This raises important privacy issues. Motion Recording (www.motion-recording.com) is currently developing a system for automatic fall detection and alarm generation via SMS. The key challenge of this master project is to identify security and privacy requirements of the system, design a suitable architecture, implement a prototype and investigate the tradeoff between privacy and responsiveness of the alarm service. A more detailed description (in Norwegian can be found on Masteroppgave_trygghetsalarm ).
This is a technical project. Programming skills are required.
Faculty contact
Professor Einar Snekkenes
Email: einar.snekkenes@hig.no
Phone: +47 982 11 222
Office: A124I
External contact
Torkjel Søndrol
www.motion-recording.com torkjel[a]motion-recording.com Phone [+47] 997 02 738
Zero effort security for the home PC users?
HiG is participating in the PETweb project (http://petweb.nr.no/petweb). This master project will be part of the PETweb project.
It is anticipated that most of the Norwegian population will need to access sensitive information (e.g. health related information) available through the ‘MinSide’ portal (www.minside.no). This may expose the user to several security risks. From a slightly different perspective, home users may end up in a botnet. It seems to be the case that most home users have not protected their PC’s sufficiently well. One possible reason for this lack of protection might be the usability relating to the installation and use of security products. Also, it seems to be the case that many users don’t want to invest (much) time in implementing sufficient protection.
The goal of this project is to investigate tradeoffs between ‘effort/ to protect’ and ‘protection achieved’. For example – is it possible to protect a home PC ‘completely’ by only clicking on a link once? What security products are available, how well do they protect, and how much effort/cost is required both to install, maintain and run?
Faculty contact
Professor Einar Snekkenes
Email: einar.snekkenes@hig.no
Phone: +47 982 11 222
Office: A124I
Postboks 191, Teknologivn. 22, 2802 Gjøvik, Tlf. 61135100, Faks 61135170, E-post: postmottak@hig.no
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