The rapid developments of the Internet of Things (IoT) and smart mobile devices in recent years have been dramatically incentivizing the advancement of edge computing. On the one hand, edge computing has provided a great assistance for lightweight devices to accomplish complicated tasks in an efficient way; on the other hand, its hasty development leads to the neglection of security threats to a large extent in edge computing platforms and their enabled applications. In this paper, we provide a comprehensive survey on the most influential and basic attacks as well as the corresponding defense mechanisms that have edge computing specific characteristics and can be practically applied to real-world edge computing systems. More specifically, we focus on the following four types of attacks that account for 82% of the edge computing attacks recently reported by Statista: distributed denial of service attacks, side-channel attacks, malware injection attacks, and authentication and authorization attacks. We also analyze the root causes of these attacks, present the status quo and grand challenges in edge computing security, and propose future research directions.

https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/ielaam/5/8789751/8741060-aam.pdf

Edge Computing Security: State of the Art and Challenges

Modern information technology is increasingly used in healthcare with the goal to improve and enhance medical services and to reduce costs. In this context, the outsourcing of computation and storage resources to general IT providers (cloud computing) has become very appealing. E-health clouds offer new possibilities, such as easy and ubiquitous access to medical data, and opportunities for new business models. However, they also bear new risks and raise challenges with respect to security and privacy aspects. In this paper, we point out several shortcomings of current e-health solutions and standards, particularly they do not address the client platform security, which is a crucial aspect for the overall security of e-health systems. To fill this gap, we present a security architecture for establishing privacy domains in e-health infrastructures. Our solution provides client platform security and appropriately combines this with network security concepts. Moreover, we discuss further open problems and research challenges on security, privacy and usability of e-health cloud systems.

http://www.trust.rub.de/media/trust/veroeffentlichungen/2010/12/22/securing-the-ehealth-cloud.pdf

Securing the e-health cloud

Recent works have shown promise in using microarchitectural execution patterns to detect malware programs. These detectors belong to a class of detectors known as signature-based detectors as they catch malware by comparing a program's execution pattern (signature) to execution patterns of known malware programs. In this work, we propose a new class of detectors - anomaly-based hardware malware detectors - that do not require signatures for malware detection, and thus can catch a wider range of malware including potentially novel ones. We use unsupervised machine learning to build profiles of normal program execution based on data from performance counters, and use these profiles to detect significant deviations in program behavior that occur as a result of malware exploitation. We show that real-world exploitation of popular programs such as IE and Adobe PDF Reader on a Windows/x86 platform can be detected with nearly perfect certainty. We also examine the limits and challenges in implementing this approach in face of a sophisticated adversary attempting to evade anomaly-based detection. The proposed detector is complementary to previously proposed signature-based detectors and can be used together to improve security.

Unsupervised Anomaly-based Malware Detection using Hardware Features

Detection of Intrusions and Malware, and Vulnerability Assessment

Remote attestation is the activity of making a claim about properties of a target by supplying evidence to an appraiser over a network. We identify five central principles to guide development of attestation systems. We argue that (i) attestation must be able to deliver temporally fresh evidence; (ii) comprehensive information about the target should be accessible; (iii) the target, or its owner, should be able to constrain disclosure of information about the target; (iv) attestation claims should have explicit semantics to allow decisions to be derived from several claims; and (v) the underlying attestation mechanism must be trustworthy. We illustrate how to acquire evidence from a running system, and how to transport it via protocols to remote appraisers. We propose an architecture for attestation guided by these principles. Virtualized platforms, which are increasingly well supported on stock hardware, provide a natural basis for our attestation architecture.

/pdf/principles-of-remote-attestation-54p9e68sny.pdf

Principles of remote attestation

Attackers constantly explore ways to camouflage illicit activities against computer platforms. Stealthy attacks are required in industrial espionage and also by criminals stealing banking credentials. Modern computers contain dedicated hardware such as network and graphics cards. Such devices implement independent execution environments but have direct memory access (DMA) to the host runtime memory. In this work we introduce DMA malware, i.e., malware executed on dedicated hardware to launch stealthy attacks against the host using DMA. DMA malware goes beyond the capability to control DMA hardware. We implemented DAGGER, a keylogger that attacks Linux and Windows platforms. Our evaluation confirms that DMA malware can efficiently attack kernel structures even if memory address randomization is in place. DMA malware is stealthy to a point where the host cannot detect its presense. We evaluate and discuss possible countermeasures and the (in)effectiveness of hardware extensions such as input/output memory management units.

Understanding DMA malware

A Trusted Channel is a secure communication channel which is cryptographically bound to the state of the hardware and software configurations of the endpoints. In this paper, we describe secure and flexible mechanisms to establish and maintain Trusted Channels which do not have the deficiencies of previous proposals. We also present a concrete implementation proposal based on Transport Layer Security (TLS) protocol, and Trusted Computing technology. We use Subject Key Attestation Evidence extensions to X.509v3 certificates to convey configuration information during key agreement (TLS handshake). The resulting session key is kept within the Trusted Computing Base, and is updated in a predetermined manner to reflect any detected change in the local configuration. This allows an endpoint to detect changes in the configuration of the peer endpoint while the Trusted Channel is in place, and to decide according to a local policy whether to maintain or tear down the Trusted Channel

Beyond secure channels

SMS-based One-Time Passwords (SMS OTP) were introduced to counter phishing and other attacks against Internet services such as online banking. Today, SMS OTPs are commonly used for authentication and authorization for many different applications. Recently, SMS OTPs have come under heavy attack, especially by smartphone Trojans. In this paper, we analyze the security architecture of SMS OTP systems and study attacks that pose a threat to Internet-based authentication and authorization services. We determined that the two foundations SMS OTP is built on, cellular networks and mobile handsets, were completely different at the time when SMS OTP was designed and introduced. Throughout this work, we show why SMS OTP systems cannot be considered secure anymore. Based on our findings, we propose mechanisms to secure SMS OTPs against common attacks and specifically against smartphone Trojans.

/pdf/sms-based-one-time-passwords-attacks-and-defense-7bjf5cjca0.pdf

SMS-based one-time passwords: attacks and defense

Security breaches on the Internet rarely involve compromising secure channels - typically based on protocols like Transport Layer Security (TLS) or Internet Protocol Security (IPsec) - because communication endpoints are much easier to compromise. Recent approaches aiming to solve this problem rely on the TLS protocol to additionally provide integrity information of the involved endpoints. However, these solutions have shortcomings with regard to either security, functionality or compliance to the TLS specification. This prevents that those approaches are deployed in practice. In this paper, we present an implementation of a security architecture for establishing Trusted Channels based on OpenSSL that resolves the deficiencies of the previous solutions. It provides the possibility to convey reliable integrity information of the involved endpoints and offers the high security standards of former approaches while being flexible, scalable and efficient to enable widespread deployment.

An efficient implementation of trusted channels based on openssl

SMS-based One-Time Passwords (SMS OTP) were intro- duced to counter phishing and other attacks against Internet services such as online banking. Today, SMS OTPs are commonly used for au- thentication and authorization for many different applications. Recently, SMS OTPs have come under heavy attack, especially by smartphone Trojans. In this paper, we analyze the security architecture of SMS OTP systems and study attacks that pose a threat to Internet-based authen- tication and authorization services. We determined that the two founda- tions SMS OTP is built on, cellular networks and mobile handsets, were completely different at the time when SMS OTP was designed and intro- duced. Throughout this work, we show why SMS OTP systems cannot be considered secure anymore. Based on our findings, we propose mech- anisms to secure SMS OTPs against common attacks and specifically against smartphone Trojans.

/pdf/sms-based-one-time-passwords-attacks-and-defense-short-paper-4sxv8kih2k.pdf

Patrick Stewin

Papers

Understanding DMA malware

Beyond secure channels

SMS-based one-time passwords: attacks and defense

An efficient implementation of trusted channels based on openssl

SMS-Based One-Time Passwords: Attacks and Defense - (Short Paper).