コンピュータ・サイエンス : ACM computing surveys

A survey on security and privacy of federated learning

Today is the era of the Internet of Things (IoT). The recent advances in hardware and information technology have accelerated the deployment of billions of interconnected, smart and adaptive devices in critical infrastructures like health, transportation, environmental control, and home automation. Transferring data over a network without requiring any kind of human-to-computer or human-to-human interaction, brings reliability and convenience to consumers, but also opens a new world of opportunity for intruders, and introduces a whole set of unique and complicated questions to the field of Digital Forensics. Although IoT data could be a rich source of evidence, forensics professionals cope with diverse problems, starting from the huge variety of IoT devices and non-standard formats, to the multi-tenant cloud infrastructure and the resulting multi-jurisdictional litigations. A further challenge is the end-to-end encryption which represents a trade-off between users’ right to privacy and the success of the forensics investigation. Due to its volatile nature, digital evidence has to be acquired and analyzed using validated tools and techniques that ensure the maintenance of the Chain of Custody. Therefore, the purpose of this paper is to identify and discuss the main issues involved in the complex process of IoT-based investigations, particularly all legal, privacy and cloud security challenges. Furthermore, this work provides an overview of the past and current theoretical models in the digital forensics science. Special attention is paid to frameworks that aim to extract data in a privacy-preserving manner or secure the evidence integrity using decentralized blockchain-based solutions. In addition, the present paper addresses the ongoing Forensics-as-a-Service (FaaS) paradigm, as well as some promising cross-cutting data reduction and forensics intelligence techniques. Finally, several other research trends and open issues are presented, with emphasis on the need for proactive Forensics Readiness strategies and generally agreed-upon standards.

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A Survey on the Internet of Things (IoT) Forensics: Challenges, Approaches, and Open Issues

Internet of Things (IoT) is transforming everyone’s life by providing features, such as controlling and monitoring of the connected smart objects. IoT applications range over a broad spectrum of services including smart cities, homes, cars, manufacturing, e-healthcare, smart control system, transportation, wearables, farming, and much more. The adoption of these devices is growing exponentially, that has resulted in generation of a substantial amount of data for processing and analyzing. Thus, besides bringing ease to the human lives, these devices are susceptible to different threats and security challenges, which do not only worry the users for adopting it in sensitive environments, such as e-health, smart home, etc., but also pose hazards for the advancement of IoT in coming days. This article thoroughly reviews the threats, security requirements, challenges, and the attack vectors pertinent to IoT networks. Based on the gap analysis, a novel paradigm that combines a network-based deployment of IoT architecture through software-defined networking (SDN) is proposed. This article presents an overview of the SDN along with a thorough discussion on SDN-based IoT deployment models, i.e., centralized and decentralized. We further elaborated SDN-based IoT security solutions to present a comprehensive overview of the software-defined security (SDSec) technology. Furthermore, based on the literature, core issues are highlighted that are the main hurdles in unifying all IoT stakeholders on one platform and few findings that emphases on a network-based security solution for IoT paradigm. Finally, some future research directions of SDN-based IoT security technologies are discussed.

An In-Depth Analysis of IoT Security Requirements, Challenges, and Their Countermeasures via Software-Defined Security

In parallel with the meteoric rise of mobile software, we are witnessing an alarming escalation in the number and sophistication of the security threats targeted at mobile platforms, particularly Android, as the dominant platform. While existing research has made significant progress towards detection and mitigation of Android security, gaps and challenges remain. This paper contributes a comprehensive taxonomy to classify and characterize the state-of-the-art research in this area. We have carefully followed the systematic literature review process, and analyzed the results of more than 300 research papers, resulting in the most comprehensive and elaborate investigation of the literature in this area of research. The systematic analysis of the research literature has revealed patterns, trends, and gaps in the existing literature, and underlined key challenges and opportunities that will shape the focus of future research efforts.

A Taxonomy and Qualitative Comparison of Program Analysis Techniques for Security Assessment of Android Software

Network covert channels are used to hide communication inside network protocols. Various techniques for covert channels have arisen in the past few decades. We surveyed and analyzed 109 techniques developed between 1987 and 2013 and show that these techniques can be reduced to only 11 different patterns. Moreover, the majority (69.7p) of techniques can be categorized into only four different patterns (i.e., most techniques we surveyed are similar). We represent the patterns in a hierarchical catalog using a pattern language. Our pattern catalog will serve as a base for future covert channel novelty evaluation. Furthermore, we apply the concept of pattern variations to network covert channels. With pattern variations, the context of a pattern can change. For example, a channel developed for IPv4 can automatically be adapted to other network protocols. We also propose the pattern-based covert channel optimizations pattern hopping and pattern combination. Finally, we lay the foundation for pattern-based countermeasures: whereas many current countermeasures were developed for specific channels, a pattern-oriented approach allows application of one countermeasure to multiple channels. Hence, future countermeasure development can focus on patterns, and the development of real-world protection against covert channels is greatly simplified.

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Pattern-Based Survey and Categorization of Network Covert Channel Techniques

Network covert channels are used to hide communication inside network protocols. Within the last decades, various techniques for covert channels arose. We surveyed and analyzed 109 techniques developed between 1987 and 2013 and show that these techniques can be reduced to only 11 different patterns. Moreover, the majority (69.7%) of techniques can be categorized in only four different patterns, i.e. most of the techniques we surveyed are very similar. We represent the patterns in a hierarchical catalog using a pattern language. Our pattern catalog will serve as a base for future covert channel novelty evaluation. Furthermore, we apply the concept of pattern variations to network covert channels. With pattern variations, the context of a pattern can change. For example, a channel developed for IPv4 can automatically be adapted to other network protocols. We also propose the pattern-based covert channel optimizations pattern hopping and pattern combination. Finally, we lay the foundation for pattern-based countermeasures: While many current countermeasures were developed for specific channels, a pattern-oriented approach allows to apply one countermeasure to multiple channels. Hence, future countermeasure development can focus on patterns, and the development of real-world protection against covert channels is greatly simplified.

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A Pattern-based Survey and Categorization of Network Covert Channel Techniques

Today’s huge volumes of data, heterogeneous information and communication technologies, and borderless cyberinfrastructures create new challenges for security experts and law enforcement agencies investigating cybercrimes. The future of digital forensics is explored, with an emphasis on these challenges and the advancements needed to effectively protect modern societies and pursue cybercriminals.

The Future of Digital Forensics: Challenges and the Road Ahead

A recent trend involves exploiting various information-hiding techniques to empower malware-for example, to bypass mobile device security frameworks or to exfiltrate sensitive data. The authors provide an overview of information-hiding techniques that can be utilized by malware. They showcase existing and emerging threats that use different types of data-hiding mechanisms (not just those adopting classical covert channels), with the goal of monitoring these threats and proposing efficient countermeasures.

The New Threats of Information Hiding: The Road Ahead

Describes Information Hiding in communication networks, and highlights their important issues, challenges, trends, and applications. Highlights development trends and potential future directions of Information Hiding Introduces a new classification and taxonomy for modern data hiding techniques Presents different types of network steganography mechanisms Introduces several example applications of information hiding in communication networks including some recent covert communication techniques in popular Internet services

Steffen Wendzel

Papers

Pattern-Based Survey and Categorization of Network Covert Channel Techniques

A Pattern-based Survey and Categorization of Network Covert Channel Techniques

The Future of Digital Forensics: Challenges and the Road Ahead

The New Threats of Information Hiding: The Road Ahead

Information Hiding in Communication Networks: Fundamentals, Mechanisms, Applications, and Countermeasures