Searchable Symmetric Encryption (SSE) when deployed in the cloud allows one to query encrypted data without the risk of data leakage. Despite the widespread interest, existing surveys do not examine in detail how SSE’s underlying structures are designed and how these result in the many properties of a SSE scheme. This is the gap we seek to address, as well as presenting recent state-of-the-art advances on SSE. Specifically, we present a general framework and believe the discussions may lead to insights for potential new designs. We draw a few observations. First, most schemes use index table, where optimal index size and sublinear search can be achieved using an inverted index. Straightforward updating can only be achieved using direct index, but search time would be linear. A recent trend is the combinations of index table, and tree, deployed for efficient updating and storage. Secondly, mechanisms from related fields such as Oblivious RAM (ORAM) have been integrated to reduce leakages. However, using these mechanisms to minimise leakages in schemes with richer functionalities (e.g., ranked, range) is relatively unexplored. Thirdly, a new approach (e.g., multiple servers) is required to mitigate new and emerging attacks on leakage. Lastly, we observe that a proposed index may not be practically efficient when implemented, where I/O access must be taken into consideration.

Searchable Symmetric Encryption: Designs and Challenges

Effect of synthesis methods on the surface and electrochemical characteristics of metal oxide/activated carbon composites for supercapacitor applications

Comparison of the electrochemical properties of engineered switchgrass biomass-derived activated carbon-based EDLCs

The purpose of this study is to design and develop a Web based circuit virtual laboratory for undergraduate student courses, which can be treated as an accessorial tool for enhancing instruction. The study firstly reviews the general concept of virtual laboratory and some related works. Secondly, the design and development of the system framework of this circuit virtual laboratory is discussed. Finally, the paper introduces the evaluation from the tutors and students using the virtual laboratory. One of the major objectives of this project is the client adopted rich Internet applications (RIAs) to enhance the students' learning experience and provides significant impact on users' learning motivation. With the support of this system, the students' uninfluenced learning and experiment process can be carried out at any place of the world where Web access is available.

A case study of virtual circuit laboratory for undergraduate student courses

Shoulder surfing experiments: A systematic literature review

Traditionally, picture-based password systems employ password objects (pictures/icons/symbols) as input during an authentication session, thus making them vulnerable to “shoulder-surfing” attack because the visual interface by function is easily observed by others. Recent software-based approaches attempt to minimize this threat by requiring users to enter their passwords indirectly by performing certain mental tasks to derive the indirect password, thus concealing the user’s actual password. However, weaknesses in the positioning of distracter and password objects introduce usability and security issues. In this paper, a new method, which conceals information about the password objects as much as possible, is proposed. Besides concealing the password objects and the number of password objects, the proposed method allows both password and distracter objects to be used as the challenge set’s input. The correctly entered password appears to be random and can only be derived with the knowledge of the full set of password objects. Therefore, it would be difficult for a shoulder-surfing adversary to identify the user’s actual password. Simulation results indicate that the correct input object and its location are random for each challenge set, thus preventing frequency of occurrence analysis attack. User study results show that the proposed method is able to prevent shoulder-surfing attack.

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Preventing shoulder-surfing attack with the concept of concealing the password objects' information

Currently, distance education (DE) courses in Malaysia are only for the non-scientific field since DE lacks the laboratory experimentation indispensable to science. The concept of Virtual laboratory provides a timely solution. This paper describes the development and implementation of a novel, multimedia interactive laboratory (MI-LAB) for online experimentation. The aim of the MI-LAB project is to provide students access via the Internet to various experiments in conceptual physics, simplifying experimentation for home-learners and professionals in a distance teaching environment. MI-LAB's effectiveness is thoroughly demonstrated in the development of the Hall Effect experiment lab aimed at enhancing student's understanding. MI-LAB supplements the physical lab by augmenting student's learning experiences with relevant information, questions, graphs and video demonstrations. This Web approach integrates Flash actionscript to do extensive simulations and interactive animation of physics based experiments in virtual reality. MI-LAB is a low cost, zero maintenance, and risk-free alternative to conventional lab for DE.

Design and Development of a Multimedia Interactive Lab for Distance Learning Applications in the WWW

Searchable encryption is a cryptographic primitive that allows a user to confidentially store items on an outside server and grants the user the capability to search for any particular item that is stored without the server or any third party observers learning anything with regards to the item that is being searched for. In 2006, Curtmola et al. strengthened the security notions for symmetric-key searchable encyrption (SSE) and proposed two secure constructions that utilize only a conventional symmetric-key encryption scheme such as Advanced Encryption Standard (AES). In this work, we show a client-server prototype implementation of the adaptive-secure scheme by Curtmola et al. utilizing only open source software on both client and server side. We show that our implementation runs in reasonable time and provides confidential search functions as defined by SSE schemes.

A Client-Server Prototype of a Symmetric Key Searchable Encryption Scheme Using Open-Source Applications

Superimposing the high and low spatial frequencies of two different images allows different image interpretations, depending on the viewing distance between the viewer and the image. Previous works used this technique to produce greyscale keypads for PIN entry to prevent shoulder-surfing. Nevertheless, implementation in colour keypads would preserve the underlying look and feel of most applications which are in colour. Thus, the proposed method uses superimposition to produce hybrid image keypads in colour. From user testing and simulated shoulder surfing attacks, it was shown that the proposed method had a low error rate of 3.57% for user logins while none of the shoulder surfing attacks were successful.

A Shoulder-Surfing Resistant Colour Image-based Authentication Method Using Human Vision Perception with Spatial Frequency

While images or emojis offer good memorability when used in an authentication method, inherently graphical data are highly susceptible to shoulder surfing attacks. An authentication system incorporating emojis was proposed and designed, which offers resistance to shoulder surfing attacks. The proposed system implements emojis in place of numerics in the reference method, DragPIN, and adds cue questions. The methods are compared in terms of performance and memorability, through user testing. The proposed authentication system was found to be successful at resisting shoulder surfing attacks. After 4–6 weeks, memorability was also higher in the proposed method compared to the reference method.

Yvonne Hwei Syn Kam

Papers

Preventing shoulder-surfing attack with the concept of concealing the password objects' information

Design and Development of a Multimedia Interactive Lab for Distance Learning Applications in the WWW

A Client-Server Prototype of a Symmetric Key Searchable Encryption Scheme Using Open-Source Applications

A Shoulder-Surfing Resistant Colour Image-based Authentication Method Using Human Vision Perception with Spatial Frequency

A Study on Using Emojis in a Shoulder Surfing Resistant Authentication Method