Research

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21 pages, 737 KiB

Open AccessArticle

ExpGen: A 2-Step Vulnerability Exploitability Evaluation Solution for Binary Programs under ASLR Environment

by Hui Huang, Yuliang Lu, Zulie Pan, Kailong Zhu, Lu Yu and Liqun Zhang

Appl. Sci. 2022, 12(13), 6593; https://0-doi-org.brum.beds.ac.uk/10.3390/app12136593 - 29 Jun 2022

Cited by 2 | Viewed by 1342

Current automatic exploit generation solutions generally adopt an 1-step exploit generation philosophy and neglect the potential difference between analysis-time environment and runtime environment. Therefore, they usually fail in evaluating exploitability for vulnerable programs running in an ASLR environment. We propose ExpGen, a 2-step [...] Read more.

Current automatic exploit generation solutions generally adopt an 1-step exploit generation philosophy and neglect the potential difference between analysis-time environment and runtime environment. Therefore, they usually fail in evaluating exploitability for vulnerable programs running in an ASLR environment. We propose ExpGen, a 2-step vulnerability-exploitability evaluation solution for binary programs running in an ASLR environment, with three novel techniques introduced, separately partial-exploit sensitive-POC generation, exploitation context sensitive analysis-time exploit generation, and runtime exploit relocation. ExpGen firstly generates an analysis-time exploit that can carry out all the desired exploitation steps through applying the first two techniques in an iterative manner, then dynamically gaps the address-space layout differences between the analysis-time environment and runtime environment by adopting the runtime exploit-relocation technique, making the analysis-time exploit dynamically adaptable to the runtime exploitation session. Using a benchmark containing six test programs, 10 CTF&RHG programs and four real-world applications with known vulnerabilities, we demonstrate that ExpGen can effectively generate partial exploit input that carries out some address-leakage event and provide a complete automated exploitability evaluation workflow on vulnerable programs running in the ASLR environment. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue State-of-the-Art of Cybersecurity)

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14 pages, 312 KiB

Open AccessArticle

H-KPP: Hypervisor-Assisted Kernel Patch Protection

by Michael Kiperberg and Nezer Jacob Zaidenberg

Appl. Sci. 2022, 12(10), 5076; https://0-doi-org.brum.beds.ac.uk/10.3390/app12105076 - 18 May 2022

Cited by 1 | Viewed by 2118

Abstract

We present H-KPP, hypervisor-based protection for kernel code and data structures. H-KPP prevents the execution of unauthorized code in kernel mode. In addition, H-KPP protects certain object fields from malicious modifications. H-KPP can protect modern kernels equipped with BPF facilities and loadable kernel [...] Read more.

We present H-KPP, hypervisor-based protection for kernel code and data structures. H-KPP prevents the execution of unauthorized code in kernel mode. In addition, H-KPP protects certain object fields from malicious modifications. H-KPP can protect modern kernels equipped with BPF facilities and loadable kernel modules. H-KPP does not require modifying or recompiling the kernel. Unlike many other systems, H-KPP is based on a thin hypervisor and includes a novel SLAT switching mechanism, which allows H-KPP to achieve very low (

\approx 6 %

) performance overhead compared to baseline Linux. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue State-of-the-Art of Cybersecurity)

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19 pages, 1657 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Incorporating Cyber Threat Intelligence into Complex Cyber-Physical Systems: A STIX Model for Active Buildings

by Ricardo M. Czekster, Roberto Metere and Charles Morisset

Appl. Sci. 2022, 12(10), 5005; https://0-doi-org.brum.beds.ac.uk/10.3390/app12105005 - 16 May 2022

Cited by 3 | Viewed by 4241

Abstract

Active buildings can be briefly described as smart buildings with distributed and renewable energy resources able to energise other premises in their neighbourhood. As their energy capacity is significant, they can provide ancillary services to the traditional power grid. As such, they can [...] Read more.

Active buildings can be briefly described as smart buildings with distributed and renewable energy resources able to energise other premises in their neighbourhood. As their energy capacity is significant, they can provide ancillary services to the traditional power grid. As such, they can be a worthy target of cyber-attacks potentially more devastating than if targeting traditional smart buildings. Furthermore, to handshake energy transfers, they need additional communications that add up to their attack surface. In such a context, security analysis would benefit from collection of cyber threat intelligence (CTI). To facilitate the analysis, we provide a base active building model in STIX in the tool cyberaCTIve that handles complex models. Active buildings are expected to implement standard network security measures, such as intrusion-detection systems. However, to timely respond to incidents, real-time detection should promptly update CTI, as it would significantly speed up the understanding of the nature of incidents and, as such, allow for a more effective response. To fill this gap, we propose an extension to the tool cyberaCTIve with a web service able to accept (incursion) feeds in real-time and apply the necessary modifications to a STIX model of interest. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue State-of-the-Art of Cybersecurity)

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18 pages, 445 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Nanovised Control Flow Attestation

by Raz Ben Yehuda, Michael Kiperberg and Nezer Jacob Zaidenberg

Appl. Sci. 2022, 12(5), 2669; https://0-doi-org.brum.beds.ac.uk/10.3390/app12052669 - 04 Mar 2022

Viewed by 1717

Abstract

This paper presents an improvement of control flow attestation (C-FLAT) for Linux. C-FLAT is a control attestation system for embedded devices. It was implemented as a software executing in ARM’s TrustZone on bare-metal devices. We extend the design and implementation of C-FLAT through [...] Read more.

This paper presents an improvement of control flow attestation (C-FLAT) for Linux. C-FLAT is a control attestation system for embedded devices. It was implemented as a software executing in ARM’s TrustZone on bare-metal devices. We extend the design and implementation of C-FLAT through the use of a type 2 Nanovisor in the Linux operating system. We call our improved system “C-FLAT Linux”. Compared to the original C-FLAT, C-FLAT Linux reduces processing overheads and is able to detect the SlowLoris attack. We describe the architecture of C-FLAT Linux and provide extensive measurements of its performance in benchmarks and real-world scenarios. In addition, we demonstrate the detection of the SlowLoris attack on the Apache web server. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue State-of-the-Art of Cybersecurity)

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15 pages, 792 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Age and Gender Impact on Password Hygiene

by Aušrius Juozapavičius, Agnė Brilingaitė, Linas Bukauskas and Ricardo Gregorio Lugo

Appl. Sci. 2022, 12(2), 894; https://0-doi-org.brum.beds.ac.uk/10.3390/app12020894 - 16 Jan 2022

Cited by 4 | Viewed by 3219

Abstract

Password hygiene plays an essential part in securing systems protected with single-factor authentication. A significant fraction of security incidents happen due to weak or reused passwords. The reasons behind differences in security vulnerable behaviour between various user groups remains an active research topic. [...] Read more.

Password hygiene plays an essential part in securing systems protected with single-factor authentication. A significant fraction of security incidents happen due to weak or reused passwords. The reasons behind differences in security vulnerable behaviour between various user groups remains an active research topic. The paper aims to identify the impact of age and gender on password strength using a large password dataset. We recovered previously hashed passwords of 102,120 users from a leaked customer database of a car-sharing company. Although the measured effect size was small, males significantly had stronger passwords than females for all age groups. Males aged 26–45 were also significantly different from all other groups, and password complexity decreased with age for both genders equally. Overall, very weak password hygiene was observed, 72% of users based their password on a word or used a simple sequence of digits, and passwords of over 39% of users were found in word lists of previous leaks. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue State-of-the-Art of Cybersecurity)

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17 pages, 810 KiB

Open AccessArticle

A Survey on TLS-Encrypted Malware Network Traffic Analysis Applicable to Security Operations Centers

by Chaeyeon Oh, Joonseo Ha and Heejun Roh

Appl. Sci. 2022, 12(1), 155; https://0-doi-org.brum.beds.ac.uk/10.3390/app12010155 - 24 Dec 2021

Cited by 7 | Viewed by 5797

Abstract

Recently, a majority of security operations centers (SOCs) have been facing a critical issue of increased adoption of transport layer security (TLS) encryption on the Internet, in network traffic analysis (NTA). To this end, in this survey article, we present existing research on [...] Read more.

Recently, a majority of security operations centers (SOCs) have been facing a critical issue of increased adoption of transport layer security (TLS) encryption on the Internet, in network traffic analysis (NTA). To this end, in this survey article, we present existing research on NTA and related areas, primarily focusing on TLS-encrypted traffic to detect and classify malicious traffic with deployment scenarios for SOCs. Security experts in SOCs and researchers in academia can obtain useful information from our survey, as the main focus of our survey is NTA methods applicable to malware detection and family classification. Especially, we have discussed pros and cons of three main deployment models for encrypted NTA: TLS interception, inspection using cryptographic functions, and passive inspection without decryption. In addition, we have discussed the state-of-the-art methods in TLS-encrypted NTA for each component of a machine learning pipeline, typically used in the state-of-the-art methods. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue State-of-the-Art of Cybersecurity)

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24 pages, 6196 KiB

Open AccessArticle

A Review on Security of Smart Farming and Precision Agriculture: Security Aspects, Attacks, Threats and Countermeasures

by Abbas Yazdinejad, Behrouz Zolfaghari, Amin Azmoodeh, Ali Dehghantanha, Hadis Karimipour, Evan Fraser, Arthur G. Green, Conor Russell and Emily Duncan

Appl. Sci. 2021, 11(16), 7518; https://0-doi-org.brum.beds.ac.uk/10.3390/app11167518 - 16 Aug 2021

Cited by 34 | Viewed by 11423

Abstract

In recent years, Smart Farming (SF) and Precision Agriculture (PA) have attracted attention from both the agriculture industry as well as the research community. Altogether, SF and PA aim to help farmers use inputs (such as fertilizers and pesticides) more efficiently through using [...] Read more.

In recent years, Smart Farming (SF) and Precision Agriculture (PA) have attracted attention from both the agriculture industry as well as the research community. Altogether, SF and PA aim to help farmers use inputs (such as fertilizers and pesticides) more efficiently through using Internet of Things (IoT) devices, but in doing so, they create new security threats that can defeat this purpose in the absence of adequate awareness and proper countermeasures. A survey on different security-related challenges is required to raise awareness and pave they way for further research in this area. In this paper, we first itemize the security aspects of SF and PA. Next, we review the types of cyber attacks that can violate each of these aspects. Accordingly, we present a taxonomy on cyber-threats to SF and PA on the basis of their relations to different stages of Cyber-Kill Chain (CKC). Among cyber-threats, we choose Advanced Persistent Threats (APTs) for further study. Finally, we studied related risk mitigation strategies and countermeasure, and developed a future road map for further study in this area. This paper’s main contribution is a categorization of security threats within the SF/PA areas and provide a taxonomy of security threats for SF environments so that we may detect the behavior of APT attacks and any other security threat in SF and PA environments. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue State-of-the-Art of Cybersecurity)

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Review

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12 pages, 507 KiB

Open AccessReview

Advancements and Research Trends in Microgrids Cybersecurity

by Giovanni Battista Gaggero, Paola Girdinio and Mario Marchese

Appl. Sci. 2021, 11(16), 7363; https://0-doi-org.brum.beds.ac.uk/10.3390/app11167363 - 10 Aug 2021

Cited by 15 | Viewed by 3204

Abstract

Microgrids are growing in importance in the Smart Grid paradigm for power systems. Microgrid security is becoming crucial since these systems increasingly rely on information and communication technologies. Many technologies have been proposed in the last few years for the protection of industrial [...] Read more.

Microgrids are growing in importance in the Smart Grid paradigm for power systems. Microgrid security is becoming crucial since these systems increasingly rely on information and communication technologies. Many technologies have been proposed in the last few years for the protection of industrial control systems, ranging from cryptography, network security, security monitoring systems, and innovative control strategies resilient to cyber-attacks. Still, electrical systems and microgrids present their own peculiarities, and some effort has to be put forth to apply cyber-protection technologies in the electrical sector. In the present work, we discuss the latest advancements and research trends in the field of microgrid cybersecurity in a tutorial form. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue State-of-the-Art of Cybersecurity)

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