Extract Sensitive Information Research Articles

Scriptless attacks: Stealing more pie without touching the sill

Due to their high practical impact, Cross-Site Scripting (XSS) attacks have attracted a lot of attention from the members of security community worldwide. In the same way, a plethora of more or less effective defense techniques have been proposed, addressing both causes and effects of XSS vulnerabilities. As a result, an adversary often can no longer inject or even execute arbitrary scripting code in several real-life scenarios. In this article, we examine an attack surface that remains after XSS and similar scripting attacks are supposedly mitigated by preventing an attacker from executing JavaScript code. We address the question of whether an attacker really needs to execute JavaScript or similar functionality to perform attacks aiming for information theft. The surprising result is that an attacker can abuse Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) in combination with other Web techniques like plain HTML, inactive SVG images, or font files. Having employed several case studies, we discuss so called scriptless attacks and demonstrate that an adversary might not need to execute code to preserve his ability to extract sensitive information from well-protected websites. More precisely, we show that an attacker can use seemingly benign features to build side-channel attacks that measure and exfiltrate almost arbitrary data displayed on a given webpage. We conclude this article with a discussion of potential mitigation techniques against this class of attacks. In addition, we have implemented a browser patch that enables a website to make a vital determination as to being loaded in a detached view or a pop-up window. This approach proves useful for prevention of certain types of attacks we here discuss.

Improving Cloud Security Using Data Mining

Cloud computing is the use of computing resources (hardware and software) that are delivered as a service over a network (typically the Internet). It does offer great level of flexibility but this advantage comes with a drawback. With increase in sharing of data over web there is an increase in possibility of data being subjected to malicious attacks. Attacker/Provider can extract sensitive information by analyzing the client data over a long period of time. Hence the privacy and security of the user's data is compromised. In this paper we

Detecting VMs Co-residency in Cloud: Using Cache-based Side Channel Attacks

Virtual machine technology enables the cloud to offer large scale and flexible computing ability. However, it also introduces a range of new vulnerabilities. Malicious users can extract sensitive information from other users covertly via side channel attacks, which breaks the isolation between the co-resident virtual machines (VMs). In this paper, we investigate such a security threat and propose the VMs Co-residency Detection Scheme via cache-based side channel attacks (VCDS) to get the location of the specified VM. Using load preprocessor based on cubic spline interpolation, VCDS makes the raw measurements more smoothing and relevant. With the load predictor based on linear regression model, VCDS probe cache load changes produced by the victim VM more accurately and effectively. Based on the normal cloud model, VCDS computes the co-residency probability to describe VMs co-residency quantitatively. The experimental results show that VCDS improves the true detection rate effectively even with an interference of the co-resident noisy VM compared to the existing schemes. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5755/j01.eee.19.5.2422

Hierarchical Node Replication Attacks Detection in Wireless Sensor Networks

Wireless sensor networks (WSNs) are composed of numerous low-cost, low-power sensor nodes communicating at short distance through wireless links. Sensors are densely deployed to collect and transmit data of the physical world to one or few destinations called the sinks. Because of open deployment in hostile environment and the use of low-cost materials, powerful adversaries could capture them to extract sensitive information (encryption keys, identities, addresses, etc.). When nodes may be compromised, “beyond cryptography” algorithmic solutions must be envisaged to complement the cryptographic solutions. This paper addresses the problem of nodes replication; that is, an adversary captures one or several nodes and inserts duplicated nodes at any location in the network. If no specific detection mechanisms are established, the attacker could lead many insidious attacks. In this work, we first introduce a new hierarchical distributed algorithm for detecting node replication attacks using a Bloom filter mechanism and a cluster head selection (see also Znaidi et al. (2009)). We present a theoretical discussion on the bounds of our algorithm. We also perform extensive simulations of our algorithm for random topologies, and we compare those results with other proposals of the literature. Finally, we show the effectiveness of our algorithm and its energy efficiency.

Fake identities in social media: A case study on the sustainability of the Facebook business model

Social networks such as Facebook, Twitter and Google+ have attracted millions of users in the last years. One of the most widely used social networks, Facebook, recently had an initial public offering (IPO) in May 2012, which was among the biggest in Internet technology. Forprofit and nonprofit organizations primarily use such platforms for target-oriented advertising and large-scale marketing campaigns. Social networks have attracted worldwide attention because of their potential to address millions of users and possible future customers. The potential of social networks is often misused by malicious users who extract sensitive private information of unaware users. One of the most common ways of performing a large-scale data harvesting attack is the use of fake profiles, where malicious users present themselves in profiles impersonating fictitious or real persons. The main goal of this research is to evaluate the implications of fake user profiles on Facebook. To do so, we established a comprehensive data harvesting attack, the social engineering experiment, and analyzed the interactions between fake profiles and regular users to eventually undermine the Facebook business model. Furthermore, privacy considerations are analyzed using focus groups. As a result of our work, we provided a set of countermeasures to increase the awareness of users.

A Survey of Intrusion Detection Schemes in Wireless Sensor Networks

Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) are currently used in many application areas including military applications, health related applications, control and tracking applications and environment and habitat monitoring applications. The harsh and unattended deployment of these networks along with their resource restrictions makes their security issue very important. Prevention-based security approaches like cryptography, authentication and key management have been used to protect WSNs from different kinds of attacks but these approaches are not enough to protect the network from insider attacks that may extract sensitive information even in the presence of the prevention-based solution. Detection-based approaches are then proposed to protect WSNs from insider attacks and act as a second line defense after the failure of the prevention-based approaches. Many intrusion detection schemes have been introduced for WSN in the literature. In this article, we present a survey of intrusion detection schemes in WSNs. First, we present the similar works and show their differences from this work. After that, we outline the fundamentals of intrusion detection in WSNs, describing the types of attacks and state the motivation for intrusion detection in WSNs. Then, we demonstrate the challenges of developing an ideal intrusion detection scheme for WSNs followed by the main requirements of a good candidate intrusion detection scheme. The state-of-the-art intrusion detection schemes are then presented based on the techniques used in each scheme and categorizing them into four main categories: rule-based, data mining and computational intelligence based, game theoretical based and statistical based. The analysis of each scheme in these categories is presented showing their advantages and drawbacks. By the end of each category, we state the general advantages and shortcomings of each category. The survey ends by recommending some important research opportunities in this field for future research.

I-NVMM

Emerging technologies for building non-volatile main memory (NVMM) systems suffer from a security vulnerability where information lingers on long after the system is powered down, enabling an attacker with physical access to the system to extract sensitive information off the memory. The goal of this study is to find a solution for such a security vulnerability. We introduce i-NVMM, a data privacy protection scheme for NVMM, where the main memory is encrypted incrementally, i.e. different data in the main memory is encrypted at different times depending on whether the data is predicted to still be useful to the processor. The motivation behind incremental encryption is the observation that the working set of an application is much smaller than its resident set. By identifying the working set and encrypting remaining part of the resident set, i-NVMM can keep the majority of the main memory encrypted at all times without penalizing performance by much. Our experiments demonstrate promising results. i-NVMM keeps 78% of the main memory encrypted across SPEC2006 benchmarks, yet only incurs 3.7% execution time overhead, and has a negligible impact on the write endurance of NVMM, all achieved with a relatively simple hardware support in the memory module.

Dependability evaluation of integrated circuits at design time against laser fault injection

ABSTRACTLaser fault injection has been proved to be a useful tool for attacks on integrated circuits. Transistors hit by a pulse of photons causes them to conduct transiently, thereby introducing transient logic errors, such as register value modifications, memory dumping, and so on. Attackers can make use of this abnormal behavior and extract sensitive information that the devices try to protect. This paper demonstrates laser fault injection attacks on very‐large‐scale integration circuits in a semi‐invasive way for the purpose of validating fault tolerant design and performance. Then, the paper presents a simulation methodology to evaluate the dependability of the integrated circuit design against laser fault injection attacks at design time. This simulation methodology involves exhaustively scanning the layout, incorporating the exposed cells into a circuit simulator, and examining the response of the circuit in detail. Experiments conducted on the same test chip spot the same vulnerabilities, thus indicating the validity of the proposed simulation methodology. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Cyclic Depth-Sensing Indentation of Gold Wire

Conventional depth-sending indentation and novel cyclic indentation were performed to study the mechanical properties and strengthening mechanism of pure gold and Ca-doped gold of up to 90 ppm. The system was chosen because it is popular materials for microelectronics interconnection, yet the strengthening mechanism is not well-understood. Conventional depthsensing indentation showed an increase in hardness and modulus of gold with increasing Ca content of up to 90 ppm, which remained significantly higher after annealing. Cyclic depth sensing indentation, where the specimen is loaded to a specific value, unloaded and immediately reloaded, produced a cyclic loop between unloading and reloading curves. The path of the unloading and reloading curves tell the story of the different response of the dislocations generated under the indentation, in different materials, pure gold and Ca-doped gold at different level. Thus their dislocation movement and deformation behavior could be studied by cyclic depth-sensing indentation method. This paper reports cyclic indentation study performed in calcium doped gold widely used in wire bonding and shows that a few ppm level of calcium could result in dislocationssolute interactions, leading to significant strengthening of the materials. TEM micrographs of the material shows that it consists of elongated grains parallel to the drawing direction about 200 nanometers in diameter and a few micrometers in length. It is concluded that cyclic nanoindentation could be used as an extended technique to extract sensitive material information that are not reflected in the conventional test.

Cyclic loading as an extended nanoindentation technique

Conventional depth sensing nanoindentation test which produces a load–depth curve for a monotonically increasing load can be used to determine many mechanical properties. Alternatively, if the specimen is loaded to a specific value, unloaded and immediately reloaded, a cyclic nanoindentation curve is produced. The unloading–reloading paths do not necessarily overlap in all materials. The reason for this is thought to be the different response of the dislocations generated under the indentation, in different materials. The dislocation behaviour will be controlled by the chemistry and microstructure of the material. Therefore, sensitive dislocation–microstructure interactions may be detectable in the unloading–reloading curves during cyclic indentation. This paper reports such cyclic nanoindentation investigation done in calcium-doped gold used in wire bonding. It is shown that calcium, even in ppm levels, can influence the cyclic load–depth curves to measurable extents. The loading and unloading profiles obtained are reported and the effect of increasing dopant level is evident in them. This is attributed to dislocation–solute interactions. The microstructure of the material consists of elongated (drawn) grains of diameter of about 200 nm and length of a few micrometers. It is concluded that cyclic nanoindentation could be used as an extended technique to extract sensitive material information that are not reflected in the conventional test.

Time-resolved circularly polarized protein phosphorescence.

The existence of circular polarization in room-temperature protein phosphorescence is demonstrated, and time-resolved circularly polarized phosphorescence (TR-CPP) is used to characterize unique tryptophan environments in multitryptophan proteins. Circularly polarized luminescence studies provide information regarding the excited state chirality of a lumiphore which can be used to extract sensitive structural information. It is shown by time resolving the circular polarization that it is possible to correlate the excited state chirality with unique decay components in a multiexponential phosphorescence decay profile. The present study presents a concurrent analysis of room-temperature time-resolved phosphorescence and TR-CPP of bacterial glucose-6-phosphate dehydrogenase as well as those of horse liver alcohol dehydrogenase. Only one of the two tryptophan residues per subunit of dimeric alcohol dehydrogenase is believed to phosphorescence, while the dimeric glucose-6-phosphate dehydrogenase has eight tryptophan residues per subunit and shows a corresponding complexity in its phosphorescence decay profile. The anisotropy factor [g(em) = delta I/(Itotal/2); delta I = Ileft circular-Iright circular] for alcohol dehydrogenase is time independent, suggesting a unique excited state chirality. The phosphorescence decay of glucose-6-phosphate dehydrogenase can be well fitted with four exponential terms of 4, 23, 76, and 142 msec, and the TR-CPP of this enzyme shows a strong time dependence that can be resolved into four individual time-independent anisotropy factors of -4.0, -2.1, +6.5, and +6.9 (x10(-3)), each respectively associated with one of the four lifetime components. These results demonstrate how the use of TR-CPP can facilitate the study of proteins with multiple lumiphores.