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Current Web browsers are plagued with vulnerabilities, providing hackers with easy access to computer systems via browser-based attacks. Browser security efforts that retrofit existing browsers have had limited success because the design of modern browsers is fundamentally flawed. To enable more secure web browsing, we design and implement a new browser, called the OP Web browser, that attempts to...
Unlike today's reactive approaches, information flow based approaches can provide positive assurances about overall system integrity, and hence can defend against sophisticated malware. However, there hasn't been much success in applying information flow based techniques to desktop systems running modern COTS operating systems. This is, in part, due to the fact that a strict application of information...
Many basic tasks in computational biology involve operations on individual DNA and protein sequences. These sequences, even when anonymized, are vulnerable to re-identification attacks and may reveal highly sensitive information about individuals. We present a relatively efficient, privacy-preserving implementation of fundamental genomic computations such as calculating the edit distance and Smith-...
PIN entry devices (PEDs) are critical security components in EMV smartcard payment systems as they receive a customer's card and PIN. Their approval is subject to an extensive suite of evaluation and certification procedures. In this paper, we demonstrate that the tamper proofing of PEDs is unsatisfactory, as is the certification process. We have implemented practical low-cost attacks on two certified,...
Decentralized distributed systems such as peer-to-peer systems are particularly vulnerable to sybil attacks, where a malicious user pretends to have multiple identities (called sybil nodes). Without a trusted central authority, defending against sybil attacks is quite challenging. Among the small number of decentralized approaches, our recent SybilGuard protocol [H. Yu et al., 2006] leverages a key...
This paper presents a predictable and quantifiable approach to designing a covert communication system capable of effectively exploiting covert channels found in the various layers of network protocols. Two metrics are developed that characterize the overall system. A measure of probability of detection is derived using statistical inference techniques. A measure of reliability is developed as the...
Web applications are ubiquitous, perform mission- critical tasks, and handle sensitive user data. Unfortunately, web applications are often implemented by developers with limited security skills, and, as a result, they contain vulnerabilities. Most of these vulnerabilities stem from the lack of input validation. That is, web applications use malicious input as part of a sensitive operation, without...
We devise an abstraction of zero-knowledge protocols that is accessible to a fully mechanized analysis. The abstraction is formalized within the applied pi-calculus using a novel equational theory that abstractly characterizes the cryptographic semantics of zero-knowledge proofs. We present an encoding from the equational theory into a convergent rewriting system that is suitable for the automated...
Eavesdropping on electronic communication is usually prevented by using cryptography-based mechanisms. However, these mechanisms do not prevent one from obtaining private information through side channels, such as the electromagnetic emissions of monitors or the sound produced by keyboards. While extracting the same information by watching somebody typing on a keyboard might seem to be an easy task,...
Despite the rapid adoption of Voice over IP (VoIP), its security implications are not yet fully understood. Since VoIP calls may traverse untrusted networks, packets should be encrypted to ensure confidentiality. However, we show that when the audio is encoded using variable bit rate codecs, the lengths of encrypted VoIP packets can be used to identify the phrases spoken within a call. Our results...
The efficacy of anomaly detection (AD) sensors depends heavily on the quality of the data used to train them. Artificial or contrived training data may not provide a realistic view of the deployment environment. Most realistic data sets are dirty; that is, they contain a number of attacks or anomalous events. The size of these high-quality training data sets makes manual removal or labeling of attack...
Network intrusion detection and prevention systems are vulnerable to evasion by attackers who craft ambiguous traffic to breach the defense of such systems. A normalizer is an inline network element that thwarts evasion attempts by removing ambiguities in network traffic. A particularly challenging step in normalization is the sound detection of inconsistent TCP retransmissions, wherein an attacker...
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