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No / This paper examines and evaluates a new robust and fragile watermarking scheme for colour images captured by mobile phone cameras. The authentication has been checked by using the fragile watermarking, while the copyright protection has been examined by using the robust one. The mobile phone number, including the international code, is a unique number across the whole world and it is used as a robust watermark. The number is embedded in the frequency domain using the discrete wavelet transform. On the other hand, hash codes are used as fragile watermarks and inserted in the spatial domain of the RGB image. The scheme is blind and the extraction process of the watermarks (Robust and Fragile) does not require the original image. The fragile watermark can detect any tampering in the image while the robust watermark is strong enough to survive against several attacks. The watermarking algorithm causes minimal distortion to the images. The proposed algorithm has been successfully tested, evaluated and compared with other algorithms.

Reaping the benefits of the Internet of Things (IoT) system is contingent upon developing IoT-specific security and privacy solutions. Conventional security and authentication solutions often fail to meet IoT requirements due to the computationally limited and portable nature of IoT objects. Privacy in IoT is a major issue especially in the light of current attacks on Facebook and Uber. Research efforts in both the academic and the industrial fields have been focused on providing security and privacy solutions that are specific to IoT systems. These solutions include systems to manage keys, systems to handle routing protocols, systems that handle data transmission, access control for devices, and authentication of devices. One of these solutions is Blockchain, a trust-less peer-to-peer network of devices with an immutable data storage that does not require a trusted party to maintain and validate data entries in it. This emerging technology solves the problem of centralization in systems and has the potential to end the corporations control over our personal information. This unique characteristic makes blockchain an excellent candidate to handle data communication and storage between IoT devices without the need of oracle nodes to monitor and validate each data transaction. The peer-to-peer network of IoT devices validates data entries before being added to the blockchain database. However, accurate authentication of each IoT device using simple methods is another challenging problem. In this dissertation, a complete novel system is proposed to authenticate, verify, and secure devices in IoT systems. The proposed system consists of a blockchain framework to collect, monitor, and analyze data in IoT systems. The blockchain based system exploits a method, called Sharding, in which devices are grouped into smaller subsets to provide a scalable system. In addition to solving the scalability problem in blockchain, the proposed system is secured against the 51% attack in which a malicious node tries to gain control over the majority of devices in a single shard in order to disrupt the validation process of data entries. The proposed system dynamically changes the assignment of devices to shards to significantly decrease the possibility of performing 51% attacks. The second part of the novel system presented in this work handles IoT device authentication. The authentication framework uses device-specific information, called fingerprints, along with a transfer learning tool to authenticate objects in the IoT. The framework tracks the effect of changes in the physical environment on fingerprints and uses unique IoT environmental effects features to detect both cyber and cyber-physical emulation attacks. The proposed environmental effects estimation framework showed an improvement in the detection rate of attackers without increasing the false positives rate. The proposed framework is also shown to be able to detect cyber-physical attackers that are capable of replicating the fingerprints of target objects which conventional methods are unable to detect. In addition, a transfer learning approach is proposed to allow the use of objects with different types and features in the environmental effects estimation process. The transfer learning approach was also implemented in cognitive radio networks to prevent primary users emulation attacks that exist in these networks. Lastly, this dissertation investigated the challenge of preserving privacy of data stored in the proposed blockchain-IoT system. The approach presented continuously analyzes the data collected anonymously from IoT devices to insure that a malicious entity will not be able to use these anonymous datasets to uniquely identify individual users. The dissertation led to the following key results. First, the proposed blockchain based framework that uses sharding was able to provide a decentralized, scalable, and secured platform to handle data exchange between IoT devices. The security of the system against 51% attacks was simulated and showed significant improvements compared to typical blockchain implementations. Second, the authentication framework of IoT devices is shown to yield to a 40% improvement in the detection of cyber emulation attacks and is able to detect cyber-physical emulation attacks that conventional methods cannot detect. The key results also show that the proposed framework improves the authentication accuracy while the transfer learning approach yields up to 70% additional performance gains. Third, the transfer learning approach to combine knowledge about features from multiple device types was also implemented in cognitive radio networks and showed performance gains with an average of 3.4% for only 10% relevant information between the past knowledge and the current environment signals. / Doctor of Philosophy / The Internet of things (IoT) system is anticipated to reach billions of devices by the year 2020. With this massive increase in the number of devices, conventional security and authentication solutions will face many challenges from computational limits to privacy and security challenges. Research on solving the challenges of IoT systems is focused on providing lightweight solutions to be implemented on these low energy IoT devices. However these solutions are often prone to different types of attacks. The goal of this dissertation is to present a complete custom solution to secure IoT devices and systems. The system presented to solve IoT challenges consists of three main components. The first component focuses on solving scalability and centralization challenges that current IoT systems suffer from. To accomplish this a combination of distributed system, called blocchain, and a method to increase scalability, called Sharding, were used to provide both scalability and decentralization while maintaining high levels of security. The second component of the proposed solution consists of a novel framework to authenticate the identity of each IoT device. To provide an authentication solution that is both simple and effective, the framework proposed used a combination of features that are easy to collect, called fingerprints. These features were used to model the environment surrounding each IoT device to validate its identity. The solution uses a method called transfer learning to allow the framework to run on different types of devices. The proposed frameworks were able to provide a solution that is scalable, simple, and secured to handle data exchange between IoT devices. The simulation presented showed significant improvements compared to typical blockchain implementations. In addition, the frameworks proposed were able to detect attackers that have the resources to replicate all the device specific features. The proposed authentication framework is the first framework to be able to detect such an advanced attacker. The transfer learning tool added to the authentication framework showed performance gains of up to 70%.

With the advent of smart devices, Internet of things and cloud computing the amount of information collected about an individual is enormous. Using this meta-data, a complete profile about a person could be created - professional information, personal information like his/her choices, preferences, likes/dislikes etc. The concept of privacy is totally lost with this gamut of technology. The ability to separate one's on-line identity from their personal identity is near impossible. The conflicting interests of the two parties - service providers' need for authentication and the users' privacy needs - is the cause for this problem. Privacy Preserving Authentication could help solve both these problems by creating valid and anonymous identities for the users. And simply by proving the authenticity and integrity of this anonymous identity (without revealing/exposing it) the users can obtain services whilst protecting their privacy. In this thesis, I review and analyze the various types of PPA schemes leading to the discussion of our new scheme 'Lightweight Anonymous Attestation with Efficient Revocation'. Finally, the scenarios where these schemes are applicable are discussed in detail. / Master of Science / With the advent of smart devices, people are almost always connected to the Internet. These smart devices and applications collect information about the user on a massive scale. When all such meta-data are put together, a complete profile of the user - professional and personal information, his/her choices, preferences, likes/dislikes etc. could be created. And all this data is stored somewhere on the Internet. The concept of privacy loses its meaning as this entity knows more about the user than they do themselves. The main reason for this is the inability to separate one’s on-line identity from their personal identity. Service providers need to authenticate the users - the process by which one entity is assured of the identity of the second entity it is interacting with - to ensure only valid members are allowed to use their service. This leads to invasion of the user’s privacy/anonymity as authentication often needs details like address, date-of-birth, credit card details etc. Privacy Preserving Authentication could help solve both these problems by creating valid but anonymous identities for the users. PPA works by issuing the users a secret credential if they can prove their identity. And simply by proving the authenticity and integrity of these secret credentials (without revealing/exposing it) the users can obtain services whilst protecting their privacy. In this thesis, I review and analyze the various types of PPA schemes leading to the discussion of our new scheme Lightweight Anonymous Attestation with Efficient Revocation. Finally, the application scenarios where these schemes are applicable are discussed in detail.

Thesis (M.S.C.S.) PLEASE NOTE: Boston University Libraries did not receive an Authorization To Manage form for this thesis or dissertation. It is therefore not openly accessible, though it may be available by request. If you are the author or principal advisor of this work and would like to request open access for it, please contact us at open-help@bu.edu. Thank you. / This paper proposes a novel distributed authentication system that uses robust alternatives in cryptographic algorithms to grant a third-party access to personal data without compromising a user's credentials. The paper examines briefly the concept of distributed authentication systems, and discusses how elliptic curve cryptography and Lamport's hash chain can operate in a zero-knowledge proof to establish and manage trust. The paper also discusses how this design avoids some of the most common flaws in distributed authentication systems. Finally, based on results from tests conducted with included source codes, the paper argues that increasing number of rounds of zero-knowledge proof yields substantially faster performance than increasing the modulus for elliptic curve calculations while maintaining comparable levels of security. / 2999-01-01

The prevalence of the Internet, client/server applications, Java, e-commerce, and electronic communications offers tremendous opportunities for business, education and communication, while simultaneously presenting big challenges to network security. In general, the web was designed with little concern for security. Thus, the issue of security is important in the design of network-based applications. The software architecture proposed in this thesis allows for the secure and efficient running of a team-based decision support system, specifically TEAMDEC. Based on the system's requirements and architecture, three types of possible attacks to the system are identified and a security solution is proposed that allows for user authentication, secure communication, and script access control. The implementation of these features will reduce security risk and allow effective use of the valuable system information data. / Master of Science

The increased usage of cloud computing has transformed modern information technology by providing organisations with a scalable, flexible, and cost-effective alternative to the traditional on-premise service model. Both service models have their own set of advantages and disadvantages. One key aspect both service models have in common is the importance of keeping private data secure. There is an ongoing debate on whether cloud computing is safe enough to store private data. This thesis will help organisations understand the security considerations of the different service models. This will be accomplished through a case study researching the different authentication models of both service models and an experiment to gain further insights. The case study and experiment will conclude with a heuristic that organisations can use when picking an authentication model. The main conclusion of this thesis is that we consider the cloud computing service model less secure than the on-premise Windows service model. We also concluded that we consider an LDAP on-premise Windows authentication model and the Azure authentication model to have a higher chance of being less secure than the other authentication models researched in this thesis.

ROS is a set of computer operating system framework designed for robot software development, and Red Door, a lightweight software firewall that serves the ROS, is intended to strengthen its security. ROS has many flaws in security, such as clear text transmission of data, no authentication mechanism, etc. Red Door can achieve identity verification and access control policy with a small performance loss, all without modifying the ROS source code, to ensure the availability and authentication of ROS applications to the greatest extent.

The use of a second factor to increase the security of systems is growing and has continued to do so for a long time. This thesis explores options for implementation to use a YubiKey as an authentication method (OTP) as well as for signing digital transactions through a web browser client. Measures of network overhead that occurs in conjunction with Digital Signing of transactions are also disclosed. Our findings show that YubiKey provides flexible and readily available solutions that can be used with only small implementations for OTP authentication. It is also shown that the major concern for implementing a solution for a web browser is to intuitively use certificates stored on a USB-device without installing any plugins or with the use of a third-party application running on the client machine.