<p>The rapid expansion of consumer Internet-of-Things (IoT) technology across various application domains has made it one of the most sought-after and swiftly evolving technologies. IoT devices offer numerous benefits, such as enhanced security, convenience, and cost reduction. However, as these devices need access to sensitive aspects of human life to function effectively, their abuse can lead to significant financial, psychological, and physical harm. While previous studies have examined the vulnerabilities of IoT devices, insufficient research has delved into the impact and mitigation of threats to users' privacy and safety. This dissertation addresses the challenge of protecting user safety and privacy against threats posed by IoT device vulnerabilities. We first introduce a novel IWMD architecture, which serves as the last line of defense against unsafe operations of Implantable and Wearable Medical Devices (IWMDs). We demonstrate the architecture's effectiveness through a prototype artificial pancreas. Subsequent chapters emphasize the safety and privacy of smart home device users. First, we propose a unique device activity-based categorization and learning approach for network traffic analysis. Utilizing this technology, we present a new smart home security framework and a device type identification mechanism to enhance transparency and access control in smart home device communication. Lastly, we propose a novel traffic shaping technique that hinders adversaries from discerning user activities through traffic analysis. Experiments conducted on commercially available IoT devices confirm that our solutions effectively address these issues with minimal overhead.</p>

<p>Program anomaly detection — modeling normal program executions to detect deviations at runtime as cues for possible exploits — has become a popular approach for software security. To leverage high performance modeling and complete tracing, existing techniques however focus on subsets of applications, e.g., on system calls or calls to predefined libraries. Due to limited scope, it is insufficient to detect subtle control-oriented and data-oriented attacks that introduces new illegal call relationships at the application level. Also such techniques are hard to apply on devices that lack a clear separation between OS and the application layer. This dissertation advances the design and implementation of program anomaly detection techniques by providing application context for library and system calls making it powerful for detecting advanced attacks targeted at manipulating intra- and inter-procedural control-flow and decision variables. </p> <p><br></p> <p>This dissertation has two main parts. The first part describes a statically initialized generic calling context program anomaly detection technique LANCET based on Hidden Markov Modeling to provide security against control-oriented attacks at program runtime. It also establishes an efficient execution tracing mechanism facilitated through source code instrumentation of applications. The second part describes a program anomaly detection framework EDISON to provide security against data-oriented attacks using graph representation learning and language models for intra and inter-procedural behavioral modeling respectively.</p> <p><br> This dissertation makes three high-level contributions. First, the concise descriptions demonstrates the design, implementation and extensive evaluation of an aggregation-based anomaly detection technique using fine-grained generic calling context-sensitive modeling that allows for scaling the detection over entire applications. Second, the precise descriptions show the design, implementation, and extensive evaluation of a detection technique that maps runtime traces to the program’s control-flow graph and leverages graphical feature representation to learn dynamic program behavior. Finally, this dissertation provides details and experience for designing program anomaly detection frameworks from high-level concepts, design, to low-level implementation techniques.</p>

<p dir="ltr">The research work presented in this thesis focuses on two highly important topics in the modern age. The first topic of research is the development of various image-based Network Intrusion Detection Systems (NIDSs) and performing a comprehensive analysis of their performance. Wi-Fi networks have become ubiquitous in enterprise and home networks which creates opportunities for attackers to target the networks. These attackers exploit various vulnerabilities in Wi-Fi networks to gain unauthorized access to a network or extract data from end users' devices. The deployment of an NIDS helps detect these attacks before they can cause any significant damages to the network's functionalities or security. Within the scope of our research, we provide a comparative analysis of various deep learning (DL)-based NIDSs that utilize various imaging techniques to detect anomalous traffic in a Wi-Fi network. The second topic in this thesis is the development of learning modules for security and privacy in Machine Learning (ML). The increasing integration of ML in various domains raises concerns about its security and privacy. In order to effectively address such concerns, students learning about the basics of ML need to be made aware of the steps that are taken to develop robust and secure ML-based systems. As part of this, we introduce a set of hands-on learning modules designed to educate students on the importance of security and privacy in ML. The modules provide a theoretical learning experience through presentations and practical experience using Python Notebooks. The modules are developed in a manner that allows students to easily absorb the concepts regarding privacy and security of ML models and implement it in real-life scenarios. The efficacy of this process will be obtained from the results of the surveys conducted before and after providing the learning modules. Positive results from the survey will demonstrate the learning modules were effective in imparting knowledge to the students and the need to incorporate security and privacy concepts in introductory ML courses.</p>

Cognitive autonomy of an autonomous system depends on its cyber module's ability to comprehend the actions and intent of the applications and services running on that system. The autonomous system should be able to accomplish this without or with limited human intervention. These mission-critical autonomous systems are often deployed in unpredictable and dynamic environments and are vulnerable to evasive cyberattacks. In particular, some of these cyberattacks are Advanced Persistent Threats where an attacker conducts reconnaissance for a long period time to ascertain system features, learn system defenses, and adapt to successfully execute the attack while evading detection. Thus an autonomous system's cognitive autonomy and cybersecurity intelligence depend on its capability to learn, classify applications (good and bad), predict the attacker's next steps, and remain operational to carryout the mission-critical tasks even under cyberattacks. In this dissertation, we propose novel learning and prediction models for enhancing cognitive autonomy and cybersecurity in autonomous systems. We develop (1) a model using deep learning along with a model selection framework that can classify benign and malicious operating contexts of a system based on performance counters, (2) a deep learning based natural language processing model that uses instruction sequences extracted from the memory to learn and profile the behavior of evasive malware, (3) a scalable deep learning based object detection model with data pre-processing assisted by fuzzy-based clustering, (4) fundamental guiding principles for cognitive autonomy using Artificial Intelligence (AI), (5) a model for privacy-preserving autonomous data analytics, and finally (6) a model for backup and replication based on combinatorial balanced incomplete block design in order to provide continuous availability in mission-critical systems. This research provides effective and computationally efficient deep learning based solutions for detecting evasive cyberattacks and increasing autonomy of a system from application-level to hardware-level. <br>