DIPLOMOVÁ PRÁCE The safety of seniors in the Internet cyberspace Ing. Martina Burešová Praha 2015 This thesis focuses on issues of use of Internet environment by seniors. I deal with benefits and risks of the cyberspace. I describe how the Internet environmet can affect the quality of life. Specific risks and actions to prevent them are defined theoretically. The theoretical description is afterwards enhanced by actual experience from my long-term work of teaching courses on computers to seniors and handicapped people. I present examples of good practice. In the practical part, I concentrate on research of safe manners of seniors in the Internet cyberspace. I organized the research as secondary activity of the education itself. I used questionnaires, tests, interviews and observation for the research. The goal of the research was the evaluation of seniors' compenences of safety manners in the cyberspace. I assume from the results of the research that seniors' competences are insufficient. I believe, subject to my observation and in compliance with safe off-line communication analysis and following evaluation of hypotheses, that safe manners may be taught to seniors using appropriate method of education.

Este documento apresenta o Lyra, um novo esquema de derivação de chaves, baseado em esponjas criptográficas. O Lyra foi projetado para ser estritamente sequencial, fornecendo um nível elevado de segurança mesmo contra atacantes que utilizem múltiplos núcleos de processamento, como uma GPU ou FPGA. Ao mesmo tempo possui uma implementação simples em software e permite ao usuário legítimo ajustar o uso de memória e tempo de processamento de acordo com o nível de segurança desejado. O Lyra é, então, comparado ao scrypt, mostrando que esta proposta fornece um nível se segurança mais alto, além de superar suas deficiências. Caso o atacante deseje realizar um ataque utilizando pouca memória, o tempo de processamento do Lyra cresce exponencialmente, enquanto no scrypt este crescimento é apenas quadrático. Além disto, para o mesmo tempo de processamento, o Lyra permite uma utilização maior de memória, quando comparado ao scrypt, aumentando o custo de ataques de força bruta. / This document presents Lyra, a password-based key derivation scheme based on cryptographic sponges. Lyra was designed to be strictly sequential, providing strong security even against attackers that use multiple processing cores, such as FPGAs or GPUs. At the same time, it is very simple to implement in software and allows legitimate users to tune its memory and processing costs according to the desired level of security. We compare Lyra with scrypt, showing how this proposal provides a higher security level and overcomes limitations of scrypt. If the attacker wishes to perform a low-memory attack against the algorithm, the processing cost grwos expontetialy, while in scrypt, this growth is only quadratic. In addition, for an identical processing time, Lyra allows for a higher memory usage than its counterparts, further increasing the cost of brute force attacks.

To protect against brute force attacks, modern password-based authentication systems usually employ mechanisms known as Password Hashing Schemes (PHS). Basically, a PHS is a cryptographic algorithm that generates a sequence of pseudorandom bits from a user-defined password, allowing the user to configure the computational costs involved in the process aiming to raise the costs of attackers testing multiple passwords trying to guess the correct one. Traditional schemes such as PBKDF2 and bcrypt, for example, include a configurable parameter that controls the number of iterations performed, allowing the user to adjust the time required by the password hashing process. The more recent scrypt and Lyra algorithms, on the other hand, allow users to control both processing time and memory usage. Despite these advances, there is still considerable interest by the research community in the development of new (and better) alternatives. Indeed, this led to the creation of a competition with this specific purpose, the Password Hashing Competition (PHC). In this context, the goal of this research effort is to propose a superior PHS alternative. Specifically, the objective is to improve the Lyra algorithm, a PHS built upon cryptographic sponges whose project counted with the authors\' participation. The resulting solution, called Lyra2, preserves the security, efficiency and flexibility of Lyra, including: the ability to configure the desired amount of memory and processing time to be used by the algorithm; and (2) the capacity of providing a high memory usage with a processing time similar to that obtained with scrypt. In addition, it brings important improvements when compared to its predecessor: (1) it allows a higher security level against attack venues involving time-memory trade-offs; (2) it includes tweaks for increasing the costs involved in the construction of dedicated hardware to attack the algorithm; (3) it balances resistance against side-channel threats and attacks relying on cheaper (and, hence, slower) storage devices. Besides describing the algorithm\'s design rationale in detail, this work also includes a detailed analysis of its security and performance in different platforms. It is worth mentioning that Lyra2, as hereby described, received a special recognition in the aforementioned PHC competition. / Para proteger-se de ataques de força bruta, sistemas modernos de autenticação baseados em senhas geralmente empregam algum Esquema de Hash de Senhas (Password Hashing Scheme - PHS). Basicamente, um PHS é um algoritmo criptográfico que gera uma sequência de bits pseudo-aleatórios a partir de uma senha provida pelo usuário, permitindo a este último configurar o custo computacional envolvido no processo e, assim, potencialmente elevar os custos de atacantes testando múltiplas senhas em paralelo. Esquemas tradicionais utilizados para esse propósito são o PBKDF2 e bcrypt, por exemplo, que incluem um parâmetro configurável que controla o número de iterações realizadas pelo algoritmo, permitindo ajustar-se o seu tempo total de processamento. Já os algoritmos scrypt e Lyra, mais recentes, permitem que usuários não apenas controlem o tempo de processamento, mas também a quantidade de memória necessária para testar uma senha. Apesar desses avanços, ainda há um interesse considerável da comunidade de pesquisa no desenvolvimento e avaliação de novas (e melhores) alternativas. De fato, tal interesse levou recentemente à criação de uma competição com esta finalidade específica, a Password Hashing Competition (PHC). Neste contexto, o objetivo do presente trabalho é propor uma alternativa superior aos PHS existentes. Especificamente, tem-se como alvo melhorar o algoritmo Lyra, um PHS baseado em esponjas criptográficas cujo projeto contou com a participação dos autores do presente trabalho. O algoritmo resultante, denominado Lyra2, preserva a segurança, eficiência e flexibilidade do Lyra, incluindo a habilidade de configurar do uso de memória e tempo de processamento do algoritmo, e também a capacidade de prover um uso de memória superior ao do scrypt com um tempo de processamento similar. Entretanto, ele traz importantes melhorias quando comparado ao seu predecessor: (1) permite um maior nível de segurança contra estratégias de ataque envolvendo trade-offs entre tempo de processamento e memória; (2) inclui a possibilidade de elevar os custos envolvidos na construção de plataformas de hardware dedicado para ataques contra o algoritmo; (3) e provê um equilíbrio entre resistância contra ataques de canal colateral (\"side-channel\") e ataques que se baseiam no uso de dispositivos de memória mais baratos (e, portanto, mais lentos) do que os utilizados em computadores controlados por usuários legítimos. Além da descrição detalhada do projeto do algoritmo, o presente trabalho inclui também uma análise detalhada de sua segurança e de seu desempenho em diferentes plataformas. Cabe notar que o Lyra2, conforme aqui descrito, recebeu uma menção de reconhecimento especial ao final da competição PHC previamente mencionada.

To protect against brute force attacks, modern password-based authentication systems usually employ mechanisms known as Password Hashing Schemes (PHS). Basically, a PHS is a cryptographic algorithm that generates a sequence of pseudorandom bits from a user-defined password, allowing the user to configure the computational costs involved in the process aiming to raise the costs of attackers testing multiple passwords trying to guess the correct one. Traditional schemes such as PBKDF2 and bcrypt, for example, include a configurable parameter that controls the number of iterations performed, allowing the user to adjust the time required by the password hashing process. The more recent scrypt and Lyra algorithms, on the other hand, allow users to control both processing time and memory usage. Despite these advances, there is still considerable interest by the research community in the development of new (and better) alternatives. Indeed, this led to the creation of a competition with this specific purpose, the Password Hashing Competition (PHC). In this context, the goal of this research effort is to propose a superior PHS alternative. Specifically, the objective is to improve the Lyra algorithm, a PHS built upon cryptographic sponges whose project counted with the authors\' participation. The resulting solution, called Lyra2, preserves the security, efficiency and flexibility of Lyra, including: the ability to configure the desired amount of memory and processing time to be used by the algorithm; and (2) the capacity of providing a high memory usage with a processing time similar to that obtained with scrypt. In addition, it brings important improvements when compared to its predecessor: (1) it allows a higher security level against attack venues involving time-memory trade-offs; (2) it includes tweaks for increasing the costs involved in the construction of dedicated hardware to attack the algorithm; (3) it balances resistance against side-channel threats and attacks relying on cheaper (and, hence, slower) storage devices. Besides describing the algorithm\'s design rationale in detail, this work also includes a detailed analysis of its security and performance in different platforms. It is worth mentioning that Lyra2, as hereby described, received a special recognition in the aforementioned PHC competition. / Para proteger-se de ataques de força bruta, sistemas modernos de autenticação baseados em senhas geralmente empregam algum Esquema de Hash de Senhas (Password Hashing Scheme - PHS). Basicamente, um PHS é um algoritmo criptográfico que gera uma sequência de bits pseudo-aleatórios a partir de uma senha provida pelo usuário, permitindo a este último configurar o custo computacional envolvido no processo e, assim, potencialmente elevar os custos de atacantes testando múltiplas senhas em paralelo. Esquemas tradicionais utilizados para esse propósito são o PBKDF2 e bcrypt, por exemplo, que incluem um parâmetro configurável que controla o número de iterações realizadas pelo algoritmo, permitindo ajustar-se o seu tempo total de processamento. Já os algoritmos scrypt e Lyra, mais recentes, permitem que usuários não apenas controlem o tempo de processamento, mas também a quantidade de memória necessária para testar uma senha. Apesar desses avanços, ainda há um interesse considerável da comunidade de pesquisa no desenvolvimento e avaliação de novas (e melhores) alternativas. De fato, tal interesse levou recentemente à criação de uma competição com esta finalidade específica, a Password Hashing Competition (PHC). Neste contexto, o objetivo do presente trabalho é propor uma alternativa superior aos PHS existentes. Especificamente, tem-se como alvo melhorar o algoritmo Lyra, um PHS baseado em esponjas criptográficas cujo projeto contou com a participação dos autores do presente trabalho. O algoritmo resultante, denominado Lyra2, preserva a segurança, eficiência e flexibilidade do Lyra, incluindo a habilidade de configurar do uso de memória e tempo de processamento do algoritmo, e também a capacidade de prover um uso de memória superior ao do scrypt com um tempo de processamento similar. Entretanto, ele traz importantes melhorias quando comparado ao seu predecessor: (1) permite um maior nível de segurança contra estratégias de ataque envolvendo trade-offs entre tempo de processamento e memória; (2) inclui a possibilidade de elevar os custos envolvidos na construção de plataformas de hardware dedicado para ataques contra o algoritmo; (3) e provê um equilíbrio entre resistância contra ataques de canal colateral (\"side-channel\") e ataques que se baseiam no uso de dispositivos de memória mais baratos (e, portanto, mais lentos) do que os utilizados em computadores controlados por usuários legítimos. Além da descrição detalhada do projeto do algoritmo, o presente trabalho inclui também uma análise detalhada de sua segurança e de seu desempenho em diferentes plataformas. Cabe notar que o Lyra2, conforme aqui descrito, recebeu uma menção de reconhecimento especial ao final da competição PHC previamente mencionada.

Este documento apresenta o Lyra, um novo esquema de derivação de chaves, baseado em esponjas criptográficas. O Lyra foi projetado para ser estritamente sequencial, fornecendo um nível elevado de segurança mesmo contra atacantes que utilizem múltiplos núcleos de processamento, como uma GPU ou FPGA. Ao mesmo tempo possui uma implementação simples em software e permite ao usuário legítimo ajustar o uso de memória e tempo de processamento de acordo com o nível de segurança desejado. O Lyra é, então, comparado ao scrypt, mostrando que esta proposta fornece um nível se segurança mais alto, além de superar suas deficiências. Caso o atacante deseje realizar um ataque utilizando pouca memória, o tempo de processamento do Lyra cresce exponencialmente, enquanto no scrypt este crescimento é apenas quadrático. Além disto, para o mesmo tempo de processamento, o Lyra permite uma utilização maior de memória, quando comparado ao scrypt, aumentando o custo de ataques de força bruta. / This document presents Lyra, a password-based key derivation scheme based on cryptographic sponges. Lyra was designed to be strictly sequential, providing strong security even against attackers that use multiple processing cores, such as FPGAs or GPUs. At the same time, it is very simple to implement in software and allows legitimate users to tune its memory and processing costs according to the desired level of security. We compare Lyra with scrypt, showing how this proposal provides a higher security level and overcomes limitations of scrypt. If the attacker wishes to perform a low-memory attack against the algorithm, the processing cost grwos expontetialy, while in scrypt, this growth is only quadratic. In addition, for an identical processing time, Lyra allows for a higher memory usage than its counterparts, further increasing the cost of brute force attacks.

Choosing an authentication protocol or a digital signature algorithm becomes more challenging when performance constraints are of concern. In this thesis, we discuss the possible options in a top-down approach and propose viable alternatives for the efficiency criteria. Before all the technical discussions, we argue that identifying prerequisites, threats and risks on an organizational context has utmost importance so that effective solutions can be delivered at a reasonable cost. For instance, one approach to solve the performance problem is to relax the security requirements if it is allowable and use one-time passwords as the more efficient entity authentication protocol. SCOTP is the first protocol proposed in this study which improves the security and flexibility of one-time passwords. After requirements are set up, another high-efficiency solution is based on new designs of improved protocols. These new protocols might utilize the trade-offs between efficiency of distinct system parameters such as communication versus computational load. SAOTS is our new protocol designed to improve the performance and increase the round efficiency of server-assisted signature protocols. With an example in e-health, we also demonstrate that efficiency can be provided on the implementation level as well, the last step in the chain. EVEREST is the third proposal in this thesis which improves the real-time efficiency of digital signatures concerning the fact that the medical images are huge in size and to verify the signature a considerable amount of time is spent to compute the hash of the image file.

In this dissertation, we design and analyze five authentication protocols that answer to the a firmative the following fi ve questions associated with the authentication functions in computer networks. 1. The transport protocol HTTP is intended to be lightweight. In particular, the execution of applications on top of HTTP is intended to be relatively inexpensive and to take full advantage of the middle boxes in the Internet. To achieve this goal, HTTP does not provide any security guarantees, including any authentication of a server by its clients. This situation raises the following question. Is it possible to design a version of HTTP that is still lightweight and yet provides some security guarantees including the authentication of servers by their clients? 2. The authentication protocol in HTTPS, called TLS, allows a client to authenti- cate the server with which it is communicating. Unfortunately, this protocol is known to be vulnerable to human mistakes and Phishing attacks and Pharm- ing attacks. Is it possible to design a version of TLS that can successfully defend against human mistakes and Phishing attacks and Pharming attacks? 3. In both HTTP and HTTPS, a server can authenticate a client, with which it is communicating, using a standard password protocol. However, standard password protocols are vulnerable to the mistake of a client that uses the same password with multiple servers and to Phishing and Pharming attacks. Is it possible to design a password protocol that is resilient to client mistakes (of using the same password with multiple servers) and to Phishing and Pharming attacks? 4. Each sensor in a sensor network needs to store n - 1 symmetric keys for secure communication if the sensor network has n sensor nodes. The storage is constrained in the sensor network and the earlier approaches succeeded to reduce the number of keys, but failed to achieve secure communications in the face of eavesdropping, impersonation, and collusion. Is it possible to design a secure keying protocol for sensor networks, which is e fficient in terms of computation and storage? 5. Most authentication protocols, where one user authenticates a second user, are based on the assumption that the second user has an "identity", i.e. has a name that is (1) fi xed for a relatively long time, (2) unique, and (3) ap- proved by a central authority. Unfortunately, the adoption of user identities in a network does create some security holes in that network, most notably anonymity loss, identity theft, and misplaced trust. This situation raises the following question. Is it possible to design an authentication protocol where the protocol users have no identities? / text

Since social networks (SNs) have become a global phenomenon in almost every industry, including airlines and banking, their security has been a major concern to most stakeholders. Several security techniques have been invented towards this but information security awareness (hereafter “awareness”) remains the most essential amongst all. This is because users, an important component of awareness, are a big problem on the SNs regardless of the technical security implemented. For SNs to improve on their awareness techniques or even determine the effectiveness of these security techniques, many measurement and evaluation techniques are in place to ascertain that controls are working as intended. While some of these awareness measurement techniques are inexpensive, effective and efficient to some extent, they are all incident-driven as they are based on the occurrence of (an) incident(s). In addition, these awareness measurement techniques may not present a true reflection of awareness, since many cyber incidents are often not reported. Hence, they are generally adjudged to be post mortem and risk-permissive. These limitations are major and unacceptable in some industries such as insurance, airlines and banking, where the risk tolerance level is at its lowest. This study therefore aims to employ a technical method to develop a non-incident statistics approach of measuring awareness efforts. Rather than evaluating the effectiveness of awareness efforts by the success of attacks or occurrence of an event, password cracking is presented and implemented to proactively measure the impacts of awareness techniques in SNs. The research encompasses the development and implementation of an SN – sOcialistOnline, the literature review of the past related works, indirect observation (available information), survey (as a questionnaire in a quiz template), and statistical analysis. Consequently, measurement of awareness efforts is shifted from detective and corrective paradigms to preventive and anticipatory paradigms, which are the preferred information security approaches going by their proactive nature. / Engineering, Science and Technology / D. Phil (Computer Science)

This thesis describes passwords cracking using probabilistic context-free grammars, specifically PCFG Cracker tool. The aim of the thesis is to design and implement enhancements to this tool, which reduce the size of output dictionaries while maintaining acceptable success rate. This work also solves critical parts in the tool that slow down the overall duration of the program. Another goal of the thesis is to analyze and implement targeted attack dictionaries that increase the scope and success rate of generated passwords.

This diploma thesis looks at building educational modules that will serve to build a basic awareness of safety for children in primary schools. The theoretical part describes the basic information from this area. The next part describes the assignment of individual modules and also describes the schools where the teaching took place. The practical section contains detailed fillings of these education modules.