Analysis and Design of Privacy-Enhancing Information Sharing Systems

By

Interdisciplinary Research Group in Socio-technical CybersecurityAnalysis and Design of Privacy-Enhancing Information Sharing SystemsSymeonidis IraklisAbstract:Recent technological advancements have enabled the collection of large amounts of personal data of individuals at an ever-increasing rate. Service providers, organisations and governments can collect or otherwise acquire rich information about individuals' everyday lives and habits from big data-silos, enabling profiling … Continued

Collateral damage of Facebook third-party applications: a comprehensive study

By

Interdisciplinary Research Group in Socio-technical CybersecurityCollateral damage of Facebook third-party applications: a comprehensive studyIraklis Symeonidis, Gergely Biczók, Fatemeh Shirazi, Cristina Pérez-Solà, Jessica Schroers, Bart PreneelaAbstract:Third-party applications on Facebook can collect personal data of the users who install them, but also of their friends. This raises serious privacy issues as these friends are not notified by … Continued

Security Analysis of Key Acquiring Strategies Used by Cryptographic Ransomware

By

Interdisciplinary Research Group in Socio-technical CybersecuritySecurity Analysis of Key Acquiring Strategies Used by Cryptographic RansomwareGenç Ziya Alper, Lenzini Gabriele, Ryan Peter Abstract:To achieve its goals, ransomware needs to employ strong encryption, which in turn requires access to high-grade encryption keys. Over the evolution of ransomware, various techniques have been observed to accomplish the latter. Understanding … Continued

No Random, No Ransom: A Key to Stop Cryptographic Ransomware

By

Interdisciplinary Research Group in Socio-technical CybersecurityNo Random, No Ransom: A Key to Stop Cryptographic RansomwareZiya Alper Genç, Gabriele Lenzini, Peter Y. A. RyanAbstract:To be effective, ransomware has to implement strong encryption, and strong encryption in turn requires a good source of random numbers. Without access to true randomness, ransomware relies on the pseudo random number … Continued

Next Generation Cryptographic Ransomware

By

Interdisciplinary Research Group in Socio-technical CybersecurityNext Generation Cryptographic RansomwareZiya Alper Genç, Gabriele Lenzini, Peter Y. A. RyanAbstract:We are assisting at an evolution in the ecosystem of cryptoware - the malware that encrypts files and makes them unavailable unless the victim pays up. New variants are taking the place once dominated by older versions; incident reports … Continued

Cholesteric Liquid Crystal Shells as Enabling Material for Information-Rich Design and Architecture

By

Interdisciplinary Research Group in Socio-technical CybersecurityCholesteric Liquid Crystal Shells as Enabling Material for Information-Rich Design and ArchitectureMathew Schwartz, Gabriele Lenzini, Yong Geng, Peter B. Rønne, Peter Y. A. Ryan, Jan P. F. LagerwallAbstract:The responsive and dynamic character of liquid crystals (LCs), arising from their ability to self‐organize into long‐range ordered structures while maintaining fluidity, has … Continued

An Interdisciplinary Methodology to Validate Formal Representations of Legal Text Applied to the GDPR

By

Interdisciplinary Research Group in Socio-technical CybersecurityAn Interdisciplinary Methodology to Validate Formal Representations of Legal Text Applied to the GDPRCesare Bartolini, Gabriele Lenzini, Cristiana SantosAbstract:The modelling of a legal text into a machine-processable form, such as a list of logic formulæ, enables a semi-automatic reasoning about legal compliance but might entail some anticipation of legal interpretation … Continued

A Protocol to Strengthen Password-Based Authentication

By

Interdisciplinary Research Group in Socio-technical CybersecurityA Protocol to Strengthen Password-Based AuthenticationVazquez Sandoval Itzel, Lenzini Gabriele, Stojkovski BorceAbstract:We discuss a password-based authentication protocol that we argue to be robust against password-guessing and o-line dictionary attacks. The core idea is to hash the passwords with a seed that comes from an OTP device, making the resulting identity … Continued

Experience report: How to extract security protocols’ specifications from C libraries

By

Interdisciplinary Research Group in Socio-technical CybersecurityExperience report: How to extract security protocols’ specifications from C librariesItzel Vazquez Sandoval, Gabriele LenziniAbstract:Often, analysts have to face a challenging situation when formally verifying the implementation of a security protocol: they need to build a model of the protocol from only poorly or not documented code, and with little … Continued

A Security Analysis, and a Fix, of a Code-Corrupted Honeywords System

By

Interdisciplinary Research Group in Socio-technical CybersecurityA Security Analysis, and a Fix, of a Code-Corrupted Honeywords SystemGenç Ziya Alper, Lenzini Gabriele, Ryan Peter, Vazquez Sandoval ItzelAbstract:In 2013 Juels and Rivest introduced the Honeywords System, a password-based authentication system designed to detect when a password file has been stolen. A Honeywords System stores passwords together with indistinguishable … Continued