Software Security

CompSci 725 S1C 03
Clark Thomborson
Handout 5: Suggestions for Oral Reports and Term Projects

Version 2.2: 12 March 2003

1)       Techniques for Protecting Software (and Media Objects)

a)       Watermarking

·        André Adelsbach and Ahmad-Reza Sadeghi, “Zero-Knowledge Watermark Detection and Proof of Ownership,” in I.S. Moskowitz (Ed.): Information Hiding, Proc. of 4th International Workshop (IHW 2001), Pittsburgh, PA, USA, April 25-27, 2001. LNCS 2137, p. 273 ff.

·        Mikhail J. Atallah, Victor Raskin, Christian F. Hempelmann, Mercan Karahan, Radu Sion, Umut Topkara, and Katrina E. Triezenberg, “Natural Language Watermarking and Tamperproofing,” in F.A.P. Petitcolas (Ed.): Information Hiding, Proc. of 5th International Workshop (IH 2002), Noordwijkerhout, The Netherlands, October 7-9, 2002.  LNCS 2578, p. 196 ff.

·        Oliver Benedens, “Robust Watermarking and Affine Registration of 3D Meshes,” in F.A.P. Petitcolas (Ed.): Information Hiding, Proc. of 5th International Workshop (IH 2002), Noordwijkerhout, The Netherlands, October 7-9, 2002.  LNCS 2578, p. 177 ff.

·        Marshall Bern, Jeff Breidenbach, and David Goldberg , “Trustworthy Paper Documents,” in I.S. Moskowitz (Ed.): Information Hiding, Proc. of 4th International Workshop (IHW 2001), Pittsburgh, PA, USA, April 25-27, 2001. LNCS 2137, p. 1 ff.

·        C Jensen, “Fingerprinting Text in Logical Markup Languages.”  In G. Davida and Y. Frankel (Eds.): ISC 2001, LNCS 2200, pp. 433-445, 2001.

·        R Venkatesan, V Vazirani, S Sinha, “A Graph Theoretic Approach to Software Watermarking”.  In .S. Moskowitz (ed.), Proc. 4th International Workshop on Information Hiding (IHW 2001), LNCS 2137, Springer-Verlag, 157-168, 2001.

·        Hiroshi Yoshiura, Ryoichi Sasaki, and Kazuo Takaragi, “Secure Fingerprinting Using Public-Key Cryptography (Position Paper),” in Christianson, B. Crispo, W.S. Harbison, M. Roe (Eds.): Proceedings of 6th International Workshop on Security Protocols, Cambridge, UK, April 1998.  LNCS 1550, p. 83 ff.

b)       Obfuscation

·        B Barak, O Goldreich, R Impagliazzo, S Rudich, A Sahai, S Vadhan, and K Yang, “On the (Im)possibility of Obfuscating Programs (Extended Abstract)”.  In J Kilian (ed.), Advances in Cryptology – Crypto 2001, LNCS 2139, Springer-Verlag, 2001.

·        S Chow et al., “An approach to the obfuscation of control-flow of sequential computer programs.”  In G. Davida and Y. Frankel (Eds.): ISC 2001, LNCS 2200, pp. 144-155, 2001.

·        M. Jacob, D. Boneh, and E. Felten, “Attacking an obfuscated cipher by injecting faults,” 2002 ACM Workshop on Digital Rights Management (DRM 2002).  Available http://crypto.stanford.edu/DRM2002/drm1.pdf, March 2003.

c)        Tamperproofing

·        D. Aucsmith, "Tamper Resistant Software: An Implementation", in Information Hiding Workshop, RJ Anderson (ed), LNCS 1174, pp. 317-333, 1996.

·        Yuqun Chen, Ramarathnam Venkatesan, Matthew Cary, Ruoming Pang, Saurabh Sinha, and Mariusz H. Jakubowski, “Oblivious Hashing: A Stealthy Software Integrity Verification Primitive,” in F.A.P. Petitcolas (Ed.): Information Hiding, Proc. of 5th International Workshop (IH 2002), Noordwijkerhout, The Netherlands, October 7-9, 2002.  LNCS 2578, p. 400 ff.

·        David Lie et al., “Architectural support for copy and tamper resistant software.”  In Architectural Support for Programming Languages and Operating Systems, Proceedings of the ninth international conference on Architectural support for programming languages and operating systems, ACM, 2000, pp. 168-177.

·        T Ogiso et al., “Software Tamper Resistance Based on the Difficulty of Interprocedural Analysis.” In The Third International Workshop on Information Security Applications (WISA 2002), pp. 437-452, August 2002.  Available: http://grampus.jaist.ac.jp:8080/miyaji-lab/member/PaperPS/wisa2002.pdf, March 2003.

·        C Wang, J Hill, J Knight, J Davidson, “Software Tamper Resistance: Obstructing Static Analysis of Programs”, Technical eport CS-2000-12, Department of Computer Science, U Virginia (USA).  Available: ftp://ftp.cs.virginia.edu/pub/techreports, May 2001.

d)       Copy Detection

·        Jennifer L. Wong, Darko Kirovski, and Miodrag Potkonjak, “Computational Forensic Techniques for Intellectual Property Protection,” in I.S. Moskowitz (Ed.): Information Hiding, Proc. of 4th International Workshop (IHW 2001), Pittsburgh, PA, USA, April 25-27, 2001. LNCS 2137, p. 66 ff.

e)       Language-Based Security

f)         Legal and Ethical Controls

·        Stefan Bechtold, “From Copyright to Information Law – Implications of Digital Rights Management”.  In T. Sander (Ed.): Security and Privacy in Digital Rights Management, ACM CCS-8 Workshop DRM 2001, Philadelphia, PA, USA, November 5, 2001.  LNCS 2320, p. 213 ff.

2)       Secure Systems Design and Analysis

a)       Digital Rights Management Systems

·        T Budd, “Protecting and Managing Electronic Content with a Digital Battery,” IEEE Computer, 2-8, August 2001.

·        J. A. Halderman, “Evaluating New Copy-Prevention Techniques for Audio CDs,” 2002 ACM Workshop on Digital Rights Management (DRM 2002).  Available http://crypto.stanford.edu/DRM2002/halderman_drm2002_pp.ps, March 2003.

·        Antonio Mana, Ernesto Pimentel, “An Efficient Software Protection Scheme,” in Michel Dupuy, Pierre Paradinas (Eds.): Trusted Information: The New Decade Challenge, IFIP TC11 Sixteenth Annual Working Conference on Information Security (IFIP/Sec'01), June 11-13, 2001, Paris, France. IFIP Conference Proceedings 193, ISBN 0-7923-7389-8, Kluwer, pp. 385-402, 2001.

·        Tim Maude and Derwent Maude, “Hardware protection against software piracy,” Communications of the ACM, 27(9):950-959, September 1984.

·        P Schneck, “Persistent Access Control to Prevent Piracy of Digital Information,” Proceedings of the IEEE, 87(7), pp. 1239-1250, July 1999.

·        Zhao J., “A WWW service to embed and prove digital copyright watermarks.” In P. Delogne et al., eds.: Proceedings of the European Conference on Multimedia Applications, Services and Techniques (ECMAST’96), vol.2, Univ. Catholique Louvain, Belgium,1996, pp.695-709.  Available: http://syscop.igd.fhg.de/Publications/Zhao96c.pdf, March 2003.

b)       Security Services: Privacy, Authentication, Reliable Service, Trust, Reputation

·        J Armington et al., “Biometric Authentication in Infrastructure Security”.  In G. Davida et al. (eds.): InfraSec 2002, LNCS 2437, pp. 1-18, 2002.

·        Tonda Beneš, “The Strong Eternity Service,” in I.S. Moskowitz (Ed.): Information Hiding, Proc. of 4th International Workshop (IHW 2001), Pittsburgh, PA, USA, April 25-27, 2001. LNCS 2137, p. 215 ff.

·        A. Boldyreva and M. Jakobsson, “Theft protected proprietary certificates,” 2002 ACM Workshop on Digital Rights Management (DRM 2002).  Available http://crypto.stanford.edu/DRM2002/tppcertif.pdf, March 2003.

·        B Canvel, “Password Interception in a SSL/TLS Channel,” LASEC Memo, EPFL, Lausanne, Switzerland, 2003.  Available http://lasecwww.epfl.ch/memo_ssl.shtml, March 2003.

·        J De Clercq, “Single Sign-On Architectures.” In G. Davida et al. (eds.): InfraSec 2002, LNCS 2437, pp. 40-58, 2002.

·        Carl Ellison, “The Trust Shell Game (Position Paper),” in Christianson, B. Crispo, W.S. Harbison, M. Roe (Eds.): Proceedings of 6th International Workshop on Security Protocols, Cambridge, UK, April 1998.  LNCS 1550, p. 36 ff.

·        T Mallard, “E-Government: Authentication of Identity,” State Services Commission, New Zealand Government, 16 April 2002.  Available: http://www.e-government.govt.nz/authentication/cabinet-paper-2002-04-22.pdf, March 2003.  (See also “Government plan ‘resembles ID cards’, NZ Herald, 7 March 2003.  Available: http://www.nzherald.co.nz/storydisplay.cfm?storyID=3199555&thesection=technology&thesubsection=general, March 2003.  The State Services Commission is currently consulting with professional groups in New Zealand regarding this online-authentication project; your instructors will be consulted on 1 April 2003.)

·        R Yahalom, “Optimistic Trust with Realistic eNvestigators.”  In B. Christianson et al. (eds.): Security Protocols, LNCS 1550, pp. 193-202, 1998.

c)       Protocol Design and Analysis

·        D. Gollmann, “Insider Fraud.”  In B. Christianson et al. (eds.): Security Protocols, LNCS 1550, pp. 213-219, 1998.

d)       Network Security

·        J McHugh, “Intrusion and Intrusion Detection,” International Journal of Information Security 1, 2001, pp. 14-35.

·        Pekka Nikander, “Denial-of-Service, Address Ownership, and Early Authentication in the IPv6 World,” in B. Christianson, B. Crispo, J.A. Malcolm, M. Roe (Eds.): Security Protocols, Proc. of 9th International Workshop, Cambridge, UK, April 25-27, 2001.  LNCS 2467, p. 12 ff.

·        Kymie Tan, John McHugh, and Kevin Killourhy, “Hiding Intrusions: From the Abnormal to the Normal and Beyond,” in F.A.P. Petitcolas (Ed.): Information Hiding, Proc. of 5th International Workshop (IH 2002), Noordwijkerhout, The Netherlands, October 7-9, 2002.  LNCS 2578, p. 1 ff.

e)       Application, Database and Operating Systems Security

·        M Bond and P Zielinski, “Decimalisation Table Attacks for PIN Cracking,” University of Cambridge Computer Laboratory Technical Report 560, February 2003, 14 pp.  Available: http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/TechReports/UCAM-CL-TR-560.pdf, March 2003.  (See also “PIN Attacks on EFT Networks”, Redpay Security Bulletin 100-0019-BL, 28 February 2003, 8 pp, available http://www.redpay.com/bulletins/RedpaySecurityBulletinPINAttacksOnEFTNetworks.pdf, March 2003.)

·        J.S. Clulow, “The Financial Cryptographic API”, Chapter 3 of The Design and Analysis of Cryptographic APIs for Security Devices, M.Sc. Dissertation, University of Natal, Durban, South Africa, 2003. Available: http://home.icon.co.za/~clulow/Chap3.pdf, March 2003.

·        C Landwehr, “Computer Security,” International Journal of Information Security 1, 2001, pp. 3-13.

·        Sin Yeung Lee, Wai Lup Low, and Pei Yuen Wong, “Learning Fingerprints for a Database Intrusion Detection System”, in D. Gollmann, G. Karjoth, M. Waidner (Eds.): Computer Security – ESORICS 2002, Proc. 7th European Symposium on Research in Computer Security Zurich, Switzerland, October 14-16, 2002. LNCS 2502, p. 264 ff.

·        D Reifer et al., “Estimating the Cost of Security for COTS Software.”  In H. Erdogmus and T. Weng (eds.): ICCBSS 2003, LNCS 2580, pp. 178-186, 2003.

·        A. Somayaji and S. Forrest, “Automated Response Using System-Call Delays." In S Bellovin and G Rose (eds): 9th Usenix Security Syposium, 2000, pp. 185-198.

·        W. van Eck, “Electromagnetic Radiation from Video Display Units: An Eavesdropping Risk,” Computers & Security 4, 1985, 269-286.

·        Hiroshi Yoshiura, Kunihiko Miyazaki, Shinji Itoh, Kazuo Takaragi, and Ryoichi Sasaki, “A Multi-OS Approach to Trusted Computer Systems,” in B. Christianson, B. Crispo, J.A. Malcolm, M. Roe (Eds.): Security Protocols, Proc. of 9th International Workshop, Cambridge, UK, April 25-27, 2001.  LNCS 2467, p. 107 ff.

3)       Project Ideas

a)      Experiment with, or add functionality to, the Javascript obfuscation system developed as a class project by Erik Walle of the University of Waterloo.  Code available at http://walle.dyndns.org/morass/misc/code/obfus.pl, and report http://walle.dyndns.org/morass/misc/wtr3b.doc, available March 2003.  You might also take a look at the obfuscated JavaScript spam email I received in January 2002: available as ObfJavascriptSpam.htm in the CompSci725 Lectures directory (hyperlink is not provided here, to minimize the risk of executing it by mistake – be careful).

b)      Experiment with the X.509 authentication certificates for email, perhaps along the lines of my Assignment 2 for CompSci 725 in 2001.  See http://www.cs.auckland.ac.nz/compsci725s1c/archive/compsci725fc/archive/2001/lectures/asst2.htm, available March 2003.  A simple introduction to X.509 certificates may be found in P Tremblatt, “X.509 Certificates”, Dr Dobbs Journal, July 1999.  Available: http://www.ddj.com/articles/1999/9907/, March 2003.

c)      Use forensic examination software, such as ComputerCop Professional P3 (I have a CD in my office) to make inferences about what an anonymous person was doing on their PC on some specific dates, (say) one month ago and six months ago.

d)      Experiment with, and/or reverse-engineer to discover the underlying “codebook” of the steganographic software Hydan (http://www.crazyboy.com/hydan/, available March 2003) that writes messages into x86 binaries without changing their size.

e)      Analyse several home PCs for “spyware”.   Your report should describe your scanning procedures and what you found.  If your scan reveals something, you should describe what you found, your reasons for (not) calling it spyware, your best guess as to when and how it was loaded, what you did to remove it, and whether you were successful in removing it.  See e.g. “Invasive Software: Who’s Inside Your Computer” (Computer, IEEE, July 2002, pp 15- 18), “Spyware epidemic rallies call for action” (ZDNet 24 Feb 03, http://zdnet.com.com/2102-1104-985644.html), “Weatherbug” (Risks Digest 21:42, http://catless.ncl.ac.uk/Risks/21.42.html#subj13), “Totally Hip with Spyware” (Risks Digest 21:56, http://catless.ncl.ac.uk/Risks/21.56.html#subj5), and  “Adobe clarification on spyware article” (Risks Digest 21: 59, http://catless.ncl.ac.uk/Risks/21.59.html#subj8).