Pub Crawl #70
Pub Crawl summarizes, by hard problems, sets of publications that have been peer reviewed and presented at SoS conferences or referenced in current work. The topics are chosen for their usefulness for current researchers. Select the topic name to view the corresponding list of publications. Submissions and suggestions are welcome.
John McCarthy, coined the term "Artificial Intelligence" in 1955 and defined it as "the science and engineering of making intelligent machines." (as quoted in Poole, Mackworth & Goebel, 1998) AI research is highly technical and specialized, and has been characterized as "deeply divided into subfields that often fail to communicate with each other." (McCorduck, Pamela (2004), Machines Who Think (2nd ed.) These divisions are attributed to both technical and social factors. The research cited here looks at the privacy implications of artificial intelligence. For the Science of Security community, AI is relevant to human factors, scalability, and resilience.
Air gaps—the physical separation of one computing system from another—is a classical defense mechanism based upon the assumption that data is safe if it cannot be touched electronically. However, air gaps may not be designed with adequate consideration for electronic emanations, thermal radiation, or other physical factors that might be exploited. For the Science of Security community, this research is relevant to the hard problems of composability, resilience, human behavior, and metrics.
Adversaries have an incentive to manipulate artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) to their advantage. One way is through a poisoning attack in which the adversary feeds carefully crafted poisonous data points into the training set. For the Science of Security community, poisoning attacks are relevant to the hard problems of scalability, resilience, and human behavior.
The proliferation and increased capability of “smart phones” has also increased security issues for users. For the Science of Security community, these small computing platforms have the same hard problems to solve as main frames, data centers, or desktops. The research cited here looked at encryption issues specific to the Android operating system. For the Science of Security community, this research is relevant to scalability, human behavior, metrics, and resilience.
Pattern locks are best known as the access codes using a series of lines connecting dots. Primarily familiar to Android users, research into pattern locks shows promise for many more uses. For the Science of Security community, they are important relative to the hard problems of human behavior, scalability, and resilience.
Peer to Peer Security 2022 (all)
Peer-to-peer systems pose considerable challenges for computer security. Like other forms of software, P2P applications can contain vulnerabilities, but what makes security particularly dangerous for P2P software is that peer-to-peer applications act as servers as well as clients, making them more vulnerable to remote exploits. For the Science of Security community, this work is relevant to the hard problems of scalability, resilience, metrics, and human factors.
Pervasive Computing Security 2022 (all)
Also called ubiquitous computing, pervasive computing is the concept that all man-made and some natural products will have embedded hardware and software technology and connectivity. This evolution has been proceeding exponentially as computing devices become progressively smaller and more powerful. For the Science of Security community, work in this area is related to resilience, scalability, human factors, and metrics.
Phishing remains a primary method for social engineering access to computers and information. Much research work has been done in this area in recent years. For the Science of Security community, phishing is relevant to the hard problem of human behavior.
Physical Layer Security 2022 (all)
Physical layer security presents the theoretical foundation for a new model for secure communications by exploiting the noise inherent to communications channels. Based on information-theoretic limits of secure communications at the physical layer, the concept has challenges and opportunities related to designing of physical layer security schemes. The works presented here address the information-theoretical underpinnings of physical layer security and present various approaches and outcomes for communications systems. For the Science of Security community, physical layer security relates to resilience, metrics, and composability.
The Public Key Infrastructure (PKI) is designed to ensure the security of electronic transactions and the exchange of sensitive information through cryptographic keys and certificates. Several PKI trust models are proposed in the literature to model trust relationship and trust propagation. The research cited here looks at several of those models, particularly in the area of ad hoc networks. For the Science of Security community, this work is relevant to the hard problems of resiliency, scalability, human behavior, and metrics.
Power Grid Vulnerability Analysis 2022 (all)
Cyber-Physical Systems such as the power grid are complex networks linked with cyber capabilities. The complexity and potential consequences of cyber-attacks on the grid make them an important area for scientific research. For the Science of Security community, this research is relevant to composability, resilience, and predictive metrics.
Robot Operating System Security 2022 (all)
The Robot Operating System (ROS) is a widely adopted standard robotic middleware that is devoid of native security features. With the increased use of robots and the risk to both the machine and the interacting human, consideration of this topic has become important. To the Science of Security community, it is relevant to the hard problems of resilience, policy-based governance, and human factors.
The proliferation of robots in the form of personal assistants, medical support devices, and other applications has heighted awareness of security issues with them. Of particular interest here is trust—the confidence the human has that the machine has not been compromised, nor the ones it has been linked to are compromised. For the Science of Security community, this relates to the hard problems of resilience and of human factors.
Memory corruption attacks account for many security breaches afflicting software systems. Return-oriented programming (ROP) techniques are often used to bypass the most common memory protection systems. For the Science of Security community, this research is related to resilience, scalability, composability and human factors.
Router Systems Security 2022 (all)
Routers are among the most ubiquitous electronic devices in use. Basic security from protocols and encryption can be readily achieved, but routing has many leaks. For the Science of Security community, they are related to the hard problems of resiliency and predictive metrics.
Coding standards encourage programmers to follow a set of uniform rules and guidelines determined by the requirements of the project and organization, rather than by the programmer's personal familiarity or preference. Developers and software designers apply these coding standards during software development to create secure systems. The development of secure coding standards is a work in progress by security researchers, language experts, and software developers. The articles cited here cover topics related to the Science of Security hard problems of resilience, metrics, human factors, and policy-based governance.
Sandboxing is an important tool for the Science of Security, particularly with regard to developing composable systems and policy-governed systems. To many researchers, it is a promising method for preventing and containing damage. Sandboxing, frequently used to test unverified programs that may contain malware, allows the software to run without harming the host device.
SCADA Systems Security 2022 (all)
SCADA system security issues have been identified as a problem for more than a decade. The work cited here addresses the issue relevant to the Science of Security hard problems of resiliency, compositionality, and human behavior.
Scalability is one of the hard problems in the Science of Security. Applied to larger data sets, increases in interoperability, and greater computing capacity, particularly in critical infrastructures and the Internet of Things, the development of effective automated scalable systems is compounded.
Scalable Verification 2022 (all)
Verification of software and its security features can be done statically or dynamically. A challenge is to conduct verifications at scale to determine whether all the features do what they are intended to do. For the Science of Security community, scalable verification relates to scalability and compositionality, resilience, and predictive metrics.
Science of Security 2021 (all)
Many more articles and research studies are appearing with “Science of Security” as a keyword. The articles cited here discuss the degree to which security is a science and various issues surrounding its development, ranging from basic approach to essential elements. The articles cited here address the fundamental concepts of the Science of Security.
Scientific Computing Security 2022 (all)
Scientific computing is concerned with constructing mathematical models and quantitative analysis techniques and using computers to analyze and solve scientific problems. As a practical matter, scientific computing is the use of computer simulation and other forms of computation from numerical analysis and theoretical computer science to solve specific problems such as cybersecurity. For the Science of Security community, it relates to predictive metrics, compositionality, and resilience.
Software Defined Network (SDN) architectures have been developed to provide improved routing and networking performance for broadband networks by separating the control plain from the data plain. This separation also provides opportunities and challenges for SDN as a security element in IoT and cyberphysical systems. For the Science of Security community, it is relevant to scalability and resilience.
Agent-based modeling of human social behavior is an increasingly important research area. Efficient, scalable and robust social systems are difficult to engineer, both from the modeling perspective and the implementation perspective. The work cited here addresses these problems. It is relevant to the Science of Security community relative to human factors and scalability.
Software assurance is an essential element in the development of scalable and composable systems. For a complete system to be secure, each subassembly must be secure. For the Science of Security community, software assurance is relevant to the hard problems of resilience and scalability.
Spam detection is a general problem in cybersecurity. For the Science of Security community, it is relevant to the problems of scalability, human behavior, and metrics.
SQL Injection Detection 2022 (all)
SQL injection is used to attack data-driven applications. Malicious SQL statements are inserted into an entry field for execution to dump the database contents to the attacker. One of the most common hacker techniques, SQL injection is used to exploit security vulnerabilities in an application's software. It is mostly used against websites but can be used to attack any type of SQL database. Because of its prevalence and ease of use from the hacker perspective, it is an important area for research and of interest to the Science of Security community relative to human behavior, metrics, resiliency, privacy and policy-based governance.
The Secure Socket Layer (SSL) is designed to ensure the security of electronic transactions and the exchange of sensitive information through cryptographic keys and certificates. Several SSL trust models are proposed in the literature to model trust relationship and trust propagation. The research cited here looks at several of those models, particularly in the area of ad hoc networks. For the Science of Security community, this work is relevant to the hard problems of resiliency, scalability, human behavior, and metrics.
Static code analysis is a standard method of testing software prior to production and marketing. Much of the work done in the Science of Security to look at code suggests that these analyses need to address security issues. Methods and practices cited in the research referenced here relate to human behavior, composability, and resiliency.
Static Code Analysis 2022 (all)
Static code analysis is a standard method of testing software prior to production and marketing. Much of the work done in the Science of Security to look at code suggests that these analyses need to address security issues. Methods and practices cited in the research referenced here relate to human behavior, composability, and resiliency.
Steganography Detection 2022 (all)
Digital steganography detection is one of the primary areas or science of security research. For the Science of Security community, it is relevant to the hard problems are privacy, metrics and composability.
Stochastic Computing Security 2022 (all)
Although stochastic computing was historically considered a failure, it may still remain relevant for solving certain problems, including machine learning and control, stochastic decoding, which applies stochastic computing to the decoding of error correcting codes, and image processing tasks such as edge detection and image thresholding. For the Science of Security community, it is of interest relative to resilience and scalability.
Stylometry is a method of tracking user behavior across platforms and using techniques such as writing style and keystrokes. If holds some promise as a tool for insider threat detection. For the Science of Security community, it is relevant to human behavior issues and predictive metrics.
Articles listed on these pages have been found on publicly available internet pages and are cited with links to those pages. Some of the information included herein has been reprinted with permission from the authors or data repositories. Direct any requests for removal via email of the links or modifications to specific citations. Please include the URL of the specific citation in your correspondence.
Pub Crawl contains bibliographical citations, abstracts if available, links on specific topics, and research problems of interest to the Science of Security community.
How recent are these publications?
These bibliographies include recent scholarly research on topics that have been presented or published within the stated year. Some represent updates from work presented in previous years; others are new topics.
How are topics selected?
The specific topics are selected from materials that have been peer reviewed and presented at SoS conferences or referenced in current work. The topics are also chosen for their usefulness for current researchers.
How can I submit or suggest a publication?
Researchers willing to share their work are welcome to submit a citation, abstract, and URL for consideration and posting, and to identify additional topics of interest to the community. Researchers are also encouraged to share this request with their colleagues and collaborators.
What are the hard problems?
Select a hard problem to retrieve related publications.
- - Scalability and Composability: Develop methods to enable the construction of secure systems with known security properties from components with known security properties, without a requirement to fully re-analyze the constituent components.
- - Policy-Governed Secure Collaboration: Develop methods to express and enforce normative requirements and policies for handling data with differing usage needs and among users in different authority domains.
- - Security Metrics Driven Evaluation, Design, Development, and Deployment: Develop security metrics and models capable of predicting whether or confirming that a given cyber system preserves a given set of security properties (deterministically or probabilistically), in a given context.
- - Resilient Architectures: Develop means to design and analyze system architectures that deliver required service in the face of compromised components.
- - Understanding and Accounting for Human Behavior: Develop models of human behavior (of both users and adversaries) that enable the design, modeling, and analysis of systems with specified security properties.