Digital healthcare systems are very popular lately, as they provide a variety of helpful means to monitor people's health state as well as to protect people against an unexpected health situation. These systems contain a huge amount of personal information in a form of electronic health records that are not allowed to be disclosed to unauthorized users. Hence, health data and information need to be protected against attacks and thefts. In this paper, we propose a secure distributed architecture for healthcare data storage and analysis. It uses a novel security model to rigorously control permissions of accessing sensitive data in the system, as well as to protect the transmitted data between distributed system servers and nodes. The model also satisfies the NIST security requirements. Thorough experimental results show that the model is very promising.
Cryptography has been widely accepted for security and partly for privacy control as discovered from past works. However, many of these works did not provide a way to manage cryptographic keys effectively especially in EHR applications, as this is the Achilles heel of cryptographic techniques currently proposed. The issue of accountability for legitimate users also has not been so popular and only a few considered it in EHR. Unless a different approach is used, the reliant on cryptography and password or escrow based system for key management will impede trust of the system and hence its accep…
The transition from paper-based information to Electronic-Health-Records (EHRs) has driven various advancements in the modern healthcare-industry. In many cases, patients need to share their EHR with healthcare professionals. Given the sensitive and security-critical nature of EHRs, it is essential to consider the security and privacy issues of storing and sharing EHR. However, existing security solutions excessively encrypt the whole database, thus requiring the entire database to be decrypted for each access request, which is a time-consuming process. On the other hand, the use of EHR for me…
The Internet of Medical Things (IoMT) offers an infrastructure made of smart medical equipment and software applications for health services. Through the internet, the IoMT is capable of providing remote medical diagnosis and timely health services. The patients can use their smart devices to create, store and share their electronic health records (EHR) with a variety of medical personnel including medical doctors and nurses. However, unless the underlying combination within IoMT is secured, malicious users can intercept, modify and even delete the sensitive EHR data of patients. Patients also…
In recent years, availability and usage of extensive systems for Electronic Healthcare Record (EHR) is increased. In medical centers such hospitals and other laboratories, more health data sets were formed during the treatment process. In order to enhance the standard of the services provided in healthcare, these records where shared and can be used by various users depends on their requirements. As a result, notable issues in the security and privacy where obtained which should be monitored and removed in order to make the use of EHR more effectively. Various researches have been done in the …
The global Electronic Health Record (EHR) market is growing dramatically and expected to reach $39.7 billions by 2022. To safe-guard security and privacy of EHR, access control is an essential mechanism for managing EHR data. This paper proposes a hybrid architecture to facilitate access control of EHR data by using both blockchain and edge node. Within the architecture, a blockchain-based controller manages identity and access control policies and serves as a tamper-proof log of access events. In addition, off-chain edge nodes store the EHR data and apply policies specified in Abbreviated Lan…
An Electronic Health Record (EHR) is designed to store diverse data accurately from a range of health care providers and to capture the status of a patient by a range of health care providers across time. Realising the numerous benefits of the system, EHR adoption is growing globally and many countries invest heavily in electronic health systems. In Australia, the Government invested $467 million to build key components of the Personally Controlled Electronic Health Record (PCEHR) system in July 2012. However, in the last three years, the uptake from individuals and health care providers has n…
The global Electronic Health Record (EHR) market is growing dramatically and has already hit $31.5 billion in 2018. To safeguard the security of EHR data and privacy of patients, fine-grained information access and sharing mechanisms are essential for EHR management. This paper proposes a hybrid architecture of blockchain and edge nodes to facilitate EHR management. In this architecture, we utilize attribute-based multi-signature (ABMS) scheme to authenticate user's signatures without revealing the sensitive information and multi-authority attribute-based encryption (ABE) scheme to encrypt EHR…
In present technological era, healthcare providers generate huge amount of clinical data on daily basis. Generated clinical data is stored digitally in the form of Electronic Health Records (EHR) as a central data repository of hospitals. Data contained in EHR is not only used for the patients' primary care but also for various secondary purposes such as clinical research, automated disease surveillance and clinical audits for quality enhancement. Using EHR data for secondary purposes without consent or in some cases even with consent creates privacy issues for individuals. Secondly, EHR data …
Timely sharing of electronic health records (EHR) across providers is essential and significance in facilitating medical researches and prompt patients' care. With sharing, it is crucial that patients can control who can access their data and when, and guarantee the security and privacy of their data. In current literature, various system models, cryptographic techniques and access control mechanisms are proposed which requires patient's consent before sharing. However, they mostly focus on patient is available to authorize the access of the EHR upon requested. This is impractical given that t…
Health data is a sensitive category of personal data. It might result in a high risk to individual and health information handling rights and opportunities unless there is a palatable defense. Reasonable security standards are needed to protect electronic health records (EHR). All personal data handling needs adequate explanation. Maintaining access to medical data even in the developing world would favor health and well-being across the world. Unfortunately, there are still countries that hinder the portability of medical records. Numerous occurrences have shown that it still takes weeks for …
Electronic Health Records(EHR) are gaining a lot of popularity all over the world. The current EHR systems however have their fair share of problems related to privacy and security. We have proposed a mechanism which provides a solution to most of these problems. Using a permissioned Ethereum blockchain allows the hospitals and patients across the world to be connected to each other. Our mechanism uses a combination of symmetric and asymmetric key cryptography to ensure the secure storage and selective access of records. It gives patients full control over their health records and also allows …
The first generation of European e-passports will be issued in 2006. We discuss how borders are crossed regarding the security and privacy erosion of the proposed schemes, and show which borders need to be crossed to improve the security and the privacy protection of the next generation of e-passports. In particular we discuss attacks on Basic Access Control due to the low entropy of the data from which the access keys are derived, we sketch the European proposals for Extended Access Control and the weaknesses in that scheme, and show how fundamentally different design decisions can make e-pas…
In e-healthcare record systems (EHRS), attribute-based encryption (ABE) appears as a natural way to achieve fine-grained access control on health records. Some proposals exploit key-policy ABE (KP-ABE) to protect privacy in such a way that all users are associated with specific access policies and only the ciphertexts matching the users' access policies can be decrypted. An issue with KP-ABE is that it requires an a priori formulation of access policies during key generation, which is not always practicable in EHRS because the policies to access health records are sometimes determined after ke…
Electronic health record (EHR) management systems require the adoption of effective technologies when health information is being exchanged. Current management approaches often face risks that may expose medical record storage solutions to common security attack vectors. However, healthcare-oriented blockchain solutions can provide a decentralized, anonymous and secure EHR handling approach. This paper presents PREHEALTH, a privacy-preserving EHR management solution that uses distributed ledger technology and an Identity Mixer (Idemix). The paper describes a proof-of-concept implementation tha…
In this study, we attempt to add to the literature of Connected and Automated Vehicle (CAV) security by incorporating the security vulnerabilities and countermeasures of the Vehicular Ad hoc Networks (VANETs) and their access technologies. Compounding VANETs and modern vehicles will allow adversaries to gain access to the in-vehicle networks and take control of vehicles remotely to use them as a target or a foothold. Extensive attention has been given to the security breaches in VANETs and in-vehicle networks in literature but there is a gap in literature to assess the security vulnerabilities…
FreeBSD was one of the first widely deployed free operating systems to provide mandatory access control. It supports a number of classic MAC models. This tutorial paper addresses exploiting this implementation to enforce typical enterprise security policies of varying complexities.
In this work we present definitive evidence, analysis, and (where needed) speculation to answer the questions, (1) Which concrete security measures in mobile devices meaningfully prevent unauthorized access to user data? (2) In what ways are modern mobile devices accessed by unauthorized parties? (3) How can we improve modern mobile devices to prevent unauthorized access? We examine the two major platforms in the mobile space, iOS and Android, and for each we provide a thorough investigation of existing and historical security features, evidence-based discussion of known security bypass techni…
This paper presents solutions for distribution, access and use of resources in information security systems. The solutions comprise the authors' experience in development and implementation of systems for information security in the Automated Information Systems. The models, the methods and the modus operandi are being explained.
We introduce the Android Security Framework (ASF), a generic, extensible security framework for Android that enables the development and integration of a wide spectrum of security models in form of code-based security modules. The design of ASF reflects lessons learned from the literature on established security frameworks (such as Linux Security Modules or the BSD MAC Framework) and intertwines them with the particular requirements and challenges from the design of Android's software stack. ASF provides a novel security API that supports authors of Android security extensions in developing th…
Workflows and role-based access control models need to be suitably merged, in order to allow users to perform processes in a correct way, according to the given data access policies and the temporal constraints. Given a mapping between workflow models and simple temporal networks with uncertainty, we discuss a mapping between role temporalities and simple temporal networks, and how to connect the two resulting networks to make explicit who can do what, when. If the connected network is still executable, we show how to compute the set of authorized users for each task. Finally, we define securi…
The Authentication and Authorization for Constrained Environments (ACE) framework provides fine-grained access control in the Internet of Things, where devices are resource-constrained and with limited connectivity. The ACE framework defines separate profiles to specify how exactly entities interact and what security and communication protocols to use. This paper presents the novel ACE IPsec profile, which specifies how a client establishes a secure IPsec channel with a resource server, contextually using the ACE framework to enforce authorized access to remote resources. The profile makes it …
During the development of the security subsystem of modern information systems, a problem of the joint implementation of several access control models arises quite often. Traditionally, a request for the user's access to resources is granted in case of simultaneous access permission by all active security policies. When there is a conflict between the decisions of the security policies, the issue of granting access remains open. The proposed method of combining multiple security policies is based on the decision support algorithms and provides a response to the access request, even in case of …
The security of logic locking has been called into question by various attacks, especially a Boolean satisfiability (SAT) based attack, that exploits scan access in a working chip. Among other techniques, a robust design-for-security (DFS) architecture was presented to restrict any unauthorized scan access, thereby, thwarting the SAT attack (or any other attack that relies on scan access). Nevertheless, in this work, we successfully break this technique by recovering the secret key despite the lack of scan access. Our security analysis on a few benchmark circuits protected by the robust DFS ar…
Quantum-access security, where an attacker is granted superposition access to secret-keyed functionalities, is a fundamental security model and its study has inspired results in post-quantum security. We revisit, and fill a gap in, the quantum-access security analysis of the Lamport one-time signature scheme (OTS) in the quantum random oracle model (QROM) by Alagic et al.~(Eurocrypt 2020). We then go on to generalize the technique to the Winternitz OTS. Along the way, we develop a tool for the analysis of hash chains in the QROM based on the superposition oracle technique by Zhandry (Crypto 20…
In 2013, Boneh and Zhandry introduced the notion of indistinguishability (IND) in chosen plaintext (CPA) and chosen ciphertext (CCA) attacks by a quantum adversary which is given superposition access to an oracle for encryption and decryption queries but is restricted to classical queries in the challenge phase. In this paper we define IND-CPA and IND-CCA notions for symmetric encryption schemes where the adversary has full quantum superposition access to the oracle, and give constructions that achieve these security notions. Our results are formulated in the concrete security framework.
Security-critical system requirements are increasingly enforced through mandatory access control systems. These systems are controlled by security policies, highly sensitive system components, which emphasizes the paramount importance of formally verified security properties regarding policy correctness. For the class of safety-properties, addressing potential dynamic right proliferation, a number of known and tested formal analysis methods and tools already exist. Unfortunately, these methods need to be redesigned from scratch for each particular policy from a broad range of different applica…
Traditional products working independently are no longer sufficient, since threats are continually gaining in complexity, diversity and performance; In order to proactively block such threats we need more integrated information security solution. To achieve this objective, we will analyze a real-world security platform, and focus on some key components Like, NAC, Firewall, and IPS/IDS then study their interaction in the perspective to propose a new security posture that coordinate and share security information between different network security components, using a central policy server that w…
This paper discusses one of the most significant challenges of next-generation big data (BD) federation platforms, namely, Hadoop access control. Privacy and security on a federation scale remain significant concerns among practitioners. Hadoop's current primitive access control presents security concerns and limitations, such as the complexity of deployment and the consumption of resources. However, this major concern has not been a subject of intensive study in the literature. This paper critically reviews and investigates these security limitations and provides a framework called BD federat…
Quantum cryptography has been extensively studied in the last twenty years, but information-flow security of quantum computing and communication systems has been almost untouched in the previous research. Duo to the essential difference between classical and quantum systems, formal methods developed for classical systems, including probabilistic systems, cannot be directly applied to quantum systems. This paper defines an automata model in which we can rigorously reason about information-flow security of quantum systems. The model is a quantum generalisation of Goguen and Meseguer's noninterfe…
In recent years, the advancement in modern technologies has experienced an explosion of huge data sets being captured and recorded in different fields, but also given rise to concerns the security and protection of data storage, transmission, processing, and access to data. The blockchain is a distributed ledger that records transactions in a secure, flexible, verifiable and permanent way. Transactions in a blockchain can be an exchange of an asset, the execution of the terms of a smart contract, or an update to a record. In this paper, we have developed a blockchain access control ecosystem t…
The healthcare industry has witnessed significant transformations in e-health services where Electronic Health Records (EHRs) are transferred to mobile edge clouds to facilitate healthcare. Many edge cloud-based system designs have been proposed, but some technical challenges still remain, such as low quality of services (QoS), data privacy and system security due to centralized healthcare architectures. In this paper, we propose a novel hybrid approach of data offloading and data sharing for healthcare using edge cloud and blockchain. First, an efficient data offloading scheme is proposed whe…
Service-oriented architecture (SOA) system has been widely utilized at many present business areas. However, SOA system is loosely coupled with multiple services and lacks the relevant security protection mechanisms, thus it can easily be attacked by unauthorized access and information theft. The existed access control mechanism can only prevent unauthorized users from accessing the system, but they can not prevent those authorized users (insiders) from attacking the system. To address this problem, we propose a behavior-aware service access control mechanism using security policy monitoring f…
The Open Radio Access Network (O-RAN) is a promising RAN architecture, aimed at reshaping the RAN industry toward an open, adaptive, and intelligent RAN. In this paper, we conducted a comprehensive security analysis of Open Radio Access Networks (O-RAN). Specifically, we review the architectural blueprint designed by the O-RAN alliance -- A leading force in the cellular ecosystem. Within the security analysis, we provide a detailed overview of the O-RAN architecture; present an ontology for evaluating the security of a system, which is currently at an early development stage; detect the primar…
Information assurance is at the core of every initiative that an organization executes. For online universities, a common and complex initiative is maintaining user lifecycle and providing seamless access using one identity in a large virtual infrastructure. To achieve information assurance the management of user privileges affected by events in the user's identity lifecycle needs to be the determining factor for access control. While the implementation of identity and access management systems makes this initiative feasible, it is the construction and maintenance of the infrastructure that ma…
Authorization and access control play an essential role in protecting sensitive information from malicious users. The system is based on security policies to determine if an access request is allowed. However, of late, the growing popularity of big data has created a new challenge which the security policy management is facing with such as dynamic and update policies in run time. Applications of dynamic policies have brought many benefits to modern domains. To the best of our knowledge, there are no previous studies focusing on solving authorization problems in the dynamic policy environments.…
The enforcement of security policies in outsourced environments is still an open challenge for policy-based systems. On the one hand, taking the appropriate security decision requires access to the policies. However, if such access is allowed in an untrusted environment then confidential information might be leaked by the policies. Current solutions are based on cryptographic operations that embed security policies with the security mechanism. Therefore, the enforcement of such policies is performed by allowing the authorised parties to access the appropriate keys. We believe that such solutio…
Information-Centric Networking (ICN) is a new networking paradigm, which replaces the widely used host-centric networking paradigm in communication networks (e.g., Internet, mobile ad hoc networks) with an information-centric paradigm, which prioritizes the delivery of named content, oblivious of the contents origin. Content and client security are more intrinsic in the ICN paradigm versus the current host centric paradigm where they have been instrumented as an after thought. By design, the ICN paradigm inherently supports several security and privacy features, such as provenance and identity…
Authoring access control policies is challenging and prone to misconfigurations. Access control policies must be conflict-free. Hence, administrators should identify discrepancies between policy specifications and their intended function to avoid violating security principles. This paper aims to demonstrate how to formally verify access control policies. Model checking is used to verify access control properties against policies supported by an access control model. The authors consider Google's Cloud Identity and Access Management (IAM) as a case study and follow NIST's guidelines to verify a…
Security has become, nowadays, a major concern for the organizations as the majority of its applications are exposed to Internet, which increases the threats of security considerably. Thus, the solution is to improve tools and mechanisms to strengthen the protection of applications against attacks and ensure the different security objectives. Among solutions we will talking about, in this paper, there is Mutation Analysis which is a technique of test that evaluates the quality of software tests and their ability to detect errors, It also compares the criteria and test generation strategies. In…
Public wireless access points are commonly provided by governments, businesses, schools and other organizations and provide access to the Internet for numerous use cases and can present varying degrees of risk to users. While there are steps that can be taken to mitigate public Wi-Fi risks, ranging from avoidance to the application of end-to-end encryption, application specific encryption, and other technologies and tools, these options are not always viable. This paper examines risks associated with Wi-Fi from on a network-by-network perspective. Recommender Systems are presented as part of a…
