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Sheik AT, Maple C, Epiphaniou G, Dianati M. Securing Cloud-Assisted Connected and Autonomous Vehicles: An In-Depth Threat Analysis and Risk Assessment. Sensors (Basel) 2023; 24:241. [PMID: 38203103 DOI: 10.3390/s24010241] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [What about the content of this article? (0)] [Affiliation(s)] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 10/23/2023] [Revised: 12/04/2023] [Accepted: 12/14/2023] [Indexed: 01/12/2024]
Abstract
As threat vectors and adversarial capabilities evolve, Cloud-Assisted Connected and Autonomous Vehicles (CCAVs) are becoming more vulnerable to cyberattacks. Several established threat analysis and risk assessment (TARA) methodologies are publicly available to address the evolving threat landscape. However, these methodologies inadequately capture the threat data of CCAVs, resulting in poorly defined threat boundaries or the reduced efficacy of the TARA. This is due to multiple factors, including complex hardware-software interactions, rapid technological advancements, outdated security frameworks, heterogeneous standards and protocols, and human errors in CCAV systems. To address these factors, this study begins by systematically evaluating TARA methods and applying the Spoofing, Tampering, Repudiation, Information disclosure, Denial of service, and Elevation of privileges (STRIDE) threat model and Damage, Reproducibility, Exploitability, Affected Users, and Discoverability (DREAD) risk assessment to target system architectures. This study identifies vulnerabilities, quantifies risks, and methodically examines defined data processing components. In addition, this study offers an attack tree to delineate attack vectors and provides a novel defense taxonomy against identified risks. This article demonstrates the efficacy of the TARA in systematically capturing compromised security requirements, threats, limits, and associated risks with greater precision. By doing so, we further discuss the challenges in protecting hardware-software assets against multi-staged attacks due to emerging vulnerabilities. As a result, this research informs advanced threat analyses and risk management strategies for enhanced security engineering of cyberphysical CCAV systems.
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Affiliation(s)
- Al Tariq Sheik
- Warwick Manufacturing Group (WMG), University of Warwick, Coventry CV4 7AL, UK
| | - Carsten Maple
- Warwick Manufacturing Group (WMG), University of Warwick, Coventry CV4 7AL, UK
| | - Gregory Epiphaniou
- Warwick Manufacturing Group (WMG), University of Warwick, Coventry CV4 7AL, UK
| | - Mehrdad Dianati
- Warwick Manufacturing Group (WMG), University of Warwick, Coventry CV4 7AL, UK
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Mehmood A, Epiphaniou G, Maple C, Ersotelos N, Wiseman R. A Hybrid Methodology to Assess Cyber Resilience of IoT in Energy Management and Connected Sites. Sensors (Basel) 2023; 23:8720. [PMID: 37960419 PMCID: PMC10647391 DOI: 10.3390/s23218720] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [What about the content of this article? (0)] [Affiliation(s)] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 08/01/2023] [Revised: 09/16/2023] [Accepted: 09/17/2023] [Indexed: 11/15/2023]
Abstract
Cyber threats and vulnerabilities present an increasing risk to the safe and frictionless execution of business operations. Bad actors ("hackers"), including state actors, are increasingly targeting the operational technologies (OTs) and industrial control systems (ICSs) used to protect critical national infrastructure (CNI). Minimisations of cyber risk, attack surfaces, data immutability, and interoperability of IoT are some of the main challenges of today's CNI. Cyber security risk assessment is one of the basic and most important activities to identify and quantify cyber security threats and vulnerabilities. This research presents a novel i-TRACE security-by-design CNI methodology that encompasses CNI key performance indicators (KPIs) and metrics to combat the growing vicarious nature of remote, well-planned, and well-executed cyber-attacks against CNI, as recently exemplified in the current Ukraine conflict (2014-present) on both sides. The proposed methodology offers a hybrid method that specifically identifies the steps required (typically undertaken by those responsible for detecting, deterring, and disrupting cyber attacks on CNI). Furthermore, we present a novel, advanced, and resilient approach that leverages digital twins and distributed ledger technologies for our chosen i-TRACE use cases of energy management and connected sites. The key steps required to achieve the desired level of interoperability and immutability of data are identified, thereby reducing the risk of CNI-specific cyber attacks and minimising the attack vectors and surfaces. Hence, this research aims to provide an extra level of safety for CNI and OT human operatives, i.e., those tasked with and responsible for detecting, deterring, disrupting, and mitigating these cyber-attacks. Our evaluations and comparisons clearly demonstrate that i-TRACE has significant intrinsic advantages compared to existing "state-of-the-art" mechanisms.
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Affiliation(s)
- Amjad Mehmood
- Secure Cyber Systems Research Group (CSCRG), WMG, University of Warwick, Coventry CV4 7AL, UK; (A.M.); (G.E.); (C.M.)
- Institute of Computing, Kohat University of Science & Technology, Kohat 46000, Pakistan
| | - Gregory Epiphaniou
- Secure Cyber Systems Research Group (CSCRG), WMG, University of Warwick, Coventry CV4 7AL, UK; (A.M.); (G.E.); (C.M.)
| | - Carsten Maple
- Secure Cyber Systems Research Group (CSCRG), WMG, University of Warwick, Coventry CV4 7AL, UK; (A.M.); (G.E.); (C.M.)
| | - Nikolaos Ersotelos
- Department of Computer Science and Creative Technologies, University of the West of England, Bristol BS16 1QY, UK
| | - Richard Wiseman
- BT Group, 5th Floor, Orion Building, Adastral Park, Martlesham Heath, Ipswich IP5 3RE, UK;
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Gallos P, DeLong R, Matragkas N, Blanchard A, Mraidha C, Epiphaniou G, Maple C, Katzis K, Delgado J, Llorente S, Maló P, Almeida B, Menychtas A, Panagopoulos C, Maglogiannis I, Papachristou P, Soares M, Breia P, Vidal AC, Ratz M, Williamson R, Erwee E, Stasiak L, Flores O, Clemente C, Mantas J, Weber P, Arvanitis TN, Hansen S. MedSecurance Project: Advanced Security-for-Safety Assurance for Medical Device IoT (IoMT). Stud Health Technol Inform 2023; 302:337-341. [PMID: 37203674 DOI: 10.3233/shti230130] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [What about the content of this article? (0)] [Affiliation(s)] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 05/20/2023]
Abstract
The MedSecurance project focus on identifying new challenges in cyber security with focus on hardware and software medical devices in the context of emerging healthcare architectures. In addition, the project will review best practice and identify gaps in the guidance, particularly the guidance stipulated by the medical device regulation and directives. Finally, the project will develop comprehensive methodology and tooling for the engineering of trustworthy networks of inter-operating medical devices, that shall have security-for-safety by design, with a strategy for device certification and certifiable dynamic network composition, ensuring that patient safety is safeguarded from malicious cyber actors and technology "accidents".
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Affiliation(s)
| | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | - Mariana Soares
- Centro Garcia de Orta, Hospital Garcia de Orta, Portugal
| | - Paula Breia
- Centro Garcia de Orta, Hospital Garcia de Orta, Portugal
| | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | - John Mantas
- European Federation of Medical Informatics, Switzerland
| | - Patrick Weber
- European Federation of Medical Informatics, Switzerland
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Yazdinejad A, Dehghantanha A, Parizi RM, Epiphaniou G. An optimized fuzzy deep learning model for data classification based on NSGA-II. Neurocomputing 2023. [DOI: 10.1016/j.neucom.2022.12.027] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [What about the content of this article? (0)] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 12/23/2022]
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Alamri H, Maple C, Mohamad S, Epiphaniou G. Do the Right Thing: A Privacy Policy Adherence Analysis of over Two Million Apps in Apple iOS App Store. Sensors (Basel) 2022; 22:8964. [PMID: 36433560 PMCID: PMC9698788 DOI: 10.3390/s22228964] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [What about the content of this article? (0)] [Affiliation(s)] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Figures] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 09/30/2022] [Revised: 11/11/2022] [Accepted: 11/12/2022] [Indexed: 06/16/2023]
Abstract
Mobile app developers are often obliged by regulatory frameworks to provide a privacy policy in natural comprehensible language to describe their apps' privacy practices. However, prior research has revealed that: (1) not all app developers offer links to their privacy policies; and (2) even if they do offer such access, it is difficult to determine if it is a valid link to a (valid) policy. While many prior studies looked at this issue in Google Play Store, Apple App Store, and particularly the iOS store, is much less clear. In this paper, we conduct the first and the largest study to investigate the previous issues in the iOS app store ecosystem. First, we introduce an App Privacy Policy Extractor (APPE), a system that embraces and analyses the metadata of over two million apps to give insightful information about the distribution of the supposed privacy policies, and the content of the provided privacy policy links, store-wide. The result shows that only 58.5% of apps provide links to purported privacy policies, while 39.3% do not provide policy links at all. Our investigation of the provided links shows that only 38.4% of those links were directed to actual privacy policies, while 61.6% failed to lead to a privacy policy. Further, for research purposes we introduce the App Privacy Policy Corpus (APPC-451K); the largest app privacy policy corpus consisting of data relating to more than 451K verified privacy policies.
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Affiliation(s)
- Hamad Alamri
- Warwick Manufacturing Group, The University of Warwick, Gibbet Hill Road, Coventry CV4 7AL, UK
| | - Carsten Maple
- Warwick Manufacturing Group, The University of Warwick, Gibbet Hill Road, Coventry CV4 7AL, UK
| | - Saad Mohamad
- School of Cellular & Molecular Medicine, University of Bristol, Bristol BS8 1TD, UK
| | - Gregory Epiphaniou
- Warwick Manufacturing Group, The University of Warwick, Gibbet Hill Road, Coventry CV4 7AL, UK
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Unal D, Hammoudeh M, Khan MA, Abuarqoub A, Epiphaniou G, Hamila R. Integration of federated machine learning and blockchain for the provision of secure big data analytics for Internet of Things. Comput Secur 2021. [DOI: 10.1016/j.cose.2021.102393] [Citation(s) in RCA: 11] [Impact Index Per Article: 3.7] [Reference Citation Analysis] [What about the content of this article? (0)] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 10/20/2022]
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Lallie HS, Shepherd LA, Nurse JR, Erola A, Epiphaniou G, Maple C, Bellekens X. Cyber security in the age of COVID-19: A timeline and analysis of cyber-crime and cyber-attacks during the pandemic. Comput Secur 2021; 105:102248. [DOI: 10.1016/j.cose.2021.102248] [Citation(s) in RCA: 45] [Impact Index Per Article: 15.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [What about the content of this article? (0)] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 06/28/2020] [Revised: 11/21/2020] [Accepted: 02/22/2021] [Indexed: 10/22/2022]
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Ramalingam S, Gan H, Epiphaniou G, Mistretta E. A Holistic Systems Security Approach Featuring Thin Secure Elements for Resilient IoT Deployments. Sensors (Basel) 2020; 20:s20185252. [PMID: 32937974 PMCID: PMC7571198 DOI: 10.3390/s20185252] [Citation(s) in RCA: 2] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.5] [Reference Citation Analysis] [What about the content of this article? (0)] [Affiliation(s)] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 08/08/2020] [Revised: 09/08/2020] [Accepted: 09/09/2020] [Indexed: 11/17/2022]
Abstract
IoT systems differ from traditional Internet systems in that they are different in scale, footprint, power requirements, cost and security concerns that are often overlooked. IoT systems inherently present different fail-safe capabilities than traditional computing environments while their threat landscapes constantly evolve. Further, IoT devices have limited collective security measures in place. Therefore, there is a need for different approaches in threat assessments to incorporate the interdependencies between different IoT devices. In this paper, we run through the design cycle to provide a security-focused approach to the design of IoT systems using a use case, namely, an intelligent solar-panel project called Daedalus. We utilise STRIDE/DREAD approaches to identify vulnerabilities using a thin secure element that is an embedded, tamper proof microprocessor chip that allows the storage and processing of sensitive data. It benefits from low power demand and small footprint as a crypto processor as well as is compatible with IoT requirements. Subsequently, a key agreement based on an asymmetric cryptographic scheme, namely B-SPEKE was used to validate and authenticate the source. We find that end-to-end and independent stand-alone procedures used for validation and encryption of the source data originating from the solar panel are cost-effective in that the validation is carried out once and not several times in the chain as is often the case. The threat model proved useful not so much as a panacea for all threats but provided the framework for the consideration of known threats, and therefore appropriate mitigation plans to be deployed.
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Affiliation(s)
- Soodamani Ramalingam
- Centre for Engineering Research, Communications and Intelligent Systems, School of Physics, Engineering and Computer Science, Department of Engineering and Technology, University of Hertfordshire, Hatfield AL10 9AB, UK; (H.G.); (E.M.)
- Correspondence:
| | - Hock Gan
- Centre for Engineering Research, Communications and Intelligent Systems, School of Physics, Engineering and Computer Science, Department of Engineering and Technology, University of Hertfordshire, Hatfield AL10 9AB, UK; (H.G.); (E.M.)
| | - Gregory Epiphaniou
- Warwick Manufacturing Group (WMG), University of Warwick, Coventry CV4 7AL, UK;
| | - Emilio Mistretta
- Centre for Engineering Research, Communications and Intelligent Systems, School of Physics, Engineering and Computer Science, Department of Engineering and Technology, University of Hertfordshire, Hatfield AL10 9AB, UK; (H.G.); (E.M.)
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Bottarelli M, Epiphaniou G, Ismail DKB, Karadimas P, Al-Khateeb H. Physical characteristics of wireless communication channels for secret key establishment: A survey of the research. Comput Secur 2018. [DOI: 10.1016/j.cose.2018.08.001] [Citation(s) in RCA: 16] [Impact Index Per Article: 2.7] [Reference Citation Analysis] [What about the content of this article? (0)] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 11/29/2022]
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