Securing Cloud-Assisted Connected and Autonomous Vehicles: An In-Depth Threat Analysis and Risk Assessment

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 This is due to multiple factors, including complex hardware-software interactions, rapid technological advancements, outdated security frameworks, heterogeneous standards and protocols, and human errors in CCAV systems.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.

Modeling Threats to AI-ML Systems Using STRIDE

The application of emerging technologies, such as Artificial Intelligence (AI), entails risks that need to be addressed to ensure secure and trustworthy socio-technical infrastructures. Machine Learning (ML), the most developed subfield of AI, allows for improved decision-making processes. However, ML models exhibit specific vulnerabilities that conventional IT systems are not subject to. As systems incorporating ML components become increasingly pervasive, the need to provide security practitioners with threat modeling tailored to the specific AI-ML pipeline is of paramount importance. Currently, there exist no well-established approach accounting for the entire ML life-cycle in the identification and analysis of threats targeting ML techniques. In this paper, we propose an asset-centered methodology-STRIDE-AI-for assessing the security of AI-ML-based systems. We discuss how to apply the FMEA process to identify how assets generated and used at different stages of the ML life-cycle may fail. By adapting Microsoft's STRIDE approach to the AI-ML domain, we map potential ML failure modes to threats and security properties these threats may endanger. The proposed methodology can assist ML practitioners in choosing the most effective security controls to protect ML assets. We illustrate STRIDE-AI with the help of a real-world use case selected from the TOREADOR H2020 project.

Vulnerabilities of Live-Streaming Services in Korea

Recently, the number of users and the demand for live-streaming services have increased. This has exponentially increased the traffic to such services, and live-streaming service platforms in Korea use a grid computing system that distributes traffic to users and reduces traffic loads. However, ensuring security with a grid computing system is difficult because the system exchanges general user traffic in a peer-to-peer (P2P) manner instead of receiving data from an authenticated server. Therefore, in this study, to explore the vulnerabilities of a grid computing system, we investigated a vulnerability discovery framework that involves a three-step analysis process and eight detailed activities. Four types of zero-day vulnerabilities, namely video stealing, information disclosure, denial of service, and remote code execution, were derived by analyzing a live-streaming platform in Korea, as a representative service, using grid computing.

Identifying and Mitigating Phishing Attack Threats in IoT Use Cases Using a Threat Modelling Approach

Internet of things (IoT) is a technology that enables our daily life objects to connect on the Internet and to send and receive data for a meaningful purpose. In recent years, IoT has led to many revolutions in almost every sector of our society. Nevertheless, security threats to IoT devices and networks are relentlessly disruptive, because of the proliferation of Internet technologies. Phishing is one of the most prevalent threats to all Internet users, in which attackers aim to fraudulently extract sensitive information of a user or system, using fictitious emails, websites, etc. With the rapid increase in IoT devices, attackers are targeting IoT devices such as security cameras, smart cars, etc., and perpetrating phishing attacks to gain control over such vulnerable devices for malicious purposes. In recent decades, such scams have been spreading, and they have become increasingly advanced over time. By following this trend, in this paper, we propose a threat modelling approach to identify and mitigate the cyber-threats that can cause phishing attacks. We considered two significant IoT use cases, i.e., smart autonomous vehicular system and smart home. The proposed work is carried out by applying the STRIDE threat modelling approach to both use cases, to disclose all the potential threats that may cause a phishing attack. The proposed threat modelling approach can support the IoT researchers, engineers, and IoT cyber-security policymakers in securing and protecting the potential threats in IoT devices and systems in the early design stages, to ensure the secure deployment of IoT devices in critical infrastructures.

Attack Graph Modeling for Implantable Pacemaker

Remote health monitoring systems are used to audit implantable medical devices or patients' health in a non-clinical setting. These systems are prone to cyberattacks exploiting their critical vulnerabilities. Thus, threatening patients' health and confidentiality. In this paper, a pacemaker automatic remote monitoring system (PARMS) is modeled using architecture analysis and design language (AADL), formally characterized, and checked using the JKind model checker tool. The generated attack graph is visualized using the Graphviz tool, and classifies security breaches through the violation of the security features of significance. The developed attack graph showed the essentiality of setting up appropriate security measures in PARMS.

A Privacy Preservation Model for Health-Related Social Networking Sites

The increasing use of social networking sites (SNS) in health care has resulted in a growing number of individuals posting personal health information online. These sites may disclose users' health information to many different individuals and organizations and mine it for a variety of commercial and research purposes, yet the revelation of personal health information to unauthorized individuals or entities brings a concomitant concern of greater risk for loss of privacy among users. Many users join multiple social networks for different purposes and enter personal and other specific information covering social, professional, and health domains into other websites. Integration of multiple online and real social networks makes the users vulnerable to unintentional and intentional security threats and misuse. This paper analyzes the privacy and security characteristics of leading health-related SNS. It presents a threat model and identifies the most important threats to users and SNS providers. Building on threat analysis and modeling, this paper presents a privacy preservation model that incorporates individual self-protection and privacy-by-design approaches and uses the model to develop principles and countermeasures to protect user privacy. This study paves the way for analysis and design of privacy-preserving mechanisms on health-related SNS.