The 802.11 standard for wireless networks includes a Wired Equivalent Privacy (WEP) protocol, used to protect link-layer communications from eavesdropping and other attacks. We have discovered several serious security flaws in the protocol, stemming from misapplication of cryptographic primitives. The flaws lead to a number of practical attacks that demonstrate that WEP fails to achieve its security goals. In this paper, we discuss in detail each of the flaws, the underlying security principle violations, and the ensuing attacks. 1.

Numerous techniques exist to augment the security functionality of Commercial O-The-Shelf (COTS) applications and operating systems, making them more suitable for use in mission-critical systems. Although individually useful, as a group these techniques present di culties to system developers because they are not based onacommon framework which might simplify integration and promote portability and reuse. This paper presents techniques for developing Generic Software Wrappers { protected, non-bypassable kernel-resident software extensions for augmenting security without modi cation of COTS source. We describe the key elements of our work: our high-level Wrapper De nition Language (WDL), and our framework for con g-uring, activating, and managing wrappers. We also discuss code reuse, automatic management of extensions, a framework for system-building through composition, platform-independence, and our experiences with our Solaris and FreeBSD prototypes. 1

One protocol (called the primary protocol) is independent of other protocols (jointly called the secondary protocol) if the question whether the primary protocol achieves a security goal never depends on whether the secondary protocol is in use.

Multi-agent systems (MASs) are societies whose individuals are software-delegatees (agents) acting on behalf of their owners or delegators (people or organizations). When deployed in an open network such as the Internet, MASs face some trust and security issues. Agents come and go, and interact with strangers. Assumptions about security and general trustworthiness of agents and their deployers are inadequate in this context. In this paper, we present the design of a security infrastructure applicable to MASs in general. Our design addresses both security threats and trust issues. In our design, we have mechanisms for ensuring secure communication among agents and secure naming and resource location services. And two types of trusts are addressed: trust that agents will not misbehave and trust that agents are really delegatees of whom they claim to be. To establish the first type of trust, we make deployers of agents liable for the actions of their agents; to establish the second type o...

Current approaches to access control on Web servers do not scale to enterprise-wide systems because they are mostly based on individual user identities. Hence we were motivated by the need to manage and enforce the strong and efficient RBAC access control technology in large-scale Web environments. To satisfy this requirement, we identify two different architectures for RBAC on the Web, called user-pull and server-pull. To demonstrate feasibility, we implement each architecture by integrating and extending well-known technologies such as cookies, X.509, SSL, and LDAP, providing compatibility with current Web technologies. We describe the technologies we use to implement RBAC on the Web in different architectures. Based on our experience, we also compare the tradeoffs of the different approaches.

Specifications for security protocols range from informal narrations of message flows to formal assertions of protocol properties. This paper discusses those specifications, emphasizing authenticity and secrecy properties. It also suggests some gaps and some opportunities for further work. Some of them pertain to the traditional core of the field; others appear when we examine the context in which protocols operate.

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Data Grids have been adopted as the platform for scientific communities that need to share, access, transport, process and manage large data collections distributed worldwide. They combine high-end computing technologies with high-performance networking and wide-area storage management techniques. In this paper, we discuss the key concepts behind Data Grids and compare them with other data sharing and distribution paradigms such as content delivery networks, peer-to-peer networks and distributed databases.

A certificate is digitally signed by a certificate authority (CA) to confirm that the information in the certificate is valid and belongs to the subject. Certificate users can verify the integrity and validity of a certificate by checking the issuing CA's digital signature in the certificate and, if necessary, chasing certificate chain and revocation lists. Usually, we use certificates to provide the integrity of identity or attribute information of the subject. Attributes must be coupled with the corresponding identities. In this paper, we introduce comprehensive approaches to bind identity and attribute certificates, identifying three different techniques: monolithic, autonomic, and chained signatures. We describe each technique and analyze the relative advantages and disadvantages of each. 1 Introduction Digital certificates support integrity services by confirming that the information in a certificate has not been altered by unauthorized methods and belongs to the proper subject....

SSL is the de-facto standard today for securing end-to-end transport on the Internet. While the protocol itself seems rather secure, there are a number of risks that lurk in its use, e.g., in web banking. However, the adoption of password-based key-exchange protocols can overcome some of these problems. We propose the integration of such a protocol (DH-EKE) in the TLS protocol, the standardization of SSL by IETF. The resulting protocol provides secure mutual authentication and key establishment over an insecure channel. It does not have to resort to a PKI or keys and certicates stored on the users computer. Additionally, its integration in TLS is as minimal and non-intrusive as possible.