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Analysis and composition of security primitives towards a framework that safeguards the confidentiality, integrity and availability of embedded systems: uSPBM - Secure Policy-based Management of Ubiquitous Smart Devices

Fysarakis Konstantinos

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Summary

Computing devices already permeate working and living environments, a trend affecting all aspects of modern everyday lives, and one that is expected to intensify in the coming years. As computing becomes ubiquitous, researchers and engineers aim to exploit the potential of pervasive systems in order to introduce new types of services and address inveterate and emerging problems. This process will lead us eventually to the era of urban computing and the Internet of Things (IoT), where all objects we own and interact with will be computerized and connected to the Internet. However, these long-promised improvements cannot be realized without overcoming some significant obstacles introduced by these technological advancements. The direct interaction smart devices often have with the physical world, along with the processing, storage and communication of data pertaining to users’ lives, i.e. private sensitive in nature, bring security and privacy concerns into the limelight. Researchers, business stakeholders and end-users alike, recognize that one such important security-related barrier is the lack of fine-grained and context-aware control of access to the resources of these pervasive embedded systems, in a secure and scalable manner. The resource-constraints of the platforms integrated into smart environments, and their heterogeneity in hardware, network and overlaying technologies, only exacerbate the above security issues. Thus, often intertwined with the security issues, is another important barrier: the lack of interoperable solutions, to facilitate the use, monitoring and management of the plethora of devices and their services. Therefore, while seamless machine-to-machine (M2M) and human-to-machine (H2M) interactions are a necessity for secure and truly ubiquitous computing, the current status quo is that of a segregated and incompatible assortment of devices.Motivated by the above, this thesis presents uSPBM, a secure policy-based management framework, focusing on the use of well-established, standardized technologies, while considering the potential resource-constraints of the target heterogeneous embedded devices. By combining the well-studied fine-grained access control provided by the eXtensible Access Control Markup Language (XACML) with the benefits of Service Oriented Architectures, via the Devices Profile for Web Services (DPWS), it enables seamless interactions and fine-grained, context-aware policy-based management of heterogeneous smart devices. Moreover, the framework includes modular elements that allow the authentication of users and devices, communication between different domains, as well as automated, real-time monitoring and management of the devices’, their operating parameters and their services, via the appropriate middleware interfaces. The work includes proof-of-concept implementations of all of the framework’s entities, on a variety of hardware platforms, including purpose-built novel development tools, which outperform existing solutions. All implementations are evaluated in detail on a number of use cases where applying the proposed framework enhances the current state of the art in terms of the interoperability, security, real-time monitoring and management of smart devices. The results validate the feasibility of uSPBM’s approach and its applicability in enabling the wider adoption of the IoT, thus allowing users to reap the associated benefits.

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