Tag Archives: cybersecurity

New THaW Patent: Secure Short-Range Wireless Communication

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The THaW team is proud to announce the issuing of a patent for apparatuses, methods, and software for secure short-range wireless communication.

With the number and diversity of Internet of Things (IoT) devices growing, cryptography is not a blanket solution for secure message exchange. Devices may encounter dozens or hundreds of new devices each day, and many of these new IoT devices will have limited or non-existent user interfaces, making this manual secret entry even more cumbersome than configuring existing devices.

This work focuses on a secure method to wirelessly transmit data between devices that are in short-range of each other. In this setup, the sending device has two antennas and two transmitters. One transmitter sends a data signal via the first antenna, which is closer to the target device than the second antenna, and another transmits a jamming signal via the second antenna. Because of the close proximity between the target device and the first antenna, which results in a stronger signal, the receiving device can retrieve the data despite the presence of the jamming signal. This ensures a secure-communications process between the sending device and the target device.

To learn more, check out the patent. If you are interested in taking advantage of this patent, please contact us.

Timothy J. Pierson, Ronald Peterson, and David Kotz. Apparatuses, Methods, and Software for Secure Short-Range Wireless Communication. U.S. Patent 11,894,920 B2. February 06, 2024. Download from https://patents.google.com/patent/US11894920B2/en

See also: Timothy J. Pierson, Ronald Peterson, and David Kotz. Apparatuses, Methods, and Software For Secure Short-Range Wireless Communication. U.S. Patent 11,153,026, October 19, 2021. Download from https://patents.google.com/patent/US11153026B2/en

See also: Timothy J. Pierson, Travis Peters, Ronald Peterson, and David Kotz. CloseTalker: secure, short-range ad hoc wireless communication. Proceedings of the ACM International Conference on Mobile Systems, Applications, and Services (MobiSys), pages 340–352. ACM, June 2019. doi:10.1145/3307334.3326100. [Details]

New THaW Patent: Proximity Detection with Single-Antenna Device

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The THaW team is proud to announce the issuing of a patent for new methods for single-antenna devices to determine proximity between themselves and another device. Previous work in this field provides a method for secure short-range information exchange between a multi-antenna device and a target device. However, a single-antenna device cannot use a multi-antenna-based method and, therefore, has no way to verify its proximity to the target device.

In this patented work, a single-antenna devices uses the phase and/or amplitude of a preamble received from a transmitting device, particularly a repeating portion of the preamble, to determine whether the receiving device is in close proximity to the transmitting device. If the transmitting device is close to the single-antenna device, the repeating portions of the preamble will differ in phase and amplitude, while a large distance between the two will cause the repeating portions to have a substantially consistent phase and amplitude. This can be helpful in preventing a distant adversary from tricking the single-antenna-device into believing that a malformed preamble is a legitimate signal from a nearby device.

Interested in learning more? Check out the patent here!

PIERSON, Timothy J., Ronald Peterson, and David F. KOTZ. System and method for proximity detection with single-antenna device. US 11,871,233 B2, issued January 9, 2024. https://patents.google.com/patent/US11871233B2/en.

New THaW Patent: Pairing Wireless Devices

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The THaW team is proud to announce the issuing of a patent for new methods to pair wireless devices resulting from the THaW project.

Current Internet of Things (IoT) device authentication protocols are functional, but not scalable, which is increasingly pertinent as more and more homes and health-focused establishments have multiple ‘smart’ devices. For example, a manufacturer of an Internet-connected blood oxygen monitor will not know the name or Wi-Fi password of an end-user’s wireless network and cannot program the device to immediately pair with the user’s access point (AP). As a result, end-users may have to set up the monitor on their own… along with dozens of other home devices. Traditional pairing protocols also rely on a one-way authentication scheme, which does not prevent the user from pairing a new device with a spoofed AP.

This recently patented pairing process involves two devices sending signals between each other and leverages the movement of objects near both of these devices, which similarly impacts both devices’ signal strength. The devices can confirm trust in each other if the signal-strength-pattern they receive substantially matches the signal-strength-pattern the other device receives.

Interested in learning more? Check out the patent here or below!

Pierson, Timothy J., and Jonathan F. Alter. Methods and software for pairing wireless devices using dynamic multipath signal matching, and wireless devices implementing the same. US11856408B2, issued December 26, 2023. https://patents.google.com/patent/US11856408B2/en.

THaW’s Eric Johnson on recent health system cyberattacks

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Eric Johnson
Eric Johnson, PhD and dean of Vanderbilt University’s Owen Graduate School of Management

Cyberattacks targeting healthcare systems have been growing in prevalence and are wreaking more havoc with the healthcare industry’s increased dependence on electronic systems. Cyberattacks such as denial-of-service attacks, can have immediate impact on patient care by leaving medical staff without important patient records. The impacts don’t end there. With healthcare systems increasing their cybersecurity protocols in the aftermath of a cyberattack, patient information can be harder to access for those who should be accessing that information. Johnson’s research with co-author S.J. Choi, PhD, shows that at hospitals where security protocols slowed computer access by just a minute or so, people who came in with a heart attack were more likely to die. “When I talk to doctors about security, a lot of times they’re very negative,” Johnson said. “So they’re pretty far behind, and at this point, incredibly vulnerable.” It’s certainly not a stretch, Johnson says, to say that delays from a ransomware attack are likely to have more serious effects.

To read more about the recent cyberattacks on healthcare systems and coverage of THaW research on those topics, check out the THaW press page.

New THaW Paper on Recurring Device Verification

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An IoT device user with a blood-pressure monitoring device should have the assurance that the device operates how a blood-pressure monitor should operate. If the monitor is connected to a measurement app that collects, stores, and reports data, but interacts in a way that is inconsistent with typical interactions for this type of device, there may be cause for concern. The reality of ubiquitous connectivity and frequent mobility gives rise to a myriad of opportunities for devices to be compromised. Thus, we argue that one-time, single-factor, device-to-device authentication (i.e., an initial pairing) is not enough, and that there must exist some mechanism to frequently (re-)verify the authenticity of devices and their connections.

In this paper we propose a device-to-device recurring authentication scheme – Verification of Interaction Authenticity (VIA) – that is based on evaluating characteristics of the communications (interactions) between devices. We adapt techniques from wireless traffic analysis and intrusion detection systems to develop behavioral models that capture typical, authentic device interactions (behavior); these models enable recurring verification of device behavior. 

To read more, check out the paper here.

Travis Peters, Timothy J. Pierson, Sougata Sen, José Camacho, and David Kotz. Recurring Verification of Interaction Authenticity Within Bluetooth Networks. Proceedings of the ACM Conference on Security and Privacy in Wireless and Mobile Networks (WiSec 2021), pages 192–203. ACM, June 2021. doi:10.1145/3448300.3468287. ©

Light Commands: Laser-Based Audio Injection Attacks on Voice-Controllable Systems

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A new THaW paper was published at USENIX Security last week. It describes using a laser at a distance of 110 meters to stimulate audio sensors on smart speakers and thereby insert audio commands that are accepted as coming from a legitimate user. Techniques for dealing with this vulnerability are proposed.

Takeshi Sugawara, Benjamin Cyr, Sara Rampazzi, Daniel Genkin, and Kevin Fu. Light Commands: Laser-Based Audio Injection Attacks on Voice-Controllable Systems. In Proceedings of the USENIX Security Symposium (USENIX Security), pages 2631–2648, August 2020. USENIX Association.

Paper and video presentation at https://www.usenix.org/conference/usenixsecurity20/presentation/sugawara 

The Evolving Cyberthreat to Privacy

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THaW’s A.J. Burns and Eric Johnson recently published a piece in IT Professional:

ABSTRACT: Cyberthreats create unique risks for organizations and individuals, especially regarding breaches of personally identifiable information (PII). However, relatively little research has examined hackings distinct impact on privacy. The authors analyze cyber breaches of PII and found that they are significantly larger compared to other breaches, showing that past breaches are useful for predicting future breaches.
Issue No. 03 – May./Jun. (2018 vol. 20)
DOI: http://doi.ieeecomputersociety.org/10.1109/MITP.2018.032501749