2019 IEEE Jordan International Joint Conference on Electrical Engineering and Information Technology (JEEIT), Apr 1, 2019
Virtual fitting rooms are a very important tool in on-line shopping, which can save time, promote... more Virtual fitting rooms are a very important tool in on-line shopping, which can save time, promote products, increase sales, and reduce number of returns. The main objective of this paper is to design an interactive virtual clothes try-on system that would make the on-line shopping process much easier, and affordable at the lowest cost possible in the local country of Jordan, which we consider as a case study of this work. The novelty of our work is that we use a cost effective RGB-D sensor, simple 3D cloth textures, and alignment/fusion procedure to build robust and interactive virtual fitting room targeted for the local market. Microsoft Kinect V2 sensor what was used in implementing the proposed system. Experimentations supported by real data from the Kinect sensor demonstrate its effectiveness and robustness. A user study was conducted among 65 Jordanian university students to evaluate the effectiveness and attitude toward using the proposed system. The study results indicate the importance and usefulness of the proposed system.
This chapter examines the superscalar pipeline Fast Fourier Transform algorithm and architecture.... more This chapter examines the superscalar pipeline Fast Fourier Transform algorithm and architecture. The algorithm presents a memory management scheme that avoids memory contention throughout the pipeline stages. The fundamental algorithm, a switch-based FFT pipeline architecture and an example 64-point FFT implementation are presented. The pipeline consists of log 2 N stages, where N is number of FFT points. Each stage can have M Processing Elements (PEs.) As a result, the architecture speed up is M*log 2 N. The pipeline algorithm is configurable to any M > 1.
The growth of low-resource devices has increased rapidly in recent years. Communication in such d... more The growth of low-resource devices has increased rapidly in recent years. Communication in such devices presents two challenges: security and resource limitation. Lightweight ciphers, such as HIGHT cipher, are encryption algorithms targeted for low resource systems. Designing lightweight ciphers in reconfigurable platform (e.g., field-programmable gate array) provides speedup as well as flexibility. The HIGHT cipher consists of simple operations and provides adequate security level. The objective of this research work is to design, optimize, and model FPGA implementation of the HIGHT cipher. Several optimized designs are presented to minimize the required hardware resources and energy including the scalar and pipeline ones. Our analysis shows that the scalar designs have smaller area and power dissipation, whereas the pipeline designs have higher throughput and lower energy. Because of the fact that obtaining the best performance out of any implemented design mainly requires balancing the design area and energy, our experimental results demonstrate that it is possible to obtain such optimal performance using the pipeline design with two and four rounds per stage as well as with the scalar design with one and eight rounds. Comparing the best implementations of pipeline and scalar designs, the scalar design requires 18% less resources and 10% less power, while the pipeline design has 18 times higher throughput and 60% less energy consumption.
International journal of security and its applications, Nov 30, 2013
Firewalls are an essential part of any information security system being the first defense line a... more Firewalls are an essential part of any information security system being the first defense line against security attacks. The sea-saw effect between firewalls and network performance is most concerning to network users; where strict security settings result in weak network performance and permeant security settings allow for a stronger one. Hence, evaluating firewall platforms and their impact on network performance is important when assessing the effectiveness of network security. In this paper, we present an assessment methodology to analyze the performance of different firewalls platforms. The analysis considers the following metrics: delay, jitter, throughput, and packet loss. Moreover, the information security of the firewalls is also tested by applying a set of attacks and observing the reaction of the firewalls. The proposed assessment methodology is tested by performing real experiments on different types of firewalls including those that are personal and network-based. Moreover, a quantitative study is conducted to explore the level of knowledge among the educated category in the community, represented by a sample of college students, on the importance of firewall and their use.
The increased demand for better accuracy and precision and wider data size has strained current t... more The increased demand for better accuracy and precision and wider data size has strained current the floating point system and motivated the development of the POSIT system. The POSIT system supports flexible formats and tapered precision and provides equivalent accuracy with fewer bits. This paper examines the POSIT and floating point systems, comparing the performance of 32-bit POSIT and 32-bit floating point systems using IIR notch filter implementation. Given that the bulk of the calculations in the filter are multiplication operations, an Enhanced Radix-4 Modified Booth Multiplier (ERMBM) is implemented to increase the calculation speed and efficiency. ERMBM enhances area, speed, power, and energy compared to the POSIT regular multiplier by 26.80%, 51.97%, 0.54%, and 52.22%, respectively, without affecting the accuracy. Moreover, the Taylor series technique is adopted to implement the division operation along with cosine arithmetic unit for POSIT numbers. After comparing POSIT w...
2017 IEEE Jordan Conference on Applied Electrical Engineering and Computing Technologies (AEECT), 2017
Indoor tracking system is an important application to locate and track individuals and objects in... more Indoor tracking system is an important application to locate and track individuals and objects inside structures. Such systems are very helpful for visitors in campuses and large buildings, e.g. universities, hospitals and shopping malls. In this paper, we present and discuss the design of an Indoor Wi-Fi tracking system. One key advantage of the system is that it employs existing Wireless Local Area Network (WLAN) infrastructure. Using WLAN is attractive because it reduce the total cost of the overall system. The system consists of a mobile device running Android operating system and Wi-Fi Access Points (APs). For tracking and locating, the system applies K-Nearest Neighbor (KNN) based Wi-Fi fingerprinting method. To mitigate computation overheard, the system is partitioned to perform light weight computations at mobile device and execute heavy computations at server side. Several challenges addressed including AP accuracy handled by using stable APs and applying Kalman filter to reduce the signal fluctuation. Using Kalman filter improved the accuracy to 86% within 2m range of error.
Blockchain is among the most promising new technologies due to its unique features, encompassing ... more Blockchain is among the most promising new technologies due to its unique features, encompassing security, privacy, data integrity, and immutability. Blockchain applications include cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin. Recently, many other applications have begun to deploy blockchain in their systems. These applications include internet of things (IoT) environments. Although deploying blockchain in IoT architecture has yielded numerous advantages, issues and challenges have arisen that require further research. Most IoT devices and platforms have limited storage capacity, low battery power, and limited hardware resources for computation and network communication. Thus, energy efficiency is a critical factor in these devices. On the other hand, blockchain requires extensive resources and high computational capabilities for mining and communication processes. Balancing computation complexity and IoT resources is a fundamental design challenge in implementing blockchain functions, including the hash function, which is crucial to blockchain design for the mining process. In this study, we present a literature review on the common hash functions used in blockchain-based applications, in addition to the lightweight hash functions available in literature. We evaluate and test the common lightweight hash functions (SPONGENT, PHOTON, and QUARK) on FPGA platforms to determine which is most suitable for blockchain-IoT devices. Moreover, we assess lightweight hash functions in terms of area, power, energy, security, and throughput. The results show tradeoffs between these hash functions. SPONGENT performs best on security and throughput. QUARK consumes the least power and energy but has the lowest security parameters. PHOTON utilizes less area and offers a balance between multiple performance metrics (area, energy, and security), rendering it the most suitable lightweight hash function.
2019 IEEE Jordan International Joint Conference on Electrical Engineering and Information Technology (JEEIT), 2019
Recently, there has been a significant increase in number of resource-constrained devices, which ... more Recently, there has been a significant increase in number of resource-constrained devices, which are typically battery-powered. Encryption schemes are employed to protect privacy of exchanged data. In such devices, balancing data security and devices resources is a critical design challenge. For resource constrained devices, energy is the most crucial resource. The research motivation is to adapt cipher energy based to predefined power levels using a single cipher with multiple implementation options.In this paper we propose a scheme to adjust power and energy consumption of single lightweight cipher based on current device power level. The scheme adjusts cipher energy by varying design options and operation complexity of the cipher. This includes varying number of implemented rounds in hardware, key scheduling and number of algorithm iterations. While altering number of algorithm iteration reduces security, it is better than inhibiting encryption or shutting down the device. Our proposed scheme allows adjustable encryption for low power level. Results from Field-programmable gate array (FPGA) implementations show energy savings of 35%-39% compared with implementations of existing designs.
Security of IoT devices is getting a lot of attention from researchers as they are becoming preva... more Security of IoT devices is getting a lot of attention from researchers as they are becoming prevalent everywhere. However, implementation of hardware security in these devices has been overlooked, and many researches have mainly focused on software, network, and cloud security. A deeper understanding of hardware Trojans (HTs) and protection against them is of utmost importance right now as they are the prime threat to the hardware. This paper emphasizes the need for a secure hardware-level foundation for security of these devices, as depending on software security alone is not adequate enough. These devices must be protected against sophisticated attacks, especially if the groundwork for the attacks is already laid in devices during design or manufacturing process, such as with HTs. This paper will discuss the stealthy nature of these HT, highlight HT taxonomy and insertion methods, and provide countermeasures.
With extraordinary growth in the Internet of Things (IoT), the amount of data exchanged between I... more With extraordinary growth in the Internet of Things (IoT), the amount of data exchanged between IoT devices is growing at an unprecedented scale. Most of the IoT devices are low-resource devices handling sensitive and confidential data. Conventional encryption methods are inappropriate for lowresource devices. Lightweight block ciphers are used to encrypt data on such devices, as it balances security requirements and energy consumption. The objective of this paper is to explore opportunities to improve performance and optimize energy consumption for cipher designs targeted for low-resource IoT devices. This paper also presents an energy management algorithm to improve IoT survivability against Denial-ofservice attacks in the form of battery exhaustion. We developed a simple and effective model for lightweight cipher performance metrics. Model results were compared and validated with published application-specific integrated circuit (ASIC) and field-programmable gate array (FPGA) designs. Using the model, we explored opportunities for performance enhancement in future cipher designs. Our analysis indicates that the optimum energy is achieved when block size is between 48-bit and 96-bit. Also, increasing size of overhead logic from one round to two rounds increases encryption energy-per-bit by 3.4%. Further, the optimum energy is attained when the number of algorithm rounds is 16 or less. Optimum throughput is achieved by implementations with large block sizes and large number of implemented rounds. Next, we present a novel algorithm to manage cipher energy consumption. The algorithm allows low-resource IoT devices to encrypt critical messages during low-energy mode while balancing throughput, energy per bit, and device activity.
The growth of remote patient monitoring technology introduces new opportunities for improving pat... more The growth of remote patient monitoring technology introduces new opportunities for improving patient outcomes, and Wireless Body Area Networks (WBANs) are a key piece in building a successful system. However, due to the limited power and computational resources of WBAN sensor nodes, combined with user mobility and large network coverage areas, integrating WBANs with cloud and fog computing presents one of the most viable options for successful remote monitoring. In order to help maintain the real-time operations of a fog-assisted WBAN, we propose a secure and efficient data delivery protocol that will reduce delay and protect against malicious attacks on the wireless signal. The protocol is composed of three custom algorithms that address channel assignment, gateway association, and introduce a new delay-and energy-aware routing metric. The channel assignment algorithm is designed to minimize and avoid interference, including jamming nodes. The fog gateway association algorithm helps to improve the efficiency and security of the connection between the WBAN and the remote resources. Similarly, the proposed routing metric is used to construct routes that both minimize delay and conserve power at the nodes along the path for improved efficiency and lifespan of the network. The system was simulated and tested under a variety of conditions to evaluate its performance in regards to mutual interference, human mobility, fog density, and attacks by jamming nodes. The results showed clear improvements in the efficiency and resiliency of the fog-assisted WBAN system when utilizing our protocol.
International Journal of Electronic Security and Digital Forensics, 2016
Steganography methods conceal covert messages inside communicated data. Field-programmable gate a... more Steganography methods conceal covert messages inside communicated data. Field-programmable gate array (FPGA) hardware implementation provides speed, flexibility and configurability. It is extremely difficult to compare published results from different platforms and technologies. The goal of our research work is to mitigate the dependency by examining implementations from multiple FPGA platforms. The research studies the implementations of 12 spatial steganography methods using Altera and Xilinx FPGAs. The methods include mix-bit LSB, least significant bit (LSB), random LSB and texture-based algorithms. The objective of the research is to develop platform-independent resources, timing, power and energy models; to empower future steganography research. Further, the article evaluates steganography methods using typical performance metrics as well as a novel performance metric. The results suggest that the mix-bit methods exhibit good performance across most of the metrics. However, when image quality is a concern, the two-bit LSB is the front runner.
2015 IEEE 2nd International Conference on Cyber Security and Cloud Computing, 2015
Cooperative communication is a technique that helps to improve the communication performance in w... more Cooperative communication is a technique that helps to improve the communication performance in wireless networks. It allows the nodes to rely on their neighbors when transmitting packets providing some diversity gain. Wireless sensor networks (WSNs) can benefit from cooperative communication to, which was proven by other researcher in the field. In this paper we consider security issues in WSNs with cooperative communications. We study such issues at each of the main protocol layers: physical layer, data link layer, network layer, services (topology) layer, and application layer. For each layer, we clarify the main task, enumerate the main attacks and threats, specify the primary security approaches and techniques, if any, and discuss possible new attacks and problems that may arise with the use of cooperative communications. Further, we showed for some attacks (e.g. jamming, packet dropping, and wormhole) that using cooperative communication improves the network resiliency and reliability. This paper builds the foundations and clarifies the specifications for a needed security protocol in WSNs with cooperative communications that can enhance its performance and resiliency against cyber-attacks.
International Journal of Circuit Theory and Applications, 2021
SummaryHardware Trojans (HTs) are malicious and intentional modification of the hardware design, ... more SummaryHardware Trojans (HTs) are malicious and intentional modification of the hardware design, embedded by an adversary to leak sensitive data, modify functionality, or cause malfunction. Lightweight ciphers are designed for resource‐constrained devices (RCDs) to balance resources and security, but often targeted by HTs. This work aims to create a trusted lightweight cipher design and detect complex sequential HTs using a runtime monitoring method with minimal resource overhead. The novelty of the approach is that it combines full or partial temporal redundancy, resource minimization, and runtime monitoring. The algorithm employs temporal redundancy, by executing a first run of the cipher, and then replays the cipher fully (ReplayN method) or partially (ReplayN/2 method). A mismatch indicates HT activity, and a third replay is executed to determine the correct results. The ReplayN/2 algorithm further optimizes time and energy by limiting replay to the second half of the cipher rou...
2017 International Conference on Electrical and Computing Technologies and Applications (ICECTA), 2017
Nowadays, robots are widely ubiquitous and integral part in our daily lives, which can be seen al... more Nowadays, robots are widely ubiquitous and integral part in our daily lives, which can be seen almost everywhere in industry, hospitals, military, etc. To provide remote access and control, usually robots are connected to local network or to the Internet through WiFi or Ethernet. As such, it is of great importance and of a critical mission to maintain the safety and the security access of such robots. Security threats may result in completely preventing the access and control of the robot. The consequences of this may be catastrophic and may cause an immediate physical damage to the robot. This paper aims to present a security risk assessment of the well-known PeopleBot; a mobile robot platform from Adept MobileRobots Company. Initially, we thoroughly examined security threats related to remote accessing the PeopleBot robot. We conducted an impact-oriented analysis approach on the wireless communication medium; the main method considered to remotely access the PeopleBot robot. Numerous experiments using SSH and server-client applications were conducted, and they demonstrated that certain attacks result in denying remote access service to the PeopleBot robot. Consequently and dangerously the robot becomes unavailable. Finally, we suggested one possible mitigation and provided useful conclusions to raise awareness of possible security threats on the robotic systems; especially when the robots are involved in critical missions or applications.
Journal of Network and Computer Applications, 2015
This paper investigates the lightweight block ciphers' implementations, which have received a fai... more This paper investigates the lightweight block ciphers' implementations, which have received a fair amount of research for their essential security role in low-resource devices. Our objective is to present a comprehensive review of state-of-the-art research progress in lightweight block ciphers' implementation and highlight future research directions. At first, we present taxonomy of the cipher design space and accurately define the scope of lightweight ciphers for low-resource devices. Moreover, this paper discusses the performance metrics that are commonly reported in the literature when comparing cipher implementations. The sources of inaccuracies and deviations are carefully examined. In order to mitigate the confusion in the composite metrics, we developed a general metric which includes the basic metrics. Our analysis designated the energy/bit metric as the most appropriate metric for energy-constrained low-resource designs. Afterwards, the software and hardware implementations of the block cipher algorithms are surveyed, investigated, and compared. The paper selects the top performing ciphers in various metrics and suggests the Present cipher as a good reference for hardware implementations. What transpires from this survey is that unresolved research questions and issues are yet to be addressed by future research projects.
2019 IEEE Jordan International Joint Conference on Electrical Engineering and Information Technology (JEEIT), Apr 1, 2019
Virtual fitting rooms are a very important tool in on-line shopping, which can save time, promote... more Virtual fitting rooms are a very important tool in on-line shopping, which can save time, promote products, increase sales, and reduce number of returns. The main objective of this paper is to design an interactive virtual clothes try-on system that would make the on-line shopping process much easier, and affordable at the lowest cost possible in the local country of Jordan, which we consider as a case study of this work. The novelty of our work is that we use a cost effective RGB-D sensor, simple 3D cloth textures, and alignment/fusion procedure to build robust and interactive virtual fitting room targeted for the local market. Microsoft Kinect V2 sensor what was used in implementing the proposed system. Experimentations supported by real data from the Kinect sensor demonstrate its effectiveness and robustness. A user study was conducted among 65 Jordanian university students to evaluate the effectiveness and attitude toward using the proposed system. The study results indicate the importance and usefulness of the proposed system.
This chapter examines the superscalar pipeline Fast Fourier Transform algorithm and architecture.... more This chapter examines the superscalar pipeline Fast Fourier Transform algorithm and architecture. The algorithm presents a memory management scheme that avoids memory contention throughout the pipeline stages. The fundamental algorithm, a switch-based FFT pipeline architecture and an example 64-point FFT implementation are presented. The pipeline consists of log 2 N stages, where N is number of FFT points. Each stage can have M Processing Elements (PEs.) As a result, the architecture speed up is M*log 2 N. The pipeline algorithm is configurable to any M > 1.
The growth of low-resource devices has increased rapidly in recent years. Communication in such d... more The growth of low-resource devices has increased rapidly in recent years. Communication in such devices presents two challenges: security and resource limitation. Lightweight ciphers, such as HIGHT cipher, are encryption algorithms targeted for low resource systems. Designing lightweight ciphers in reconfigurable platform (e.g., field-programmable gate array) provides speedup as well as flexibility. The HIGHT cipher consists of simple operations and provides adequate security level. The objective of this research work is to design, optimize, and model FPGA implementation of the HIGHT cipher. Several optimized designs are presented to minimize the required hardware resources and energy including the scalar and pipeline ones. Our analysis shows that the scalar designs have smaller area and power dissipation, whereas the pipeline designs have higher throughput and lower energy. Because of the fact that obtaining the best performance out of any implemented design mainly requires balancing the design area and energy, our experimental results demonstrate that it is possible to obtain such optimal performance using the pipeline design with two and four rounds per stage as well as with the scalar design with one and eight rounds. Comparing the best implementations of pipeline and scalar designs, the scalar design requires 18% less resources and 10% less power, while the pipeline design has 18 times higher throughput and 60% less energy consumption.
International journal of security and its applications, Nov 30, 2013
Firewalls are an essential part of any information security system being the first defense line a... more Firewalls are an essential part of any information security system being the first defense line against security attacks. The sea-saw effect between firewalls and network performance is most concerning to network users; where strict security settings result in weak network performance and permeant security settings allow for a stronger one. Hence, evaluating firewall platforms and their impact on network performance is important when assessing the effectiveness of network security. In this paper, we present an assessment methodology to analyze the performance of different firewalls platforms. The analysis considers the following metrics: delay, jitter, throughput, and packet loss. Moreover, the information security of the firewalls is also tested by applying a set of attacks and observing the reaction of the firewalls. The proposed assessment methodology is tested by performing real experiments on different types of firewalls including those that are personal and network-based. Moreover, a quantitative study is conducted to explore the level of knowledge among the educated category in the community, represented by a sample of college students, on the importance of firewall and their use.
The increased demand for better accuracy and precision and wider data size has strained current t... more The increased demand for better accuracy and precision and wider data size has strained current the floating point system and motivated the development of the POSIT system. The POSIT system supports flexible formats and tapered precision and provides equivalent accuracy with fewer bits. This paper examines the POSIT and floating point systems, comparing the performance of 32-bit POSIT and 32-bit floating point systems using IIR notch filter implementation. Given that the bulk of the calculations in the filter are multiplication operations, an Enhanced Radix-4 Modified Booth Multiplier (ERMBM) is implemented to increase the calculation speed and efficiency. ERMBM enhances area, speed, power, and energy compared to the POSIT regular multiplier by 26.80%, 51.97%, 0.54%, and 52.22%, respectively, without affecting the accuracy. Moreover, the Taylor series technique is adopted to implement the division operation along with cosine arithmetic unit for POSIT numbers. After comparing POSIT w...
2017 IEEE Jordan Conference on Applied Electrical Engineering and Computing Technologies (AEECT), 2017
Indoor tracking system is an important application to locate and track individuals and objects in... more Indoor tracking system is an important application to locate and track individuals and objects inside structures. Such systems are very helpful for visitors in campuses and large buildings, e.g. universities, hospitals and shopping malls. In this paper, we present and discuss the design of an Indoor Wi-Fi tracking system. One key advantage of the system is that it employs existing Wireless Local Area Network (WLAN) infrastructure. Using WLAN is attractive because it reduce the total cost of the overall system. The system consists of a mobile device running Android operating system and Wi-Fi Access Points (APs). For tracking and locating, the system applies K-Nearest Neighbor (KNN) based Wi-Fi fingerprinting method. To mitigate computation overheard, the system is partitioned to perform light weight computations at mobile device and execute heavy computations at server side. Several challenges addressed including AP accuracy handled by using stable APs and applying Kalman filter to reduce the signal fluctuation. Using Kalman filter improved the accuracy to 86% within 2m range of error.
Blockchain is among the most promising new technologies due to its unique features, encompassing ... more Blockchain is among the most promising new technologies due to its unique features, encompassing security, privacy, data integrity, and immutability. Blockchain applications include cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin. Recently, many other applications have begun to deploy blockchain in their systems. These applications include internet of things (IoT) environments. Although deploying blockchain in IoT architecture has yielded numerous advantages, issues and challenges have arisen that require further research. Most IoT devices and platforms have limited storage capacity, low battery power, and limited hardware resources for computation and network communication. Thus, energy efficiency is a critical factor in these devices. On the other hand, blockchain requires extensive resources and high computational capabilities for mining and communication processes. Balancing computation complexity and IoT resources is a fundamental design challenge in implementing blockchain functions, including the hash function, which is crucial to blockchain design for the mining process. In this study, we present a literature review on the common hash functions used in blockchain-based applications, in addition to the lightweight hash functions available in literature. We evaluate and test the common lightweight hash functions (SPONGENT, PHOTON, and QUARK) on FPGA platforms to determine which is most suitable for blockchain-IoT devices. Moreover, we assess lightweight hash functions in terms of area, power, energy, security, and throughput. The results show tradeoffs between these hash functions. SPONGENT performs best on security and throughput. QUARK consumes the least power and energy but has the lowest security parameters. PHOTON utilizes less area and offers a balance between multiple performance metrics (area, energy, and security), rendering it the most suitable lightweight hash function.
2019 IEEE Jordan International Joint Conference on Electrical Engineering and Information Technology (JEEIT), 2019
Recently, there has been a significant increase in number of resource-constrained devices, which ... more Recently, there has been a significant increase in number of resource-constrained devices, which are typically battery-powered. Encryption schemes are employed to protect privacy of exchanged data. In such devices, balancing data security and devices resources is a critical design challenge. For resource constrained devices, energy is the most crucial resource. The research motivation is to adapt cipher energy based to predefined power levels using a single cipher with multiple implementation options.In this paper we propose a scheme to adjust power and energy consumption of single lightweight cipher based on current device power level. The scheme adjusts cipher energy by varying design options and operation complexity of the cipher. This includes varying number of implemented rounds in hardware, key scheduling and number of algorithm iterations. While altering number of algorithm iteration reduces security, it is better than inhibiting encryption or shutting down the device. Our proposed scheme allows adjustable encryption for low power level. Results from Field-programmable gate array (FPGA) implementations show energy savings of 35%-39% compared with implementations of existing designs.
Security of IoT devices is getting a lot of attention from researchers as they are becoming preva... more Security of IoT devices is getting a lot of attention from researchers as they are becoming prevalent everywhere. However, implementation of hardware security in these devices has been overlooked, and many researches have mainly focused on software, network, and cloud security. A deeper understanding of hardware Trojans (HTs) and protection against them is of utmost importance right now as they are the prime threat to the hardware. This paper emphasizes the need for a secure hardware-level foundation for security of these devices, as depending on software security alone is not adequate enough. These devices must be protected against sophisticated attacks, especially if the groundwork for the attacks is already laid in devices during design or manufacturing process, such as with HTs. This paper will discuss the stealthy nature of these HT, highlight HT taxonomy and insertion methods, and provide countermeasures.
With extraordinary growth in the Internet of Things (IoT), the amount of data exchanged between I... more With extraordinary growth in the Internet of Things (IoT), the amount of data exchanged between IoT devices is growing at an unprecedented scale. Most of the IoT devices are low-resource devices handling sensitive and confidential data. Conventional encryption methods are inappropriate for lowresource devices. Lightweight block ciphers are used to encrypt data on such devices, as it balances security requirements and energy consumption. The objective of this paper is to explore opportunities to improve performance and optimize energy consumption for cipher designs targeted for low-resource IoT devices. This paper also presents an energy management algorithm to improve IoT survivability against Denial-ofservice attacks in the form of battery exhaustion. We developed a simple and effective model for lightweight cipher performance metrics. Model results were compared and validated with published application-specific integrated circuit (ASIC) and field-programmable gate array (FPGA) designs. Using the model, we explored opportunities for performance enhancement in future cipher designs. Our analysis indicates that the optimum energy is achieved when block size is between 48-bit and 96-bit. Also, increasing size of overhead logic from one round to two rounds increases encryption energy-per-bit by 3.4%. Further, the optimum energy is attained when the number of algorithm rounds is 16 or less. Optimum throughput is achieved by implementations with large block sizes and large number of implemented rounds. Next, we present a novel algorithm to manage cipher energy consumption. The algorithm allows low-resource IoT devices to encrypt critical messages during low-energy mode while balancing throughput, energy per bit, and device activity.
The growth of remote patient monitoring technology introduces new opportunities for improving pat... more The growth of remote patient monitoring technology introduces new opportunities for improving patient outcomes, and Wireless Body Area Networks (WBANs) are a key piece in building a successful system. However, due to the limited power and computational resources of WBAN sensor nodes, combined with user mobility and large network coverage areas, integrating WBANs with cloud and fog computing presents one of the most viable options for successful remote monitoring. In order to help maintain the real-time operations of a fog-assisted WBAN, we propose a secure and efficient data delivery protocol that will reduce delay and protect against malicious attacks on the wireless signal. The protocol is composed of three custom algorithms that address channel assignment, gateway association, and introduce a new delay-and energy-aware routing metric. The channel assignment algorithm is designed to minimize and avoid interference, including jamming nodes. The fog gateway association algorithm helps to improve the efficiency and security of the connection between the WBAN and the remote resources. Similarly, the proposed routing metric is used to construct routes that both minimize delay and conserve power at the nodes along the path for improved efficiency and lifespan of the network. The system was simulated and tested under a variety of conditions to evaluate its performance in regards to mutual interference, human mobility, fog density, and attacks by jamming nodes. The results showed clear improvements in the efficiency and resiliency of the fog-assisted WBAN system when utilizing our protocol.
International Journal of Electronic Security and Digital Forensics, 2016
Steganography methods conceal covert messages inside communicated data. Field-programmable gate a... more Steganography methods conceal covert messages inside communicated data. Field-programmable gate array (FPGA) hardware implementation provides speed, flexibility and configurability. It is extremely difficult to compare published results from different platforms and technologies. The goal of our research work is to mitigate the dependency by examining implementations from multiple FPGA platforms. The research studies the implementations of 12 spatial steganography methods using Altera and Xilinx FPGAs. The methods include mix-bit LSB, least significant bit (LSB), random LSB and texture-based algorithms. The objective of the research is to develop platform-independent resources, timing, power and energy models; to empower future steganography research. Further, the article evaluates steganography methods using typical performance metrics as well as a novel performance metric. The results suggest that the mix-bit methods exhibit good performance across most of the metrics. However, when image quality is a concern, the two-bit LSB is the front runner.
2015 IEEE 2nd International Conference on Cyber Security and Cloud Computing, 2015
Cooperative communication is a technique that helps to improve the communication performance in w... more Cooperative communication is a technique that helps to improve the communication performance in wireless networks. It allows the nodes to rely on their neighbors when transmitting packets providing some diversity gain. Wireless sensor networks (WSNs) can benefit from cooperative communication to, which was proven by other researcher in the field. In this paper we consider security issues in WSNs with cooperative communications. We study such issues at each of the main protocol layers: physical layer, data link layer, network layer, services (topology) layer, and application layer. For each layer, we clarify the main task, enumerate the main attacks and threats, specify the primary security approaches and techniques, if any, and discuss possible new attacks and problems that may arise with the use of cooperative communications. Further, we showed for some attacks (e.g. jamming, packet dropping, and wormhole) that using cooperative communication improves the network resiliency and reliability. This paper builds the foundations and clarifies the specifications for a needed security protocol in WSNs with cooperative communications that can enhance its performance and resiliency against cyber-attacks.
International Journal of Circuit Theory and Applications, 2021
SummaryHardware Trojans (HTs) are malicious and intentional modification of the hardware design, ... more SummaryHardware Trojans (HTs) are malicious and intentional modification of the hardware design, embedded by an adversary to leak sensitive data, modify functionality, or cause malfunction. Lightweight ciphers are designed for resource‐constrained devices (RCDs) to balance resources and security, but often targeted by HTs. This work aims to create a trusted lightweight cipher design and detect complex sequential HTs using a runtime monitoring method with minimal resource overhead. The novelty of the approach is that it combines full or partial temporal redundancy, resource minimization, and runtime monitoring. The algorithm employs temporal redundancy, by executing a first run of the cipher, and then replays the cipher fully (ReplayN method) or partially (ReplayN/2 method). A mismatch indicates HT activity, and a third replay is executed to determine the correct results. The ReplayN/2 algorithm further optimizes time and energy by limiting replay to the second half of the cipher rou...
2017 International Conference on Electrical and Computing Technologies and Applications (ICECTA), 2017
Nowadays, robots are widely ubiquitous and integral part in our daily lives, which can be seen al... more Nowadays, robots are widely ubiquitous and integral part in our daily lives, which can be seen almost everywhere in industry, hospitals, military, etc. To provide remote access and control, usually robots are connected to local network or to the Internet through WiFi or Ethernet. As such, it is of great importance and of a critical mission to maintain the safety and the security access of such robots. Security threats may result in completely preventing the access and control of the robot. The consequences of this may be catastrophic and may cause an immediate physical damage to the robot. This paper aims to present a security risk assessment of the well-known PeopleBot; a mobile robot platform from Adept MobileRobots Company. Initially, we thoroughly examined security threats related to remote accessing the PeopleBot robot. We conducted an impact-oriented analysis approach on the wireless communication medium; the main method considered to remotely access the PeopleBot robot. Numerous experiments using SSH and server-client applications were conducted, and they demonstrated that certain attacks result in denying remote access service to the PeopleBot robot. Consequently and dangerously the robot becomes unavailable. Finally, we suggested one possible mitigation and provided useful conclusions to raise awareness of possible security threats on the robotic systems; especially when the robots are involved in critical missions or applications.
Journal of Network and Computer Applications, 2015
This paper investigates the lightweight block ciphers' implementations, which have received a fai... more This paper investigates the lightweight block ciphers' implementations, which have received a fair amount of research for their essential security role in low-resource devices. Our objective is to present a comprehensive review of state-of-the-art research progress in lightweight block ciphers' implementation and highlight future research directions. At first, we present taxonomy of the cipher design space and accurately define the scope of lightweight ciphers for low-resource devices. Moreover, this paper discusses the performance metrics that are commonly reported in the literature when comparing cipher implementations. The sources of inaccuracies and deviations are carefully examined. In order to mitigate the confusion in the composite metrics, we developed a general metric which includes the basic metrics. Our analysis designated the energy/bit metric as the most appropriate metric for energy-constrained low-resource designs. Afterwards, the software and hardware implementations of the block cipher algorithms are surveyed, investigated, and compared. The paper selects the top performing ciphers in various metrics and suggests the Present cipher as a good reference for hardware implementations. What transpires from this survey is that unresolved research questions and issues are yet to be addressed by future research projects.
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