Conventional worms and super-worms focus on the infection of end-systems. They exploit network vulnerabilities and use the network resources only to route their processes appropriately. We describe a new class of super-worms which target to infect network resources and utilizes routing information to effectively partition the address space of Internet.

Distributed configuration management involves maintaining a set of distributed storage and processing resources in such a way that they serve a community of users fairly, promptly, reliably and securely. Security has recently received much attention due to the general anxiety of hacking. Parallel computing systems such as clusters of workstations are no exception to this threat. This paper discusses experiments that measure the effect of employing randomisation in the scheduling of interdependent user and management tasks onto a distributed system such as clusters of workstations. Two attributes are investigated, namely performance and security. Performance is usually the prime objective in task scheduling. In this work the scheduling problem is viewed as a multi-objective optimisation problem where there is a subtle balance between efficient schedules and security. A schedule is secure if it is not vulnerable to malicious acts or inadvertent human errors. Further, the scheduling model should be hidden from unauthorised observers. The results of the study support the use of randomisation in the scheduling of tasks over an insecure network of processing nodes inhabited by malicious users.

In 2002, Hwang and Yeh proposed some improved schemes to mend several security flaws in the Peyravian-Zunic password transmission scheme and password change scheme. However, this article will point out that there still exist some security flaws in the Hwang-Yeh schemes; at the same time, we shall also propose some improved versions of their schemes.

In this paper, the authors intend to propose a new untraceable blind signature scheme based on the RSA cryptosystem. This paper applies the Extended Euclidean algorithm to our blind signature scheme. Compared with other blind signature schemes, our proposed scheme can meet the all requirements of a blind signature scheme. The security of the proposed scheme, as did that of the RSA cryptosystem, depends on the difficulty of solving the factoring problem.

In 2002, Hwang, Lee, and Lai presented an attack on the untraceability property of Fan and Lei's partially blind signature scheme. In this letter, their attack is demonstrated as being invalid.

Fingerprinting is one of the digital watermarking techniques, and is becoming more important as a copyright protection technique. Fingerprinting must resist collusion attacks. As a security index, "c-secureness" has been proposed, but it has been known that there is indeed no c-secure code. In this paper, we introduce a new index to measure the resilience of fingerprinting for collusion attacks and obtain some upper bounds and a lower bound on the index.

We present an efficient stream authentication scheme using authentication stars. The computation overhead of the proposed scheme on the sender is almost the same as that of the scheme with the smallest overhead. On the receiver's side, the verification probability of the proposed scheme is much higher than that of any other scheme. To show this, we first conducted a mathematical analysis on the verification probability of our scheme and then performed simulation to compare the verification probability of our scheme with those of the previous schemes. Simulation results shows that when the packet loss rate is 50%, the verification probability of our scheme is 73% whereas those of the previous schemes are below 41%.

Following the developments in the use of ID-based schemes and smart cards, Yang and Shieh proposed two password authentication schemes to achieve two purposes: (1) to allow users to choose and change their passwords freely, and (2) to make it unnecessary for the remote server to maintain a directory of passwords or a verification table to authenticate users. Recently, Chan and Cheng showed that Yang and Shieh's timestamp-based password authentication scheme is insecure against forgery. In this paper, we point out that Chan and Cheng's forgery attack can not work. Thus, we further examine the security of Yang and Shieh's password authentication schemes and find that they are insecure against forgery because one adversary can easily pretend to be a valid user and pass the server's verification which allows the adversary to login to the the remote server.

Jan and Tseng, in 1999, proposed two efficient digital signature schemes with subliminal channels. However, we show that a malicious subliminal receiver can forge subliminal messages that will be accepted by other subliminal receivers in Jan and Tseng's two schemes. Moreover, we also present a modification of Jan and Tseng's schemes to repair the security flaw.

In an order-specified multisignature scheme, one can verify not only a set of signers who have signed the message but also its signing order. Though we have seen several schemes with such properties proposed, none of them is given the security proof against active adversaries. The scheme can be easily modified to be an order-specified multisignature scheme, but still has the restriction that the possible signing orders are only ones of the type of serial signing. In this paper, we propose the first order-specified multisignature scheme, which is shown to be secure against adaptive chosen-message insider attacks in the random oracle model, and which allows the signing orders to form like any series-parallel graphs. The security is shown by using ID-reduction technique, which reduces the security of multisignature schemes to those of multi-round identification schemes. Furthermore, we discuss the efficiency of the proposed scheme and the upper bound of the possible number of participating signers.

Access control involves a check to see if a user has an access right to a resource and then a decision is made as to whether his/her access to the resource is to be allowed or denied. Typical access control models are the Discretionary Access Control Model, the Mandatory Access Control Model, and the Role-Based Access Control Model. Today, the Role-Based Access Control Model has become popular and is recognized as an effective method. However, until now, the Role-Based Access Control Model was adequate only for bureaucracy organizations, in which some roles are standardized and organizational hierarchy is stable. Team-Based Access Control models that were designed for team-based organizations have been proposed, but they do not reflect some features of an adhocracy organization, which are organic, temporary, not standardized, changeable, and obscure in terms of hierarchical relationship, such as a Task Force Team in the company. This study shows the characteristics of an adhocracy organization that differ from the existing bureaucracy organization, and then shows why existing access control models have caused some problems. Finally, a revised Role-Based Access Control model is proposed to solve those problems and is analyzed according to main evaluation standards.

In the case of personal computers (PCs), interoperability among PCs are sufficiently realized with the advent of Microsoft Windows to take the position of mainstream OS, and major software applications following the mainstream for standardization, for more and more user-friendly human machine interface. Considering the case for PCs as above, it is not surprising to us at all, if the same concept is pursued in a radio communications terminal, which can freely access to different radio systems just by replacing the embedded software. This means that the prospective end user will gain the benefit to be able to change his radio set to one of the desired systems in the field, by installing the software of his choice. Such radio equipment is called Software Defined Radio (SDR), and various kinds of applications are expected for development in many fields. However, for the SDR to be in widespread use, we have many outstanding issues to be solved, which are not limited only in the technical matters. One barrier is interoperability among manufacturers. Namely, even when a technical problem is solved, the appropriate technical solution should be shared for the interoperability among as many manufacturers as possible. If such interoperability is unachievable, that technical solution could only be for internal use within the specific manufacturer, failing to take advantage of the true value of the SDR. Another barrier might be the Radio Law of Japan. Unless overcoming this barrier, the commercial implementation of the SDR is unachievable, resulting in the failure to entertain the real benefit from the SDR implication. Under such a background, this paper first describes the concept of and definition for the SDR to make them clearer for the readers. Then, the interoperability issue, which would be the key to the widespread use of SDR, is taken up as next topic. The last topic is focused on the legal and regulatory issue, to discuss what would be the problem under the Radio Law of Japan.

In this paper, we focus attention on the development of security techniques using software defined radio (SDR) technologies. We propose a new secure download system which uses the characteristics of the field programmable gate arrays (FPGAs) composing the SDR. The proposed system has the novelty that realization of high security encipherment is possible. This is achieved using the characteristic of FPGAs which allows systems to be arranged in a variety of different layouts, as well as by using the configuration information as the key. This unifies the renewal of the key and the encipherment. In addition the proposed system has the merit that it has high security against illegal acquisition such as a wiretapping, and can also be used in conjunction with any other current cipher algorithm. As an evaluation of the security, we show that the proposed system has high immunity to illegal acquisition of software using replay attack, by verification of the protocol as well as by numerical computation. The proposed system can therefore realize high security software downloads based on SDR.

To promote the commercial implementation of software download for software defined radio (SDR) terminals, a secure method of download is vital. This paper examines the needs of software download for SDR, and proposes a comprehensive system framework within which secure download can be carried out. The features of the proposed system include unique individual encryption to each terminal and secure exchangeability of any cryptographic components. The main goals of the security system are the following: (i) verification of the identity of the source of the software; (ii) control and verification of the integrity of the downloaded data; (iii) disabling of the ability to run unauthorized software on the software defined terminal; (iv) secrecy of the transmitted data. The proposed system is flexible and in harmony with current requirements regarding the SDR security issues.

Software radio promises to bring unparalleled flexibility and reconfigurability to wireless systems, with enormous commercial potential. As the next decade progresses SDR is expected by many to emerge as the dominant design in the commercial wireless marketplace. However, significant practical issues associated with security and regulation exist which, if not adequately addressed, could threaten to result in regulatory hurdles precluding, or at least delaying, its deployment--a regulator could be understandably hesitant about authorising the operation of a handset whose radio emissions can be determined by an end user downloading and using unproven software from an arbitrary source post-purchase. In this article we describe the Reconfiguration Management Architecture--a pragmatic technological approach, developed within the framework of Mobile VCE research, that offers solutions to this and other associated SDR problems. The RMA approach fully acknowledges and builds upon the necessary interaction between the user terminal and the network to allow full validation of a reconfigured user device prior to realtime operational authorisation. Such an architecture allows responsibility for validation to be delegated and assigned by a national regulator to, for example, a mobile network operator. Such a capability can, in turn, facilitate the creation and growth of an open market in downloadable software provision, which itself promises to encourage rapid development of new capabilities, applications and innovation. New business models and revenue streams may be expected to result. This article describes the basic technical concepts associated with the RMA, explaining the key functionalities residing within the terminal and the network and their interrelationships. The RMA is presently being evaluated as part of the SDR Forum's security and architecture work. It promises to provide realistic solutions that could accelerate the successful commercial deployment and rollout of SDR technology to the benefit of the industry, across the whole value chain.

To secure the interactive multimedia applications in WLANs (wireless local area networks), it is pertinent to implement a number of security services such as authentication, key exchange and real-time encryption/decryption. The implementation of those security services in WLANs presents a complex and challenging environment because these services may deplete the limited network resources and increases the burden of supporting the quality of service for multimedia applications. As an alternative solution, we thus introduce a new security system, which is based on RCNC (Random Connection Node Convolutional) code and M-sequence. The architecture of RCNC code formed by developing the conventional convolutional code structure has an excellent security operation as well as an error correction function. To verify the performance of our proposed system, the computer simulations have been performed in IEEE 802.11b environment.

Wang et al., in 2000, proposed a generalized group-oriented threshold signature scheme and a generalized authenticated encryption scheme with shared verification. Tseng et al., in 2001, showed that both schemes are insecure, because any attacker is able to reveal the group secret keys from two previously valid threshold signatures. They further presented two improvements on Wang et al.'s schemes to against the attacks. Unfortunately, this paper will show that the improved schemes are still breakable.

Recently, networked cryptographic devices resilient to capture have been presented in 2001 IEEE Symposium on Security and Privacy. This letter presents a practical combination of the networked cryptographic devices and the password-based cryptography standard, PKCS#5, that is beneficial to security, efficiency, and conformance.

A visual secret sharing scheme (VSSS) is one of secret sharing schemes for images. Droste showed the method for constructing VSSS based on basis matrices whose contrast was high. Koga, Iwamoto, and Yamamoto also proposed the method for constructing a lattice-based VSSS and its polynomial representation. It is known that many good VSSSs are not in the class of lattice-based VSSSs. In this paper, we show the well-defined polynomial representation of a VSSS based on permuting different matrices for black-white images. The necessary and sufficient condition of the existence of a VSSS based on permuting different matrices can be obtained from the proposed polynomial representation. This condition is useful for constructing a good VSSS. We also point out that without additional data, it is possible to achieve member verification by using a VSSS. Using the proposed polynomial representation, the probability of detecting a cheater is analyzed.

An all-or-nothing transform (AONT), which has been proposed by Rivest, is one of encryption modes. The AONT is intended to increase the cost of brute-fore attacks on a block cipher. This paper provides the revised definition of an unconditionally secure AONT, and shows the instance of an optimal unconditionally secure AONT. In addition, we propose a computationally secure AONT such that any information on a message cannot be obtained regardless of the position of the lost block due to a linear code.