PapersCut A shortcut to recent security papers

Enabling Quartile-based Estimated-Mean Gradient Aggregation As Baseline for Federated Image Classifications

Authors: Yusen Wu, Jamie Deng, Hao Chen, Phuong Nguyen, Yelena Yesha

Abstract: Federated Learning (FL) has revolutionized how we train deep neural networks by enabling decentralized collaboration while safeguarding sensitive data and improving model performance. However, FL faces two crucial challenges: the diverse nature of data held by individual clients and the vulnerability of the FL system to security breaches. This paper introduces an innovative solution named Estimated Mean Aggregation (EMA) that not only addresses these challenges but also provides a fundamental reference point as a $\mathsf{baseline}$ for advanced aggregation techniques in FL systems. EMA's significance lies in its dual role: enhancing model security by effectively handling malicious outliers through trimmed means and uncovering data heterogeneity to ensure that trained models are adaptable across various client datasets. Through a wealth of experiments, EMA consistently demonstrates high accuracy and area under the curve (AUC) compared to alternative methods, establishing itself as a robust baseline for evaluating the effectiveness and security of FL aggregation methods. EMA's contributions thus offer a crucial step forward in advancing the efficiency, security, and versatility of decentralized deep learning in the context of FL.

Date: 21 Sep 2023

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t-EER: Parameter-Free Tandem Evaluation of Countermeasures and Biometric Comparators

Authors: Tomi Kinnunen, Kong Aik Lee, Hemlata Tak, Nicholas Evans, Andreas Nautsch

Abstract: Presentation attack (spoofing) detection (PAD) typically operates alongside biometric verification to improve reliablity in the face of spoofing attacks. Even though the two sub-systems operate in tandem to solve the single task of reliable biometric verification, they address different detection tasks and are hence typically evaluated separately. Evidence shows that this approach is suboptimal. We introduce a new metric for the joint evaluation of PAD solutions operating in situ with biometric verification. In contrast to the tandem detection cost function proposed recently, the new tandem equal error rate (t-EER) is parameter free. The combination of two classifiers nonetheless leads to a \emph{set} of operating points at which false alarm and miss rates are equal and also dependent upon the prevalence of attacks. We therefore introduce the \emph{concurrent} t-EER, a unique operating point which is invariable to the prevalence of attacks. Using both modality (and even application) agnostic simulated scores, as well as real scores for a voice biometrics application, we demonstrate application of the t-EER to a wide range of biometric system evaluations under attack. The proposed approach is a strong candidate metric for the tandem evaluation of PAD systems and biometric comparators.

Comment: To appear in IEEE Transactions on Pattern Analysis and Machine Intelligence. For associated codes, see https://github.com/TakHemlata/T-EER (Github) and https://colab.research.google.com/drive/1ga7eiKFP11wOFMuZjThLJlkBcwEG6_4m?usp=sharing (Google Colab)

Date: 21 Sep 2023

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De-authentication using Ambient Light Sensor

Authors: Ankit Gangwal, Aashish Paliwal, Mauro Conti

Abstract: While user authentication happens before initiating or resuming a login session, de-authentication detects the absence of a previously-authenticated user to revoke her currently active login session. The absence of proper de-authentication can lead to well-known lunchtime attacks, where a nearby adversary takes over a carelessly departed user's running login session. The existing solutions for automatic de-authentication have distinct practical limitations, e.g., extraordinary deployment requirements or high initial cost of external equipment. In this paper, we propose "DE-authentication using Ambient Light sensor" (DEAL), a novel, inexpensive, fast, and user-friendly de-authentication approach. DEAL utilizes the built-in ambient light sensor of a modern computer to determine if the user is leaving her work-desk. DEAL, by design, is resilient to natural shifts in lighting conditions and can be configured to handle abrupt changes in ambient illumination (e.g., due to toggling of room lights). We collected data samples from 4800 sessions with 120 volunteers in 4 typical workplace settings and conducted a series of experiments to evaluate the quality of our proposed approach thoroughly. Our results show that DEAL can de-authenticate a departing user within 4 seconds with a hit rate of 89.15% and a fall-out of 7.35%. Finally, bypassing DEAL to launch a lunchtime attack is practically infeasible as it requires the attacker to either take the user's position within a few seconds or manipulate the sensor readings sophisticatedly in real-time.

Date: 21 Sep 2023

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Information Forensics and Security: A quarter-century-long journey

Authors: Mauro Barni, Patrizio Campisi, Edward J. Delp, Gwenael Doërr, Jessica Fridrich, Nasir Memon, Fernando Pérez-González, Anderson Rocha, Luisa Verdoliva, Min Wu

Abstract: Information Forensics and Security (IFS) is an active R&D area whose goal is to ensure that people use devices, data, and intellectual properties for authorized purposes and to facilitate the gathering of solid evidence to hold perpetrators accountable. For over a quarter century since the 1990s, the IFS research area has grown tremendously to address the societal needs of the digital information era. The IEEE Signal Processing Society (SPS) has emerged as an important hub and leader in this area, and the article below celebrates some landmark technical contributions. In particular, we highlight the major technological advances on some selected focus areas in the field developed in the last 25 years from the research community and present future trends.

Date: 21 Sep 2023

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S-GBDT: Frugal Differentially Private Gradient Boosting Decision Trees

Authors: Moritz Kirsche, Thorsten Peinemann, Joshua Stock, Carlos Cotrini, Esfandiar Mohammadi

Abstract: Privacy-preserving learning of gradient boosting decision trees (GBDT) has the potential for strong utility-privacy tradeoffs for tabular data, such as census data or medical meta data: classical GBDT learners can extract non-linear patterns from small sized datasets. The state-of-the-art notion for provable privacy-properties is differential privacy, which requires that the impact of single data points is limited and deniable. We introduce a novel differentially private GBDT learner and utilize four main techniques to improve the utility-privacy tradeoff. (1) We use an improved noise scaling approach with tighter accounting of privacy leakage of a decision tree leaf compared to prior work, resulting in noise that in expectation scales with $O(1/n)$, for $n$ data points. (2) We integrate individual R\'enyi filters to our method to learn from data points that have been underutilized during an iterative training process, which -- potentially of independent interest -- results in a natural yet effective insight to learning streams of non-i.i.d. data. (3) We incorporate the concept of random decision tree splits to concentrate privacy budget on learning leaves. (4) We deploy subsampling for privacy amplification. Our evaluation shows for the Abalone dataset ($<4k$ training data points) a $R^2$-score of $0.39$ for $\varepsilon=0.15$, which the closest prior work only achieved for $\varepsilon=10.0$. On the Adult dataset ($50k$ training data points) we achieve test error of $18.7\,\%$ for $\varepsilon=0.07$ which the closest prior work only achieved for $\varepsilon=1.0$. For the Abalone dataset for $\varepsilon=0.54$ we achieve $R^2$-score of $0.47$ which is very close to the $R^2$-score of $0.54$ for the nonprivate version of GBDT. For the Adult dataset for $\varepsilon=0.54$ we achieve test error $17.1\,\%$ which is very close to the test error $13.7\,\%$ of the nonprivate version of GBDT.

Comment: The first two authors equally contributed to this work

Date: 21 Sep 2023

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A quaternary analogue of Tang-Ding codes

Authors: Minjia Shi, Sihui Tao, Jon-Lark Kim, Patrick Sole

Abstract: In a recent paper, Tang and Ding introduced a class of binary cyclic codes of rate close to one half with a designed lower bound on their minimum distance. The definition involves the base $2$ expansion of the integers in their defining set. In this paper we propose an analogue for quaternary codes. In addition, the performances of the subfield subcode and of the trace code (two binary cyclic codes) are investigated.

Date: 21 Sep 2023

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A New cryptanalysis model based on random and quantum walks

Authors: Ahmed Drissi

Abstract: Randomness plays a key role in the design of attacks on cryptographic systems and cyber security algorithms in general. Random walks and quantum walks are powerful tools for mastering random phenomena. In this article, I propose a probabilistic attack model of a cryptographic system. This model is based on a random or quantum walk with the space of states being a space containing the secret to be revealed. This space can be a subspace of keys, plain texts or cipher texts.

Date: 21 Sep 2023

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Generic Selfish Mining MDP for DAG Protocols

Authors: Patrik Keller, George Bissias

Abstract: Selfish Mining is strategic rule-breaking to maximize rewards in proof-of-work protocols [3] and Markov Decision Processes (MDPs) are the preferred tool for finding optimal strategies in Bitcoin [4, 10] and similar linear chain protocols [12]. Protocols increasingly adopt non-sequential chain structures [11], for which MDP analysis is more involved [2]. To date, researchers have tailored specific attack spaces for each protocol [2, 4, 5, 7, 10, 12]. Assumptions differ, and validating and comparing results is difficult. To overcome this, we propose a generic attack space that supports the wide class of DAG protocols that provide a total ordering of blocks [11], e. g., Ethereum, Fruitchains, and Parallel Proof-of-Work. Our approach is modular: we specify each protocol as one program, and then derive the Selfish Mining MDPs automatically.

Date: 21 Sep 2023

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The supersingular endomorphism ring problem given one endomorphism

Authors: Arthur Herlédan Le Merdy, Benjamin Wesolowski

Abstract: Given a supersingular elliptic curve E and a non-scalar endomorphism $\alpha$ of E, we prove that the endomorphism ring of E can be computed in classical time about disc(Z[$\alpha$])^1/4 , and in quantum subexponential time, assuming the generalised Riemann hypothesis. Previous results either had higher complexities, or relied on heuristic assumptions. Along the way, we prove that the Primitivisation problem can be solved in polynomial time (a problem previously believed to be hard), and we prove that the action of smooth ideals on oriented elliptic curves can be computed in polynomial time (previous results of this form required the ideal to be powersmooth, i.e., not divisible by any large prime power). Following the attacks on SIDH, isogenies in high dimension are a central ingredient of our results.

Date: 21 Sep 2023

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Full mesh networking technology with peer to peer grid topology based on variable parameter full dimensional space

Authors: Wenqiang Song, Chuan He, Zhaoyang Xie, Yuanyuan Chai

Abstract: The continuous development of computer network technology has accelerated the pace of informatization, and at the same time, network security issues are becoming increasingly prominent. Networking technology with different network topologies is one of the important means to solve network security problems. The security of VPN is based on the division of geographical boundaries, but the granularity is relatively coarse, which is difficult to cope with the dynamic changes of the security situation. Zero trust network solves the VPN problem through peer to peer authorization and continuous verification, but most of the solutions use a central proxy device, resulting in the central node becoming the bottleneck of the network. This paper put forward the hard-Nat traversal formula based on the birthday paradox, which solves the long-standing problem of hard NAT traversal. A full mesh networking mechanism with variable parameter full-dimensional spatial peer-to-peer grid topology was proposed, which covers all types of networking schemes and achieve peer-2-peer resource interconnection on both methodological and engineering level.

Comment: 9th International Conference on Networks & Communications (NWCOM 2023)

Date: 21 Sep 2023

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