Uncategorized

Post-Doctoral Research Fellow in Mobile Phone Forensics

The Information Security Group (ISG) at Royal Holloway, University of London, is seeking a highly motivated postdoctoral research fellow for the EU Horizon2020-funded EXFILES project. The successful candidates will join the Smart Card and IoT Security Centre (SCC), of the ISG, supporting the SCC research activities related to mobile phone forensics. The position is fixed term full-time.

Application closing date: 08 October 2020.

Full description: https://jobs.royalholloway.ac.uk/vacancy.aspx?ref=0720-153-R

Responsible Disclosure: XiongMai uc-httpd 1.0.0 – Buffer Overflow

As part of his MSc Project, Andrew Watson discovered a previously unknown buffer overflow vulnerability in ‘XiongMai uc-httpd 1.0.0’ – a web server used in multiple IoT devices including routers, CCTV cameras and DVR’s. Following best practice and with the full support of RHUL ISG, he attempted responsible disclosure to assist XiongMai in fixing the vulnerability, but unfortunately the company did not respond to any of the multiple attempts to discuss the vulnerability with them. After 111days of no responses, he released the 0day exploit publicly, further details available here.

The vulnerability (CVE ID: CVE-2018-10088) has since been given a CVSS score of 10.0 – the highest any vulnerability can score.

Andrew’s Proof of Concept exploit (PoC) was accepted to the Offensive Security Exploit Database as EDB-ID: 44864 and is also included in Kali Linux via the SearchSploit tool.

Soon after the PoC exploit was publicly released, it was reported that the Satori Botnet integrated the PoC exploit into their botnet code. Quoting Security Affairs: “The code recently included in the Satori botnet exploits a buffer overflow vulnerability, tracked as CVE-2018-10088, in XionMai uc-httpd 1.0.0. The exploit could be used by remote attackers to execute arbitrary code by sending a malformed package via ports 80 or 8000.”

The vulnerability was also reported by Bleeping Computer: “The sudden surge in port 8000 activity turned the heads of multiple security experts specialized in botnet tracking, as it came out of nowhere and at an incredible scale”.

Funded PhD Position – Applications Welcome

There is a funded PhD position on “Control flow verification and integrity of executed instructions for the protection of run-time data in Tokens, Internet-of-Things, Mobile Devices and Cyber Physical Systems”, supervised by Konstantinos Markantonakis.

More information can be obtained from https://www.findaphd.com/search/projectdetails.aspx?PJID=44472

SCC Open Day 2017

Save the date!

The next Smart Card Centre Open Day will be on August 30th 2017, in the Picture Gallery, Founders Building, Royal Holloway, University of London.

The Smart Card Centre Open Day is a free exhibition (50:50 mix of industry and student exhibits) for sponsors, supporters, lecturers, students and visitors as a friendly and informal networking event.

More details can be found at this page.

Best Paper Award at Digital Avionics Systems Conference (DASC)

A paper written by Raja Naeem Akram, Konstantinos Markantonakis, Sharadha Kariyawasam, Shahid Ayub, Amar Seeam, and Robert Atkinson, “Challenges of Security and Trust in Avionics Wireless Networks” has won the best paper award in the security track at IEEE/AIAA 34^th Digital Avionics Systems Conference (DASC), September 2016.

The abstract of the paper is:

“Avionics networks have a set of stringent reliability and safety requirements. In existing deployments, most of these networks are based on wired technology, which provide a high degree of reliability and safety. Furthermore, it simplifies the security management of the network as certain assumptions including an inability for an attacker to access the network can be safely made. The proposal for having an Avionics Wireless Network (AWN), as being developed by multiple aerospace working groups, promises reduction in complexity of electrical wiring harness design & fabrication, reduction in wiring weight, increased configurability, and potentially monitoring of otherwise inaccessible moving or rotating aircraft parts. While providing these benefits, the AWN must ensure that it provides at a minimum the equivalent levels of safety offered by the wired network. Substituting the wired network for a wireless network, even for a specific set of well defined and non critical tasks, brings a whole set of new challenges related to assurance, reliability, and security.  In this paper, we discuss the security and trust challenges an AWN deployment might face along with highlighting potential directions for solutions. Furthermore, as a case study we will elaborate on AWN deployment variants like Secure High-Availability Avionics Wireless Networks (SHAWN). Finally, the paper makes suggestions that set the agenda for security, reliability and trust work that could if successful provide an AWN system, meeting the required safety standards.”

ISG Open Day June 22nd 2016

Professor Markantonakis is the lead organiser of the first ISG Open Day on June 22nd 2016.

The Open Day is designed to showcase our world leading Information Security department featuring presentations from current research students, exhibitions and demos, talks from ISG staff and keynote lectures from exciting guest speakers. There will be opportunities to network and engage in discussions with current professionals who are based here at Royal Holloway.

The event is sponsored by:

Thales, GSK, KPMG, Qinetic and Royal Holloway Enterprise

Stuart Atwood Prize at SCC Open Day 2015

At the SCC Open Day 2015, a special prize in memory of Stuart Atwood was awarded by MULTOS to MSc student Shreya Singh for her work on Secure Authentication in Vehicular Ad Hoc Networks (VANET).

More details can be found on the MULTOS website.

Smart Card Centre Open Day 2015

A report of the day can be found here