Table Of ContentCommunications
and
Multimedia
Security
IFIP -The International Federation for Information Processing
IFIP was founded in 1960 under the auspices of UNESCO, following the First World
Computer Congress held in Paris the previous year. An umbrella organization for societies
working in information processing, IFIP's aim is two-fold: to support information processing
within its member countries and to encourage technology transfer to developing nations. As
its mission statement clearly states,
IFIP's mission is to be the leading, truly international, apolitical organization which
encourages and assists in the development, exploitation and application of information
technology for the benefit of all people.
IFIP is a non-profitmaking organization, run almost solely by 2500 volunteers. It operates
through a number of technical committees, which organize events and publications. IFIP's
events range from an international congress to local seminars, but the most important are:
• the IFIP World Computer Congress, held every second year;
• open conferences;
• working conferences.
The flagship event is the IFIP World Computer Congress, at which both invited and
contributed papers are presented. Contributed papers are rigorously refereed and the rejection
rate is high.
As with the Congress, participation in the open conferences is open to all and papers may
be invited or submitted. Again, submitted papers are stringently refereed.
The working conferences are structured differently. They are usually nm by a working
group and attendance is small and by invitation only. Their purpose is to create an atmosphere
conducive to innovation and development. Refereeing is less rigorous and papers are
subjected to extensive group discussion.
Publications arising from IFIP events vary. The papers presented at the IFIP World
Computer Congress and at open conferences are published as conference proceedings, while
the results of the working conferences are often published as collections of selected and
edited papers.
Any national society whose primary activity is in information may apply to become a full
member of IFIP, although full membership is restricted to one society per country. Full
members are entitled to vote at the annual General Assembly, National societies preferring a
less committed involvement may apply for associate or corresponding membership. Associate
members enjoy the same benefits as full members, but without voting rights. Corresponding
members are not represented in IFIP bodies. Affiliated membership is open to non-national
societies, and individual and honorary membership schemes are also offered.
Communications
and
Multimedia
Security
Proceedings of the IFIP TC6, TC11 and
Austrian Computer Society joint working
conference on communications and
multimedia security, 1995
Edited by
Reinhard Posch
Institute for Applied Information Processing and Communications
Technical University of Graz
Graz. Austria
I~HI
SPRINGER INTERNATIONAL PUBLISHING, CHAM
First edition 1995
© 1995 IFIP International Federation for Information Processing
Originally published by Chapman & Hall in 1995
Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 1995
ISBN 978-1-5041-2908-4 ISBN 978-0-387-34943-5 (eBook)
DOI 10.1007/978-0-387-34943-5
Apart from any fair dealing for the purposes of research or private study, or criticism or review,
as permitted under the UK Copyright Designs and Patents Act, 1988, this publication may not
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Orpnization outside the UK. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside the terms stated here
should be sent to the publishers at the London address printed on this page.
The publisher makes no representation, express or implied, with repro to the accuracy of the
information contained in this book and cannot accept any legal responsibility or liability for
any errors or omissions that may be made.
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
§/Printed on permanent acid-free text paper, manufactured in accordance with
ANSIINISO Z39.48-1992 and ANSIINISO Z39.48-1984.(Permanence of Paper).
CONTENTS
Preface vii
1 Issues of attack in distributed systems - a generic attack model
L Kantzavelou and A. Patel 1
2 The puzzling science of information integrity
G.J. Simmons 17
3 Covered trust values in distributed systems
B. Borcherding and M. Borcherding 24
4 File server architecture for an open distributed document system
B. Christianson, P. Hu and B. Snook 32
5 A heuristic for securing hypertext systems
M.S. Olivier 43
6 Video communication - security and quality issues
K. Keus and R. Thomys 55
7 The graphical interface for secure mail
F. Brawn, B. Jennan-Blali/1, T. Klobui!ar and D. Treek 66
8 The network security reference model: its security subjects and their
classification criteria
T. Chikaraishi, Y. Oki, T. Shimomura and T. Ohta 80
9 A strategic approach to a national security policy
H.G. Zeger 97
1 0 The patient card and its position in a 'new health care system'
C.O. Kohler 110
11 Access controls for federated database environments - taxonomy of
design choices
W. Eflmayr, F. Kastner, S. Preishuber, G. Pemul and A.M. 1Joa 117
1 2 Authorization in multimedia conferencing systems
E.B. Fernandez and P.D. Chien 133
13 Authentication and key distribution in computer networks and distributed
systems
R. Oppliger 148
14 Hidden signature schemes beased on the discrete logarithm problem and
related concepts
P. Horster, M. Michels and H. Petersen 160
15 Digital signature schemes based on Lucas functions
P. Horster, M. Michels and H. Petersen 178
vi Contents
1 6 Power permutations on prime residue classes
H. Fischer and C. Stingl 191
1 7 Hill cipher application to multimedia security
N. Nikitakos 19 8
18 From 'Steganographia' to subliminal communications
O.J. Horak 205
1 9 On the fractal nature of the set of all binary sequences with almost J,ierfect
linear complexity profile
H. Niede"eiter and M. Vielhaber 214
Index of contributors 222
Keywordindex 223
Preface
In October 1994 the German newspaper Die Zeit published an article about the Washington
museum on cryptography. Next to this article was placed the future of CD-ROM. From this it
may be seen that public opinion is already beginning to make some connection between
multimedia and security. In fact, these two areas have a close connection and start to show their
social impact -- and thus the need of awareness. Doing an event about these two items should
be an effort to bring these twofold views into an even closer relation. It is also a contribution to
building social awareness for security needs when deploying multimedia applications. In this
context, networks and multimedia security is one way of treating the social impact of electronic
communication.
The term multimedia is placed right in the middle of technical communication, media and
entertainment. It will need a lot of effort to build up ethics and rules, so that after a first phase of
enthusiasm, multimedia will not be abused and drop into the twilight -- and thus earn a
reputation it would not deserve.
The first associations in the public opinion with information security still are military, espionage,
red telephone, etc. The museum of cryptology mentioned earlier contributed its share by
exhibiting famous species like the ENIGMA. Placing activities in the area between multimedia
and communication security shall also be an effort to gradually influence public opinion
concerning this point.
IT security has moved and still is moving fast from the intelligence area to the commercial field.
With smart cards and electronic payment, with electronic shopping and all the commercial
applications around the internet, IT security will soon be omnipresent. Just to give one example
of a step towards this end: Austria will experience the switch of all bank cards to a smart card
system within a two month's time. Credit cards will follow in a few years.
Besides this fact that information security is moving towards commercial applications, we may
as well observe two further trends:
First, in most cases we are not protecting life or military secrets but a limited amount of
commercial risk There is a temptation to delude security and to implement some obscurity and
some guruism instead. But if we treat it the right way, it is the challenge to build a light weight
security.
Second, unlike the military case, people will not really feel the need for security before they
experience a damage. We cannot expect the general public to take the responsibility. The second
demand therefore will be the integration of security. As it can be seen in examples like electronic
mail systems and in program downloading like FTP, security without integration just does not
happen.
There are already some efforts to integrate IT security. A very controversial example for this
development is the famous CLIPPER technology. With its law enforcement features CLIPPER
is a perfect example that IT security has tremendous social impact. All users should be taught
the security goals and the side effects. Solutions like CLIPPER, putting most of its features in
the confidentiality area, do not aim at this goal. They might even hinder or disfavor advanced
viii Preface
methods like escrow technologies. At what end? Asking this question one could come up with
the idea that at the best such an effort as CLIPPER is to assure a forerunner position for strong
national commercial interests.
Besides awareness, light weight security, and other goals mentioned, multimedia security also
needs to work on the national and international protection policies. IT AR is one of the best
examples how such regulations gain on influence. Since solutions as SSL and SHTTP as well as
others are available, these solutions may only be efficiently exploited in some part of the world
for legal reasons; it is open to judge on the effect but it definitely will lead to a diversification.
Unlike intelligence, commercial use demands for a maximum of knowledge about mechanisms,
their effect and their capabilities. This conference shall contribute in the mentioned context to
the technical understanding, and thus to setup means and regulations for using open networks
with a maximum range of applications, still giving the confidence that the design goals of the
network are not violated.
Reinhard Posch
Institute for Applied Information Processing and Communications Technology,
Graz University of Technology,
Klosterwiesgasse 32/I,A-8010 Graz
email: [email protected]
1
Issues of attack in distributed systems - A
Generic Attack Model
Kantzavelou /. and Patel A.
Computer Networks and Distributed Systems Research Group
Department of Computer Science, University College Dublin
Belfield, Dublin 4, Ireland, tel. +353-1-7062476,/ax +353-1-
2697262, ioanna@teia. ariadne-t.gr, apatel@ccvax. ucd. ie
Abstract
In the past, IT equipment consisted solely of standalone systems, whereas in recent years the
trend has been towards computer networks and distributed systems. The spread of distributed
information technology has increased the number of opportunities for crime and fraud in
computer systems. Despite the fact that computer systems are typically protected by a number
of security mechanisms (Muftic 1989) such as encryption (Denning 1983), digital signature
(ISO 7498-2 1989), access control (Muftic 1993), and passwords (Pfleeger 1989), attacks
continue to occur (Highland 1993). In addition, it seems infeasible to close all the known
security loopholes of today's systems. Therefore, computer systems and especially distributed
systems continue to envisage a number of threats. A threat is a potential violation of security
(ISO 7498-2 1989). More specifically, a threat is a possibility of an attack, and an attack is an
attempt (by an attacker) to damage or in some way negatively affect the working of a
computer system, or to damage the· interest of the organisation owning the system
(Kantzavelou 1994). This paper discusses issues of attack and the construction of a generic
attack model.
Keywords
Threat, attack, attacker, distributed system, security flaw, method of attack, attack diagnosis
factors.
