Which Properties has an Icon? A Critical Discussion on Evaluation Methods for Standardised Data Protection Iconography

in Proceedings of the 8th Workshop on Socio-Technical Aspects in Security and Trust (STAST) (2021)

Following GDPR's Article12.7's proposal to use standardized icons to inform data subject in "an easily visible, intelligible and clearly legible manner," several icon sets have been developed. In this ... [more ▼]

Following GDPR's Article12.7's proposal to use standardized icons to inform data subject in "an easily visible, intelligible and clearly legible manner," several icon sets have been developed. In this paper, we firstly critically review some of those proposals. We then examine the properties that icons and icon sets should arguably fulfill according to Art.12's transparency provisions. Lastly, we discuss metrics and evaluation procedures to measure compliance with the Article. [less ▲]

The French National Framework of Tracing Applications

in Poillot, Elise; Lenzini, Gabriele; Resta, Giorgio (Eds.) Data Protection in the Context of Covid-19. A Short (Hi)story of Tracing Applications (2021)

available on line (click on scarica): https://romatrepress.uniroma3.it/libro/data-protection-in-the-context-of-covid-19-a-short-history-of-tracing-applications/

The Framework of Security-Enhancing Friction: How UX Can Help Users Behave More Securely

in New Security Paradigms Workshop (2020, October 26)

A growing body of research in the usable privacy and security community addresses the question of how to best influence user behavior to reduce risk-taking.We propose to address this challenge by ... [more ▼]

A growing body of research in the usable privacy and security community addresses the question of how to best influence user behavior to reduce risk-taking.We propose to address this challenge by integrating the concept of user experience (UX) into empirical usable privacy and security studies that attempt to change risktaking behavior. UX enables us to study the complex interplay between user-related, system-related and contextual factors and provides insights into the experiential aspects underlying behavior change, including negative experiences. We first compare and contrast existing security-enhancing interventions (e.g., nudges, warnings, fear appeals) through the lens of friction. We then build on these insights to argue that it can be desirable to design for moments of negative UX in security-critical situations. For this purpose, we introduce the novel concept of security-enhancing friction, friction that effectively reduces the occurrence of risk-taking behavior and ensures that the overall UX (after use) is not compromised. We illustrate how security-enhancing friction provides an actionable way to systematically integrate the concept of UX into empirical usable privacy and security studies for meeting both the objectives of secure behavior and of overall acceptable experience. [less ▲]

Making the Case for Evidence-based Standardization of Data Privacy and Data Protection Visual Indicators

in Journal of Open Access to Law (2020), 8(1),

Lately, icons have witnessed a growing wave of interest in the view of enhancing transparency and clarity of data processing practices in mandated disclosures. Although benefits in terms of ... [more ▼]

Lately, icons have witnessed a growing wave of interest in the view of enhancing transparency and clarity of data processing practices in mandated disclosures. Although benefits in terms of comprehensibility, noticeability, navigability of the information and user’s attention and memorization can be expected, they should also be supported by decisive empirical evidence about the efficacy of the icons in specific contexts. Misrepresentation, oversimplification, and improper salience of certain aspects over others are omnipresent risks that can drive data subjects to wrong conclusions. Cross-domain and international standardization of visual means also poses a serious challenge: if on the one hand developing standards is necessary to ensure widespread recognition and comprehension, each domain and application presents unique features that can be hardly established, and imposed, in a top-down manner. This article critically discusses the above issues and identifies relevant open questions for scientific research. It also provides concrete examples and practical suggestions for researchers and practitioners that aim to implement transparency-enhancing icons in the spirit of the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). [less ▲]

Authentication and Key Management Automation in Decentralized Secure Email and Messaging via Low-Entropy Secrets

in Proceedings of the 17th International Joint Conference on e-Business and Telecommunications (2020)

We revisit the problem of entity authentication in decentralized end-to-end encrypted email and secure messaging to propose a practical and self-sustaining cryptographic solution based on password ... [more ▼]

We revisit the problem of entity authentication in decentralized end-to-end encrypted email and secure messaging to propose a practical and self-sustaining cryptographic solution based on password-authenticated key exchange (PAKE). This not only allows users to authenticate each other via shared low-entropy secrets, e.g., memorable words, without a public key infrastructure or a trusted third party, but it also paves the way for automation and a series of cryptographic enhancements; improves security by minimizing the impact of human error and potentially improves usability. First, we study a few vulnerabilities in voice-based out-of-band authentication, in particular a combinatorial attack against lazy users, which we analyze in the context of a secure email solution. Next, we propose solving the problem of secure equality test using PAKE to achieve entity authentication and to establish a shared high-entropy secret key. Our solution lends itself to offline settings, compatible with the inherently asynchronous nature of email and modern messaging systems. The suggested approach enables enhancements in key management such as automated key renewal and future key pair authentications, multi-device synchronization, secure secret storage and retrieval, and the possibility of post-quantum security as well as facilitating forward secrecy and deniability in a primarily symmetric-key setting. We also discuss the use of auditable PAKEs for mitigating a class of online guess and abort attacks in authentication protocols. [less ▲]

Qualifying and Measuring Transparency: A Medical Data System Case Study

in Computers and Security (2020)

Transparency is a data processing principle enforced by the GDPR but purposely left open to interpretation. As such, the means to adhere to it are left unspecified. Article 29 Working Party provides ... [more ▼]

Transparency is a data processing principle enforced by the GDPR but purposely left open to interpretation. As such, the means to adhere to it are left unspecified. Article 29 Working Party provides practical guidance on how to interpret transparency, however there are no defined requirements nor ways to verify the quality of the implementation of transparency. We address this problem. We discuss and define applicable metrics for transparency, propose how measurement can be conducted in an operative system, and suggest a practical way in which these metrics can be interpreted in order to increase confidence that transparency is realised in a system. [less ▲]

The DAta Protection REgulation COmpliance Model

in IEEE Security and Privacy (2019), 17(6), 37-45

Understanding whether certain technical measures comply with the General Data Protection Regulation’s (GDPR’s) principles is complex legal work. This article describes a model of the GDPR that allows for ... [more ▼]

Understanding whether certain technical measures comply with the General Data Protection Regulation’s (GDPR’s) principles is complex legal work. This article describes a model of the GDPR that allows for semiautomatic processing of legal text and the leveraging of state-of-the-art legal informatics approaches, which are useful for legal reasoning, software design, information retrieval, or compliance checking. [less ▲]

A Critical Security Analysis of the Password-Based Authentication Honeywords System Under Code-Corruption Attack

in Information Systems Security and Privacy (2019, July)

Password-based authentication is a widespread method to access into systems, thus password files are a valuable resource often target of attacks. To detect when a password file has been stolen, Juels and ... [more ▼]

Password-based authentication is a widespread method to access into systems, thus password files are a valuable resource often target of attacks. To detect when a password file has been stolen, Juels and Rivest introduced the Honeywords System in 2013. The core idea is to store the password with a list of decoy words that are ``indistinguishable'' from the password, called honeywords. An adversary that obtains the password file and, by dictionary attack, retrieves the honeywords can only guess the password when attempting to log in: but any incorrect guess will set off an alarm, warning that file has been compromised. In a recent conference paper, we studied the security of the Honeywords System in a scenario where the intruder also manages to corrupt the server's code (with certain limiting assumptions); we proposed an authentication protocol and proved it secure despite the corruption. In this extended journal version, we detail the analysis and we extend it, under the same attacker model, to the other two protocols of the original Honeywords System, the setup and change of password. We formally verify the security of both of them; further, we discuss that our design suggests a completely new approach that diverges from the original idea of the Honeywords System but indicates an alternative way to authenticate users which is robust to server's code-corruption. [less ▲]

On Deception-Based Protection Against Cryptographic Ransomware

in Proceedings of the 16th Conference on Detection of Intrusions and Malware & Vulnerability Assessment (2019)

In order to detect malicious file system activity, some commercial and academic anti-ransomware solutions implement deception-based techniques, specifically by placing decoy files among user files. While ... [more ▼]

In order to detect malicious file system activity, some commercial and academic anti-ransomware solutions implement deception-based techniques, specifically by placing decoy files among user files. While this approach raises the bar against current ransomware, as any access to a decoy file is a sign of malicious activity, the robustness of decoy strategies has not been formally analyzed and fully tested. In this paper, we analyze existing decoy strategies and discuss how they are effective in countering current ransomware by defining a set of metrics to measure their robustness. To demonstrate how ransomware can identify existing deception-based detection strategies, we have implemented a proof-of-concept anti-decoy ransomware that successfully bypasses decoys by using a decision engine with few rules. Finally, we discuss existing issues in decoy-based strategies and propose practical solutions to mitigate them. [less ▲]

An Agile Approach to Validate a Formal Representation of the GDPR

in JSAI International Symposium on Artificial Intelligence (2019), 11717

Modeling in a knowledge base of logic formulæ the articles of the GDPR enables semi-automatic reasoning of the Regulation. To be legally substantiated, it requires that the formulæ express validly the ... [more ▼]

Modeling in a knowledge base of logic formulæ the articles of the GDPR enables semi-automatic reasoning of the Regulation. To be legally substantiated, it requires that the formulæ express validly the legal meaning of the Regulation’s articles. But legal experts are usually not familiar with logic, and this calls for an interdisciplinary validation methodology that bridges the communication gap between formal modelers and legal evaluators. We devise such a validation methodology and exemplify it over a knowledge base of articles of the GDPR translated <br />AQ2 into Reified I/O (RIO) logic and encoded in LegalRuleML. A pivotal element of the methodology is a human-readable intermediate representation of the logic formulæ that preserves the formulæ’s meaning while rendering it in a readable way to non-experts. After being applied over a use case, we prove that it is possible to retrieve feedback from legal experts about the formal representation of Art. 5.1a and Art. 7.1. What emerges is an agile process to build logic knowledge bases of legal texts, and to support their public trust, which we intend to use for a logic AQ3 model of the GDPR, called DAPRECO knowledge base. [less ▲]