arXiv subjects

Owen Lo

Publications and source records attributed to Owen Lo.

11 recordsLinked to original sources

arXiv2026

PQC-LEO: An Evaluation Framework for Post-Quantum Cryptographic Algorithms

Advances in quantum computing threaten digital communication security by undermining the foundations of current public-key cryptography through Shor's quantum algorithm. This has driven the development of Post-Quantum Cryptography (PQC), a new set of algorithms resistant to quantum attacks. While NIST has standardised several PQC schemes, challenges remain in their adoption. This paper introduces the PQC-LEO framework, a benchmarking suite designed to automate the evaluation of PQC computational and networking performance across x86 and ARM architectures. A proof-of-concept evaluation was conducted to demonstrate the framework's capabilities and highlight its application in supporting ongoing research on the adoption of PQC algorithms. The results show that there is a greater performance reduction in implementing PQC methods with higher security on ARM architectures than on the x86 architecture.

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arXiv2025

Electromagnetic Side-Channel Analysis of PRESENT Lightweight Cipher

Side-channel vulnerabilities pose an increasing threat to cryptographically protected devices. Consequently, it is crucial to observe information leakages through physical parameters such as power consumption and electromagnetic (EM) radiation to reduce susceptibility during interactions with cryptographic functions. EM side-channel attacks are becoming more prevalent. PRESENT is a promising lightweight cryptographic algorithm expected to be incorporated into Internet-of-Things (IoT) devices in the future. This research investigates the EM side-channel robustness of PRESENT using a correlation attack model. This work extends our previous Correlation EM Analysis (CEMA) of PRESENT with improved results. The attack targets the Substitution box (S-box) and can retrieve 8 bytes of the 10-byte encryption key with a minimum of 256 EM waveforms. This paper presents the process of EM attack modelling, encompassing both simple and correlation attacks, followed by a critical analysis.

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arXiv2022

Transforming EU Governance: The Digital Integration through EBSI and GLASS

Traditionally, government systems managed citizen identities through disconnected data systems, using simple identifiers and paper-based processes, limiting digital trust and requiring citizens to request identity verification documents. The digital era offers a shift towards unique digital identifiers for each citizen, enabling a 'citizen wallet' for easier access to personal documents like academic records and licences, with enhanced security through digital signatures. The European Commission's initiative for a digital wallet for every EU citizen aims to improve mobility and integration, leveraging the European Blockchain Services Infrastructure (EBSI) for harmonised citizen integration. This paper discusses how EBSI and the GLASS project can advance governance and streamline access to identity documents.

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arXiv2022

GLASS: A Citizen-Centric Distributed Data-Sharing Model within an e-Governance Architecture

E-governance is a process that aims to enhance a government's ability to simplify all the processes that may involve government, citizens, businesses, and so on. The rapid evolution of digital technologies has often created the necessity for the establishment of an e-Governance model. There is often a need for an inclusive e-governance model with integrated multiactor governance services and where a single market approach can be adopted. e-Governance often aims to minimise bureaucratic processes, while at the same time including a digital-by-default approach to public services. This aims at administrative efficiency and the reduction of bureaucratic processes. It can also improve government capabilities, and enhances trust and security, which brings confidence in governmental transactions. However, solid implementations of a distributed data sharing model within an e-governance architecture is far from a reality; hence, citizens of European countries often go through the tedious process of having their confidential information verified. This paper focuses on the sinGLe sign-on e-GovernAnce Paradigm based on a distributed file-exchange network for security, transparency, cost-effectiveness and trust (GLASS) model, which aims to ensure that a citizen can control their relationship with governmental agencies. The paper thus proposes an approach that integrates a permissioned blockchain with the InterPlanetary File System (IPFS). This method demonstrates how we may encrypt and store verifiable credentials of the GLASS ecosystem, such as academic awards, ID documents and so on, within IPFS in a secure manner and thus only allow trusted users to read a blockchain record, and obtain the encryption key. This allows for the decryption of a given verifiable credential that stored on IPFS. This paper outlines the creation of a demonstrator that proves the principles of the GLASS approach.

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arXiv2021

Electromagnetic Side-Channel Attack Resilience against PRESENT Lightweight Block Cipher

Lightweight cryptography is a novel diversion from conventional cryptography that targets internet-of-things (IoT) platform due to resource constraints. In comparison, it offers smaller cryptographic primitives such as shorter key sizes, block sizes and lesser energy drainage. The main focus can be seen in algorithm developments in this emerging subject. Thus, verification is carried out based upon theoretical (mathematical) proofs mostly. Among the few available side-channel analysis studies found in literature, the highest percentage is taken by power attacks. PRESENT is a promising lightweight block cipher to be included in IoT devices in the near future. Thus, the emphasis of this paper is on lightweight cryptology, and our investigation shows unavailability of a correlation electromagnetic analysis (CEMA) of it. Hence, in an effort to fill in this research gap, we opted to investigate the capabilities of CEMA against the PRESENT algorithm. This work aims to determine the probability of secret key leakage with a minimum number of electromagnetic (EM) waveforms possible. The process initially started from a simple EM analysis (SEMA) and gradually enhanced up to a CEMA. This paper presents our methodology in attack modelling, current results that indicate a probability of leaking seven bytes of the key and upcoming plans for optimisation. In addition, introductions to lightweight cryptanalysis and theories of EMA are also included.

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arXiv2021

PAN-DOMAIN: Privacy-preserving Sharing and Auditing of Infection Identifier Matching

The spread of COVID-19 has highlighted the need for a robust contact tracing infrastructure that enables infected individuals to have their contacts traced, and followed up with a test. The key entities involved within a contact tracing infrastructure may include the Citizen, a Testing Centre (TC), a Health Authority (HA), and a Government Authority (GA). Typically, these different domains need to communicate with each other about an individual. A common approach is when a citizen discloses his personally identifiable information to both the HA a TC, if the test result comes positive, the information is used by the TC to alert the HA. Along with this, there can be other trusted entities that have other key elements of data related to the citizen. However, the existing approaches comprise severe flaws in terms of privacy and security. Additionally, the aforementioned approaches are not transparent and often being questioned for the efficacy of the implementations. In order to overcome the challenges, this paper outlines the PAN-DOMAIN infrastructure that allows for citizen identifiers to be matched amongst the TA, the HA and the GA. PAN-DOMAIN ensures that the citizen can keep control of the mapping between the trusted entities using a trusted converter, and has access to an audit log.

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arXiv2021

A Privacy-Preserving Platform for Recording COVID-19 Vaccine Passports

Digital vaccine passports are one of the main solutions which would allow the restart of travel in a post COVID-19 world. Trust, scalability and security are all key challenges one must overcome in implementing a vaccine passport. Initial approaches attempt to solve this problem by using centralised systems with trusted authorities. However, sharing vaccine passport data between different organisations, regions and countries has become a major challenge. This paper designs a new platform architecture for creating, storing and verifying digital COVID-19 vaccine certifications. The platform makes use of the InterPlanetary File System (IPFS) to guarantee there is no single point of failure and allow data to be securely distributed globally. Blockchain and smart contracts are also integrated into the platform to define policies and log access rights to vaccine passport data while ensuring all actions are audited and verifiably immutable. Our proposed platform realises General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) requirements in terms of user consent, data encryption, data erasure and accountability obligations. We assess the scalability and performance of the platform using IPFS and Blockchain test networks.

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arXiv2021

GLASS: Towards Secure and Decentralized eGovernance Services using IPFS

The continuously advancing digitization has provided answers to the bureaucratic problems faced by eGovernance services. This innovation led them to an era of automation it has broadened the attack surface and made them a popular target for cyber attacks. eGovernance services utilize internet, which is currently a location addressed system where whoever controls the location controls not only the content itself, but the integrity of that content, and the access to that content. We propose GLASS, a decentralised solution which combines the InterPlanetary File System (IPFS) with Distributed Ledger technology and Smart Contracts to secure EGovernance services. We also create a testbed environment where we measure the IPFS performance.

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arXiv2021

Electromagnetic Analysis of an Ultra-Lightweight Cipher: PRESENT

Side-channel attacks are an unpredictable risk factor in cryptography. Therefore, continuous observations of physical leakages are essential to minimise vulnerabilities associated with cryptographic functions. Lightweight cryptography is a novel approach in progress towards internet-of-things (IoT) security. Thus, it would provide sufficient data and privacy protection in such a constrained ecosystem. IoT devices are resource-limited in terms of data rates (in kbps), power maintainability (battery) as well as hardware and software footprints (physical size, internal memory, RAM/ROM). Due to the difficulty in handling conventional cryptographic algorithms, lightweight ciphers consist of small key sizes, block sizes and few operational rounds. Unlike in the past, affordability to perform side-channel attacks using inexpensive electronic circuitries is becoming a reality. Hence, cryptanalysis of physical leakage in these emerging ciphers is crucial. Among existing studies, power analysis seems to have enough attention in research, whereas other aspects such as electromagnetic, timing, cache and optical attacks continue to be appropriately evaluated to play a role in forensic analysis. As a result, we started analysing electromagnetic emission leakage of an ultra-lightweight block cipher, PRESENT. According to the literature, PRESENT promises to be adequate for IoT devices, and there still seems not to exist any work regarding correlation electromagnetic analysis (CEMA) of it. Firstly, we conducted simple electromagnetic analysis in both time and frequency domains and then proceeded towards CEMA attack modelling. This paper provides a summary of the related literature (IoT, lightweight cryptography, side-channel attacks and EMA), our methodology, current outcomes and future plans for the optimised results.

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arXiv2020

Privacy Preserving Passive DNS

The Domain Name System (DNS) was created to resolve the IP addresses of the web servers to easily remembered names. When it was initially created, security was not a major concern; nowadays, this lack of inherent security and trust has exposed the global DNS infrastructure to malicious actors. The passive DNS data collection process creates a database containing various DNS data elements, some of which are personal and need to be protected to preserve the privacy of the end users. To this end, we propose the use of distributed ledger technology. We use Hyperledger Fabric to create a permissioned blockchain, which only authorized entities can access. The proposed solution supports queries for storing and retrieving data from the blockchain ledger, allowing the use of the passive DNS database for further analysis, e.g. for the identification of malicious domain names. Additionally, it effectively protects the DNS personal data from unauthorized entities, including the administrators that can act as potential malicious insiders, and allows only the data owners to perform queries over these data. We evaluated our proposed solution by creating a proof-of-concept experimental setup that passively collects DNS data from a network and then uses the distributed ledger technology to store the data in an immutable ledger, thus providing a full historical overview of all the records.

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arXiv2020

Wi-Fi Channel Saturation as a Mechanism to Improve Passive Capture of Bluetooth Through Channel Usage Restriction

Bluetooth is a short-range wireless technology that provides audio and data links between personal smartphones and playback devices, such as speakers, headsets and car entertainment systems. Since its introduction in 2001, security researchers have suggested that the protocol is weak, and prone to a variety of attacks against its authentication, link management and encryption schemes. Key researchers in the field have suggested that reliable passive sniffing of Bluetooth traffic would enable the practical application of a range of currently hypothesised attacks. Restricting Bluetooth's frequency hopping behaviour by manipulation of the available channels, in order to make brute force attacks more effective has been a frequently proposed avenue of future research from the literature. This paper has evaluated the proposed approach in a series of experiments using the software defined radio tools and custom hardware developed by the Ubertooth project. The work concludes that the mechanism suggested by previous researchers may not deliver the proposed improvements, but describes an as yet undocumented interaction between Bluetooth and Wi-Fi technologies which may provide a Denial of Service attack mechanism.

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