Overview
The Network Security Lab is a part of the Department of Engineering and Architecture at University of Parma. Research projects in the group focus on various aspects of network and computer security.
Research activities
The main research topics are:
- IoT Security - The Internet of Things (IoT) is going to connect billions of heterogeneous devices in an Internet-like structure, and possibly to connect to the existing Internet, enabling new forms machine-to-machine and things-to-people communications.
In this scenario, security is a crucial aspect. However, applying traditional Internet security mechanisms is complicated by the nature of the nodes (typically constrained devices) and limitations of the connectivity resources and of the user interface.
In this context we are identifying possible threads and studying proper countermeasures, new mechanisms, and security protocols.
- End-to-end security - Providing end-to-end security in a open scenario, without relying on a PKI or a key distribution infrastructure is still an important issue. The main aspect where current protocols may fail is indeed in how the end nodes securely initialize the cryptographic mechanisms. We are studying fully distributed and scalable solution aiming to solve this issue.
- Computer security - Computer security strongly depends on the security of the software, i.e. applications and services, that is usually the weakest part of the system. In order to limit the vulnerabilities of the applications and their exploitation proper secure architectures should be considered. In this context we are studying new isolation mechanisms in order to increase the computer and application security. In particular we are designing a new virtualization platform aiming to isolate single applications with the minimum overhead.
- Anonymous communication - We are studying the problem of protecting the identity of the objects/users involved in a communication. The most used protocol/platform is Tor. However Tor has been mainly designed for web oriented applications. We are studying new protocols for providing anonymity to a wider range of applications and network scenarios.
- Blockchains - We are studying new decentralized security solutions, mainly applied to the problem of entity authentication and authorization, based on Blockchain and smart contract technologies.
- Artificial Intelligence for Intrusion Detection - An important application of Artificial Intelligence, and in particular Machine Learning, is thread detection and rapid attack response. In this context we are studying suitable mechanisms and algorithms.
Courses
Current courses on network and computer security at the Dept. of Engineering and Architecture of the University of Parma are:
Contacts
For thesis projects, or other information please contact
Prof. Luca Veltri.
