DCS Lab: Short Presentation Evangelos Markatos: - - PowerPoint PPT Presentation

DCS Lab: Short Presentation Evangelos Markatos: markatos@ics.forth.gr

Distributed Computing Systems and Cybersecurity

• Focus: Cyber Security and Privacy
• Areas of expertise:
• Systems Security, Privacy, cyberattacks
• Contributions to EU Policy:
• Europol EC3 (European CyberCrime Center)
• Participation in the pilot projects for the European CybersEcurity

Competence Network (CONCORDIA and CyberSec4Europe)

2

Distributed Computing Systems and Cybersecurity

• Contributions to EU Policy:
• ENISA: Research Priorities
• ECSO (European CyberSecurity Organization): Strategic

Research and Innovation Agenda

• Service to the Community:
• Safer Internet Access: SaferInternet4kids.gr
• Projects:
• More than 60 R&D projects implemented

3

Where are our Graduates?

• Academia
• Michalis Polychronakis, Ph.D. (’09)
• Assistant Professor Stony Brook
• Iason Polakis, Ph.D. (’14)
• Assistant Professor, UIC
• Elias Athanasopoulos, Ph.D. (’10)
• Assistant Professor, VUA and U of Cyprus
• Apostolis Zaras, M.Sc. (’10)
• Assistant Professor, U Maastricht
• Nick Nikiforakis, M.Sc. (‘10)
• Assistant Professor, Stony Brook
• Industry
• Facebook, Apple, Symantec, Tenable, IBM, etc.

4

Problem: How to share a secret?

• Cyber Security is usually based on secrets:
• Passwords
• (private) Keys
• The secrets are usually known by two people:
• The sender and the receiver
• The client and the server
• The employee and the server
• The employee knows the entire secret
• e.g. the entire password
• Some secrets though are TOO MUCH for a single person: e.g.
• Payments larger than 30,000 euros need to be authorized by TWO

employees

• Sales larger than 100Keuros need to be authorized by TWO vice

presidents

5

Problem: How to share a secret? II

• So, we need to SHARE a secret - Let us focus on an example:
• A company have 5 Vice Presidents
• Purchases larger than 100K euros need to be authorized by at least

three Vice Presidents

• How do you do it?
• One Possible Solution:
• Break the secret (purchase authorization) into 3 pieces
• Give each Vice President a piece
• Piece1: VP1 and VP4
• Piece2: VP2 and VP5
• Piece 3: VP3

6

Piece 1 Piece 2 Piece 3

Problem: How to share a secret? III

• Piece1: VP1 and VP4
• Piece2: VP2 and VP5
• Piece 3: VP3
• If we select VP1 , VP2, and VP3
• We have all pieces
• If we select Vice Presidents VP1, VP4, and VP5
• We do not have “Piece 3”
• What do we do?

7

Piece 1 Piece 2 Piece 3

Problem: How to share a secret? IV

• We want to give one piece to each of N employees
• How can we share the secret so that
• ANY set of K (out of the N) employees should be able
• to recover the secret
• ANY set of K-1 employees should NOT be able
• to recover the secret
• If you solve the problem
• If you find the problem interesting
• Come and talk to me

8

Piece 1 Piece 2 Piece 3 …. Piece K

DCS Lab: Short Presentation Evangelos Markatos: markatos@ics.forth.gr

• Images were provided by
• Flickr
• picserver

10

Acks