Who Knows What's Going On? Mapping New Security Landscapes in Contemporary Espionage Fiction

This article explores whether or to what extent the contemporary espionage novel is able to map and interrogate transformations in the post-9/11security environment. It asks how well a form or genre of writing, typically handcuffed to the machinations and demands of the Cold War and state sovereignty, is able to adapt to a new security environment characterized by strategies of “risk assessment” and “resilience-building” and by modes or regimes of power not reducible to, or wholly controlled by, the state. In doing so, it thinks about the capacities of this type of fiction for “resisting” the formations of power it wants to make visible and is partly complicit with.

Status and security: how Russian media is spinning airstrikes in Syria

Even before the Russian air force launched its first strikes over Syria, there was already a Russian presence on the battleground. These were not the spetsnaz, Kremlin’s special forces, but war correspondents from the leading Russian media outlets. This was as clear a sign as any that the Russia’s priority has shifted from Ukraine, where these reporters spent most of the past 18 months, to Syria.

There is, however, no unanimity on Russia’s latest escalation in Syria. As Russian state TV stations report successes of Russia’s high-precision weapons projecting an image of a high-tech Russian military equal to the US, doubts persist about the latest adventure in the Middle East.

Cooperative Beamforming and User Selection for Improving the Security of Relay-aided Systems

A relay network in which a source wishes to convey a confidential message to a legitimate destination with the assistance of trusted relays is considered. In particular, cooperative beamforming and user selection techniques are applied to protect the confidential message. The secrecy rate (SR) and secrecy outage probability (SOP) of the network are investigated first, and a tight upper bound for the SR and an exact formula for the SOP are derived. Next, asymptotic approximations for the SR and SOP in the high signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) regime are derived for two different schemes: i) cooperative beamforming and ii) multiuser selection. Further, a new concept of cooperative diversity gain, namely, adapted cooperative diversity gain (ACDG), which can be used to evaluate security level of a cooperative relaying network, is investigated. It is shown that the ACDG of cooperative beamforming is equal to the conventional cooperative diversity gain of traditional multiple-input single-output networks, while the ACDG of the multiuser scenario is equal to that of traditional single-input multiple-output networks.

A Cyber-Physical Security Analysis of Synchronous-Islanded Microgrid Operation

Cyber-security research in the field of smart grids is often performed with a focus on either the power and control domain or the Information and Communications Technology (ICT) domain. The characteristics of the power equipment or ICT domain are commonly not collectively considered. This work provides an analysis of the physical effects of cyber-attacks on microgrids – a smart grid construct that allows continued power supply when disconnected from a main grid. Different types of microgrid operations are explained (connected, islanded and synchronous-islanding) and potential cyber-attacks and their physical effects are analyzed. A testbed that is based on physical power and ICT equipment is presented to validate the results in both the physical and ICT domain.

On the Security of Balanced Encoding Countermeasures

Most cryptographic devices should inevitably have a resistance against the threat of side channel attacks. For this, masking and hiding schemes have been proposed since 1999. The security validation of these countermeasures is an ongoing research topic, as a wider range of new and existing attack techniques are tested against these countermeasures. This paper examines the side channel security of the balanced encoding countermeasure, whose aim is to process the secret key-related data under a constant Hamming weight and/or Hamming distance leakage. Unlike previous works, we assume that the leakage model coefficients conform to a normal distribution, producing a model with closer fidelity to real-world implementations. We perform analysis on the balanced encoded PRINCE block cipher with simulated leakage model and also an implementation on an AVR board. We consider both standard correlation power analysis (CPA) and bit-wise CPA. We confirm the resistance of the countermeasure against standard CPA, however, we find with a bit-wise CPA that we can reveal the key with only a few thousands traces.

Twitter Sentiment Analysis for Security-Related Information Gathering

Analysing public sentiment about future events, such as demonstration or parades, may provide valuable information while estimating the level of disruption and disorder during these events. Social media, such as Twitter or Facebook, provides views and opinions of users related to any public topics. Consequently, sentiment analysis of social media content may be of interest to different public sector organisations, especially in the security and law enforcement sector. In this paper we present a lexicon-based approach to sentiment analysis of Twitter content. The algorithm performs normalisation of the sentiment in an effort to provide intensity of the sentiment rather than positive/negative label. Following this, we evaluate an evidence-based combining function that supports the classification process in cases when positive and negative words co-occur in a tweet. Finally, we illustrate a case study examining the relation between sentiment of twitter posts related to English Defence League and the level of disorder during the EDL related events.

Exploiting Direct Links for Physical Layer Security in Multi-User Multi-Relay Networks

We present two physical layer secure transmission schemes for multi-user multi-relay networks, where the communication from M users to the base station is assisted by direct links and by N decode-and-forward relays. In this network, we consider that a passive eavesdropper exists to overhear the transmitted information, which entails exploiting the advantages of both direct and relay links for physical layer security enhancement. To fulfill this requirement, we investigate two criteria for user and relay selection and examine the achievable secrecy performance. Criterion I performs a joint user and relay selection, while Criterion II performs separate user and relay selections, with a lower implementation complexity. We derive a tight lower bound on the secrecy outage probability for Criterion I and an accurate analytical expression for the secrecy outage probability for Criterion II. We further derive the asymptotic secrecy outage probabilities at high transmit signal-to-noise ratios and high main-to-eavesdropper ratios for both criteria. We demonstrate that the secrecy diversity order is min (MN, M + N) for Criterion I, and N for Criterion II. Finally, we present numerical and simulation results to validate the proposed analysis, and show the occurrence condition of the secrecy outage probability floor

Secure Tropos: A Security-Oriented Extension of the Tropos methodology

Although security plays an important role in the development of multiagent systems, a careful analysis of software development processes shows that the definition of security requirements is, usually, considered after the design of the system. One of the reasons is the fact that agent oriented software engineering methodologies have not integrated security concerns throughout their developing stages. The integration of security concerns during the whole range of the development stages can help towards the development of more secure multiagent systems. In this paper we introduce extensions to the Tropos methodology to enable it to model security concerns throughout the whole development process. A description of the new concepts and modelling activities is given along with a discussion on how these concepts and modelling activities are integrated to the current stages of Tropos. A real life case study from the health and social care sector is used to illustrate the approach.