Ala Eddine Ben Yahya

Chair of Software Engineering (Informatik II)
Department of Computer Science
University of Würzburg

Am Hubland, 97074 Würzburg

Informatikgebäude, 1.OG, Room A117

E-Mail: ala-eddine.ben-yahya@uni-wuerzburg.de
Phone: +49 (931) 31 88242

Occupation

Since Jan 2020: Research Assistant at the Chair of Software-Engineering, University of Würzburg
Feb 2019 - Dec 2019: Student research assistant at the Chair of Software-Engineering, University of Würzburg

Research interests

IoT Security
Network Security
Anonymity Networks

Projects

Teaching

WS 2021

Introduction to IT Security [exercises]

SS 2021

Seminar IT-Security

SS 2020

Seminar IT-Security

WS 2019

Seminar IT-Security

Publications

2022[ to top ]

An Experience Report on the Suitability of a Distributed Group Encryption Scheme for an IoT Use Case. Prantl, Thomas; Engel, Simon; Bauer, Andre; Ben Yahya, Ala Eddine; Herrnleben, Stefan; Iffländer, Lukas; Dmitrienko, Alexandra; Kounev, Samuel; in 2022 IEEE 95th Vehicular Technology Conference (VTC2022 (2022).
- [ BibTeX ]
- [ BibSonomy-Post ]
@inproceedings{PrEnBaAlHeIfDmKo2022-IoT/CPS-DistributedGroupEncryption, author = {Prantl, Thomas and Engel, Simon and Bauer, Andre and Ben Yahya, Ala Eddine and Herrnleben, Stefan and Iffländer, Lukas and Dmitrienko, Alexandra and Kounev, Samuel}, booktitle = {2022 IEEE 95th Vehicular Technology Conference (VTC2022}, keywords = {publication}, organization = {IEEE}, title = {An Experience Report on the Suitability of a Distributed Group Encryption Scheme for an IoT Use Case}, year = 2022 }
SCRAPS: Scalable Collective Remote Attestation for Pub-Sub IoT Networks with Untrusted Proxy Verifier Petzi, Lukas; Ben Yahya, Ala Eddine; Dmitrienko, Alexandra; Tsudik, Gene; Prantl, Thomas; Kounev, Samuel; (2022). (Vol. USENIX Security ’22)

Coming Soon
- [ Abstract ]
- [ BibTeX ]
- [ BibSonomy-Post ]
Remote Attestation (RA) is a basic security mechanism that detects malicious presence on various types of computing components, e.g., IoT devices. In a typical IoT setting, RA involves a trusted Verifier that sends a challenge to an untrusted remote Prover, which must in turn reply with a fresh and authentic evidence of being in a trustworthy state. However,most current RA schemes assume a central Verifier, which rep-resents a single point of failure. This feature is problematic when mutually suspicious stakeholders are involved. Furthermore, scalability issues arise as the number of IoT devices (Provers) grows. Although some RA schemes allow peer Provers to act as Verifiers, they involve unrealistic (for IoT devices) requirements, such as time synchronization and synchronous communication. Moreover, they incur heavy memory, computation,and communication burdens, while not considering sleeping or otherwise disconnected devices. Motivated by the need to address these limitations, we construct Scalable Collective Remote Attestation for Pub-Sub (SCRAPS), a novel collective RA scheme. It achieves scalability by outsourcing Verifier duties to a smart contract and mitigates DoS attacks against both Provers and Verifiers. It also removes the need for synchronous communication. Furthermore,RA evidence in SCRAPS is publicly verifiable, which significantly reduces the number of attestation evidence computations, thus lowering Prover burden. We report on a prototype of SCRAPS over Hyperledger Sawtooth (a blockchain geared for IoT use-cases) and evaluate its performance, scalability, and security aspects.

@proceedings{petzi2022scraps, abstract = {Remote Attestation (RA) is a basic security mechanism that detects malicious presence on various types of computing components, e.g., IoT devices. In a typical IoT setting, RA involves a trusted Verifier that sends a challenge to an untrusted remote Prover, which must in turn reply with a fresh and authentic evidence of being in a trustworthy state. However,most current RA schemes assume a central Verifier, which rep-resents a single point of failure. This feature is problematic when mutually suspicious stakeholders are involved. Furthermore, scalability issues arise as the number of IoT devices (Provers) grows. Although some RA schemes allow peer Provers to act as Verifiers, they involve unrealistic (for IoT devices) requirements, such as time synchronization and synchronous communication. Moreover, they incur heavy memory, computation,and communication burdens, while not considering sleeping or otherwise disconnected devices. Motivated by the need to address these limitations, we construct Scalable Collective Remote Attestation for Pub-Sub (SCRAPS), a novel collective RA scheme. It achieves scalability by outsourcing Verifier duties to a smart contract and mitigates DoS attacks against both Provers and Verifiers. It also removes the need for synchronous communication. Furthermore,RA evidence in SCRAPS is publicly verifiable, which significantly reduces the number of attestation evidence computations, thus lowering Prover burden. We report on a prototype of SCRAPS over Hyperledger Sawtooth (a blockchain geared for IoT use-cases) and evaluate its performance, scalability, and security aspects.}, author = {Petzi, Lukas and Ben Yahya, Ala Eddine and Dmitrienko, Alexandra and Tsudik, Gene and Prantl, Thomas and Kounev, Samuel}, keywords = {publication}, note = {Coming Soon}, title = {SCRAPS: Scalable Collective Remote Attestation for Pub-Sub IoT Networks with Untrusted Proxy Verifier}, volume = {USENIX Security '22}, year = 2022 }

2020[ to top ]

SIMPL: Secure IoT Management Platform. Prantl, Thomas; Ben Yahya, Ala Eddine; Dmitrienko, Alexandra; Kounev, Samuel; Lipp, Fabian; Hock, David; Rathfelder, Christoph; Hofherr, Martin; in ITG Workshop on IT Security (ITSec) (2020).
- [ Abstract ]
- [ BibTeX ]
- [ BibSonomy-Post ]
The proliferation of IoT devices is increasing at a fast pace, whether for private or business use. However,despite their growing popularity, their safe operation is often not guaranteed. To tackle the security challenges of modern IoT environments, the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research is funding the SIMPL project in order to support research in this area. The contribution of this paper is to introduce the main goal, objectives, and key features of SIMPL

@inproceedings{prantl2020simpl, abstract = {The proliferation of IoT devices is increasing at a fast pace, whether for private or business use. However,despite their growing popularity, their safe operation is often not guaranteed. To tackle the security challenges of modern IoT environments, the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research is funding the SIMPL project in order to support research in this area. The contribution of this paper is to introduce the main goal, objectives, and key features of SIMPL}, author = {Prantl, Thomas and Ben Yahya, Ala Eddine and Dmitrienko, Alexandra and Kounev, Samuel and Lipp, Fabian and Hock, David and Rathfelder, Christoph and Hofherr, Martin}, booktitle = {ITG Workshop on IT Security (ITSec)}, keywords = {publication}, month = {may}, title = {SIMPL: Secure IoT Management Platform}, year = 2020 }

Occupation

Research interests

Projects

Teaching

WS 2021

SS 2021

SS 2020

WS 2019

Publications

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Hinweis zum Datenschutz

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