Evaluating a communication protocol’s design in terms of compliance and security is a very complex and time-consuming task. It requires the configuration of suitable test environments and test scenarios as well as the evaluation of procedures and handling of network traffic. A plethora of tools and frameworks exist that tackle individual problems of low-level networking but they usually presume robust programming skills and lack visualization. In contrast we propose an approach, derived from node-based processing systems, that conveys a clear logical picture that is still flexible and extensible enough to be adaptable to real-time processing or simulation of arbitrary networking components. In this paper, we present the concept for a visually programmable low-code communication protocol analysis framework (Lowcaf) that can be used either stand-alone to simulate network components or be used together with arbitrary backends. We also showcase our prototypical implementation of this framework and how it can be combined with the popular deterministic network simulator ns-3.

Operating large-scale IT infrastructures and IT services necessitates the management of the involved devices (e. g., network components and servers) and applications. Recent advances and trends in technology, such as software-defined networking, network function virtualization, and distributed data centers render many established organization-wide management processes and tools almost useless: We argue that they must be significantly re-designed to profoundly address the specifics of the new technologies and operational procedures. In this paper, we present a common data model and inter-domain information exchange procedures for integrated network and security management; it is designed for dynamically instantiated IT services in federated, i. e., inter-organizational scenarios. First, we extend STIX and TAXII to generically support network and security event exchange; then we propose a complementary lightweight data model in favor of efficient data processing and correlation. We discuss our data model's application to four layers of abstraction - from single assets to federated services - along with their management activities and the information required to support them with management tools. An evaluation discusses the feasibility of our concept.

We present a new active imaging architecture that enables rapid spectropolarimetric imaging in a compact system. The transmitter laser produces a synchronous cascade of closely spaced wavelengths, each of which is modulated with a unique amplitude pattern. Temporal multiplexing of the optical return signals is used to reduce system cost, size, weight, and power. This architecture enables a single laser and a single detector for all wavelengths and polarization states. This in turn enables pixel-by-pixel scene characterization, which could be used for target identification in future work. The basic hardware and software architecture will be presented in addition to technologies that are being investigated to develop this system architecture. We will introduce analytical expressions for the temporally multiplexed transmitted and detected signals based on the proposed hardware configuration. We then derive optimal and computationally efficient algorithms for the estimation of the overall range per pixel and the reflectivity per wavelength per pixel, as well as the Cramer-Rao lower bound on estimator variance. The bound and simulated performance yield guidelines for the system parameters required to achieve a desired level of fidelity of the spectral and polarimetric reflectivity. The proposed system is validated with laboratory data and explored via simulations.

Vulnerability management, often used as a generic term for any organizational and technical security controls in the context of identifying, assessing, and mitigating security-relevant software and network weaknesses, has specific challenges in decentralized communication networks such as research and education networks operated by higher education institutions. While many large organizations perform professional vulnerability management and related activities, especially risk management, which are supported by commercial and open source software products, universities and other academic environments still often struggle with ad-hoc and scope-limited approaches due to often unclear responsibilities and a lack of suitable tool support. This poster presents VUDEC, an integrated vulnerability management framework tailored for the requirements of decentrally operated networks; besides organizational aspects of the vulnerability management process, its implementation supports, among other functionality, a highly distributed vulnerability scan architecture and full multi-tenancy capability.