SAFEST: Secure Actions for FTP Environment with Smart Token

14 pages•Published: September 26, 2019

Abstract

Nowadays, with the wide applications of distributed systems, web-based applications, and communications systems over the Internet for carrying data between users such as terminal client and computer/server or communications between different devices using a computer network, network security has become crucial requirement to ensure authentic received data during transmission. Authentication and encryption are basic procedures to ensure secure communications over a public network due to tamper-resistance and convenience in dealing with a password file. Most of the used protocols; HTTP, FTP, and SMTP of the Internet applications use text stream that is more and more vulnerable to attacks. Encryption represents the main security for the most computer applications.
This work proposes enhanced secure actions for transferring data using FTP protocol by using a smart token. A smart token has the capabilities of the smart card, but more secured beside some interesting operations. A practical and secure user scheme, based on a smart token device, is proposed. A Secure Platform has been developed using implemented APIs and PKCS#11 as RSA standard interface. The proposed API is called SAFEST (Secure Actions for FTP Environment with Smart Token). SAFEST API wraps a standard protocol for implementing the communication between a token and the application using it. This API is a platform independent, scalable to support more functionality, optimizing token usage and adding more security for accessing token objects. The smart token can process the cryptographic key operations on its own rather than on the host computer, which supports high-level platform independence. In addition, through the proposed SAFEST API, standard interfacing to such token devices from any vendor can be implemented through using PKCS#11 interfaces, developed by RSA labs.

Keyphrases: ftp, pkcs#11, security protocols, smart token, web applications

In: Quan Yuan, Yan Shi, Les Miller, Gordon Lee, Gongzhu Hu and Takaaki Goto (editors). Proceedings of 32nd International Conference on Computer Applications in Industry and Engineering, vol 63, pages 197-210.

Links:	https://easychair.org/publications/paper/wGQB
	https://doi.org/10.29007/5945

BibTeX entry

@inproceedings{CAINE2019:SAFEST_Secure_Actions_FTP,
  author    = {Tarek Sobh and Awad Khalil},
  title     = {SAFEST: Secure Actions for FTP Environment with Smart Token},
  booktitle = {Proceedings of 32nd International Conference on Computer Applications in Industry and Engineering},
  editor    = {Quan Yuan and Yan Shi and Les Miller and Gordon Lee and Gongzhu Hu and Takaaki Goto},
  series    = {EPiC Series in Computing},
  volume    = {63},
  publisher = {EasyChair},
  bibsource = {EasyChair, https://easychair.org},
  issn      = {2398-7340},
  url       = {/publications/paper/wGQB},
  doi       = {10.29007/5945},
  pages     = {197-210},
  year      = {2019}}

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