Muhammad Farooq-i-Azam

Muhammad Farooq-i-Azam

There is no denying the fact that with the widespread usage of computers and the Internet in our daily lives, security of information and data has gained increased attention. Information stored in electronic form is more susceptible to being leaked to unauthorized individuals intentionally or without intent. One of the major reasons for this breach of security has been attributed to proprietary software whose source is available only to the company which made it. Thus you have no surety that the proprietary and pre-compiled software has no hole to help an individual break security of your computer or network. Philosophy of free and open source software as against this provides everyone an opportunity to view the source code for any possible vulnerabilities and compile and change it according to ones need. This paper discusses this philosophy in length with some examples and also some open source tools that help maintain computer and Internet security.

Muhammad Farooq-i-Azam, Muhammad Naeem Ayyaz

Revolution in the area of information technology has brought about changes in many spheres of life. Today, information systems are being used in very sensitive areas such as defence and missile control systems, nuclear plants, etc. Not only has it changed how business is conducted, it has also brought about entirely new paradigms like that of information and cyber warfare. Similarly, one of the many impacts that it has made, is how wars are fought. For all what it has contributed, the information stored on digital devices and computers has become a precious resource and special measures are taken to guard it against attacks from malicious users. These special measures are needed by any enterprise be it a business firm, a commercial entity, a government agency or a military organization. However, requirements and specifications for information security and assurance for a military organization are essentially different from those of commercial or business applications. This paper highlights and discusses various aspects related to the security of information resources of military importance and outlines certain parameters that should be taken into consideration when talking about the security of military information resources. W also describe the role satellite reconnaissance can play in cyber war. Authors proclaim that this paper is first such attempt to correlate cyber war with satellite reconnaissance.

Muhammad Farooq-i-Azam, Muhammad Naeem Ayyaz

Not long ago, it was thought that only software applications and general purpose digital systems i.e. computers were prone to various types of attacks against their security. The underlying hardware, hardware implementations of these software applications, embedded systems, and hardware devices were considered to be secure and out of reach of these attacks. However, during the previous few years, it has been demonstrated that novel attacks against the hardware and embedded systems can also be mounted. Not only viruses, but worms and Trojan horses have been developed for them, and they have also been demonstrated to be effective. Whereas a lot of research has already been done in the area of security of general purpose computers and software applications, hardware and embedded systems security is a relatively new and emerging area of research. This chapter provides details of various types of existing attacks against hardware devices and embedded systems, analyzes existing design methodologies for their vulnerability to new types of attacks, and along the way describes solutions and countermeasures against them for the design and development of secure systems.

Muhammad Salman Raheel, Muhammad Raza Asfi, Muhammad Farooq-i-Azam et al.

This paper presents the verified methodology for wireless authentication system using infrared barcode based scanner. An alternate approach of scanning a barcode using an infrared communication is implemented here, comprises of a card on which a barcode is printed is illuminated with an infrared beam. The reflections from the card are received by an infrared receiver and transmit them to a remote machine over wireless channel where the retrieve information is further processed and converted into the corresponding barcode digits which are further matched against the database stored in the server and the authenticity of the user is established. The system developed is cost-effective, efficient, provide double security and robust.