The Huawei and Snowden Questions

1 Introduction: 1.1 A New Situation.- 1.2 What are we Afraid of?.- 1.3 Huawei and ZTE.- 1.4 Trust in Vendors.- 1.5 Points of Attack.- 1.6 Trust in Vendors is Different from Computer Security.- 1.7 Why the Problem is Important.- 1.8 Advice for Readers.- 2 Trust: 2.1 Prisoner's Dilemma.- 2.2 Trust and Game Theory.- 2.3 Trust and Freedom of Choice.- 2.4 Trust, Consequence and Situation.- 2.5 Trust and Security.- 2.6 Trusted Computing Base---Trust between Components.- 2.7 Discussion.- 3 What is an ICT-System?: 3.1 Transistors and Integrated Circuits.- 3.2 Memory and Communication.- 3.3 Processors and Instruction Sets.- 3.4 Firmware.- 3.5 Operating Systems, Device Drivers, Hardware Adaptation Layers and Hypervisors.- 3.6 Bytecode Interpreters.- 3.7 The Application on Top.- 3.8 Infrastructures and Distributed Systems.- 3.9 Discussion.- 4 Development of ICT Systems: 4.1 Software Development.- 4.2 Hardware Development .- 4.3 Security Updates and Maintenance.- 4.4 Discussion.- 5 Theoretical Foundation: 5.1 Gödel and the Liar's Paradox.- 5.2 Turing and the Halting Problem.- 5.3 Decidability of Malicious Behaviour.- 5.4 Is there Still Hope?.- 5.5 Where does this Lead Us?.- 6 Reverse Engineering of Code: 6.1 Application of Reversing in ICT.- 6.2 Static Code Analysis.- 6.3 Disassemblers.- 6.4 Decompilers.- 6.5 Debuggers.- 6.6 Antireversing.- 6.7 Hardware.- 6.8 Discussion.- 7 Static Detection of Malware: 7.1 Classes of Malware.- 7.2 Signatures, and Static Code Analysis.- 7.3 Encrypted and Oligomorphic Malware.- 7.4 Obfuscation Techniques.- 7.5 Polymorphic and Metamorphic Malware.- 7.6 Heuristic Approaches.- 7.7 Malicious Hardware.- 7.8 Specification Based Techniques.- 7.9 Discussion.- 8 Dynamic Detection Methods: 8.1 Dynamic Properties.- 8.2 Unrestricted Execution.- 8.3 Emulator Based Analysis.- 8.4 Virtual Machines.- 8.5 Evasion Techniques.- 8.6 Analysis.- 8.7 Hardware.- 8.8 Discussion.- 9 Formal Methods: 9.1 Formal Methods Overview.- 9.2 Specification.- 9.3 Programming

Olav Lysne is Director and founder of the Center for Resilient Networks and Applications (CRNA) at Simula research laboratory, and professor in computer science at Simula and the University of Oslo. He holds a PhD in Computer Science from the University of Oslo, and his   experience in research, education, management and innovation reaches back to 1989. 

Lysne was the leader of a National Commission that assessed whether the Norwegian Intelligence Service (Etterretningstjenesten) should be allowed to do lawful interception of Internet-traffic crossing the national borders of Norway (Lysne II utvalget).  The commission started its work in January 2016, and handed over its report to the Norwegian Minister of Defence in August 2016. Lysne was the leader of National Commission for Digital Vulnerability formed by the Norwegian government (Lysne I utvalget). The commission was active from August 2014 to September 2015, and consisted of nine experts from all relevant sectors in Norway.  Their mandate was to write a report that forms the basis for the Government's cyber-policy. 


The early research contributions of Lysne were in the field of algebraic specification and term rewriting, with a particular emphasis on automated deduction.  While working in this field he was a visiting researcher at Université de Paris-Sud.  Later in his career he has been working on resilient computer architecture for supercomputing and cloud infrastructures, routing and switching techniques for IP-networks and measurement of national network infrastructures.


Since 2010 Lysne has been working on developing methods for measurement of resilience in Mobile Broadband Networks.   This work has resulted in the formation of a nation-wide monitoring system of mobile broadband in Norway, funded directly by the Norwegian government.  This system has been extended to Sweden, Italy and Spain through the EU project MONROE.