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strict authentication and authorisation processes. Nobody should be exempted
from this requirement so that there is less chance for unauthorised individuals
to do something harmful and also to ensure that actions taken by authorised
individuals can later be traced back to them for accountability purposes.
8. Operational Security
There should be processes and procedures in place by the cloud service provider to
ensure the operational security of the service is well-defined. The processes
and procedures are important so that everybody is aware and can properly
do their work during normal operating conditions as well as during security
disasters.
9. Personnel security
The consumer should make sure that the cloud service provider performs adequate
security screening of their personnel and ensure that those personnel undergo the
correct security training for their role in the cloud provider’s organisation.
10. Secure development of services
Consumers should evaluate and decide whether the cloud service provider
implement secure development practices. One way this can be verified is to insist
on the latest vulnerability and security assessment reports of the services that
the consumer is interested in. This can help to show whether the cloud service
provider consistently identify and mitigate threats to the security of the
service.
Conclusion
Security is the responsibility of both the consumer and the cloud service
provider. This article has attempted to describe some of the security principles
that both the consumer and the provider should be concerned with. There are
additional security principles that will add extra layers of confidence if they
are implemented by the provider but the principles described above should be a
good starting point in the right direction for the consumer.
￭
References
1 . h t t p : w w w . m e r r i a m - w e b s t e r . c o m d i c t i o n a r y s e c u r i t y
2 . h t t p : w w w. a c c o u n t i n g c o a c h . c o m b l o g s e p a r a t i o n - o f - d u t i e s - i n t e r n a l - c o n t r o l
3 . h t t p : w w w . s a f e n e t - i n c . c o m d a t a - p r o t e c t i o n v i r t u a l i z a t i o n - c l o u d - s e c u r i t y
s a a s - s e c u r i t y - c l o u d - a c c e s s - c o n t r o l 4 . 4 . h t t p s : d a t a t r a c k e r . i e t f . o r g
d o c u m e n t s L I A I S O N f i l e 1 1 8 1 . d o c [ R e q u i r e m e n t s f o r S e r v i c e P r o t e c t i o n A c r o s s
E x t e r n a l I n t e r f a c e s D r a f t 0 . 3 4 J a n u a r y 2 0 1 1 ]
5 . h t t p s : w w w . g o v . u k g o v e r n m e n t p u b l i c a t i o n s c l o u d - s e r v i c e - s e c u r i t y -
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© CyberSecurity Malaysia 2014 - All Rights Reserved
67
I
was once given a mobile phone to be analysed for a criminal case several years
ago. The case objective was to extract SMS text messages from the phone and
to correlate the timestamp of SMS from the sender’s phone and the SMS from the
receiver’s phone.
What was supposed to be a simple analysis became complex as the timestamp
correlation did not make sense at all. Further analysis on the timestamp found
that there were actually three possibilities of how SMS timestamp were generated on
the phone.
When a SMS is received, the timestamp displayed on the SMS could be:
• The timestamp of the sender’s phone device time
• Timestamp of the telecommunication provider’s server time network time
• Timestamp of the recipient’s phone device time
Figure 1: Three 3 possibilities of timestamp generated
for an SMS. Have you ever wondered which timestamp is displayed on your SMS?
How do we determine which timestamp is generated on the SMS? In this article, I will
present a simple analysis on three phone models and provide a conclusion from the
analysis.
Methodology
The methodology of conducting this analysis is quite simple. The steps below show how
the analysis is conducted:
Preliminary Study on Timestamp
Before we proceed to the next section, it is important for an analyst to understand the
timestamp system. Mobile phones, in general, uses the Coordinated Universal Time UTC
format. It is also known as Zulu time’ or ‘Z time’. UTC is 24-hour time, which begins at 00:00 at
midnight.
To obtain Malaysia’s local time known as GMT, we need to add 8 hours +8 to the UTC. The
example of UTC to GMT calculation is as below:
Figure 2: Converting UTC time to GMT time
Analysis Finding
Three phone models were used for the purposes of this study. The phones have
been synchronised to the SIRIM standard time. The details are as follows:
A Forensic Analysis on SMS Timestamp
By | Nor Zarina Zainal Abidin
