Security and Privacy Issues in Wireless Mesh Networks: A Survey

This book chapter identifies various security threats in wireless mesh network (WMN). Keeping in mind the critical requirement of security and user privacy in WMNs, this chapter provides a comprehensive overview of various possible attacks on different layers of the communication protocol stack for WMNs and their corresponding defense mechanisms. First, it identifies the security vulnerabilities in the physical, link, network, transport, application layers. Furthermore, various possible attacks on the key management protocols, user authentication and access control protocols, and user privacy preservation protocols are presented. After enumerating various possible attacks, the chapter provides a detailed discussion on various existing security mechanisms and protocols to defend against and wherever possible prevent the possible attacks. Comparative analyses are also presented on the security schemes with regards to the cryptographic schemes used, key management strategies deployed, use of any trusted third party, computation and communication overhead involved etc. The chapter then presents a brief discussion on various trust management approaches for WMNs since trust and reputation-based schemes are increasingly becoming popular for enforcing security in wireless networks. A number of open problems in security and privacy issues for WMNs are subsequently discussed before the chapter is finally concluded.Comment: 62 pages, 12 figures, 6 tables. This chapter is an extension of the author's previous submission in arXiv submission: arXiv:1102.1226. There are some text overlaps with the previous submissio

A Review of the Energy Efficient and Secure Multicast Routing Protocols for Mobile Ad hoc Networks

This paper presents a thorough survey of recent work addressing energy efficient multicast routing protocols and secure multicast routing protocols in Mobile Ad hoc Networks (MANETs). There are so many issues and solutions which witness the need of energy management and security in ad hoc wireless networks. The objective of a multicast routing protocol for MANETs is to support the propagation of data from a sender to all the receivers of a multicast group while trying to use the available bandwidth efficiently in the presence of frequent topology changes. Multicasting can improve the efficiency of the wireless link when sending multiple copies of messages by exploiting the inherent broadcast property of wireless transmission. Secure multicast routing plays a significant role in MANETs. However, offering energy efficient and secure multicast routing is a difficult and challenging task. In recent years, various multicast routing protocols have been proposed for MANETs. These protocols have distinguishing features and use different mechanismsComment: 15 page

Software Defined Networks based Smart Grid Communication: A Comprehensive Survey

The current power grid is no longer a feasible solution due to ever-increasing user demand of electricity, old infrastructure, and reliability issues and thus require transformation to a better grid a.k.a., smart grid (SG). The key features that distinguish SG from the conventional electrical power grid are its capability to perform two-way communication, demand side management, and real time pricing. Despite all these advantages that SG will bring, there are certain issues which are specific to SG communication system. For instance, network management of current SG systems is complex, time consuming, and done manually. Moreover, SG communication (SGC) system is built on different vendor specific devices and protocols. Therefore, the current SG systems are not protocol independent, thus leading to interoperability issue. Software defined network (SDN) has been proposed to monitor and manage the communication networks globally. This article serves as a comprehensive survey on SDN-based SGC. In this article, we first discuss taxonomy of advantages of SDNbased SGC.We then discuss SDN-based SGC architectures, along with case studies. Our article provides an in-depth discussion on routing schemes for SDN-based SGC. We also provide detailed survey of security and privacy schemes applied to SDN-based SGC. We furthermore present challenges, open issues, and future research directions related to SDN-based SGC.Comment: Accepte

A Survey on Wireless Sensor Network Security

Wireless sensor networks (WSNs) have recently attracted a lot of interest in the research community due their wide range of applications. Due to distributed nature of these networks and their deployment in remote areas, these networks are vulnerable to numerous security threats that can adversely affect their proper functioning. This problem is more critical if the network is deployed for some mission-critical applications such as in a tactical battlefield. Random failure of nodes is also very likely in real-life deployment scenarios. Due to resource constraints in the sensor nodes, traditional security mechanisms with large overhead of computation and communication are infeasible in WSNs. Security in sensor networks is, therefore, a particularly challenging task. This paper discusses the current state of the art in security mechanisms for WSNs. Various types of attacks are discussed and their countermeasures presented. A brief discussion on the future direction of research in WSN security is also included.Comment: 24 pages, 4 figures, 2 table

GRIDKIT: Pluggable overlay networks for Grid computing

A `second generation' approach to the provision of Grid middleware is now emerging which is built on service-oriented architecture and web services standards and technologies. However, advanced Grid applications have significant demands that are not addressed by present-day web services platforms. As one prime example, current platforms do not support the rich diversity of communication `interaction types' that are demanded by advanced applications (e.g. publish-subscribe, media streaming, peer-to-peer interaction). In the paper we describe the Gridkit middleware which augments the basic service-oriented architecture to address this particular deficiency. We particularly focus on the communications infrastructure support required to support multiple interaction types in a unified, principled and extensible manner-which we present in terms of the novel concept of pluggable overlay networks

A component-based middleware framework for configurable and reconfigurable Grid computing

Significant progress has been made in the design and development of Grid middleware which, in its present form, is founded on Web services technologies. However, we argue that present-day Grid middleware is severely limited in supporting projected next-generation applications which will involve pervasive and heterogeneous networked infrastructures, and advanced services such as collaborative distributed visualization. In this paper we discuss a new Grid middleware framework that features (i) support for advanced network services based on the novel concept of pluggable overlay networks, (ii) an architectural framework for constructing bespoke Grid middleware platforms in terms of 'middleware domains' such as extensible interaction types and resource discovery. We believe that such features will become increasingly essential with the emergence of next-generation e-Science applications. Copyright (c) 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd

Linux XIA: an interoperable meta network architecture to crowdsource the future Internet

With the growing number of proposed clean-slate redesigns of the Internet, the need for a medium that enables all stakeholders to participate in the realization, evaluation, and selection of these designs is increasing. We believe that the missing catalyst is a meta network architecture that welcomes most, if not all, clean-state designs on a level playing field, lowers deployment barriers, and leaves the final evaluation to the broader community. This paper presents Linux XIA, a native implementation of XIA [12] in the Linux kernel, as a candidate. We first describe Linux XIA in terms of its architectural realizations and algorithmic contributions. We then demonstrate how to port several distinct and unrelated network architectures onto Linux XIA. Finally, we provide a hybrid evaluation of Linux XIA at three levels of abstraction in terms of its ability to: evolve and foster interoperation of new architectures, embed disparate architectures inside the implementation’s framework, and maintain a comparable forwarding performance to that of the legacy TCP/IP implementation. Given this evaluation, we substantiate a previously unsupported claim of XIA: that it readily supports and enables network evolution, collaboration, and interoperability—traits we view as central to the success of any future Internet architecture.This research was supported by the National Science Foundation under awards CNS-1040800, CNS-1345307 and CNS-1347525