397 research outputs found
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
Secure and Privacy-Preserving Authentication Protocols for Wireless Mesh Networks
Wireless mesh networks (WMNs) have emerged as a promising concept to meet the
challenges in next-generation wireless networks such as providing flexible,
adaptive, and reconfigurable architecture while offering cost-effective
solutions to service providers. As WMNs become an increasingly popular
replacement technology for last-mile connectivity to the home networking,
community and neighborhood networking, it is imperative to design efficient and
secure communication protocols for these networks. However, several
vulnerabilities exist in currently existing protocols for WMNs. These security
loopholes can be exploited by potential attackers to launch attack on WMNs. The
absence of a central point of administration makes securing WMNs even more
challenging. The broadcast nature of transmission and the dependency on the
intermediate nodes for multi-hop communications lead to several security
vulnerabilities in WMNs. The attacks can be external as well as internal in
nature. External attacks are launched by intruders who are not authorized users
of the network. For example, an intruding node may eavesdrop on the packets and
replay those packets at a later point of time to gain access to the network
resources. On the other hand, the internal attacks are launched by the nodes
that are part of the WMN. On example of such attack is an intermediate node
dropping packets which it was supposed to forward. This chapter presents a
comprehensive discussion on the current authentication and privacy protection
schemes for WMN. In addition, it proposes a novel security protocol for node
authentication and message confidentiality and an anonymization scheme for
privacy protection of users in WMNs.Comment: 32 pages, 10 figures. The work is an extended version of the author's
previous works submitted in CoRR: arXiv:1107.5538v1 and arXiv:1102.1226v
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Cloned Access Point Detection and Point Detection and Prevention Mechanism in IEEE 802.11 Wireless Mesh Networks
IEEE 802.11 Wireless Mesh Network (WMN) is an
emerging low cost, decentralized community-based broadband technology, which is based on self-healing and multi-hop deployment of Access Points (APs), so that to increase the coverage area with maximum freedom to end-users to join or leave the
network from anywhere anytime having low deployment and maintenance cost. Such kind of decentralized structure and multihop architecture increases its security vulnerabilities especially
against the APs. One of such possible security attack is the placement of cloned AP to create serious performance degradation in IEEE 802.11 WMN. In this paper, we discuss the different
security vulnerabilities of AP in IEEE 802.11 WMN along with possible research directions. We also propose a mutual cooperation mechanism between the multi-hop APs and serving gateway so that
to detect and prevent the possibility of cloned AP. In this way the large scale exploitation of IEEE 802.11 WMN can be eliminated
Efficient Security Protocols for Fast Handovers in Wireless Mesh Networks
Wireless mesh networks (WMNs) are gaining popularity as a flexible and inexpensive replacement for Ethernet-based infrastructures. As the use of mobile devices such as smart phones and tablets is becoming ubiquitous, mobile clients should be guaranteed uninterrupted connectivity and services as they move from one access point to another within a WMN or between networks. To that end, we propose a novel security framework that consists of a new architecture, trust models, and protocols to offer mobile clients seamless and fast handovers in WMNs. The framework provides a dynamic, flexible, resource-efficient, and secure platform for intra-network and inter-network handovers in order to support real-time mobile applications in WMNs. In particular, we propose solutions to the following problems: authentication, key management, and group key management. We propose
(1) a suite of certificate-based authentication protocols that minimize the authentication delay during handovers from one access point to another within a network (intra-network authentication).
(2) a suite of key distribution and authentication protocols that minimize the authentication delay during handovers from one network to another (inter-network authentication).
(3) a new implementation of group key management at the data link layer in order to
reduce the group key update latency from linear time (as currently done in IEEE 802.11 standards) to logarithmic time. This contributes towards minimizing the latency of the handover process for mobile members in a multicast or broadcast group
Non-repudiable authentication and billing architecture for wireless mesh networks
Wireless mesh networks (WMNs) are a kind of wireless ad hoc networks
that are multi-hop where packets are forwarded from source to destination
by intermediate notes as well as routers that form a kind of network infrastructure
backbone. We investigate the security of the recently proposed first known secure
authentication and billing architecture for WMNs which eliminates the need for
bilateral roaming agreements and that for traditional home-foreign domains. We
show that this architecture does not securely provide incontestable billing contrary
to designer claims and furthermore it does not achieve entity authentication. We
then present an enhanced scheme that achieves entity authentication and nonrepudiable
billing
Untraceable Authentication Protocol for IEEE802.11s Standard
In the current paper, a new handover authentication protocol for IEEE802.11s Wireless mesh networks is presented. The new protocol divides the network into a number of cells, each cell contains a number of access points and based on the concept of ticket authentication, the mesh user takes a new ticket when enters the region of a new cell which decreases the handover latency. Moreover, in the current paper, a new idea for ticket generation is proposed, called Chain Ticket Derivation Function (CTDF), which uses the concept of a chain. Using CTDF in our proposed protocol raises the level of privacy for the users. The security analysis presented in the paper showed more strengths in our proposed scheme. Two formal verification tools, AVISPA and BAN logic are used to test the proposed protocol
A distributed key establishment scheme for wireless mesh networks using identity-based cryptography
In this paper, we propose a secure and efficient key establishment scheme designed with respect to the unique requirements of Wireless Mesh Networks. Our security model is based on Identity-based key establishment scheme without
the utilization of a trusted authority for private key operations. Rather, this task is performed by a collaboration of users; a threshold number of users come together in a coalition so that they generate the private key. We performed
simulative performance evaluation in order to show the effect of both the network size and the threshold value. Results show a tradeoff between resiliency and efficiency: increasing the threshold value or the number of mesh nodes also
increases the resiliency but negatively effects the efficiency. For threshold values smaller than 8 and for number of mesh nodes in between 40 and 100, at least 90% of the mesh nodes can compute their private keys within at most 70 seconds. On the other hand, at threshold value 8, an increase in the number of mesh nodes from 40 to 100 results in 25% increase in the rate of successful private key generations
An identity aware wimax personalization for pervasive computing services
Mobile Internet access is becoming more and more pervasive in the new 4G scenarios, where WiMAX is to play a crucial role. WiMax has advantages when considering both
energy consumption and bandwidth, when compared with
HSDPA and LTE. However, we have found some limitations in
IEEE 802.16 security support, which may limit authentication
and authorization mechanisms for ubiquitous service
development. In this article we analyze weaknesses and
vulnerabilities we have found in WiMAX security. WiMax,
with the adequate identity management support, could be
invaluable for developing new pervasive computing services.
We propose the introduction of identity management in WiMAX, as a pervious step to the definition of identity aware
WiMax personalization of pervasive computing servicesProyecto CCG10-UC3M/TIC-4992 de la Comunidad AutĂłnoma de Madrid y la Universidad Carlos III de Madri
A New Scheme of Group-based AKA for Machine Type Communication over LTE Networks
Machine Type Communication (MTC) is considered as one of the most important approaches to the future of mobile communication has attracted more and more attention. To reach the safety of MTC, applications in networks must meet the low power consumption requirements of devices and mass transmission device. When a large number of MTC devices get connected to the network, each MTC device must implement an independent access authentication process according to the 3GPP standard, which will cause serious traffic congestion in the Long Term Evolution (LTE) network. In this article, we propose a new group access authentication scheme, by which a huge number of MTC devices can be simultaneously authenticated by the network and establish an independent session key with the network respectively. Experimental results show that the proposed scheme can achieve robust security and avoid signaling overload on LTE network
Secure and seamless prepayment for wireless mesh networks
Wireless Mesh Network (WMN) is multi-hop high-speed networking technology for broadband access. Compared to conventional network service providing systems, WMNs are easy to deploy and cost-effective. In this thesis, we propose a secure and seamless prepayment system for the Internet access through WMNs (SSPayWMN). Practical payment systems for network access generally depend on trustworthiness of service provider. However, in real life, service providers may unintentionally overcharge their clients. This misbehavior in the system may cause disputes between the clients and the service providers. Even if the service provider is rightful, it is very difficult to convince the customer since the service providers generally do not have justifiable proofs that can easily be denied by the clients. The main goal of SSPayWMN is to provide a secure payment scheme, which is fair to both operators and clients. Using cryptographic tools and techniques, all system entities are able to authenticate each other and provide/get service in an undeniable way. Moreover, SSPayWMN provides privacy and untraceability in order not to track down particular user’s network activities. We implemented SSPayWMN on a network simulator (ns-3) and performed performance evaluation to understand the latency caused by the system's protocols. Our results show that our protocols achieve low steady state latency and in overall put very little burden on the system
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