123 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 Routing in Wireless Mesh Networks
Wireless mesh networks (WMNs) have emerged as a promising concept to meet the
challenges in next-generation networks such as providing flexible, adaptive,
and reconfigurable architecture while offering cost-effective solutions to the
service providers. Unlike traditional Wi-Fi networks, with each access point
(AP) connected to the wired network, in WMNs only a subset of the APs are
required to be connected to the wired network. The APs that are connected to
the wired network are called the Internet gateways (IGWs), while the APs that
do not have wired connections are called the mesh routers (MRs). The MRs are
connected to the IGWs using multi-hop communication. The IGWs provide access to
conventional clients and interconnect ad hoc, sensor, cellular, and other
networks to the Internet. However, most of the existing routing protocols for
WMNs are extensions of protocols originally designed for mobile ad hoc networks
(MANETs) and thus they perform sub-optimally. Moreover, most routing protocols
for WMNs are designed without security issues in mind, where the nodes are all
assumed to be honest. In practical deployment scenarios, this assumption does
not hold. This chapter provides a comprehensive overview of security issues in
WMNs and then particularly focuses on secure routing in these networks. First,
it identifies security vulnerabilities in the medium access control (MAC) and
the network layers. Various possibilities of compromising data confidentiality,
data integrity, replay attacks and offline cryptanalysis are also discussed.
Then various types of attacks in the MAC and the network layers are discussed.
After enumerating the various types of attacks on the MAC and the network
layer, the chapter briefly discusses on some of the preventive mechanisms for
these attacks.Comment: 44 pages, 17 figures, 5 table
Resilient networking in wireless sensor networks
This report deals with security in wireless sensor networks (WSNs),
especially in network layer. Multiple secure routing protocols have been
proposed in the literature. However, they often use the cryptography to secure
routing functionalities. The cryptography alone is not enough to defend against
multiple attacks due to the node compromise. Therefore, we need more
algorithmic solutions. In this report, we focus on the behavior of routing
protocols to determine which properties make them more resilient to attacks.
Our aim is to find some answers to the following questions. Are there any
existing protocols, not designed initially for security, but which already
contain some inherently resilient properties against attacks under which some
portion of the network nodes is compromised? If yes, which specific behaviors
are making these protocols more resilient? We propose in this report an
overview of security strategies for WSNs in general, including existing attacks
and defensive measures. In this report we focus at the network layer in
particular, and an analysis of the behavior of four particular routing
protocols is provided to determine their inherent resiliency to insider
attacks. The protocols considered are: Dynamic Source Routing (DSR),
Gradient-Based Routing (GBR), Greedy Forwarding (GF) and Random Walk Routing
(RWR)
Multilevel adaptive security system
Recent trends show increased demand for content-rich media such as images, videos and text in ad-hoc communication. Since such content often tends to be private, sensitive, or paid for, there exists a requirement for securing such information over resource constrained ad hoc networks. In this work, traditional data security mechanisms, existing ad hoc secure routing protocols and multilevel security are first reviewed. Then a new system, called the Multilevel Adaptive Security System, which incorporates the multilevel security concept at both the application layer and the network layer, is proposed to provide adaptive security services for data and routing processes.
MLASS is composed of two subsystems: Content-Based Multi-level Data Security (CB-MLDS) for content-rich data protection and Multi-Level On-demand Secure Mobile Ad hoc Routing (MOSAR) for secure route selection. The structure of each sub-system is explained in detail; experiments for each sub-system were conducted and the performance was analyzed. It is shown that MLASS is a practical security solution that is flexible enough to adapt to a range of security requirements and applies appropriate level of security services to data and its distribution over ad hoc networks. MLASS provides a balance between security, performance and resource
More on Castor: the Scalable Secure Routing for Ad-hoc Networks
Wireless ad hoc networks are inherently vulnerable, as any node can disrupt the communication of potentially any other node in the network. Many solutions to this problem have been proposed. In this paper, we take a fresh and comprehensive approach, simultaneously addressing three aspects: security, scalability and adaptability to changing network conditions. Our communication protocol, Castor, occupies a unique point in the design space: it does not use any control messages except simple packet acknowledgments, and each node makes routing decisions locally and independently of other nodes without exchanging routing state with them. This novel design makes Castor resilient to a wide range of attacks and allows it to scale to large network sizes and to remain efficient under high mobility. We compare Castor against four representative protocols from the literature. Our protocol achieves up to two times higher packet delivery rates, particularly in large and highly volatile networks, incurs no or only limited additional overhead and it is able to survive more severe attacks and recovers from them faster
SoK : password-authenticated key exchange - theory, practice, standardization and real-world lessons
Password-authenticated key exchange (PAKE) is a major area of cryptographic protocol research and practice. Many PAKE proposals have emerged in the 30 years following the original 1992 Encrypted Key Exchange (EKE), some accompanied by new theoretical models to support rigorous analysis. To reduce confusion and encourage practical development, major standards bodies including IEEE, ISO/IEC and the IETF have worked towards standardizing PAKE schemes, with mixed results. Challenges have included contrasts between heuristic protocols and schemes with security proofs, and subtleties in the assumptions of such proofs rendering some schemes unsuitable for practice. Despite initial difficulty identifying suitable use cases, the past decade has seen PAKE adoption in numerous large-scale applications such as Wi-Fi, Apple's iCloud, browser synchronization, e-passports, and the Thread network protocol for Internet of Things devices. Given this backdrop, we consolidate three decades of knowledge on PAKE protocols, integrating theory, practice, standardization and real-world experience. We provide a thorough and systematic review of the field, a summary of the state-of-the-art, a taxonomy to categorize existing protocols, and a comparative analysis of protocol performance using representative schemes from each taxonomy category. We also review real-world applications, summarize lessons learned, and highlight open research problems related to PAKE protocols
Learning with Errors in the Exponent
We initiate the study of a novel class of group-theoretic intractability problems. Inspired by the theory of learning in presence of errors [Regev, STOC\u2705] we ask if noise in the exponent amplifies intractability. We put forth the notion of Learning with Errors in the Exponent (LWEE) and rather surprisingly show that various attractive properties known to exclusively hold for lattices carry over. Most notably are worst-case hardness and post-quantum resistance. In fact, LWEE\u27s duality is due to the reducibility to two seemingly unrelated assumptions: learning with errors and the representation problem [Brands, Crypto\u2793] in finite groups. For suitable parameter choices LWEE superposes properties from each individual intractability problem. The argument holds in the classical and quantum model of computation.
We give the very first construction of a semantically secure public-key encryption system in the standard model. The heart of our construction is an ``error recovery\u27\u27 technique inspired by [Joye-Libert, Eurocrypt\u2713] to handle critical propagations of noise terms in the exponent
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Secure Comparator: a ZKP-Based Authentication System
This paper presents Secure Comparator, a way to implement Zero Knowledge Proof algorithm called Socialist Millionaire’s Problem, to compare secrets between two parties. Compared to existing implementations, Secure Comparator provides better security guarantees, stronger cryptographic math, and, possibly, more integration-friendly architecture
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