Design and implementation of the node identity internetworking architecture

The Internet Protocol (IP) has been proven very flexible, being able to accommodate all kinds of link technologies and supporting a broad range of applications. The basic principles of the original Internet architecture include end-to-end addressing, global routeability and a single namespace of IP addresses that unintentionally serves both as locators and host identifiers. The commercial success and widespread use of the Internet have lead to new requirements, which include internetworking over business boundaries, mobility and multi-homing in an untrusted environment. Our approach to satisfy these new requirements is to introduce a new internetworking layer, the node identity layer. Such a layer runs on top of the different versions of IP, but could also run directly on top of other kinds of network technologies, such as MPLS and 2G/3G PDP contexts. This approach enables connectivity across different communication technologies, supports mobility, multi-homing, and security from ground up. This paper describes the Node Identity Architecture in detail and discusses the experiences from implementing and running a prototype

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

Solutions and Tools for Secure Communication in Wireless Sensor Networks

Secure communication is considered a vital requirement in Wireless Sensor Network (WSN) applications. Such a requirement embraces different aspects, including confidentiality, integrity and authenticity of exchanged information, proper management of security material, and effective prevention and reaction against security threats and attacks. However, WSNs are mainly composed of resource-constrained devices. That is, network nodes feature reduced capabilities, especially in terms of memory storage, computing power, transmission rate, and energy availability. As a consequence, assuring secure communication in WSNs results to be more difficult than in other kinds of network. In fact, trading effectiveness of adopted solutions with their efficiency becomes far more important. In addition, specific device classes or technologies may require to design ad hoc security solutions. Also, it is necessary to efficiently manage security material, and dynamically cope with changes of security requirements. Finally, security threats and countermeasures have to be carefully considered since from the network design phase. This Ph.D. dissertion considers secure communication in WSNs, and provides the following contributions. First, we provide a performance evaluation of IEEE 802.15.4 security services. Then, we focus on the ZigBee technology and its security services, and propose possible solutions to some deficiencies and inefficiencies. Second, we present HISS, a highly scalable and efficient key management scheme, able to contrast collusion attacks while displaying a graceful degradation of performance. Third, we present STaR, a software component for WSNs that secures multiple traffic flows at the same time. It is transparent to the application, and provides runtime reconfigurability, thus coping with dynamic changes of security requirements. Finally, we describe ASF, our attack simulation framework for WSNs. Such a tool helps network designers to quantitatively evaluate effects of security attacks, produce an attack ranking based on their severity, and thus select the most appropriate countermeasures

Secure migration of WebAssembly-based mobile agents between secure enclaves

Cryptography and security protocols are today commonly used to protect data at-rest and in-transit. In contrast, protecting data in-use has seen only limited adoption. Secure data transfer methods employed today rarely provide guarantees regarding the trustworthiness of the software and hardware at the communication endpoints. The field of study that addresses these issues is called Trusted or Confidential Computing and relies on the use of hardware-based techniques. These techniques aim to isolate critical data and its processing from the rest of the system. More specifically, it investigates the use of hardware isolated Secure Execution Environments (SEEs) where applications cannot be tampered with during operation. Over the past few decades, several implementations of SEEs have been introduced, each based on a different hardware architecture. However, lately, the trend is to move towards architecture-independent SEEs. As part of this, Huawei research project is developing a secure enclave framework that enables secure execution and migration of applications (mobile agents), regardless of the underlying architecture. This thesis contributes to the development of the framework by participating in the design and implementation of a secure migration scheme for the mobile agents. The goal is a scheme wherein it is possible to transfer the mobile agent without compromising the security guarantees provided by SEEs. Further, the thesis also provides performance measurements of the migration scheme implemented in a proof of concept of the framework

Securing Handover in Wireless IP Networks

In wireless and mobile networks, handover is a complex process that involves multiple layers of protocol and security executions. With the growing popularity of real time communication services such as Voice of IP, a great challenge faced by handover nowadays comes from the impact of security implementations that can cause performance degradation especially for mobile devices with limited resources. Given the existing networks with heterogeneous wireless access technologies, one essential research question that needs be addressed is how to achieve a balance between security and performance during the handover. The variations of security policy and agreement among different services and network vendors make the topic challenging even more, due to the involvement of commercial and social factors. In order to understand the problems and challenges in this field, we study the properties of handover as well as state of the art security schemes to assist handover in wireless IP networks. Based on our analysis, we define a two-phase model to identify the key procedures of handover security in wireless and mobile networks. Through the model we analyze the performance impact from existing security schemes in terms of handover completion time, throughput, and Quality of Services (QoS). As our endeavor of seeking a balance between handover security and performance, we propose the local administrative domain as a security enhanced localized domain to promote the handover performance. To evaluate the performance improvement in local administrative domain, we implement the security protocols adopted by our proposal in the ns-2 simulation environment and analyze the measurement results based on our simulation test