Network coding for anonymous broadcast

Thesis: M. Eng., Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, 2013.Cataloged from PDF version of thesis.Includes bibliographical references (pages 101-104).This thesis explores the use of network coding for anonymous broadcast. Network coding, the technique of transmitting or storing mixtures of messages rather than individual messages, can provide anonymity with its mixing nature, efficiently disseminate content in multicast and broadcast networks, and resiliently deliver messages despite packet erasure and constrained network resources. While broadcast mediums guarantee receiver anonymity, they are thought to be difficult to emulate efficiently over unicast networks. This thesis introduces NCGAB, a decentralized peer-to-peer overlay network based on network coded gossip that provides a resilient, anonymous broadcast medium. Unlike most anonymous communication systems, NCGAB requires no cryptosystem, no infrastructure of trust, and no special nodes to operate. This thesis also introduces Melting Pad, an algebraic coding scheme with properties of information theoretic security and efficient decodability, designed to protect messages for wide dissemination and for hosting with diminished liability.by Ivan A. Sergeev.M. Eng

Crowdsourcing atop blockchains

Traditional crowdsourcing systems, such as Amazon\u27s Mechanical Turk (MTurk), though once acquiring great economic successes, have to fully rely on third-party platforms to serve between the requesters and the workers for basic utilities. These third-parties have to be fully trusted to assist payments, resolve disputes, protect data privacy, manage user authentications, maintain service online, etc. Nevertheless, tremendous real-world incidents indicate how elusive it is to completely trust these platforms in reality, and the reduction of such over-reliance becomes desirable. In contrast to the arguably vulnerable centralized approaches, a public blockchain is a distributed and transparent global consensus computer that is highly robust. The blockchain is usually managed and replicated by a large-scale peer-to-peer network collectively, thus being much more robust to be fully trusted for correctness and availability. It, therefore, becomes enticing to build novel crowdsourcing applications atop blockchains to reduce the over-trust on third-party platforms. However, this new fascinating technology also brings about new challenges, which were never that severe in the conventional centralized setting. The most serious issue is that the blockchain is usually maintained in the public Internet environment with a broader attack surface open to anyone. This not only causes serious privacy and security issues, but also allows the adversaries to exploit the attack surface to hamper more basic utilities. Worse still, most existing blockchains support only light on-chain computations, and the smart contract executed atop the decentralized consensus computer must be simple, which incurs serious feasibility problems. In reality, the privacy/security issue and the feasibility problem even restrain each other and create serious tensions to hinder the broader adoption of blockchain. The dissertation goes through the non-trivial challenges to realize secure yet still practical decentralization (for urgent crowdsourcing use-cases), and lay down the foundation for this line of research. In sum, it makes the next major contributions. First, it identifies the needed security requirements in decentralized knowledge crowdsourcing (e.g., data privacy), and initiates the research of private decentralized crowdsourcing. In particular, the confidentiality of solicited data is indispensable to prevent free-riders from pirating the others\u27 submissions, thus ensuring the quality of solicited knowledge. To this end, a generic private decentralized crowdsourcing framework is dedicatedly designed, analyzed, and implemented. Furthermore, this dissertation leverages concretely efficient cryptographic design to reduce the cost of the above generic framework. It focuses on decentralizing the special use-case of Amazon MTurk, and conducts multiple specific-purpose optimizations to remove needless generality to squeeze performance. The implementation atop Ethereum demonstrates a handling cost even lower than MTurk. In addition, it focuses on decentralized crowdsourcing of computing power for specific machine learning tasks. It lets a requester place deposits in the blockchain to recruit some workers for a designated (randomized) programs. If and only if these workers contribute their resources to compute correctly, they would earn well-deserved payments. For these goals, a simple yet still useful incentive mechanism is developed atop the blockchain to deter rational workers from cheating. Finally, the research initiates the first systematic study on crowdsourcing blockchains\u27 full nodes to assist superlight clients (e.g., mobile phones and IoT devices) to read the blockchain\u27s records. This dissertation presents a novel generic solution through the powerful lens of game-theoretic treatments, which solves the long-standing open problem of designing generic superlight clients for all blockchains

Compute-and-Forward in Multi-User Relay Networks: Optimization, Implementation, and Secrecy

In this thesis, we investigate physical-layer network coding in an L × M × K relay network, where L source nodes want to transmit messages to K sink nodes via M relay nodes. We focus on the information processing at the relay nodes and the compute-and-forward framework. Nested lattice codes are used, which have the property that every linear combination of codewords is a valid codeword. This property is essential for physical-layer network coding. Because the actual network coding occurs on the physical layer, the network coding coefficients are determined by the channel realizations. Finding the optimal network coding coefficients for given channel realizations is a non-trivial optimization problem. In this thesis, we provide an algorithm to find network coding coefficients that result in the highest data rate at a chosen relay. The solution of this optimization problem is only locally optimal, i.e., it is optimal for a particular relay. If we consider a multi-hop network, each potential receiver must get enough linear independent combinations to be able to decode the individual messages. If this is not the case, outage occurs, which results in data loss. In this thesis, we propose a new strategy for choosing the network coding coefficients locally at the relays without solving the optimization problem globally. We thereby reduce the solution space for the relays such that linear independence between their decoded linear combinations is guaranteed. Further, we discuss the influence of spatial correlation on the optimization problem. Having solved the optimization problem, we combine physical-layer network coding with physical-layer secrecy. This allows us to propose a coding scheme to exploit untrusted relays in multi-user relay networks. We show that physical-layer network coding, especially compute-and-forward, is a key technology for simultaneous and secure communication of several users over an untrusted relay. First, we derive the achievable secrecy rate for the two-way relay channel. Then, we enhance this scenario to a multi-way relay channel with multiple antennas. We describe our implementation of the compute-and-forward framework with software-defined radio and demonstrate the practical feasibility. We show that it is possible to use the framework in real-life scenarios and demonstrate a transmission from two users to a relay. We gain valuable insights into a real transmission using the compute-and-forward framework. We discuss possible improvements of the current implementation and point out further work.In dieser Arbeit untersuchen wir Netzwerkcodierung auf der Übertragungsschicht in einem Relay-Netzwerk, in dem L Quellen-Knoten Nachrichten zu K Senken-Knoten über M Relay-Knoten senden wollen. Der Fokus dieser Arbeit liegt auf der Informationsverarbeitung an den Relay-Knoten und dem Compute-and-Forward Framework. Es werden Nested Lattice Codes eingesetzt, welche die Eigenschaft besitzen, dass jede Linearkombination zweier Codewörter wieder ein gültiges Codewort ergibt. Dies ist eine Eigenschaft, die für die Netzwerkcodierung von entscheidender Bedeutung ist. Da die eigentliche Netzwerkcodierung auf der Übertragungsschicht stattfindet, werden die Netzwerkcodierungskoeffizienten von den Kanalrealisierungen bestimmt. Das Finden der optimalen Koeffizienten für gegebene Kanalrealisierungen ist ein nicht-triviales Optimierungsproblem. Wir schlagen in dieser Arbeit einen Algorithmus vor, welcher Netzwerkcodierungskoeffizienten findet, die in der höchsten Übertragungsrate an einem gewählten Relay resultieren. Die Lösung dieses Optimierungsproblems ist zunächst nur lokal, d. h. für dieses Relay, optimal. An jedem potentiellen Empfänger müssen ausreichend unabhängige Linearkombinationen vorhanden sein, um die einzelnen Nachrichten decodieren zu können. Ist dies nicht der Fall, kommt es zu Datenverlusten. Um dieses Problem zu umgehen, ohne dabei das Optimierungsproblem global lösen zu müssen, schlagen wir eine neue Strategie vor, welche den Lösungsraum an einem Relay soweit einschränkt, dass lineare Unabhängigkeit zwischen den decodierten Linearkombinationen an den Relays garantiert ist. Außerdem diskutieren wir den Einfluss von räumlicher Korrelation auf das Optimierungsproblem. Wir kombinieren die Netzwerkcodierung mit dem Konzept von Sicherheit auf der Übertragungsschicht, um ein Übertragungsschema zu entwickeln, welches es ermöglicht, mit Hilfe nicht-vertrauenswürdiger Relays zu kommunizieren. Wir zeigen, dass Compute-and-Forward ein wesentlicher Baustein ist, um solch eine sichere und simultane Übertragung mehrerer Nutzer zu gewährleisten. Wir starten mit dem einfachen Fall eines Relay-Kanals mit zwei Nutzern und erweitern dieses Szenario auf einen Relay-Kanal mit mehreren Nutzern und mehreren Antennen. Die Arbeit wird abgerundet, indem wir eine Implementierung des Compute-and-Forward Frameworks mit Software-Defined Radio demonstrieren. Wir zeigen am Beispiel von zwei Nutzern und einem Relay, dass sich das Framework eignet, um in realen Szenarien eingesetzt zu werden. Wir diskutieren mögliche Verbesserungen und zeigen Richtungen für weitere Forschungsarbeit auf

Keeping Authorities "Honest or Bust" with Decentralized Witness Cosigning

The secret keys of critical network authorities - such as time, name, certificate, and software update services - represent high-value targets for hackers, criminals, and spy agencies wishing to use these keys secretly to compromise other hosts. To protect authorities and their clients proactively from undetected exploits and misuse, we introduce CoSi, a scalable witness cosigning protocol ensuring that every authoritative statement is validated and publicly logged by a diverse group of witnesses before any client will accept it. A statement S collectively signed by W witnesses assures clients that S has been seen, and not immediately found erroneous, by those W observers. Even if S is compromised in a fashion not readily detectable by the witnesses, CoSi still guarantees S's exposure to public scrutiny, forcing secrecy-minded attackers to risk that the compromise will soon be detected by one of the W witnesses. Because clients can verify collective signatures efficiently without communication, CoSi protects clients' privacy, and offers the first transparency mechanism effective against persistent man-in-the-middle attackers who control a victim's Internet access, the authority's secret key, and several witnesses' secret keys. CoSi builds on existing cryptographic multisignature methods, scaling them to support thousands of witnesses via signature aggregation over efficient communication trees. A working prototype demonstrates CoSi in the context of timestamping and logging authorities, enabling groups of over 8,000 distributed witnesses to cosign authoritative statements in under two seconds.Comment: 20 pages, 7 figure

A Framework for anonymous background data delivery and feedback

The current state of the industry’s methods of collecting background data reflecting diagnostic and usage information are often opaque and require users to place a lot of trust in the entity receiving the data. For vendors, having a centralized database of potentially sensitive data is a privacy protection headache and a potential liability should a breach of that database occur. Unfortunately, high profile privacy failures are not uncommon, so many individuals and companies are understandably skeptical and choose not to contribute any information. It is a shame, since the data could be used for improving reliability, or getting stronger security, or for valuable academic research into real-world usage patterns. We propose, implement and evaluate a framework for non-realtime anonymous data collection, aggregation for analysis, and feedback. Departing from the usual “trusted core” approach, we aim to maintain reporters’ anonymity even if the centralized part of the system is compromised. We design a peer-to-peer mix network and its protocol that are tuned to the properties of background diagnostic traffic. Our system delivers data to a centralized repository while maintaining (i) source anonymity, (ii) privacy in transit, and (iii) the ability to provide analysis feedback back to the source. By removing the core’s ability to identify the source of data and to track users over time, we drastically reduce its attractiveness as a potential attack target and allow vendors to make concrete and verifiable privacy and anonymity claims

A Lightweight Secure and Resilient Transmission Scheme for the Internet of Things in the Presence of a Hostile Jammer

In this article, we propose a lightweight security scheme for ensuring both information confidentiality and transmission resiliency in the Internet-of-Things (IoT) communication. A single-Antenna transmitter communicates with a half-duplex single-Antenna receiver in the presence of a sophisticated multiple-Antenna-Aided passive eavesdropper and a multiple-Antenna-Assisted hostile jammer (HJ). A low-complexity artificial noise (AN) injection scheme is proposed for drowning out the eavesdropper. Furthermore, for enhancing the resilience against HJ attacks, the legitimate nodes exploit their own local observations of the wireless channel as the source of randomness to agree on shared secret keys. The secret key is utilized for the frequency hopping (FH) sequence of the proposed communication system. We then proceed to derive a new closed-form expression for the achievable secret key rate (SKR) and the ergodic secrecy rate (ESR) for characterizing the secrecy benefits of our proposed scheme, in terms of both information secrecy and transmission resiliency. Moreover, the optimal power sharing between the AN and the message signal is investigated with the objective of enhancing the secrecy rate. Finally, through extensive simulations, we demonstrate that our proposed system model outperforms the state-of-The-Art transmission schemes in terms of secrecy and resiliency. Several numerical examples and discussions are also provided to offer further engineering insights

Beamforming and non-orthogonal multiple access for rate and secrecy enhancement of fifth generation communication system

The fifth-generation (5G) communication systems have many anticipated functionalities and requirements such as high data rate, massive connectivity, wide coverage area, low latency and enhanced secrecy performance. In order to meet these criteria, communication schemes that combine 5G key enabling technologies need to be investigated. In this thesis, a novel communication system that merges non-orthogonal multiple access (NOMA), energy harvesting, beamforming, and full-duplex (FD) techniques in order to enhance both capacity and secrecy of 5G system is introduced. In the capacity improving scheme, NOMA is first combined with beamforming to serve more than one user in each beamforming vector. Next, simultaneous wireless information and power transfer (SWIPT) technique is exploited to encourage the strong user (user with better channel condition) to relay the information messages of the weak user (user with poor channel condition) in FD manner. The total sum rate maximisation problem is formulated and solved by means of convex-concave procedure. The system performance is also analysed by deriving the outage probability of both users. Additionally, the model is extended to a more general case wherein the users are moving, and the outage probability of this dynamic topology is provided by means of the stochastic geometry framework. Novel secure schemes are also introduced to safeguard legitimate users’ information from internal and external eavesdroppers. In the internal eavesdropper’s case, artificial signal concept is adopted to protect NOMA’s weak user’s information from being intercepted by the strong user. The secrecy outage probability of theweak user is derived and validated. In addition, game theory discipline is exploited to provide an efficient eavesdropping avoidance algorithm. Null-steering beamforming is adopted in the external eavesdropper’s case in two different schemes namely self and nonself-cooperative jamming. In self-cooperative strategy, the base station applies the null-steering jamming to impair the eavesdropper channel, while sending the information-bearing signals to the intended legitimate users. Whereas in the nonself-cooperative jamming scheme, the base station provides the helpers with the required information and power by means of SWIPT technique in the first phase. The helpers deploy null-steering beamforming to jam the eavesdropper during the information exchange between the base station and the intended users in the second phase. The secrecy outage probability of the legitimate users is derived in both jamming schemes. Game theory is also introduced to the nonself-cooperative jamming scheme for further improvements on the secrecy outage behaviour and the economic revenue of the system. The proposed capacity enhancing scheme demonstrates about 200% higher sum rate when compared with the non-cooperative and half-duplex cooperative NOMA systems. In addition, the novel secure scheme in the internal eavesdropper case is proven to enhance the information security of the weak user without compromising the functionalities of the strong user or NOMA superiority over orthogonal multiple access systems. Null-steering based jamming system also illustrates improved secrecy performance in the external eavesdropper case when compared to the conventional jamming schemes. Numerical simulations are carried out in order to validate the derived closed-form expressions and to illustrate the performance enhancement achieved by the proposed schemes where the rate is increased by 200% and the secrecy outage probability is decreased by 33% when compared to the baseline systems

Determination of optically stimulated luminescence dosimetric characteristics and suitability for entrance surface dose assessement in diagnostic x-ray examinations

The availability of Optically Stimulated Luminescence (OSL) dosimeter system developed by Landauer Inc. (Glenwood IL) has greatly improved radiation dosimetry application in the medical field. Recent studies with OSL dosimeters (nanoDots) gave much emphases to patient radiation exposure in radiotherapy but ignoring the potential risks from radiographic examinations. This study focused on the measurement of entrance surface dose (ESD) resulting from radiographic examination. Monitoring procedures have been developed by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) to estimate ESD, while considering exposure parameters and patient’s characteristics. However, dosimetric properties of the OSL system must be characterized to ascertain its suitability for ESD measurements in medical radiography due to energy dependence and over-response factors of the Al2O3 material. This thesis consists of three phases: 1) evaluating stability of the new OSL dosimetry system, 2) characterizing the nanoDots in radiographic energy range from 40 kV to 150 kV with typical doses ranging from 0 to 20 mGy, and 3) assessing suitability of the nanoDots for ESD measurement in routine X-ray examinations. The dosimetric characteristics of the nanoDots in the above energy range are presented in this study, including repeatability, reproducibility, signal depletion, element correction factor, linearity, angular and energy dependence, and dose measurement accuracy. Experimental results showed repeatability of below 5% and reproducibility of less than 2%. OSL signals after sequential readouts were reduced by approximately 0.5% per readout and having good linearity for doses between 5 – 20 mGy. The nanoDots OSL dosimeter showed significant angular and energy dependence in this energy range, and corresponding energy correction factors were determined in the range of 0.76 – 1.12. ESDs were determined in common diagnostic X-ray examinations using three different methods including direct (measured on phantom/patient) and indirect (without phantom) measurements with nanoDots OSL dosimeters, and CALDose_X 5.0 software calculations. Results from direct and indirect ESD measurements showed good agreement within relative uncertainties of 5.9% and 12%, respectively, in accordance with the International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC) 61674 specifications. However, the measured results were below ESDs calculated with CALDose_X 5.0 software. Measured eye and gonad doses were found to be significant compared to ESDs during anterior-posterior (AP) abdomen and AP skull examinations, respectively. The results obtained in this research work indicate the suitability of utilizing nanoDots OSL dosimeter for entrance surface dose assessment during diagnostic X-ray examinations