Proceedings of the 2nd International Workshop on Security in Mobile Multiagent Systems

This report contains the Proceedings of the Second Workshop on Security on Security of Mobile Multiagent Systems (SEMAS2002). The Workshop was held in Montreal, Canada as a satellite event to the 5th International Conference on Autonomous Agents in 2001. The far reaching influence of the Internet has resulted in an increased interest in agent technologies, which are poised to play a key role in the implementation of successful Internet and WWW-based applications in the future. While there is still considerable hype concerning agent technologies, there is also an increasing awareness of the problems involved. In particular, that these applications will not be successful unless security issues can be adequately handled. Although there is a large body of work on cryptographic techniques that provide basic building-blocks to solve specific security problems, relatively little work has been done in investigating security in the multiagent system context. Related problems are secure communication between agents, implementation of trust models/authentication procedures or even reflections of agents on security mechanisms. The introduction of mobile software agents significantly increases the risks involved in Internet and WWW-based applications. For example, if we allow agents to enter our hosts or private networks, we must offer the agents a platform so that they can execute correctly but at the same time ensure that they will not have deleterious effects on our hosts or any other agents / processes in our network. If we send out mobile agents, we should also be able to provide guarantees about specific aspects of their behaviour, i.e., we are not only interested in whether the agents carry out-out their intended task correctly. They must defend themselves against attacks initiated by other agents, and survive in potentially malicious environments. Agent technologies can also be used to support network security. For example in the context of intrusion detection, intelligent guardian agents may be used to analyse the behaviour of agents on a firewall or intelligent monitoring agents can be used to analyse the behaviour of agents migrating through a network. Part of the inspiration for such multi-agent systems comes from primitive animal behaviour, such as that of guardian ants protecting their hill or from biological immune systems

Risk-Aware Planning for Sensor Data Collection

With the emergence of low-cost unmanned air vehicles, civilian and military organizations are quickly identifying new applications for affordable, large-scale collectives to support and augment human efforts via sensor data collection. In order to be viable, these collectives must be resilient to the risk and uncertainty of operating in real-world environments. Previous work in multi-agent planning has avoided planning for the loss of agents in environments with risk. In contrast, this dissertation presents a problem formulation that includes the risk of losing agents, the effect of those losses on the mission being executed, and provides anticipatory planning algorithms that consider risk. We conduct a thorough analysis of the effects of risk on path-based planning, motivating new solution methods. We then use hierarchical clustering to generate risk-aware plans for a variable number of agents, outperforming traditional planning methods. Next, we provide a mechanism for distributed negotiation of stable plans, utilizing coalitional game theory to provide cost allocation methods that we prove to be fair and stable. Centralized planning with redundancy is then explored, planning for parallel task completion to mitigate risk and provide further increased expected value. Finally, we explore the role of cost uncertainty as additional source of risk, using bi-objective optimization to generate sets of alternative plans. We demonstrate the capability of our algorithms on randomly generated problem instances, showing an improvement over traditional multi-agent planning methods as high as 500% on very large problem instances

Formulating a Strategy for Securing High-Speed Rail in the United States, Research Report 12-03

This report presents an analysis of information relating to attacks, attempted attacks, and plots against high-speed rail (HSR) systems. It draws upon empirical data from MTI’s Database of Terrorist and Serious Criminal Attacks Against Public Surface Transportation and from reviews of selected HSR systems, including onsite observations. The report also examines the history of safety accidents and other HSR incidents that resulted in fatalities, injuries, or extensive asset damage to examine the inherent vulnerabilities (and strengths) of HSR systems and how these might affect the consequences of terrorist attacks. The study is divided into three parts: (1) an examination of security principles and measures; (2) an empirical examination of 33 attacks against HSR targets and a comparison of attacks against HSR targets with those against non-HSR targets; and (3) an examination of 73 safety incidents on 12 HRS systems. The purpose of this study is to develop an overall strategy for HSR security and to identify measures that could be applied to HSR systems currently under development in the United States. It is hoped that the report will provide useful guidance to both governmental authorities and transportation operators of current and future HSR systems

Military transformation on the Korean Peninsula : technology versus geography

This thesis provides an explanation of one RMA issue: the effectiveness of contemporary military technology against tough geography, based upon case studies in the Korean peninsula. The originality of the thesis is that it will provide a sound insight for potential foes’ approach to the dominant US military power (superior technology and sustenance of war). The North Korean defence strategy – using their edge in geography and skill – tried to protect themselves from the dominant US power, but it may be impossible to deter or defeat them with technological superiority alone. This research also provides a valuable example, through Stephen Biddle’s technology and skill theory, which claims that, in the future of war, the skills of the unit (tactical readiness) are as important as the technology involved. By examining three case studies, the thesis aims to reveal that technological superiority alone cannot guarantee military success against the foe that possesses the geographic advantage and the capability to use its benefits. The first case study of the Imjin Wars will examine the significance of geography and capability to using the geographic edge in the Korean peninsula. The second case study of the Korean War will examine how technology alone failed to overcome the skilled and geographically advantageous defenders in modern warfare. Finally, by examining possible conflict scenarios of US-ROK alliance and North Korea, this research will seek to prove that contemporary military technology alone would not guarantee military success and deterrence against North Korea, which is both geographically advantaged and highly skilled.Publication date not given on thesi

Intrusion detection and response model for mobile ad hoc networks.

This dissertation presents a research whose objective is to design and develop an intrusion detection and response model for Mobile Ad hoc NETworks (MANET). Mobile ad hoc networks are infrastructure-free, pervasive and ubiquitous in nature, without any centralized authority. These unique MANET characteristics present several changes to secure them. The proposed security model is called the Intrusion Detection and Response for Mobile Ad hoc Networks (IDRMAN). The goal of the proposed model is to provide a security framework that will detect various attacks and take appropriate measures to control the attack automatically. This model is based on identifying critical system parameters of a MANET that are affected by various types of attacks, and continuously monitoring the values of these parameters to detect and respond to attacks. This dissertation explains the design and development of the detection framework and the response framework of the IDRMAN. The main aspects of the detection framework are data mining using CART to identify attack sensitive network parameters from the wealth of raw network data, statistical processing using six sigma to identify the thresholds for the attack sensitive parameters and quantification of the MANET node state through a measure called the Threat Index (TI) using fuzzy logic methodology. The main aspects of the response framework are intruder identification and intruder isolation through response action plans. The effectiveness of the detection and response framework is mathematically analyzed using probability techniques. The detection framework is also evaluated by performance comparison experiments with related models, and through performance evaluation experiments from scalability perspective. Performance metrics used for assessing the detection aspect of the proposed model are detection rate and false positive rate at different node mobility speed. Performance evaluation experiments for scalability are with respect to the size of the MANET, where more and more mobile nodes are added into the MANET at varied mobility speed. The results of both the mathematical analysis and the performance evaluation experiments demonstrate that the IDRMAN model is an effective and viable security model for MANET

Petite Politique: The British, French, Iroquois, and Everyday Power in the Lake Ontario Borderlands, 1724-1760

This dissertation examines the exercise and limitation of power at the interpersonal and intercultural level in the contested borderlands region around Lake Ontario in the middle decades of the eighteenth century. Beginning in the 1720s, the region underwent an intensification of geopolitical competition among the British and French empires and the Iroquois Six Nations. During this time that Iroquois Confederacy granted competing trading posts to the British at Oswego and the French at Niagara in an effort to secure goods, balance neighboring rivals, and maintain their own sovereignty. Despite these cessions, the social and diplomatic interests of the Iroquois remained the foundation of the regions politics until the end of the Seven Years’ War. However, a variety of political officials, military officers, soldiers, and traders working for the British in New York and the French in Canada recognized the largely native dynamics and adjusted their tactics and goals accordingly. The resulting new culture of power, dubbed “petite politique,” sought to exploit mobility, control the flow of resources and information, conduct intercultural on-the-ground diplomacy, and exert sovereignty, often by symbolic means. By detailing daily operations at the micro-historical level this study illuminates a distinctive borderland region, which was characterized by function and mentality. It was largely a synthesis of Iroquois tactics and interests, and colonial agendas, antagonism, and warfare. Borderland fluidity, rather than aiding the Iroquois alone, could also serve to further the aims of imperialists. This marked a departure from the middle ground diplomacy of the west and the much more militarized and colonized areas to the east. Around Lake Ontario the politics of relatively cohesive native homeland collided and combined with the inter-imperial struggle to produce new geopolitical opportunities. The resulting petite politique proved to be a durable and flexible New World creation, existing in times of both peace and war. By the latter part of the Seven Years\u27 War these talks, meetings, travels, connections, and confrontations ultimately undid the very borderland conditions that had brought about its existence

Whiteness in Africa: Americo-Liberians and the Transformative Geographies of Race

This dissertation examines the constructed racial identities of African American settlers in colonial Liberia as they traversed the Atlantic between the United States and West Africa during the first half of the nineteenth century. In one of the great testaments that race is a social construction, the West African neighbors and inhabitants of Liberia, who conceived of themselves as “black,” recognized the significant cultural differences between themselves and these newly-arrived Americans and racially categorized the newcomers as “white.” This project examines the ramifications for these African American settlers of becoming simultaneously white and black through their Atlantic mobility. This is not to suggest that those African Americans who relocated to Liberia somehow desired to be white or hoped to “pass” as white after their arrival in Africa. Instead, the Americo-Liberians utilized their African whiteness to lay claim to an exotic, foreign identity that also escaped associations of primitivism. This project makes several significant contributions to scholarship on the colonization movement, whiteness, and Atlantic world. Importantly for scholarship on Liberia, it reestablishes the colony as but one evolving point within the Atlantic world instead of its usual interpretative place as the end of a transatlantic journey. Whether as disgruntled former settlers, or paid spokesmen for the American Colonization Society (ACS), or visitors returning to childhood abodes, or emancipators looking to free families from the chains of slavery, or students seeking medical degrees, Liberian settlers returned to the United States and they were remarkably uninterested in returning to their formerly downtrodden place in American society. This project examines the “tools” provided to Americo-Liberians by their African residence to negotiate a new relationship with the white inhabitants of the United States. These were not just metaphorical arguments shouted across the Atlantic Ocean and focusing on the experiences of Americo-Liberians in the United States highlights that these “negotiations” had practical applications for the lives of settlers in both the United States and Africa. The African whiteness of the settlers would function as a bargaining chip when they approached that rhetorical bargaining table

Wireless Sensor Networks And Data Fusion For Structural Health Monitoring Of Aircraft

This thesis discusses an architecture and design of a sensor web to be used for structural health monitoring of an aircraft. Also presented are several prototypes of critical parts of the sensor web. The proposed sensor web will utilize sensor nodes situated throughout the structure. These nodes and one or more workstations will support agents that communicate and collaborate to monitor the health of the structure. Agents can be any internal or external autonomous entity that has direct access to affect a given system. For the purposes of this document, an agent will be defined as an autonomous software resource that has the ability to make decisions for itself based on given tasks and abilities while also collaborating with others to find a feasible answer to a given problem regarding the structural health monitoring system. Once the agents have received relevant data from nodes, they will utilize applications that perform data fusion techniques to classify events and further improve the functionality of the system for more accurate future classifications. Agents will also pass alerts up a self-configuring hierarchy of monitor agents and make them available for review by personnel. This thesis makes use of previous results from applying the Gaia methodology for analysis and design of the multiagent system