To NACK or not to NACK? Negative Acknowledgments in Information-Centric Networking

Information-Centric Networking (ICN) is an internetworking paradigm that offers an alternative to the current IP\nobreakdash-based Internet architecture. ICN's most distinguishing feature is its emphasis on information (content) instead of communication endpoints. One important open issue in ICN is whether negative acknowledgments (NACKs) at the network layer are useful for notifying downstream nodes about forwarding failures, or requests for incorrect or non-existent information. In benign settings, NACKs are beneficial for ICN architectures, such as CCNx and NDN, since they flush state in routers and notify consumers. In terms of security, NACKs seem useful as they can help mitigating so-called Interest Flooding attacks. However, as we show in this paper, network-layer NACKs also have some unpleasant security implications. We consider several types of NACKs and discuss their security design requirements and implications. We also demonstrate that providing secure NACKs triggers the threat of producer-bound flooding attacks. Although we discuss some potential countermeasures to these attacks, the main conclusion of this paper is that network-layer NACKs are best avoided, at least for security reasons.Comment: 10 pages, 7 figure

Security for the Industrial IoT: The Case for Information-Centric Networking

Industrial production plants traditionally include sensors for monitoring or documenting processes, and actuators for enabling corrective actions in cases of misconfigurations, failures, or dangerous events. With the advent of the IoT, embedded controllers link these `things' to local networks that often are of low power wireless kind, and are interconnected via gateways to some cloud from the global Internet. Inter-networked sensors and actuators in the industrial IoT form a critical subsystem while frequently operating under harsh conditions. It is currently under debate how to approach inter-networking of critical industrial components in a safe and secure manner. In this paper, we analyze the potentials of ICN for providing a secure and robust networking solution for constrained controllers in industrial safety systems. We showcase hazardous gas sensing in widespread industrial environments, such as refineries, and compare with IP-based approaches such as CoAP and MQTT. Our findings indicate that the content-centric security model, as well as enhanced DoS resistance are important arguments for deploying Information Centric Networking in a safety-critical industrial IoT. Evaluation of the crypto efforts on the RIOT operating system for content security reveal its feasibility for common deployment scenarios.Comment: To be published at IEEE WF-IoT 201

Content-Centric Networking at Internet Scale through The Integration of Name Resolution and Routing

We introduce CCN-RAMP (Routing to Anchors Matching Prefixes), a new approach to content-centric networking. CCN-RAMP offers all the advantages of the Named Data Networking (NDN) and Content-Centric Networking (CCNx) but eliminates the need to either use Pending Interest Tables (PIT) or lookup large Forwarding Information Bases (FIB) listing name prefixes in order to forward Interests. CCN-RAMP uses small forwarding tables listing anonymous sources of Interests and the locations of name prefixes. Such tables are immune to Interest-flooding attacks and are smaller than the FIBs used to list IP address ranges in the Internet. We show that no forwarding loops can occur with CCN-RAMP, and that Interests flow over the same routes that NDN and CCNx would maintain using large FIBs. The results of simulation experiments comparing NDN with CCN-RAMP based on ndnSIM show that CCN-RAMP requires forwarding state that is orders of magnitude smaller than what NDN requires, and attains even better performance

Interest Flooding Attack in Named Data Networking: A Survey

Named Data Networking (NDN) is based on the principle of Content-Centric Networking (CCN) that aims to overcome the weaknesses of the current host-based Internet architecture. Like traditional networks, it is identified that NDN is also vulnerable to many security threats including denial-of-service (DoS) or distributed DoS (DDoS) and might offer avenues for new DoS/DDoS attacks. DDoS attacks can be triggered in NDN to exhaust resources within an NDN router or the content producer(s). This survey paper focuses on different types of possible distributed denial-ofservice (DDoS) attacks; in particular, we address Interest flooding, where an adversary with limited resources can implement this attack and significantly impact thenetwork performance and their proposed countermeasures.Keywords:Named Data Networking, Interest flooding, denial-of-service

Mediator-assisted multi-source routing in information-centric networks

Among the new communication paradigms recently proposed, information-centric networking (ICN) is able to natively support content awareness at the network layer shifting the focus from hosts (as in traditional IP networks) to information objects. In this paper, we exploit the intrinsic content-awareness ICN features to design a novel multi-source routing mechanism. It involves a new network entity, the ICN mediator, responsible for locating and delivering the requested information objects that are chunked and stored at different locations. Our approach imposes very limited signalling overhead, especially for large chunk size (MBytes). Simulations show significant latency reduction compared to traditional routing approaches

Information-Centric Design and Implementation for Underwater Acoustic Networks

Over the past decade, Underwater Acoustic Networks (UANs) have received extensive attention due to their vast benefits in academia and industry alike. However, due to the overall magnitude and harsh characteristics of underwater environments, standard wireless network techniques will fail because current technology and energy restrictions limit underwater devices due to delayed acoustic communications. To help manage these limitations we utilize Information-Centric Networking (ICN). More importantly, we look at ICN\u27s paradigm shift from traditional TCP/IP architecture to improve data handling and enhance network efficiency. By utilizing some of ICN\u27s techniques, such as data naming hierarchy, we can reevaluate each component of the network\u27s protocol stack given current underwater limitations to study the vast solutions and perspectives Information-Centric architectures can provide to UANs. First, we propose a routing strategy used to manage and route large data files in a network prone to high mobility. Therefore, due to UANs limited transmitting capability, we passively store sensed data and adaptively find the best path. Furthermore, we introduce adapted Named Data Networking (NDN) components to improve upon routing robustness and adaptiveness. Beyond naming data, we use tracers to assist in tracking stored data locations without using other excess means such as flooding. By collaborating tracer consistency with routing path awareness our protocol can adaptively manage faulty or high mobility nodes. Through this incorporation of varied NDN techniques, we are able to see notable improvements in routing efficiency. Second, we analyze the effects of Denial of Service (DoS) attacks on upper layer protocols. Since UANs are typically resource restrained, malicious users can advantageously create fake traffic to burden the already constrained network. While ICN techniques only provide basic DoS restriction we must expand our detection and restriction technique to meet the unique demands of UANs. To provide enhanced security against DoS we construct an algorithm to detect and restrict against these types of attacks while adapting to meet acoustic characteristics. To better extend this work we incorporate three node behavior techniques using probabilistic, adaptive, and predictive approaches for detecting malicious traits. Thirdly, to depict and test protocols in UANs, simulators are commonly used due to their accessibility and controlled testing aspects. For this section, we review Aqua-Sim, a discrete event-driven open-source underwater simulator. To enhance the core aspect of this simulator we first rewrite the current architecture and transition Aqua-Sim to the newest core simulator, NS-3. Following this, we clean up redundant features spread out between the various underwater layers. Additionally, we fully integrate the diverse NS-3 API within our simulator. By revamping previous code layout we are able to improve architecture modularity and child class expandability. New features are also introduced including localization and synchronization support, busy terminal problem support, multi-channel support, transmission range uncertainty modules, external noise generators, channel trace-driven support, security module, and an adapted NDN module. Additionally, we provide extended documentation to assist in user development. Simulation testing shows improved memory management and continuous validity in comparison to other underwater simulators and past iterations of Aqua-Sim