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

Potential Terrorist Uses of Highway-Borne Hazardous Materials, MTI Report 09-03

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has requested that the Mineta Transportation Institutes National Transportation Security Center of Excellence (MTI NTSCOE) provide any research it has or insights it can provide on the security risks created by the highway transportation of hazardous materials. This request was submitted to MTI/NSTC as a National Transportation Security Center of Excellence. In response, MTI/NTSC reviewed and revised research performed in 2007 and 2008 and assembled a small team of terrorism and emergency-response experts, led by Center Director Brian Michael Jenkins, to report on the risks of terrorists using highway shipments of flammable liquids (e.g., gasoline tankers) to cause casualties anywhere, and ways to reduce those risks. This report has been provided to DHS. The teams first focus was on surface transportation targets, including highway infrastructure, and also public transportation stations. As a full understanding of these materials, and their use against various targets became revealed, the team shifted with urgency to the far more plentiful targets outside of surface transportation where people gather and can be killed or injured. However, the team is concerned to return to the top of the use of these materials against public transit stations and recommends it as a separate subject for urgent research

A Survey on Wireless Security: Technical Challenges, Recent Advances and Future Trends

This paper examines the security vulnerabilities and threats imposed by the inherent open nature of wireless communications and to devise efficient defense mechanisms for improving the wireless network security. We first summarize the security requirements of wireless networks, including their authenticity, confidentiality, integrity and availability issues. Next, a comprehensive overview of security attacks encountered in wireless networks is presented in view of the network protocol architecture, where the potential security threats are discussed at each protocol layer. We also provide a survey of the existing security protocols and algorithms that are adopted in the existing wireless network standards, such as the Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, WiMAX, and the long-term evolution (LTE) systems. Then, we discuss the state-of-the-art in physical-layer security, which is an emerging technique of securing the open communications environment against eavesdropping attacks at the physical layer. We also introduce the family of various jamming attacks and their counter-measures, including the constant jammer, intermittent jammer, reactive jammer, adaptive jammer and intelligent jammer. Additionally, we discuss the integration of physical-layer security into existing authentication and cryptography mechanisms for further securing wireless networks. Finally, some technical challenges which remain unresolved at the time of writing are summarized and the future trends in wireless security are discussed.Comment: 36 pages. Accepted to Appear in Proceedings of the IEEE, 201

Cyber Physical System Security — DoS Attacks on Synchrophasor Networks in the Smart Grid

With the rapid increase of network-enabled sensors, switches, and relays, cyber-physical system security in the smart grid has become important. The smart grid operation demands reliable communication. Existing encryption technologies ensures the authenticity of delivered messages. However, commonly applied technologies are not able to prevent the delay or drop of smart grid communication messages. In this dissertation, the author focuses on the network security vulnerabilities in synchrophasor network and their mitigation methods. Side-channel vulnerabilities of the synchrophasor network are identified. Synchrophasor network is one of the most important technologies in the smart grid transmission system. Experiments presented in this dissertation shows that a DoS attack that exploits the side-channel vulnerability against the synchrophasor network can lead to the power system in stability. Side-channel analysis extracts information by observing implementation artifacts without knowing the actual meaning of the information. Synchrophasor network consist of Phasor Measurement Units (PMUs) use synchrophasor protocol to transmit measurement data. Two side-channels are discovered in the synchrophasor protocol. Side-channel analysis based Denial of Service (DoS) attacks differentiate the source of multiple PMU data streams within an encrypted tunnel and only drop selected PMU data streams. Simulations on a power system shows that, without any countermeasure, a power system can be subverted after an attack. Then, mitigation methods from both the network and power grid perspectives are carried out. From the perspective of network security study, side-channel analysis, and protocol transformation has the potential to assist the PMU communication to evade attacks lead with protocol identifications. From the perspective of power grid control study, to mitigate PMU DoS attacks, Cellular Computational Network (CCN) prediction of PMU data is studied and used to implement a Virtual Synchrophasor Network (VSN), which learns and mimics the behaviors of an objective power grid. The data from VSN is used by the Automatic Generation Controllers (AGCs) when the PMU packets are disrupted by DoS attacks. Real-time experimental results show the CCN based VSN effectively inferred the missing data and mitigated the negative impacts of DoS attacks. In this study, industry-standard hardware PMUs and Real-Time Digital Power System Simulator (RTDS) are used to build experimental environments that are as close to actual production as possible for this research. The above-mentioned attack and mitigation methods are also tested on the Internet. Man-In-The-Middle (MITM) attack of PMU traffic is performed with Border Gateway Protocol (BGP) hijacking. A side-channel analysis based MITM attack detection method is also investigated. A game theory analysis is performed to give a broade

A Research on Supply Chain Security in Malaysia

Abstract Transportation is an important supply chain driver because products are rarely produced and consumed in the same location and industry is very dependent on the transportation to transfer the products. In todays economy, every organization is working on reducing its bottom line to get its profits up, as top line growth is almost non-existent. In logistics business, one area that can add to your organizations profitability but which is often overlooked is prevention of cargo theft. The need for cargo security is critical to assist the transportation industry in combating the serious increases in cargo crime. Cargo security is not an isolated event; security has to be applied across the value chain, across borders, (countries, departments, competitors, customers and transportation modes) and integrate an ongoing awareness in every single point of interaction with the goods. The term, cargo theft represents any stealing from premises or hijacking of cargo moving by trucks, rail cars or ships from the point of origin to the destination. It is considered cargo theft if it is stolen at any point between origin, destination and in between. Many companies normally do not report such crimes for several reasons. The security of cargo in the supply chain has become one of the major global security concerns given its recognized vulnerabilities which make cargo possibly the easiest target for criminals. Any supply chains success is closely linked to the appropriate use of a secured and safe transportation. Many companies have not yet invested in improving security beyond the minimum level due to difficulty in justifying security investments. Companies may not yet see the benefits of enhanced security or may be unable to make an adequate business case for security implementation. However, supply chain security management is not a black hole and it is believe that secured supply chains do provide a return on investment for transportation and logistics companies