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

A Charging and Rewarding Scheme for Packet Forwarding

In multi-hop cellular networks, data packets have to be relayed hop by hop from a given mobile station to a base station and vice-versa. This means that the mobile stations must accept to forward information for the benefit of other stations. In this paper, we propose an incentive mechanism that is based on a charging/rewarding scheme and that makes collaboration rational for selfish nodes. We base our solution on symmetric cryptography to cope with the limited resources of the mobile stations. We provide a set of protocols and study their robustness with respect to various attacks. By leveraging on the relative stability of the routes, our solution leads to a very moderate overhead

Key management for beyond 5G mobile small cells: a survey

The highly anticipated 5G network is projected to be introduced in 2020. 5G stakeholders are unanimous that densification of mobile networks is the way forward. The densification will be realized by means of small cell technology, and it is capable of providing coverage with a high data capacity. The EU-funded H2020-MSCA project “SECRET” introduced covering the urban landscape with mobile small cells, since these take advantages of the dynamic network topology and optimizes network services in a cost-effective fashion. By taking advantage of the device-to-device communications technology, large amounts of data can be transmitted over multiple hops and, therefore, offload the general network. However, this introduction of mobile small cells presents various security and privacy challenges. Cryptographic security solutions are capable of solving these as long as they are supported by a key management scheme. It is assumed that the network infrastructure and mobile devices from network users are unable to act as a centralized trust anchor since these are vulnerable targets to malicious attacks. Security must, therefore, be guaranteed by means of a key management scheme that decentralizes trust. Therefore, this paper surveys the state-of-the-art key management schemes proposed for similar network architectures (e.g., mobile ad hoc networks and ad hoc device-to-device networks) that decentralize trust. Furthermore, these key management schemes are evaluated for adaptability in a network of mobile small cells

A Study of Geocast Routing Protocols in Vehicular Ad-Hoc Network (VANET)

Geocast routing has been comprehensively investigated for consistent and well-organized spreading of information due to growing number of Intelligent Transportation System (ITS) applications favouring geocasting. Freshly, different geocast routing protocol have been developed in vehicular ad-hoc network (VANET). In this paper, a qualitative survey of recent geocast routing protocols and some specific future research issues in geocast routing have been provided. A practical and qualitative explanation of each considered protocols have been presented. All the considered protocols have been relatively characterized. This relative study leads us towards some future research challenges in geocast routing. DOI: 10.17762/ijritcc2321-8169.150519

Efficient Information Dissemination in Vehicular Networks with Privacy Protection

Vehicular ad hoc network (VANET) is a key component of intelligent transportation System (ITS). In VANETs, vehicles and roadside units exchange information for the purpose of navigation, safe driving, entertainment and so on. The high mobility of vehicles makes efficient and private communications in VANETs a big challenge. Improving the performance of information dissemination while protecting data privacy is studied in this research. Meet-Table based information dissemination method is first proposed, so as to improve the information dissemination, and to efficiently distribute information via utilizing roadside units, Cloud Computing, and Fog Computing. A clustering algorithm is proposed as well, to improve the stability for self-organized cluster-based dissemination in VANETs on highways. Then, fuzzy neural networks are used to improve the stability and security of routing protocols, AODV, and design a novel protocol, GSS-AODV. To further protect data privacy, a multi-antenna based information protection approach for vehicle-to-vehicle(V2V) communications is also proposed