784 research outputs found
An Outline of Security in Wireless Sensor Networks: Threats, Countermeasures and Implementations
With the expansion of wireless sensor networks (WSNs), the need for securing
the data flow through these networks is increasing. These sensor networks allow
for easy-to-apply and flexible installations which have enabled them to be used
for numerous applications. Due to these properties, they face distinct
information security threats. Security of the data flowing through across
networks provides the researchers with an interesting and intriguing potential
for research. Design of these networks to ensure the protection of data faces
the constraints of limited power and processing resources. We provide the
basics of wireless sensor network security to help the researchers and
engineers in better understanding of this applications field. In this chapter,
we will provide the basics of information security with special emphasis on
WSNs. The chapter will also give an overview of the information security
requirements in these networks. Threats to the security of data in WSNs and
some of their counter measures are also presented
Multi-Channel Security through Data Fragmentation
This thesis presents a novel security system developed for a multi-channel communication architecture, which achieves security by distributing the message and its associated message authentication code across the available channels at the bit level, to support systems that require protection from confidentiality and integrity attacks without relying solely on traditional encryption. One contribution of the work is to establish some helpful terminology, present a basic theory for multi-channel communications, describe the services provided by an optimal system, and then implement a proof of concept system to demonstrate the concept\u27s validity. This proof of concept, focused on the splitting and recombination activities, operates by using existing key exchange mechanisms to establish system initialization information, and then splitting the message in fragments across each available channel. Splitting prevents the entirety of a given message from being transmitted across a single channel, and spreads the overall message authentication across the set of channels. This gives the end user the following unique service: the sender and receiver can identify a compromised channel, even in the presence of a sophisticated man in the middle attack wherein the adversary achieves fragment acceptance at the destination by altering the message\u27s error detecting code. Under some conditions, the receiver can recover the original message without retransmission, despite these injected errors. The resulting system may be attractive for critical infrastructure communications systems as a holistic approach to both availability and a defense against integrity attacks. This system would be a natural fit as a cipher suite for a future iteration of the Transport Layer Security protocol targeting support for multi-channel communication systems
A Novel Seed Based Random Interleaving for OFDM System and Its PHY Layer Security Implications
Wireless channels are characterized by multipath and fading that can often cause long
burst of errors. Even though, to date, many very sophisticated error correcting codes have
been designed, yet none can handle long burst of errors efficiently. An interleaver, a
device that distributes a burst of errors, possibly caused by a deep fade, and makes them
appear as simple random errors, therefore, proves to a very useful technique when used in
conjunction with an efficient error correcting code.
In this work, a novel near optimal seed based random interleaver is designed. An optimal
interleaver scatters a given burst of errors uniformly over a fixed block of data - a
property that is measured by so called ‘spread’. The design makes use of a unique seed
based pseudo-random sequence generator or logistic map based chaotic sequence
generator to scramble the given block of data. Since the proposed design is based on a
seed based scrambler, the nature of input is irrelevant. Therefore, the proposed interleaver
can interleave either the bits or the symbols or the packets or even the frames.
Accordingly, in this work, we analyze the suitability of interleaver when introduced
before or after the modulation in single carrier communication systems and show that
interleaving the bits before modulation or interleaving the symbols after modulation has
same advantage. We further show that, in an orthogonal frequency division multiplexing
(OFDM) systems, the position of interleaver, whether before or after constellation
mapper, has no significance, and is interchangeable. However, scrambling symbols is
computationally less expensive than scrambling bits.
For the purpose of analyzing the performance of the proposed seed based random
interleaver, simulations are carried out in MATLAB®. Results show that our proposed
seed based random interleaver has near optimal properties of ‘spread’ and ‘dispersion’.
Furthermore, the proposed interleaver is evaluated in terms of bit error rate (BER) versus
length of burst error in a single carrier system both before and after modulation. The
proposed interleaver out-performs the built in RANDINTLV in MATLAB® when used in
the same system. It shows that proposed interleaver can convert greater amount of burst
errors into simple random errors than that of MATLAB® interleaver. The proposed
interleaver is also tested in IEEE 802.16e based WiMAX system with Stanford University Interim (SUI) channels to compare the performance of average BER versus
SNR for both pre modulation and post modulation interleaver. Results show that pre
modulation interleaver and post modulation has same performance.
There is also a side advantage of this seed based interleaver, in that it generates a variety
of unique random-looking interleaving sequences. Only a receiver that has the knowledge
of the input seed can generate this sequence and no one else. If the interleaving patterns
are kept secure then it can possibly be used to introduce an extra layer of security at
physical (PHY) layer. In that way, at PHY layer, one builds an additional entry barrier to
break through and it comes with no extra cost. This property has been investigated by
carrying out key sensitivity analysis to show that the attacks to guess key can be very
futile, as difference at 4th decimal place in the initial condition can lead to entirely
different scrambling
Co-Check: Collaborative Outsourced Data Auditing in Multicloud Environment
With the increasing demand for ubiquitous connectivity, wireless technology has significantly improved our daily lives. Meanwhile, together with cloud-computing technology (e.g., cloud storage services and big data processing), new wireless networking technology becomes the foundation infrastructure of emerging communication networks. Particularly, cloud storage has been widely used in services, such as data outsourcing and resource sharing, among the heterogeneous wireless environments because of its convenience, low cost, and flexibility. However, users/clients lose the physical control of their data after outsourcing. Consequently, ensuring the integrity of the outsourced data becomes an important security requirement of cloud storage applications. In this paper, we present Co-Check, a collaborative multicloud data integrity audition scheme, which is based on BLS (Boneh-Lynn-Shacham) signature and homomorphic tags. According to the proposed scheme, clients can audit their outsourced data in a one-round challenge-response interaction with low performance overhead. Our scheme also supports dynamic data maintenance. The theoretical analysis and experiment results illustrate that our scheme is provably secure and efficient
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