2,697 research outputs found
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
Towards Cyber Security for Low-Carbon Transportation: Overview, Challenges and Future Directions
In recent years, low-carbon transportation has become an indispensable part
as sustainable development strategies of various countries, and plays a very
important responsibility in promoting low-carbon cities. However, the security
of low-carbon transportation has been threatened from various ways. For
example, denial of service attacks pose a great threat to the electric vehicles
and vehicle-to-grid networks. To minimize these threats, several methods have
been proposed to defense against them. Yet, these methods are only for certain
types of scenarios or attacks. Therefore, this review addresses security aspect
from holistic view, provides the overview, challenges and future directions of
cyber security technologies in low-carbon transportation. Firstly, based on the
concept and importance of low-carbon transportation, this review positions the
low-carbon transportation services. Then, with the perspective of network
architecture and communication mode, this review classifies its typical attack
risks. The corresponding defense technologies and relevant security suggestions
are further reviewed from perspective of data security, network management
security and network application security. Finally, in view of the long term
development of low-carbon transportation, future research directions have been
concerned.Comment: 34 pages, 6 figures, accepted by journal Renewable and Sustainable
Energy Review
Secure and Privacy-Preserving Authentication Protocols for Wireless Mesh Networks
Wireless mesh networks (WMNs) have emerged as a promising concept to meet the
challenges in next-generation wireless networks such as providing flexible,
adaptive, and reconfigurable architecture while offering cost-effective
solutions to service providers. As WMNs become an increasingly popular
replacement technology for last-mile connectivity to the home networking,
community and neighborhood networking, it is imperative to design efficient and
secure communication protocols for these networks. However, several
vulnerabilities exist in currently existing protocols for WMNs. These security
loopholes can be exploited by potential attackers to launch attack on WMNs. The
absence of a central point of administration makes securing WMNs even more
challenging. The broadcast nature of transmission and the dependency on the
intermediate nodes for multi-hop communications lead to several security
vulnerabilities in WMNs. The attacks can be external as well as internal in
nature. External attacks are launched by intruders who are not authorized users
of the network. For example, an intruding node may eavesdrop on the packets and
replay those packets at a later point of time to gain access to the network
resources. On the other hand, the internal attacks are launched by the nodes
that are part of the WMN. On example of such attack is an intermediate node
dropping packets which it was supposed to forward. This chapter presents a
comprehensive discussion on the current authentication and privacy protection
schemes for WMN. In addition, it proposes a novel security protocol for node
authentication and message confidentiality and an anonymization scheme for
privacy protection of users in WMNs.Comment: 32 pages, 10 figures. The work is an extended version of the author's
previous works submitted in CoRR: arXiv:1107.5538v1 and arXiv:1102.1226v
Systematizing Decentralization and Privacy: Lessons from 15 Years of Research and Deployments
Decentralized systems are a subset of distributed systems where multiple
authorities control different components and no authority is fully trusted by
all. This implies that any component in a decentralized system is potentially
adversarial. We revise fifteen years of research on decentralization and
privacy, and provide an overview of key systems, as well as key insights for
designers of future systems. We show that decentralized designs can enhance
privacy, integrity, and availability but also require careful trade-offs in
terms of system complexity, properties provided, and degree of
decentralization. These trade-offs need to be understood and navigated by
designers. We argue that a combination of insights from cryptography,
distributed systems, and mechanism design, aligned with the development of
adequate incentives, are necessary to build scalable and successful
privacy-preserving decentralized systems
Practical privacy enhancing technologies for mobile systems
Mobile computers and handheld devices can be used today to connect to services available on the Internet. One of the predominant technologies in this respect for wireless Internet connection is the IEEE 802.11 family of WLAN standards. In many countries, WLAN access can be considered ubiquitous; there is a hotspot available almost anywhere. Unfortunately, the convenience provided by wireless Internet access has many privacy tradeoffs that are not obvious to mobile computer users. In this thesis, we investigate the lack of privacy of mobile computer users, and propose practical enhancements to increase the privacy of these users.
We show how explicit information related to the users' identity leaks on all layers of the protocol stack. Even before an IP address is configured, the mobile computer may have already leaked their affiliation and other details to the local network as the WLAN interface openly broadcasts the networks that the user has visited. Free services that require authentication or provide personalization, such as online social networks, instant messengers, or web stores, all leak the user's identity. All this information, and much more, is available to a local passive observer using a mobile computer.
In addition to a systematic analysis of privacy leaks, we have proposed four complementary privacy protection mechanisms. The main design guidelines for the mechanisms have been deployability and the introduction of minimal changes to user experience. More specifically, we mitigate privacy problems introduced by the standard WLAN access point discovery by designing a privacy-preserving access-point discovery protocol, show how a mobility management protocol can be used to protect privacy, and how leaks on all layers of the stack can be reduced by network location awareness and protocol stack virtualization. These practical technologies can be used in designing a privacy-preserving mobile system or can be retrofitted to current systems
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