Security and Privacy Challenges in Cognitive Wireless Sensor Networks

Wireless sensor networks (WSNs) have attracted a lot of interest in the research community due to their potential applicability in a wide range of real-world practical applications. However, due to the distributed nature and their deployments in critical applications without human interventions and sensitivity and criticality of data communicated, these networks are vulnerable to numerous security and privacy threats that can adversely affect their performance. These issues become even more critical in cognitive wireless sensor networks (CWSNs) in which the sensor nodes have the capabilities of changing their transmission and reception parameters according to the radio environment under which they operate in order to achieve reliable and efficient communication and optimum utilization of the network resources. This chapter presents a comprehensive discussion on the security and privacy issues in CWSNs by identifying various security threats in these networks and various defense mechanisms to counter these vulnerabilities. Various types of attacks on CWSNs are categorized under different classes based on their natures and targets, and corresponding to each attack class, appropriate security mechanisms are also discussed. Some critical research issues on security and privacy in CWSNs are also identified.Comment: 36 pages, 4 figures, 2 tables. The book chapter is accepted for publication in 201

A Survey on Software-Defined VANETs: Benefits, Challenges, and Future Directions

The evolving of Fifth Generation (5G) networks isbecoming more readily available as a major driver of the growthof new applications and business models. Vehicular Ad hocNetworks (VANETs) and Software Defined Networking (SDN)represent the key enablers of 5G technology with the developmentof next generation intelligent vehicular networks and applica-tions. In recent years, researchers have focused on the integrationof SDN and VANET, and look at different topics related to thearchitecture, the benefits of software-defined VANET servicesand the new functionalities to adapt them. However, securityand robustness of the complete architecture is still questionableand have been largely negleted. Moreover, the deployment andintegration of novel entities and several architectural componentsdrive new security threats and vulnerabilities.In this paper, first we survey the state-of-the-art SDN basedVehicular ad-hoc Network (SDVN) architectures for their net-working infrastructure design, functionalities, benefits, and chal-lenges. Then we discuss these SDVN architectures against majorsecurity threats that violate the key security services such asavailability, confidentiality, authentication, and data integrity.We also propose different countermeasures to these threats.Finally, we discuss the lessons learned with the directions offuture research work towards provisioning stringent security andprivacy solutions in future SDVN architectures. To the best of ourknowledge, this is the first comprehensive work that presents sucha survey and analysis on SDVNs in the era of future generationnetworks (e.g., 5G, and Information centric networking) andapplications (e.g., intelligent transportation system, and IoT-enabled advertising in VANETs).Comment: 17 pages, 2 figure

A Survey on the Security of Pervasive Online Social Networks (POSNs)

Pervasive Online Social Networks (POSNs) are the extensions of Online Social Networks (OSNs) which facilitate connectivity irrespective of the domain and properties of users. POSNs have been accumulated with the convergence of a plethora of social networking platforms with a motivation of bridging their gap. Over the last decade, OSNs have visually perceived an altogether tremendous amount of advancement in terms of the number of users as well as technology enablers. A single OSN is the property of an organization, which ascertains smooth functioning of its accommodations for providing a quality experience to their users. However, with POSNs, multiple OSNs have coalesced through communities, circles, or only properties, which make service-provisioning tedious and arduous to sustain. Especially, challenges become rigorous when the focus is on the security perspective of cross-platform OSNs, which are an integral part of POSNs. Thus, it is of utmost paramountcy to highlight such a requirement and understand the current situation while discussing the available state-of-the-art. With the modernization of OSNs and convergence towards POSNs, it is compulsory to understand the impact and reach of current solutions for enhancing the security of users as well as associated services. This survey understands this requisite and fixates on different sets of studies presented over the last few years and surveys them for their applicability to POSNs...Comment: 39 Pages, 10 Figure

Applications of Data Mining Techniques for Vehicular Ad hoc Networks

Due to the recent advances in vehicular ad hoc networks (VANETs), smart applications have been incorporating the data generated from these networks to provide quality of life services. In this paper, we have proposed taxonomy of data mining techniques that have been applied in this domain in addition to a classification of these techniques. Our contribution is to highlight the research methodologies in the literature and allow for comparing among them using different characteristics. The proposed taxonomy covers elementary data mining techniques such as: preprocessing, outlier detection, clustering, and classification of data. In addition, it covers centralized, distributed, offline, and online techniques from the literature

A Roadmap Towards Resilient Internet of Things for Cyber-Physical Systems

The Internet of Things (IoT) is a ubiquitous system connecting many different devices - the things - which can be accessed from the distance. The cyber-physical systems (CPS) monitor and control the things from the distance. As a result, the concepts of dependability and security get deeply intertwined. The increasing level of dynamicity, heterogeneity, and complexity adds to the system's vulnerability, and challenges its ability to react to faults. This paper summarizes state-of-the-art of existing work on anomaly detection, fault-tolerance and self-healing, and adds a number of other methods applicable to achieve resilience in an IoT. We particularly focus on non-intrusive methods ensuring data integrity in the network. Furthermore, this paper presents the main challenges in building a resilient IoT for CPS which is crucial in the era of smart CPS with enhanced connectivity (an excellent example of such a system is connected autonomous vehicles). It further summarizes our solutions, work-in-progress and future work to this topic to enable "Trustworthy IoT for CPS". Finally, this framework is illustrated on a selected use case: A smart sensor infrastructure in the transport domain.Comment: preprint (2018-10-29

Energy and Information Management of Electric Vehicular Network: A Survey

The connected vehicle paradigm empowers vehicles with the capability to communicate with neighboring vehicles and infrastructure, shifting the role of vehicles from a transportation tool to an intelligent service platform. Meanwhile, the transportation electrification pushes forward the electric vehicle (EV) commercialization to reduce the greenhouse gas emission by petroleum combustion. The unstoppable trends of connected vehicle and EVs transform the traditional vehicular system to an electric vehicular network (EVN), a clean, mobile, and safe system. However, due to the mobility and heterogeneity of the EVN, improper management of the network could result in charging overload and data congestion. Thus, energy and information management of the EVN should be carefully studied. In this paper, we provide a comprehensive survey on the deployment and management of EVN considering all three aspects of energy flow, data communication, and computation. We first introduce the management framework of EVN. Then, research works on the EV aggregator (AG) deployment are reviewed to provide energy and information infrastructure for the EVN. Based on the deployed AGs, we present the research work review on EV scheduling that includes both charging and vehicle-to-grid (V2G) scheduling. Moreover, related works on information communication and computing are surveyed under each scenario. Finally, we discuss open research issues in the EVN

Game Theoretic Approaches in Vehicular Networks: A Survey

In the era of the Internet of Things (IoT), vehicles and other intelligent components in Intelligent Transportation System (ITS) are connected, forming the Vehicular Networks (VNs) that provide efficient and secure traffic, ubiquitous access to information, and various applications. However, as the number of connected nodes keeps increasing, it is challenging to satisfy various and large amounts of service requests with different Quality of Service (QoS ) and security requirements in the highly dynamic VNs. Intelligent nodes in VNs can compete or cooperate for limited network resources so that either an individual or group objectives can be achieved. Game theory, a theoretical framework designed for strategic interactions among rational decision-makers who faced with scarce resources, can be used to model and analyze individual or group behaviors of communication entities in VNs. This paper primarily surveys the recent advantages of GT used in solving various challenges in VNs. As VNs and GT have been extensively investigate34d, this survey starts with a brief introduction of the basic concept and classification of GT used in VNs. Then, a comprehensive review of applications of GT in VNs is presented, which primarily covers the aspects of QoS and security. Moreover, with the development of fifth-generation (5G) wireless communication, recent contributions of GT to diverse emerging technologies of 5G integrated into VNs are surveyed in this paper. Finally, several key research challenges and possible solutions for applying GT in VNs are outlined

Artificial Intelligence-Defined 5G Radio Access Networks

Massive multiple-input multiple-output antenna systems, millimeter wave communications, and ultra-dense networks have been widely perceived as the three key enablers that facilitate the development and deployment of 5G systems. This article discusses the intelligent agent in 5G base station which combines sensing, learning, understanding and optimizing to facilitate these enablers. We present a flexible, rapidly deployable, and cross-layer artificial intelligence (AI)-based framework to enable the imminent and future demands on 5G and beyond infrastructure. We present example AI-enabled 5G use cases that accommodate important 5G-specific capabilities and discuss the value of AI for enabling beyond 5G network evolution

Security Improvements for Connected Vehicles Position-Based Routing

The constant growing on the number of vehicles is increasing the complexity of traffic in urban and highway environments. It is paramount to improve traffic management to guarantee better road usage and people’s safety. Through efficient communications, Vehicular Ad hoc Networks (VANETs) can provide enough information for traffic safety initiatives, daily traffic data processing, and entertainment information. However, VANETs are vulnerable to malicious nodes applying different types of net-work attacks, where an attacker can, for instance, forge its position to receive the data packet and drop the message. This can lead vehicles and authorities to make incorrect assumptions and decisions, which can result in dangerous situations. Therefore, any data dissemination protocol designed for VANET should consider security issues when selecting the next-hop forwarding node. In this paper, we propose a security scheme designed for position-based routing algorithms, which analyzes nodes position, transmission range, and hello packet interval. The scheme deals with malicious nodes performing network attacks, faking their positions forcing packets to be dropped. We used the Simulation of Urban MObility (SUMO) and Network Simulator-version 3 (NS-3) to compare our proposed scheme integrated with two well-known position-based algorithms. The results were collected in an urban Manhattan grid environment varying the number of nodes, the number of malicious nodes, as well as the number of source-destination pairs. The results show that the proposed security scheme can successfully improve the packet delivery ratio while maintaining low average end-to-end delay of the algorithms.

Vehicle Authentication via Monolithically Certified Public Key and Attributes

Vehicular networks are used to coordinate actions among vehicles in traffic by the use of wireless transceivers (pairs of transmitters and receivers). Unfortunately, the wireless communication among vehicles is vulnerable to security threats that may lead to very serious safety hazards. In this work, we propose a viable solution for coping with Man-in-the-Middle attacks. Conventionally, Public Key Infrastructure (PKI) is utilized for a secure communication with the pre-certified public key. However, a secure vehicle-to-vehicle communication requires additional means of verification in order to avoid impersonation attacks. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first work that proposes to certify both the public key and out-of-band sense-able static attributes to enable mutual authentication of the communicating vehicles. Vehicle owners are bound to preprocess (periodically) a certificate for both a public key and a list of fixed unchangeable attributes of the vehicle. Furthermore, the proposed approach is shown to be adaptable with regards to the existing authentication protocols. We illustrate the security verification of the proposed protocol using a detailed proof in Spi calculus.Comment: Accepted in Wireless Networks June 2015, 4 figure