Resilient Misbehaviour Detection MAC Protocol (MD-MAC) for Distributed Wireless Networks

Chaminda Alocious, Hannan Xiao, B. Christianson, 'Resilient Misbehaviour Detection MAC Protocol (MD-MAC) for Distributed Wireless Networks' paper presented at the 2016 IEEE Wireless Communications and Networking Conference (IEEE WCNC). Doha, Qatar. 3-6 April 2016Wireless network security requirements are becoming more important and critical. The modern network security architectures require more attention to provide security in each network layer. This will require understanding of protocol vulnerabilities in existing protocol architectures. However, providing security requirements are not just limited to confidentiality and integrity, also availability and fairness are important security elements. IEEE 802.11 MAC protocol is one of the most common standard in modern day networks and has been designed without a consideration for providing security protection at MAC layer. IEEE 802.11 assumes all the nodes in the network are cooperative. However, nodes may purposefully misbehave in order to obtain extra bandwidth, conserve resources and disrupt network performance. This research proposes a Misbehaviour Detection MAC protocol (MD-MAC) to address the problematic scenarios of MAC layer misbehaviours, which takes a novel approach to detect misbehaviours in Mobile Adhoc Networks (MANETs). The MD-MAC modifies the CSMA/CA protocol message exchange and uses verifiable backoff value generation mechanism with an incorporated trust model which is suitable for distributed networks. The MD-MAC protocol has been implemented and evaluated in ns2, simulation results suggest that the protocol is able to detect misbehaving wireless nodes in a distributed network environment

Development of a Security Methodology for Cooperative Information Systems: The CooPSIS Project

Since networks and computing systems are vital components of today\u27s life, it is of utmost importance to endow them with the capability to survive physical and logical faults, as well as malicious or deliberate attacks. When the information system is obtained by federating pre-existing local systems, a methodology is needed to integrate security policies and mechanisms under a uniform structure. Therefore, in building distributed information systems, a methodology for analysis, design and implementation of security requirements of data and processes is essential for obtaining mutual trust between cooperating organizations. Moreover, when the information system is built as a cooperative set of e-services, security is related to the type of data, to the sensitivity context of the cooperative processes and to the security characteristics of the communication paradigms. The CoopSIS (Cooperative Secure Information Systems) project aims to develop methods and tools for the analysis, design, implementation and evaluation of secure and survivable distributed information systems of cooperative type, in particular with experimentation in the Public Administration Domain. This paper presents the basic issues of a methodology being conceived to build a trusted cooperative environment, where data sensitivity parameters and security requirements of processes are taken into account. The milestones phases of the security development methodology in the context of this project are illustrated

A Game Theoretical Analysis of Localization Security in Wireless Sensor Networks with Adversaries

Wireless Sensor Networks (WSN) support data collection and distributed data processing by means of very small sensing devices that are easy to tamper and cloning: therefore classical security solutions based on access control and strong authentication are difficult to deploy. In this paper we look at the problem of assessing security of node localization. In particular, we analyze the scenario in which Verifiable Multilateration (VM) is used to localize nodes and a malicious node (i.e., the adversary) try to masquerade as non-malicious. We resort to non-cooperative game theory and we model this scenario as a two-player game. We analyze the optimal players' strategy and we show that the VM is indeed a proper mechanism to reduce fake positions.Comment: International Congress on Ultra Modern Telecommunications and Control Systems 2010. (ICUMT'10

Intrusion-aware Alert Validation Algorithm for Cooperative Distributed Intrusion Detection Schemes of Wireless Sensor Networks

Existing anomaly and intrusion detection schemes of wireless sensor networks have mainly focused on the detection of intrusions. Once the intrusion is detected, an alerts or claims will be generated. However, any unidentified malicious nodes in the network could send faulty anomaly and intrusion claims about the legitimate nodes to the other nodes. Verifying the validity of such claims is a critical and challenging issue that is not considered in the existing cooperative-based distributed anomaly and intrusion detection schemes of wireless sensor networks. In this paper, we propose a validation algorithm that addresses this problem. This algorithm utilizes the concept of intrusion-aware reliability that helps to provide adequate reliability at a modest communication cost. In this paper, we also provide a security resiliency analysis of the proposed intrusion-aware alert validation algorithm.Comment: 19 pages, 7 figure

Cooperative Secure Transmission by Exploiting Social Ties in Random Networks

Social awareness and social ties are becoming increasingly popular with emerging mobile and handheld devices. Social trust degree describing the strength of the social ties has drawn lots of research interests in many fields in wireless communications, such as resource sharing, cooperative communication and so on. In this paper, we propose a hybrid cooperative beamforming and jamming scheme to secure communication based on the social trust degree under a stochastic geometry framework. The friendly nodes are categorized into relays and jammers according to their locations and social trust degrees with the source node. We aim to analyze the involved connection outage probability (COP) and secrecy outage probability (SOP) of the performance in the networks. To achieve this target, we propose a double Gamma ratio (DGR) approach through Gamma approximation. Based on this, the COP and SOP are tractably obtained in closed-form. We further consider the SOP in the presence of Poisson Point Process (PPP) distributed eavesdroppers and derive an upper bound. The simulation results verify our theoretical findings, and validate that the social trust degree has dramatic influences on the security performance in the networks.Comment: 30 pages, 11 figures, to be published in IEEE Transactions on Communication

Signal processing for distributed nodes in smart networks

With increasing environmental concern for energy conservation and mitigating climate change, next generation smart networks are bound to provide improved performance in terms of security, reliability, and energy efficiency. For instance, future smart networks will work in highly complex and dynamic environments and will have distributed nodes that need to interact with each other and may also interact with an energy provider in order to improve their performance. In this context, advanced signal processing tools such as game theory and distributed transmit beamforming can yield tremendous performance gains in terms of energy efficiency for demand management and signal trans-mission in smart networks. The central theme of this dissertation is the modeling of energy usage behavior of self-seeking distributed nodes in smart networks. The thesis mainly looks into two key areas of smart networks: 1) smart grid networks and 2) wireless sensor networks, and contains: an analytical framework of the economics of electric vehicle charging in smart grids in an energy constrained environment; a study of a consumer-centric energy management scheme for encouraging the consumers in a smart grid to voluntarily take part in energy management; an outage management scheme for efficiently curtailing energy from the consumers in smart grids in the event of a power outage; a comprehensive study of power control of sensors in a wireless sensor network using game theory and distributed transmit beamforming; and finally, an energy aware distributed transmit beamfoming technique for long distance signal transmission in a wireless sensor network. This thesis addresses the challenges of modeling the energy usage behavior of distributed nodes through studying the propriety of energy users in smart networks, 1) by capturing the interactions between the energy users and energy provider in smart grids using non-cooperative Stackelberg and generalized Nash games, and showing that the socially optimal energy management for users can be achieved at the solution of the games, and 2) by studying the power control of sensors in wireless sensor networks, using a non-cooperative Nash game and distributed transmit beamforming that demonstrates significant transmit energy savings for the sensors. To foster energy efficient transmission, the thesis also studies a distributed transmit beamforming technique that does not require any channel state information for long distance signal transmission in sensor networks. The contributions of this dissertation are enhanced by proposing suitable system models and appropriate signal processing techniques. These models and techniques can capture the different cost-benefit tradeoffs that exist in these networks. All the proposed schemes in this dissertation are shown to have significant performance improvement when compared with existing solutions. The work in this thesis demonstrates that modeling power usage behavior of distributed nodes in smart networks is both possible and beneficial for increasing the energy efficiency of these networks