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 two‐step authentication framework for Mobile ad hoc networks

The lack of fixed infrastructure in ad hoc networks causes nodes to rely more heavily on peer nodes for communication. Nevertheless, establishing trust in such a distributed environment is very difficult, since it is not straightforward for a node to determine if its peer nodes can be trusted. An additional concern in such an environment is with whether a peer node is merely relaying a message or if it is the originator of the message. In this paper, we propose an authentication approach for protecting nodes in mobile ad hoc networks. The security requirements for protecting data link and network layers are identified and the design criteria for creating secure ad hoc networks using several authentication protocols are analyzed. Protocols based on zero knowledge and challenge response techniques are presented and their performance is evaluated through analysis and simulation

A Survey on Off-chain Networks: Frameworks, Technologies, Solutions and Challenges

Blockchain has received increasing attention in academia and industry. However, the increasing transaction volumes and limited on-chain storage underscore scalability as a key challenge hindering the widespread adoption of blockchain. Fortunately, off-chain networks that enable transactions outside the blockchain show promising potential to mitigate the scalability challenge. Off-chain solutions that address blockchain scalability hurdles, such as payment channel networks, facilitate secure and fast off-chain transactions, thus relieving the main chain's strain. In this article, we provide a comprehensive review of key technologies, solutions, and challenges of off-chain networks. First, we introduce the background of off-chain networks encompassing design motivation, framework, overview, and application scenarios. We then review the key issues and technologies associated with off-chain networks. Subsequently, we summarize the mainstream solutions for the corresponding key issues. Finally, we discuss some research challenges and open issues in this area.Comment: 30 pages, 5 figure

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

Enhanced dynamic source routing for verifying trust in mobile ad hoc network for secure routing

Secure data transfer in mobile ad hoc network (MANET) against malicious attacks is of immense importance. In this paper, we propose a new enhanced trust model for securing the MANET using trust-based scheme that uses both blind trust and referential trust. In order to do this, the trust relationship function has to be integrated with the dynamic source routing (DSR) protocol for making the protocol more secure. We thoroughly analyze the DSR protocol and generate the performance matrices for the data pertaining to packets sent, packets received, packets loss, and throughput. We also analyze the outcome attained from the improvised trust establishment scheme by using the three algorithm implementations in NS2 simulator for detecting and preventing various types of attacks