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

Improving Air Interface User Privacy in Mobile Telephony

Although the security properties of 3G and 4G mobile networks have significantly improved by comparison with 2G (GSM), significant shortcomings remain with respect to user privacy. A number of possible modifications to 2G, 3G and 4G protocols have been proposed designed to provide greater user privacy; however, they all require significant modifications to existing deployed infrastructures, which are almost certainly impractical to achieve in practice. In this article we propose an approach which does not require any changes to the existing deployed network infrastructures or mobile devices, but offers improved user identity protection over the air interface. The proposed scheme makes use of multiple IMSIs for an individual USIM to offer a degree of pseudonymity for a user. The only changes required are to the operation of the authentication centre in the home network and to the USIM, and the scheme could be deployed immediately since it is completely transparent to the existing mobile telephony infrastructure. We present two different approaches to the use and management of multiple IMSIs

Secure Routing in Wireless Mesh Networks

Wireless mesh networks (WMNs) have emerged as a promising concept to meet the challenges in next-generation networks such as providing flexible, adaptive, and reconfigurable architecture while offering cost-effective solutions to the service providers. Unlike traditional Wi-Fi networks, with each access point (AP) connected to the wired network, in WMNs only a subset of the APs are required to be connected to the wired network. The APs that are connected to the wired network are called the Internet gateways (IGWs), while the APs that do not have wired connections are called the mesh routers (MRs). The MRs are connected to the IGWs using multi-hop communication. The IGWs provide access to conventional clients and interconnect ad hoc, sensor, cellular, and other networks to the Internet. However, most of the existing routing protocols for WMNs are extensions of protocols originally designed for mobile ad hoc networks (MANETs) and thus they perform sub-optimally. Moreover, most routing protocols for WMNs are designed without security issues in mind, where the nodes are all assumed to be honest. In practical deployment scenarios, this assumption does not hold. This chapter provides a comprehensive overview of security issues in WMNs and then particularly focuses on secure routing in these networks. First, it identifies security vulnerabilities in the medium access control (MAC) and the network layers. Various possibilities of compromising data confidentiality, data integrity, replay attacks and offline cryptanalysis are also discussed. Then various types of attacks in the MAC and the network layers are discussed. After enumerating the various types of attacks on the MAC and the network layer, the chapter briefly discusses on some of the preventive mechanisms for these attacks.Comment: 44 pages, 17 figures, 5 table

Network layer access control for context-aware IPv6 applications

As part of the Lancaster GUIDE II project, we have developed a novel wireless access point protocol designed to support the development of next generation mobile context-aware applications in our local environs. Once deployed, this architecture will allow ordinary citizens secure, accountable and convenient access to a set of tailored applications including location, multimedia and context based services, and the public Internet. Our architecture utilises packet marking and network level packet filtering techniques within a modified Mobile IPv6 protocol stack to perform access control over a range of wireless network technologies. In this paper, we describe the rationale for, and components of, our architecture and contrast our approach with other state-of-the- art systems. The paper also contains details of our current implementation work, including preliminary performance measurements

Fly-By-Wireless for Next Generation Aircraft: Challenges and Potential solutions

”Fly-By-Wireless” paradigm based on wireless connectivity in aircraft has the potential to improve efficiency and flexibility, while reducing weight, fuel consumption and maintenance costs. In this paper, first, the opportunities and challenges for wireless technologies in safety-critical avionics context are discussed. Then, the assessment of such technologies versus avionics requirements is provided in order to select the most appropriate one for a wireless aircraft application. As a result, the design of a Wireless Avionics Network based on Ultra WideBand technology is investigated, considering the issues of determinism, reliability and security

Artificial-Noise-Aided Physical Layer Phase Challenge-Response Authentication for Practical OFDM Transmission

Recently, we have developed a PHYsical layer Phase Challenge-Response Authentication Scheme (PHY-PCRAS) for independent multicarrier transmission. In this paper, we make a further step by proposing a novel artificial-noise-aided PHY-PCRAS (ANA-PHY-PCRAS) for practical orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) transmission, where the Tikhonov-distributed artificial noise is introduced to interfere with the phase-modulated key for resisting potential key-recovery attacks whenever a static channel between two legitimate users is unfortunately encountered. Then, we address various practical issues for ANA-PHY-PCRAS with OFDM transmission, including correlation among subchannels, imperfect carrier and timing recoveries. Among them, we show that the effect of sampling offset is very significant and a search procedure in the frequency domain should be incorporated for verification. With practical OFDM transmission, the number of uncorrelated subchannels is often not sufficient. Hence, we employ a time-separated approach for allocating enough subchannels and a modified ANA-PHY-PCRAS is proposed to alleviate the discontinuity of channel phase at far-separated time slots. Finally, the key equivocation is derived for the worst case scenario. We conclude that the enhanced security of ANA-PHY-PCRAS comes from the uncertainty of both the wireless channel and introduced artificial noise, compared to the traditional challenge-response authentication scheme implemented at the upper layer.Comment: 33 pages, 13 figures, submitted for possible publicatio