Solutions and Tools for Secure Communication in Wireless Sensor Networks

Secure communication is considered a vital requirement in Wireless Sensor Network (WSN) applications. Such a requirement embraces different aspects, including confidentiality, integrity and authenticity of exchanged information, proper management of security material, and effective prevention and reaction against security threats and attacks. However, WSNs are mainly composed of resource-constrained devices. That is, network nodes feature reduced capabilities, especially in terms of memory storage, computing power, transmission rate, and energy availability. As a consequence, assuring secure communication in WSNs results to be more difficult than in other kinds of network. In fact, trading effectiveness of adopted solutions with their efficiency becomes far more important. In addition, specific device classes or technologies may require to design ad hoc security solutions. Also, it is necessary to efficiently manage security material, and dynamically cope with changes of security requirements. Finally, security threats and countermeasures have to be carefully considered since from the network design phase. This Ph.D. dissertion considers secure communication in WSNs, and provides the following contributions. First, we provide a performance evaluation of IEEE 802.15.4 security services. Then, we focus on the ZigBee technology and its security services, and propose possible solutions to some deficiencies and inefficiencies. Second, we present HISS, a highly scalable and efficient key management scheme, able to contrast collusion attacks while displaying a graceful degradation of performance. Third, we present STaR, a software component for WSNs that secures multiple traffic flows at the same time. It is transparent to the application, and provides runtime reconfigurability, thus coping with dynamic changes of security requirements. Finally, we describe ASF, our attack simulation framework for WSNs. Such a tool helps network designers to quantitatively evaluate effects of security attacks, produce an attack ranking based on their severity, and thus select the most appropriate countermeasures

Group Key Rekeying Technique with Secure Data Encryption in MANETs

A Mobile Ad hoc Network (MANET) is a collection of autonomous nodes or mobile devices that can arrange themselves in various ways and operate without strict network administration. Ensuring security in mobile ad hoc network is a challenging issue and most of the applications in mobile ad hoc networks involve group-oriented communication. In Mobile ad-hoc network, each node treated as a terminal and also acts as an intermediate router. In this scenario, multi-hop occurs for communication in mobile ad hoc network. There may be a possibility of threats and malicious nodes in between source and destination. Providing the security in MANET is entirely different from the traditional wired network. In the present scenario, various applications of the mobile ad hoc network have been proposed and issues are solved by using the cryptographic techniques. Mostly cryptographic techniques are used to provide the security to MANETs. Cryptographic techniques will not be efficient security mechanism if the key management is weak. The purpose of key management is to provide secure procedures for handling keys in the cryptographic technique. The responsibilities of key management include key generation, key distribution, and key maintenance. Several key management schemes have been introduced for MANETs. The Group key management scheme is an efficient method for key management in MANET. In group key management scheme, rekeying is used whenever a new node joins or existing node leaves from the group. In this paper, we propose a periodic rekeying method (PRK) and analyze the performance of LKH rekeying techniques in a group key management schemes. The symmetric encryption techniques are analyzed with different parameters, such as Throughput and Energy consumption. Security and performance of rekeying protocols are analyzed through detailed study and simulation

A Secure Group Communication Architecture for a Swarm of Autonomous Unmanned Aerial Vehicles

This thesis investigates the application of a secure group communication architecture to a swarm of autonomous unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs). A multicast secure group communication architecture for the low earth orbit (LEO) satellite environment is evaluated to determine if it can be effectively adapted to a swarm of UAVs and provide secure, scalable, and efficient communications. The performance of the proposed security architecture is evaluated with two other commonly used architectures using a discrete event computer simulation developed using MatLab. Performance is evaluated in terms of the scalability and efficiency of the group key distribution and management scheme when the swarm size, swarm mobility, multicast group join and departure rates are varied. The metrics include the total keys distributed over the simulation period, the average number of times an individual UAV must rekey, the average bandwidth used to rekey the swarm, and the average percentage of battery consumed by a UAV to rekey over the simulation period. The proposed security architecture can successfully be applied to a swarm of autonomous UAVs using current technology. The proposed architecture is more efficient and scalable than the other tested and commonly-used architectures. Over all the tested configurations, the proposed architecture distributes 55.2 – 94.8% fewer keys, rekeys 59.0 - 94.9% less often per UAV, uses 55.2 - 87.9% less bandwidth to rekey, and reduces the battery consumption by 16.9 – 85.4%

Sécurité dans les réseaux mobiles de nouvelle génération

RÉSUMÉ Les réseaux de nouvelle génération visent à converger les réseaux fixes et mobiles hétérogènes afin d’offrir tous les services à travers un réseau coeur tout IP. Faisant parti du réseau d’accès mobile, un des principaux objectifs du réseau 4G est de permettre une relève ininterrompue entre les réseaux cellulaires et WIFI pour ainsi favoriser l’apprivoisement de services vidéo mobiles exigeant des critères de qualité de service très stricts à moindres coûts. Cependant, l’uniformisation du trafic au niveau de la couche réseau favorise sa centralisation à travers un réseau coeur IP partagé par tous les opérateurs, la rendant ainsi comme une cible vulnérable de choix pour les pirates informatiques. La conception de solutions sécuritaires dans un environnement où les entités ne se connaissent pas à priori s’annonce comme une tâche très ardue. La thèse se penche sur quatre problématiques importantes dans les réseaux de nouvelle génération dont chacune est traitée dans un article distinct. Les deux premiers articles touchent à la sécurité dans un contexte décentralisé, à savoir les réseaux mobiles ad hoc (MANETs), alors que les deux derniers proposent des mécanismes innovateurs pour sécuriser des solutions visant à réduire la consommation de bande passante et d’énergie, en conformité avec le virage vert informatique promu par les opérateurs réseautiques. Plus précisément, le troisième article traite de la sécurisation des flots multicast dans un environnement à haut taux de perte de paquet et le dernier propose une solution d’optimisation de route sécuritaire pour mobile IPv6 (MIPv6) utilisant une version améliorée de l’algorithme de genération d’adresses cryptographiques (CGA) et les extensions de sécurité du système de nom de domaine (DNSSEC). Les systèmes de détection d’intrusion (IDS) pour les MANETs basés sur la réputation des noeuds classifient les participants du réseau selon leur degré de confiance. Cependant, ils partagent tous une vulnérabilité commune : l’impossibilité de détecter et de réagir aux attaques complices. Le premier article propose un IDS qui intègre efficacement le risque de collusion entre deux ou plusieurs noeuds malveillants dans le calcul de la fiabilité d’un chemin. L’algorithme propos´e ne se limite pas qu’au nombre et à la réputation des noeuds intermédiaires formant un chemin, mais intègre également d’autres informations pertinentes sur les voisins des noeuds intermédiaires d’un chemin pouvant superviser le message original et celui retransmis. Le IDS proposé détecte efficacement les noeuds malicieux et complices dans le but de les isoler rapidement du réseau. Les simulations lancées dans divers environnements MANETs contenant une proportion variable d’attaquants complices montrent bien l’efficacité du IDS proposée en offrant un gain en débit considérable comparativement aux solutions existantes. À l’instar de prévenir les comportements égoïstes des noeuds par la menace d’être privés de certaines fonctions, voire même isolés du réseau, due à une baisse de réputation, le second article opte pour un incitatif non-punitif en la monnaie virtuelle plus communément appelée nuglets. Plus précisément, l’article présente un cadre de travail issu de la théorie des jeux basé sur la compétition de Bertrand pour inciter les noeuds intermédiaires à retransmettre les messages selon les requis de QoS demandés par la source. Pour qu’un noeud source envoie ou accède à un flot sensible à la QoS comme par exemple les applications en temps réel, il débute par envoyer un contrat qui spécifie les critères de QoS, sa durée et son prix de réserve. Sur réception du contrat, les noeuds intermédiaires formant une route entre la source et la destination partagent les informations sur eux-mêmes et celles recueillies sur les noeuds voisins, anciens et courants pour estimer la probabilité de bris de contrat ainsi que le nombre de compétiteurs actifs. Ces deux paramètres sont cruciaux dans le processus de fixation des prix. Une fois les réponses de route recueillies, la source choisit la route la moins chère. Le cadre de travail multijoueur proposé, basé sur la compétition de Bertrand avec des firmes asymétriques et ayant accès à de l’information imparfaite, possède un équilibre de Nash en stratégies mixtes dans lequel le profit des firmes est positif et baisse non seulement avec le nombre de compétiteurs, mais aussi avec l’impression d’une précision accrue que les compétiteurs ont sur le coût de production du joueur. Les résultats montrent que l’incertitude sur les coûts augmente le taux de la marge brute et la fluctuation des prix tout en diminuant les chances d’honorer le contrat. Dans un autre ordre d’idée, l’intérêt sans cesse grandissant des opérateurs à converger les réseaux fixes et mobiles dans le but d’offrir une relève sans interruption favorise l’utilisation des applications vidéo mobiles qui surchargeront rapidement leurs réseaux. Dans un contexte du virage vert qui prend de plus en plus d’ampleur dans le domaine des télécommunications, la transmission des flots en multidiffusion (multicast) devient essentiel dans le but de réduire la consommation de bande passante et la congestion du réseau en rejoignant simultanément plusieurs destinataires. La sécurisation des flots en multidiffusion a été largement étudiée dans la littérature antérieure, cependant aucune des solutions proposées ne tient compte des contraintes imposées par les liaisons sans fil et la mobilité des noeuds, en particulier le haut taux de perte de paquets. La nécessité d’un mécanisme de distribution de clés régénératrices efficace et pouvant supporter un grand bassin d’abonnés pour les réseaux mobiles n’aura jamais été aussi urgent avec l’arrivée de la convergence fixe-mobile dans les réseaux 4G. Le troisième article présente deux algorithmes de clés régénératrices basés sur les chaînes de hachage bidirectionnelles pour le protocole de distribution de clés logical key hierarchy (LKH). Ainsi, un membre ayant perdu jusqu’à un certain nombre de clés de déchiffrement consécutives pourrait lui-même les régénérer sans faire la requête de retransmission au serveur de clés. Les simulations effectuées montrent que les algorithmes proposés offrent des améliorations considérables dans un environnement de réseau mobile à taux de perte de paquet, notamment dans le percentage de messages déchiffrés. Le souci d’efficacité énergétique est également présent pour les opérateurs de réseaux cellulaires. D’ailleurs, près de la moitié des abonnements sur Internet proviennent présentement d’unités mobiles et il est attendu que ce groupe d’utilisateurs deviennent le plus grand bassin d’usagers sur Internet dans la prochaine décennie. Pour supporter cette croissance rapide du nombre d’utilisateurs mobiles, le choix le plus naturel pour les opérateurs serait de remplacer mobile IPv4 par MIPv6. Or, la fonction d’optimisation de route (RO), qui remplace le routage triangulaire inefficace de MIP en permettant au noeud mobile (MN) une communication bidirectionnelle avec le noeud correspondant (CN) sans faire passer les messages à travers l’agent du réseau mère (HA), est déficiente au niveau de la sécurité. L’absence d’informations pré-partagées entre le MN et le CN rend la sécurisation du RO un défi de taille. MIPv6 adopte la routabilité de retour (RR) qui est davantage un mécanisme qui vérifie l’accessibilité du MN sur son adresse du réseau mère (HoA) et du réseau visité (CoA) plutôt qu’une fonction de sécurité. D’autres travaux se sont attaqués aux nombreuses failles de sécurité du RR, mais soit leur conception est fautive, soit leurs suppositions sont irréalistes. Le quatrième article présente une version améliorée de l’algorithme de génération cryptographique d’adresse (ECGA) pour MIPv6 qui intègre une chaîne de hachage arrière et offre de lier plusieurs adresses CGA ensemble. ECGA élimine les attaques de compromis temps-mémoire tout en étant efficace. Ce mécanisme de génération d’adresse fait parti du protocole Secure MIPv6 (SMIPv6) proposé avec un RO sécuritaire et efficace grâce à DNSSEC pour valider les CGAs qui proviennent d’un domaine de confiance et qui permet une authentification forte plutôt que l’invariance de source. Le vérificateur de protocoles cryptographiques dans le modèle formel AVISPA a été utilisé pour montrer qu’aucune faille de sécurité n’est présente tout en limitant au maximum les messages échangés dans le réseau d’accès. ----------ABSTRACT Next generation networks aim at offering all available services through an IP-core network by converging fixed-mobile heterogeneous networks. As part of the mobile access network, one of the main objectives of the 4G network is to provide seamless roaming with wireless local area networks and accommodating quality of service (QoS) specifications for digital video broadcasting systems. Such innovation aims expanding video-based digital services while reducing costs by normalizing the network layer through an all-IP architecture such as Internet. However, centralizing all traffic makes the shared core network a vulnerable target for attackers. Design security solutions in such an environment where entities a priori do not know each other represent a daunting task. This thesis tackles four important security issues in next generation networks each in distinct papers. The first two deal with security in decentralized mobile ad hoc networks (MANETs) while the last two focus on securing solutions aiming at reducing bandwidth and energy consumption, in line with the green shift promoted by network operators. More precisely, the third paper is about protecting multicast flows in a packet-loss environment and the last one proposes a secure route optimization function in mobile IPv6 (MIPv6) using an enhanced version of cryptographically generated address (CGA) and domain name service security extensions (DNSSEC). Most intrusion detection systems (IDS) for MANETs are based on reputation system which classifies nodes according to their degree of trust. However, existing IDS all share the same major weakness: the failure to detect and react on colluding attacks. The first paper proposes an IDS that integrates the colluding risk factor into the computation of the path reliability which considers the number and the reputation of nodes that can compare both the source message and the retransmitted one. Also, the extended architecture effectively detects malicious and colluding nodes in order to isolate them and protect the network. The simulations launched in various MANETs containing various proportions of malicious and colluding nodes show that the proposed solution offers a considerable throughput gain compared to current solutions. By effectively selecting the most reliable route and by promptly detecting colluding attacks, the number of lost messages is decreased, and therefore, offering more efficient transmissions. Instead of thwarting selfishness in MANETs by threatening nodes to limit their network functions, the second paper opts for a non-punishment incentive by compensating nodes for their service through the use of virtual money, more commonly known as nuglets. The last paper presents a game-theoretic framework based on Bertrand competition to incite relaying nodes in forwarding messages according to QoS requirements. For a source to send or access QoS-sensitive flows, such as real-time applications, it starts by sending a contract specifying the QoS requirements, its duration and a reservation price. Upon receiving a contract submission, intermediary nodes forming a route between the source and the destination share their current and past collected information on themselves and on surrounding nodes to estimate the probability of breaching the contract and the number of active competitors. Both parameters are crucial in setting a price. Once the source gets the responses from various routes, it selects the most cheapest one. This multiplayer winner-takes-all framework based on Bertrand competition with firms having asymmetric costs and access imperfect information has a mixed-strategy equilibrium in which industry profits are positive and decline not only with the number of firms having an estimated cost below the reservation price but also with the perception of a greater accuracy on a player’s cost that competitors have. In fact,results show that cost uncertainty increases firms’ gross margin rate and the prices fluctuation while making the contract honoring much riskier. On another topic, with the growing interest in converging fixed and mobile networks, mobile applications will require more and more resources from both the network and the mobile device. In a social-motivated context of shifting into green technologies, using multicast transmissions is essential because it lowers bandwidth consumption by simultaneously reaching a group of multiple recipients. Securing multicast flows has been extensively studied in the past, but none of the existing solutions were meant to handle the constraints imposed by mobile scenarios, in particular the high packet-loss rate. The need for a low overhead selfhealing rekeying mechanism that is scalable, reliable and suitable for mobile environments has never been more urgent than with the arrival of fixed-mobile convergence in 4G networks. The second paper presents two self-healing recovery schemes based on the dual directional hash chains for the logical key hierarchy rekeying protocol. This enables a member that has missed up to m consecutive key updates to recover the missing decryption keys without asking the group controller key server for retransmission. Conducted simulations show considerable improvements in the ratio of decrypted messages and in the rekey message overhead in high packet loss environments. The concern of energy efficiency is also present for mobile access network operators. In fact, nearly half of all Internet subscribers come from mobile units at the moment and it is expected to be the largest pool of Internet users by the next decade. The most obvious choice for mobile operators to support more users would be to replace Mobile IP for IPv4 with MIPv6. However, the Route Optimization (RO) function, which replaces the inefficient triangle routing by allowing a bidirectional communication between a mobile node (MN) and the corresponding node (CN) without passing through its home agent (HA), is not secure and has a high overhead. The lack of pre-shared information between the MN and the CN makes security in RO a difficult challenge. MIPv6 adopts the return routability (RR) mechanism which is more to verify the MN reachability in both its home address (HoA) and care-of address (CoA) than a security feature. Other works attempted to solve the multiple security issues in RR but either their design are flawed, or rely on unrealistic assumptions. The third paper presents an enhanced cryptographically generated address (ECGA) for MIPv6 that integrates a built-in backward key chain and offers support to bind multiple logically-linked CGAs together. ECGA tackles the time-memory tradeoff attacks while being very efficient. It is part of the proposed secure MIPv6 (SMIPv6) with secure and efficient RO which uses DNSSEC to validate CGAs from trusted domains and provide strong authentication rather than sender invariance. The AVISPA on-the-fly model checker (OFMC) tool has been used to show that the proposed solution has no security flaws while still being lightweight in signalling messages in the radio network

An Enhanced Hybrid Key Management Protocol for Secure Multicast in Ad Hoc Networks

Colloque avec actes et comité de lecture. internationale.International audienceAn ad hoc network is a collection of wireless mobile hosts forming a temporary network without the aid of any established infrastructure or centralized administration. This exibility in space and time induces new challenges towards the security infrastructure needed to support secure unicast and multicast communications. Especially, traditional group key management architectures meant for wired networks are not appropriate in such environment due to high dynamics and mobility of nodes. In this paper, we propose an enhanced hybrid key management protocol for secure multicast dedicated to operate in ad hoc networks. Built on a protocol called BAAL dedicated to key distribution in wired networks, our approach integrates threshold cryptography and the services of the AKMP protocol to deliver fast, efficient and mobility aware key distribution in a multicast service

Using secure coprocessors to enforce network access policies in enterprise and ad hoc networks

Nowadays, network security is critically important. Enterprises rely on networks to improvetheir business. However, network security breaches may cause them loss of millions of dollars.Ad hoc networks, which enable computers to communicate wirelessly without the need forinfrastructure support, have been attracting more and more interests. However, they cannotbe deployed effectively due to security concerns.Studies have shown that the major network security threat is insiders (malicious orcompromised nodes). Enterprises have traditionally employed network security solutions(e.g., firewalls, intrusion detection systems, anti-virus software) and network access controltechnologies (e.g., 802.1x, IPsec/IKE) to protect their networks. However, these approachesdo not prevent malicious or compromised nodes from accessing the network. Many attacksagainst ad hoc networks, including routing, forwarding, and leader-election attacks, requiremalicious nodes joining the attacked network too.This dissertation presents a novel solution to protect both enterprise and ad hoc networksby addressing the above problem. It is a hardware-based solution that protects a networkthrough the attesting of a node's configuration before authorizing the node's access to thenetwork. Attestation is the unforgeable disclosure of a node's configuration to another node,signed by a secure coprocessor known as a Trusted Platform Module (TPM).This dissertation makes following contributions. First, several techniques at operatingsystem level (i.e., TCB prelogging, secure association root tripping, and sealing-free attestation confinement) are developed to support attestation and policy enforcement. Second, two secure attestation protocols at network level (i.e., Bound Keyed Attestation (BKA) andBatched Bound Keyed Attestation (BBKA)) are designed to overcome the risk of a man-inthe-middle (MITM) attack. Third, the above techniques are applied in enterprise networks todifferent network access control technologies to enhance enterprise network security. Fourth,AdHocSec, a novel network security solution for ad hoc networks, is proposed and evaluated. AdHocSec inserts a security layer between the network and data link layer of the networkstack. Several algorithms are designed to facilitate node's attestation in ad hoc networks,including distributed attestation (DA), and attested merger (AM) algorithm

A Secure Group Communication Architecture for Autonomous Unmanned Aerial Vehicle

This paper investigates the application of a secure group communication architecture to a swarm of autonomous unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs). A multicast secure group communication architecture for the low earth orbit (LEO) satellite environment is evaluated to determine if it can be effectively adapted to a swarm of UAVs and provide secure, scalable, and efficient communications. The performance of the proposed security architecture is evaluated with two other commonly used architectures using a discrete event computer simulation developed using MATLAB. Performance is evaluated in terms of the scalability and efficiency of the group key distribution and management scheme when the swarm size, swarm mobility, multicast group join and departure rates are varied. The metrics include the total keys distributed over the simulation period, the average number of times an individual UAV must rekey, the average bandwidth used to rekey the swarm, and the average percentage of battery consumed by a UAV to rekey over the simulation period. The proposed security architecture can successfully be applied to a swarm of autonomous UAVs using current technology. The proposed architecture is more efficient and scalable than the other tested and commonly used architectures. Over all the tested configurations, the proposed architecture distributes 55.2–94.8% fewer keys, rekeys 59.0–94.9% less often per UAV, uses 55.2–87.9% less bandwidth to rekey, and reduces the battery consumption by 16.9–85.4%

A Secure and Efficient Communications Architecture for Global Information Grid Users via Cooperating Space Assets

With the Information Age in full and rapid development, users expect to have global, seamless, ubiquitous, secure, and efficient communications capable of providing access to real-time applications and collaboration. The United States Department of Defense’s (DoD) Network-Centric Enterprise Services initiative, along with the notion of pushing the “power to the edge,” aims to provide end-users with maximum situational awareness, a comprehensive view of the battlespace, all within a secure networking environment. Building from previous AFIT research efforts, this research developed a novel security framework architecture to address the lack of efficient and scalable secure multicasting in the low earth orbit satellite network environment. This security framework architecture combines several key aspects of different secure group communications architectures in a new way that increases efficiency and scalability, while maintaining the overall system security level. By implementing this security architecture in a deployed environment with heterogeneous communications users, reduced re-keying frequency will result. Less frequent re-keying means more resources are available for throughput as compared to security overhead. This translates to more transparency to the end user; it will seem as if they have a “larger pipe” for their network links. As a proof of concept, this research developed and analyzed multiple mobile communication environment scenarios to demonstrate the superior re-keying advantage offered by the novel “Hubenko Security Framework Architecture” over traditional and clustered multicast security architectures. For example, in the scenario containing a heterogeneous mix of user types (Stationary, Ground, Sea, and Air), the Hubenko Architecture achieved a minimum ten-fold reduction in total keys distributed as compared to other known architectures. Another experiment demonstrated the Hubenko Architecture operated at 6% capacity while the other architectures operated at 98% capacity. In the 80% overall mobility experiment with 40% Air users, the other architectures re-keying increased 900% over the Stationary case, whereas the Hubenko Architecture only increased 65%. This new architecture is extensible to numerous secure group communications environments beyond the low earth orbit satellite network environment, including unmanned aerial vehicle swarms, wireless sensor networks, and mobile ad hoc networks

Group Rekeying Protocol for Secure communication

Group communication is one of the approaches to impart the messages effectively. Yet, security is the issue for this, and thus keys are utilized to secure the information. In this paper, the key management in group communication, an advanced rekeying approach based on the Logical Key Hierarchy (LKH) and One way Function Tree (OFT) schemes are explained. The AES crypto scheme is used to rekey the keys and the performance of the approach is better than LKH and OFT. Forward and backward security is provided by the proposed rekeying scheme. It is a novel rekeying scheme for large-scale dynamic groups that levers on logical sub-grouping and join history. On contrary other schemes, subgroups only support efficient group key management, have no application meaning and are transparent to the application layer. It misuses the historical backdrop of joining events to build up an aggregate requesting among subgroups and among nodes in every subgroup, so as to effectively recoup from collusion attacks