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 Survey on Wireless Sensor Network Security

Wireless sensor networks (WSNs) have recently attracted a lot of interest in the research community due their wide range of applications. Due to distributed nature of these networks and their deployment in remote areas, these networks are vulnerable to numerous security threats that can adversely affect their proper functioning. This problem is more critical if the network is deployed for some mission-critical applications such as in a tactical battlefield. Random failure of nodes is also very likely in real-life deployment scenarios. Due to resource constraints in the sensor nodes, traditional security mechanisms with large overhead of computation and communication are infeasible in WSNs. Security in sensor networks is, therefore, a particularly challenging task. This paper discusses the current state of the art in security mechanisms for WSNs. Various types of attacks are discussed and their countermeasures presented. A brief discussion on the future direction of research in WSN security is also included.Comment: 24 pages, 4 figures, 2 table

An Effective Approach for Recovering From Simultaneous Node Failures in Wireless Sensor Networks

In wireless sensor - actor networks, sensors probe their surroundings and forward their data to actor nodes. Actors collaboratively respond to achieve predefined application mission. Since actors have to coordinate their operation, it is nec essary to maintain a stron gly connected network topology at all times. Failure of one or multiple actors may partition the inter - actor network into disjoint segments, and thus hinders the network operation. Autonomous detection and rapid recovery procedures ar e highly desirable in such a case . One of the effective recovery methodologies is to autonomously reposition a subset of the actor nodes to restore connectivity. Contemporary recovery schemes either impose high node relocation overhead or extend some of th e inter - actor data pat hs. This paper overcomes these shortcomings and presents extended version of DCR named RAM, to handle one possible case of a multi - actor failure with Least - Disruptive topology Repair (LeDiR) algorithm for minimal topological changes . Upon failure detection , the backup actor initiates a recovery process that relocates the least num ber of nodes

Ant-based evidence distribution with periodic broadcast in attacked wireless network

In order to establish trust among nodes in large wireless networks, the trust certicates need to be distributed and be readily accessible. However, even so, searching for trust certicates will still become highly cost and delay especially when wireless network is suering CTS jamming attack. We believe the individual solution can lead us to solve this combination problems in the future. Therefore, in this work, we investigate the delay and cost of searching a distributed certicate and the adverse eects of fabiricated control packet attacks on channel throughput and delivery ratio respectively, and propose two techniques that can improve the eciency of searching for such certicates in the network and mitigate the CTS jamming attack's eect. Evidence Distribution based on Periodic Broadcast (EDPB) is the rst solution we presented to help node to quickly locate trust certicates in a large wireless sensor network. In this solution, we not only take advantages from swarm intelligence alogrithm, but also allow nodes that carrying certicates to periodically announce their existence. Such announcements, together with a swarm-intelligence pheromone pdate procedure, will leave traces on the nodes to lead query packets toward the certicate nodes. We then investigate the salient features of this schema and evaluate its performance in both static and mobile networks. This schema can also be used for other essential information dissemination in mobile ad hoc networks. The second technqiue, address inspection schema (AIS) xes vulnerabilities exist in distribution coordinating function (DCF) dened in IEEE 802.11 standard so that each node has the ability to beat the impact of CTS jamming attack and furthermore, benets network throughput. We then perform ns-2 simulations to evaluate the benet of AIS

Effective bootstrapping of Peer-to Peer networks over Mobile Ad-hoc networks

Mobile Ad-hoc Networks (MANETs) and Peer-to-Peer (P2P) networks are vigorous, revolutionary communication technologies in the 21st century. They lead the trend of decentralization. Decentralization will ultimately win clients over client/server model, because it gives ordinary network users more control, and stimulates their active participation. It is a determinant factor in shaping the future of networking. MANETs and P2P networks are very similar in nature. Both are dynamic, distributed. Both use multi-hop broadcast or multicast as major pattern of traffic. Both set up connection by self-organizing and maintain connection by self-healing. Embodying the slogan networking without networks, both abandoned traditional client/server model and disclaimed pre-existing infrastructure. However, their status quo levels of real world application are widely divergent. P2P networks are now accountable for about 50 ~ 70% internet traffic, while MANETs are still primarily in the laboratory. The interesting and confusing phenomenon has sparked considerable research effort to transplant successful approaches from P2P networks into MANETs. While most research in the synergy of P2P networks and MANETs focuses on routing, the network bootstrapping problem remains indispensable for any such transplantation to be realized. The most pivotal problems in bootstrapping are: (1) automatic configuration of nodes addresses and IDs, (2) topology discovery and transformation in different layers and name spaces. In this dissertation research, we have found novel solutions for these problems. The contributions of this dissertation are: (1) a non-IP, flat address automatic configuration scheme, which integrates lower layer addresses and P2P IDs in application layer and makes simple cryptographical assignment possible. A related paper entitled Pastry over Ad-Hoc Networks with Automatic Flat Address Configuration was submitted to Elsevier Journal of Ad Hoc Networks in May. (2) an effective ring topology construction algorithm which builds perfect ring in P2P ID space using only simplest multi-hop unicast or multicast. Upon this ring, popular structured P2P networks like Chord, Pastry could be built with great ease. A related paper entitled Chord Bootstrapping on MANETs - All Roads lead to Rome will be ready for submission after defense of the dissertation

Smart Wireless Sensor Networks

The recent development of communication and sensor technology results in the growth of a new attractive and challenging area - wireless sensor networks (WSNs). A wireless sensor network which consists of a large number of sensor nodes is deployed in environmental fields to serve various applications. Facilitated with the ability of wireless communication and intelligent computation, these nodes become smart sensors which do not only perceive ambient physical parameters but also be able to process information, cooperate with each other and self-organize into the network. These new features assist the sensor nodes as well as the network to operate more efficiently in terms of both data acquisition and energy consumption. Special purposes of the applications require design and operation of WSNs different from conventional networks such as the internet. The network design must take into account of the objectives of specific applications. The nature of deployed environment must be considered. The limited of sensor nodes� resources such as memory, computational ability, communication bandwidth and energy source are the challenges in network design. A smart wireless sensor network must be able to deal with these constraints as well as to guarantee the connectivity, coverage, reliability and security of network's operation for a maximized lifetime. This book discusses various aspects of designing such smart wireless sensor networks. Main topics includes: design methodologies, network protocols and algorithms, quality of service management, coverage optimization, time synchronization and security techniques for sensor networks

Ad-hoc Stream Adaptive Protocol

With the growing market of smart-phones, sophisticated applications that do extensive computation are common on mobile platform; and with consumers’ high expectation of technologies to stay connected on the go, academic researchers and industries have been making efforts to find ways to stream multimedia contents to mobile devices. However, the restricted wireless channel bandwidth, unstable nature of wireless channels, and unpredictable nature of mobility, has been the major road block for wireless streaming advance forward. In this paper, various recent studies on mobility and P2P system proposal are explained and analyzed, and propose a new design based on existing P2P systems, aimed to solve the wireless and mobility issues