A Framework for Secure and Survivable Wireless Sensor Networks

Wireless sensor networks increasingly become viable solutions to many challenging problems and will successively be deployed in many areas in the future. A wireless sensor network (WSN) is vulnerable to security attacks due to the insecure communication channels, limited computational and communication capabilities and unattended nature of sensor node devices, limited energy resources and memory. Security and survivability of these systems are receiving increasing attention, particularly critical infrastructure protection. So we need to design a framework that provide both security and survivability for WSNs. To meet this goals, we propose a framework for secure and survivable WSNs and we present a key management scheme as a case study to prevent the sensor networks being compromised by an adversary. This paper also considers survivability strategies for the sensor network against a variety of threats that can lead to the failure of the base station, which represents a central point of failure.key management scheme, security, survivability, WSN

Autonomic computing architecture for SCADA cyber security

Cognitive computing relates to intelligent computing platforms that are based on the disciplines of artificial intelligence, machine learning, and other innovative technologies. These technologies can be used to design systems that mimic the human brain to learn about their environment and can autonomously predict an impending anomalous situation. IBM first used the term ‘Autonomic Computing’ in 2001 to combat the looming complexity crisis (Ganek and Corbi, 2003). The concept has been inspired by the human biological autonomic system. An autonomic system is self-healing, self-regulating, self-optimising and self-protecting (Ganek and Corbi, 2003). Therefore, the system should be able to protect itself against both malicious attacks and unintended mistakes by the operator

Generic Platform for Failure Recovery in Survivable Trees

Failure recovery is a fundamental task of the dependable systems needed to achieve fault-tolerant communications, smooth operation of system components and a comfortable user interface. Tree topologies are fragile, yet they are quite popular structures in computer systems. The term survivable tree denotes the capability of the tree network to deliver messages even in the presence of failures. In this paper, we analyze the characteristics of large-scale overlay survivable trees and identify the requirements for general-purpose failure recovery mechanisms in such an environment. We outline a generic failure recovery platform for preplanned tree restoration which meets those requirements, and we focus primarily on its completeness and correctness properties. The platform is based on bypass rings and it uses a bypass routing algorithm to ensure completeness, and specialized leader election to guarantee correctness. The platform supports multiple, on-line and on-the-fly recovery, provides an optional level of fault-tolerance, protection selectivity and optimization capability. It is independent of the the protected tree type (regarding traffic direction, number of sources, etc.) and forms a basis for application-specific fragment reconnection.

Survivable algorithms and redundancy management in NASA's distributed computing systems

The design of survivable algorithms requires a solid foundation for executing them. While hardware techniques for fault-tolerant computing are relatively well understood, fault-tolerant operating systems, as well as fault-tolerant applications (survivable algorithms), are, by contrast, little understood, and much more work in this field is required. We outline some of our work that contributes to the foundation of ultrareliable operating systems and fault-tolerant algorithm design. We introduce our consensus-based framework for fault-tolerant system design. This is followed by a description of a hierarchical partitioning method for efficient consensus. A scheduler for redundancy management is introduced, and application-specific fault tolerance is described. We give an overview of our hybrid algorithm technique, which is an alternative to the formal approach given

Vertex-linked infrastructure for ad hoc networks

An ad hoc network is composed of geographically dispersed nodes that may move arbitrarily and communicate with each other without the support of a stationary infrastructure. Compared with a wireless network with a stationary infrastructure, such as a cellular network, an ad hoc network is inherently less efficient. Therefore, a number of proposals have been made to develop a quasi-stationary infrastructure for ad hoc networks. However, the dynamic nature of ad hoc networks makes it very costly to maintain such an infrastructure. This article proposes a Vertex-Linked Infrastructure (VLI) for ad hoc networks. This novel approach uses an easily deployable, survivable, wired infrastructure as a backbone of the ad hoc network, thus realizing the advantages of an infrastructure in wireless communications, but without the overhead due to maintaining such an infrastructure.published_or_final_versio