Improved search methods for assessing Delay-Tolerant Networks vulnerability to colluding strong heterogeneous attacks

Increasingly more digital communication is routed among wireless, mobile computers over ad-hoc, unsecured communication channels. In this paper, we design two stochastic search algorithms (a greedy heuristic, and an evolutionary algorithm) which automatically search for strong insider attack methods against a given ad-hoc, delay-tolerant communication protocol, and thus expose its weaknesses. To assess their performance, we apply the two algorithms to two simulated, large-scale mobile scenarios (of different route morphology) with 200 nodes having free range of movement. We investigate a choice of two standard attack strategies (dropping messages and flooding the network), and four delay-tolerant routing protocols: First Contact, Epidemic, Spray and Wait, and MaxProp. We find dramatic drops in performance: replicative protocols (Epidemic, Spray and Wait, MaxProp), formerly deemed resilient, are compromised to different degrees (delivery rates between 24% and 87%), while a forwarding protocol (First Contact) is shown to drop delivery rates to under 5% — in all cases by well-crafted attack strategies and with an attacker group of size less than 10% the total network size. Overall, we show that the two proposed methods combined constitute an effective means to discover (at design-time) and raise awareness about the weaknesses and strengths of existing ad-hoc, delay-tolerant communication protocols against potential malicious cyber-attacks

Optimizing groups of colluding strong attackers in mobile urban communication networks with evolutionary algorithms

In novel forms of the Social Internet of Things, any mobile user within communication range may help routing messages for another user in the network. The resulting message delivery rate depends both on the users’ mobility patterns and the message load in the network. This new type of configuration, however, poses new challenges to security, amongst them, assessing the effect that a group of colluding malicious participants can have on the global message delivery rate in such a network is far from trivial. In this work, after modeling such a question as an optimization problem, we are able to find quite interesting results by coupling a network simulator with an evolutionary algorithm. The chosen algorithm is specifically designed to solve problems whose solutions can be decomposed into parts sharing the same structure. We demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed approach on two medium-sized Delay-Tolerant Networks, realistically simulated in the urban contexts of two cities with very different route topology: Venice and San Francisco. In all experiments, our methodology produces attack patterns that greatly lower network performance with respect to previous studies on the subject, as the evolutionary core is able to exploit the specific weaknesses of each target configuration.<br/

A Taxonomy on Misbehaving Nodes in Delay Tolerant Networks

Delay Tolerant Networks (DTNs) are type of Intermittently Connected Networks (ICNs) featured by long delay, intermittent connectivity, asymmetric data rates and high error rates. DTNs have been primarily developed for InterPlanetary Networks (IPNs), however, have shown promising potential in challenged networks i.e. DakNet, ZebraNet, KioskNet and WiderNet. Due to unique nature of intermittent connectivity and long delay, DTNs face challenges in routing, key management, privacy, fragmentation and misbehaving nodes. Here, misbehaving nodes i.e. malicious and selfish nodes launch various attacks including flood, packet drop and fake packets attack, inevitably overuse scarce resources (e.g., buffer and bandwidth) in DTNs. The focus of this survey is on a review of misbehaving node attacks, and detection algorithms. We firstly classify various of attacks depending on the type of misbehaving nodes. Then, detection algorithms for these misbehaving nodes are categorized depending on preventive and detective based features. The panoramic view on misbehaving nodes and detection algorithms are further analyzed, evaluated mathematically through a number of performance metrics. Future directions guiding this topic are also presented

Trust Management for P2P application in Delay Tolerant Mobile Ad-hoc Networks. An Investigation into the development of a Trust Management Framework for Peer to Peer File Sharing Applications in Delay Tolerant Disconnected Mobile Ad-hoc Networks.

Security is essential to communication between entities in the internet. Delay tolerant and disconnected Mobile Ad Hoc Networks (MANET) are a class of networks characterized by high end-to-end path latency and frequent end-to-end disconnections and are often termed as challenged networks. In these networks nodes are sparsely populated and without the existence of a central server, acquiring global information is difficult and impractical if not impossible and therefore traditional security schemes proposed for MANETs cannot be applied. This thesis reports trust management schemes for peer to peer (P2P) application in delay tolerant disconnected MANETs. Properties of a profile based file sharing application are analyzed and a framework for structured P2P overlay over delay tolerant disconnected MANETs is proposed. The framework is implemented and tested on J2ME based smart phones using Bluetooth communication protocol. A light weight Content Driven Data Propagation Protocol (CDDPP) for content based data delivery in MANETs is presented. The CDDPP implements a user profile based content driven P2P file sharing application in disconnected MANETs. The CDDPP protocol is further enhanced by proposing an adaptive opportunistic multihop content based routing protocol (ORP). ORP protocol considers the store-carry-forward paradigm for multi-hop packet delivery in delay tolerant MANETs and allows multi-casting to selected number of nodes. Performance of ORP is compared with a similar autonomous gossiping (A/G) protocol using simulations. This work also presents a framework for trust management based on dynamicity aware graph re-labelling system (DA-GRS) for trust management in mobile P2P applications. The DA-GRS uses a distributed algorithm to identify trustworthy nodes and generate trustable groups while isolating misleading or untrustworthy nodes. Several simulations in various environment settings show the effectiveness of the proposed framework in creating trust based communities. This work also extends the FIRE distributed trust model for MANET applications by incorporating witness based interactions for acquiring trust ratings. A witness graph building mechanism in FIRE+ is provided with several trust building policies to identify malicious nodes and detect collusive behaviour in nodes. This technique not only allows trust computation based on witness trust ratings but also provides protection against a collusion attack. Finally, M-trust, a light weight trust management scheme based on FIRE+ trust model is presented

Modelling of the Electric Vehicle Charging Infrastructure as Cyber Physical Power Systems: A Review on Components, Standards, Vulnerabilities and Attacks

The increasing number of electric vehicles (EVs) has led to the growing need to establish EV charging infrastructures (EVCIs) with fast charging capabilities to reduce congestion at the EV charging stations (EVCS) and also provide alternative solutions for EV owners without residential charging facilities. The EV charging stations are broadly classified based on i) where the charging equipment is located - on-board and off-board charging stations, and ii) the type of current and power levels - AC and DC charging stations. The DC charging stations are further classified into fast and extreme fast charging stations. This article focuses mainly on several components that model the EVCI as a cyberphysical system (CPS)

Formal modelling and analysis of denial of services attacks in wireless sensor networks

Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) have attracted considerable research attention in recent years because of the perceived potential benefits offered by self-organising, multi-hop networks consisting of low-cost and small wireless devices for monitoring or control applications in di±cult environments. WSN may be deployed in hostile or inaccessible environments and are often unattended. These conditions present many challenges in ensuring that WSNs work effectively and survive long enough to fulfil their functionalities. Securing a WSN against any malicious attack is a particular challenge. Due to the limited resources of nodes, traditional routing protocols are not appropriate in WSNs and innovative methods are used to route data from source nodes to sink nodes (base stations). To evaluate the routing protocols against DoS attacks, an innovative design method of combining formal modelling and computer simulations has been proposed. This research has shown that by using formal modelling hidden bugs (e.g. vulnerability to attacks) in routing protocols can be detected automatically. In addition, through a rigorous testing, a new routing protocol, RAEED (Robust formally Analysed protocol for wirEless sEnsor networks Deployment), was developed which is able to operate effectively in the presence of hello flood, rushing, wormhole, black hole, gray hole, sink hole, INA and jamming attacks. It has been proved formally and using computer simulation that the RAEED can pacify these DoS attacks. A second contribution of this thesis relates to the development of a framework to check the vulnerability of different routing protocols against Denial of Service(DoS) attacks. This has allowed us to evaluate formally some existing and known routing protocols against various DoS attacks iand these include TinyOS Beaconing, Authentic TinyOS using uTesla, Rumour Routing, LEACH, Direct Diffusion, INSENS, ARRIVE and ARAN protocols. This has resulted in the development of an innovative and simple defence technique with no additional hardware cost for deployment against wormhole and INA attacks. In the thesis, the detection of weaknesses in INSENS, Arrive and ARAN protocols was also addressed formally. Finally, an e±cient design methodology using a combination of formal modelling and simulation is propose to evaluate the performances of routing protocols against DoS attacks

Secure Communication in Disaster Scenarios

Während Naturkatastrophen oder terroristischer Anschläge ist die bestehende Kommunikationsinfrastruktur häufig überlastet oder fällt komplett aus. In diesen Situationen können mobile Geräte mithilfe von drahtloser ad-hoc- und unterbrechungstoleranter Vernetzung miteinander verbunden werden, um ein Notfall-Kommunikationssystem für Zivilisten und Rettungsdienste einzurichten. Falls verfügbar, kann eine Verbindung zu Cloud-Diensten im Internet eine wertvolle Hilfe im Krisen- und Katastrophenmanagement sein. Solche Kommunikationssysteme bergen jedoch ernsthafte Sicherheitsrisiken, da Angreifer versuchen könnten, vertrauliche Daten zu stehlen, gefälschte Benachrichtigungen von Notfalldiensten einzuspeisen oder Denial-of-Service (DoS) Angriffe durchzuführen. Diese Dissertation schlägt neue Ansätze zur Kommunikation in Notfallnetzen von mobilen Geräten vor, die von der Kommunikation zwischen Mobilfunkgeräten bis zu Cloud-Diensten auf Servern im Internet reichen. Durch die Nutzung dieser Ansätze werden die Sicherheit der Geräte-zu-Geräte-Kommunikation, die Sicherheit von Notfall-Apps auf mobilen Geräten und die Sicherheit von Server-Systemen für Cloud-Dienste verbessert

Security techniques for sensor systems and the Internet of Things

Sensor systems are becoming pervasive in many domains, and are recently being generalized by the Internet of Things (IoT). This wide deployment, however, presents significant security issues. We develop security techniques for sensor systems and IoT, addressing all security management phases. Prior to deployment, the nodes need to be hardened. We develop nesCheck, a novel approach that combines static analysis and dynamic checking to efficiently enforce memory safety on TinyOS applications. As security guarantees come at a cost, determining which resources to protect becomes important. Our solution, OptAll, leverages game-theoretic techniques to determine the optimal allocation of security resources in IoT networks, taking into account fixed and variable costs, criticality of different portions of the network, and risk metrics related to a specified security goal. Monitoring IoT devices and sensors during operation is necessary to detect incidents. We design Kalis, a knowledge-driven intrusion detection technique for IoT that does not target a single protocol or application, and adapts the detection strategy to the network features. As the scale of IoT makes the devices good targets for botnets, we design Heimdall, a whitelist-based anomaly detection technique for detecting and protecting against IoT-based denial of service attacks. Once our monitoring tools detect an attack, determining its actual cause is crucial to an effective reaction. We design a fine-grained analysis tool for sensor networks that leverages resident packet parameters to determine whether a packet loss attack is node- or link-related and, in the second case, locate the attack source. Moreover, we design a statistical model for determining optimal system thresholds by exploiting packet parameters variances. With our techniques\u27 diagnosis information, we develop Kinesis, a security incident response system for sensor networks designed to recover from attacks without significant interruption, dynamically selecting response actions while being lightweight in communication and energy overhead