552 research outputs found
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
Observation-based Cooperation Enforcement in Ad Hoc Networks
Ad hoc networks rely on the cooperation of the nodes participating in the
network to forward packets for each other. A node may decide not to cooperate
to save its resources while still using the network to relay its traffic. If
too many nodes exhibit this behavior, network performance degrades and
cooperating nodes may find themselves unfairly loaded. Most previous efforts to
counter this behavior have relied on further cooperation between nodes to
exchange reputation information about other nodes. If a node observes another
node not participating correctly, it reports this observation to other nodes
who then take action to avoid being affected and potentially punish the bad
node by refusing to forward its traffic. Unfortunately, such second-hand
reputation information is subject to false accusations and requires maintaining
trust relationships with other nodes. The objective of OCEAN is to avoid this
trust-management machinery and see how far we can get simply by using direct
first-hand observations of other nodes' behavior. We find that, in many
scenarios, OCEAN can do as well as, or even better than, schemes requiring
second-hand reputation exchanges. This encouraging result could possibly help
obviate solutions requiring trust-management for some contexts.Comment: 10 pages, 7 figure
Algebraic Watchdog: Mitigating Misbehavior in Wireless Network Coding
We propose a secure scheme for wireless network coding, called the algebraic
watchdog. By enabling nodes to detect malicious behaviors probabilistically and
use overheard messages to police their downstream neighbors locally, the
algebraic watchdog delivers a secure global self-checking network. Unlike
traditional Byzantine detection protocols which are receiver-based, this
protocol gives the senders an active role in checking the node downstream. The
key idea is inspired by Marti et al.'s watchdog-pathrater, which attempts to
detect and mitigate the effects of routing misbehavior.
As an initial building block of a such system, we first focus on a two-hop
network. We present a graphical model to understand the inference process nodes
execute to police their downstream neighbors; as well as to compute, analyze,
and approximate the probabilities of misdetection and false detection. In
addition, we present an algebraic analysis of the performance using an
hypothesis testing framework that provides exact formulae for probabilities of
false detection and misdetection.
We then extend the algebraic watchdog to a more general network setting, and
propose a protocol in which we can establish trust in coded systems in a
distributed manner. We develop a graphical model to detect the presence of an
adversarial node downstream within a general multi-hop network. The structure
of the graphical model (a trellis) lends itself to well-known algorithms, such
as the Viterbi algorithm, which can compute the probabilities of misdetection
and false detection. We show analytically that as long as the min-cut is not
dominated by the Byzantine adversaries, upstream nodes can monitor downstream
neighbors and allow reliable communication with certain probability. Finally,
we present simulation results that support our analysis.Comment: 10 pages, 10 figures, Submitted to IEEE Journal on Selected Areas in
Communications (JSAC) "Advances in Military Networking and Communications
Resilient networking in wireless sensor networks
This report deals with security in wireless sensor networks (WSNs),
especially in network layer. Multiple secure routing protocols have been
proposed in the literature. However, they often use the cryptography to secure
routing functionalities. The cryptography alone is not enough to defend against
multiple attacks due to the node compromise. Therefore, we need more
algorithmic solutions. In this report, we focus on the behavior of routing
protocols to determine which properties make them more resilient to attacks.
Our aim is to find some answers to the following questions. Are there any
existing protocols, not designed initially for security, but which already
contain some inherently resilient properties against attacks under which some
portion of the network nodes is compromised? If yes, which specific behaviors
are making these protocols more resilient? We propose in this report an
overview of security strategies for WSNs in general, including existing attacks
and defensive measures. In this report we focus at the network layer in
particular, and an analysis of the behavior of four particular routing
protocols is provided to determine their inherent resiliency to insider
attacks. The protocols considered are: Dynamic Source Routing (DSR),
Gradient-Based Routing (GBR), Greedy Forwarding (GF) and Random Walk Routing
(RWR)
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
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