1,253 research outputs found
A Survey on Wireless Security: Technical Challenges, Recent Advances and Future Trends
This paper examines the security vulnerabilities and threats imposed by the
inherent open nature of wireless communications and to devise efficient defense
mechanisms for improving the wireless network security. We first summarize the
security requirements of wireless networks, including their authenticity,
confidentiality, integrity and availability issues. Next, a comprehensive
overview of security attacks encountered in wireless networks is presented in
view of the network protocol architecture, where the potential security threats
are discussed at each protocol layer. We also provide a survey of the existing
security protocols and algorithms that are adopted in the existing wireless
network standards, such as the Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, WiMAX, and the long-term
evolution (LTE) systems. Then, we discuss the state-of-the-art in
physical-layer security, which is an emerging technique of securing the open
communications environment against eavesdropping attacks at the physical layer.
We also introduce the family of various jamming attacks and their
counter-measures, including the constant jammer, intermittent jammer, reactive
jammer, adaptive jammer and intelligent jammer. Additionally, we discuss the
integration of physical-layer security into existing authentication and
cryptography mechanisms for further securing wireless networks. Finally, some
technical challenges which remain unresolved at the time of writing are
summarized and the future trends in wireless security are discussed.Comment: 36 pages. Accepted to Appear in Proceedings of the IEEE, 201
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 Study of IEEE 802.15.4 Security Framework for Wireless Body Area Network
A Wireless Body Area Network (WBAN) is a collection of low-power and
lightweight wireless sensor nodes that are used to monitor the human body
functions and the surrounding environment. It supports a number of innovative
and interesting applications, including ubiquitous healthcare and Consumer
Electronics (CE) applications. Since WBAN nodes are used to collect sensitive
(life-critical) information and may operate in hostile environments, they
require strict security mechanisms to prevent malicious interaction with the
system. In this paper, we first highlight major security requirements and
Denial of Service (DoS) attacks in WBAN at Physical, Medium Access Control
(MAC), Network, and Transport layers. Then we discuss the IEEE 802.15.4
security framework and identify the security vulnerabilities and major attacks
in the context of WBAN. Different types of attacks on the Contention Access
Period (CAP) and Contention Free Period (CFP) parts of the superframe are
analyzed and discussed. It is observed that a smart attacker can successfully
corrupt an increasing number of GTS slots in the CFP period and can
considerably affect the Quality of Service (QoS) in WBAN (since most of the
data is carried in CFP period). As we increase the number of smart attackers
the corrupted GTS slots are eventually increased, which prevents the legitimate
nodes to utilize the bandwidth efficiently. This means that the direct
adaptation of IEEE 802.15.4 security framework for WBAN is not totally secure
for certain WBAN applications. New solutions are required to integrate high
level security in WBAN.Comment: 14 pages, 7 figures, 2 table
Model checking medium access control for sensor networks
We describe verification of S-MAC, a medium access control protocol designed for wireless sensor networks, by means of the PRISM model checker. The S-MAC protocol is built on top of the IEEE 802.11 standard for wireless ad hoc networks and, as such, it uses the same randomised backoff procedure as a means to avoid collision. In order to minimise energy consumption, in S-MAC, nodes are periodically put into a sleep state. Synchronisation of the sleeping schedules is necessary for the nodes to be able to communicate. Intuitively, energy saving obtained through a periodic sleep mechanism will be at the expense of performance. In previous work on S-MAC verification, a combination of analytical techniques and simulation has been used to confirm the correctness of this intuition for a simplified (abstract) version of the protocol in which the initial schedules coordination phase is assumed correct. We show how we have used the PRISM model checker to verify the behaviour of S-MAC and compare it to that of IEEE 802.11
Threat modeling for communication security of IoT-enabled digital logistics
The modernization of logistics through the use of Wireless Sensor Network (WSN) Internet of Things (IoT) devices promises great efficiencies. Sensor devices can provide real-time or near real-time condition monitoring and location tracking of assets during the shipping process, helping to detect delays, prevent loss, and stop fraud. However, the integration of low-cost WSN/IoT systems into a pre-existing industry should first consider security within the context of the application environment. In the case of logistics, the sensors are mobile, unreachable during the deployment, and accessible in potentially uncontrolled environments. The risks to the sensors include physical damage, either malicious/intentional or unintentional due to accident or the environment, or physical attack on a sensor, or remote communication attack. The easiest attack against any sensor is against its communication. The use of IoT sensors for logistics involves the deployment conditions of mobility, inaccesibility, and uncontrolled environments. Any threat analysis needs to take these factors into consideration. This paper presents a threat model focused on an IoT-enabled asset tracking/monitoring system for smart logistics. A review of the current literature shows that no current IoT threat model highlights logistics-specific IoT security threats for the shipping of critical assets. A general tracking/monitoring system architecture is presented that describes the roles of the components. A logistics-specific threat model that considers the operational challenges of sensors used in logistics, both malicious and non-malicious threats, is then given. The threat model categorizes each threat and suggests a potential countermeasure
A Comprehensive Survey on the Cyber-Security of Smart Grids: Cyber-Attacks, Detection, Countermeasure Techniques, and Future Directions
One of the significant challenges that smart grid networks face is
cyber-security. Several studies have been conducted to highlight those security
challenges. However, the majority of these surveys classify attacks based on
the security requirements, confidentiality, integrity, and availability,
without taking into consideration the accountability requirement. In addition,
some of these surveys focused on the Transmission Control Protocol/Internet
Protocol (TCP/IP) model, which does not differentiate between the application,
session, and presentation and the data link and physical layers of the Open
System Interconnection (OSI) model. In this survey paper, we provide a
classification of attacks based on the OSI model and discuss in more detail the
cyber-attacks that can target the different layers of smart grid networks
communication. We also propose new classifications for the detection and
countermeasure techniques and describe existing techniques under each category.
Finally, we discuss challenges and future research directions
IEEE 802.11 i Security and Vulnerabilities
Despite using a variety of comprehensive preventive security measures, the Robust Secure Networks (RSNs) remain vulnerable to a number of attacks. Failure of preventive measures to address all RSN vulnerabilities dictates the need for enhancing the performance of Wireless Intrusion Detection Systems (WIDSs) to detect all attacks on RSNs with less false positive and false negative rates
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