Security in transnational interoperable PPDR communications: threats and requirements

The relevance of cross border security operations has been identified as a priority at European level for a long time. A European network where Public Protection and Disaster Relief (PPDR) forces share communications processes and a legal framework would greatly enforce response to disaster recovery and security against crime. Nevertheless, uncertainty on costs, timescale and functionalities have slowed down the interconnection of PPDR networks across countries and limited the transnational cooperation of their PPDR forces so far. In this context, the European research project ISITEP is aimed at developing the legal, operational and technical framework to achieve a cost effective solution for PPDR interoperability across European countries. Inter alia, ISITEP project is specifying a new Inter-System-Interface (ISI) interface for the interconnection of current TETRA and TETRAPOL networks that can be deployed over Internet Protocol (IP) connectivity. This approach turns communications security as a central aspect to consider when deploying the new IP ISI protocol between PPDR national networks. Ensuring that threats to the interconnected communications systems and terminals are sufficiently and appropriately reduced by technical, procedural and environmental countermeasures is vital to realise the trusted and secure communication system needed for the pursued PPDR transnational cooperation activities. In this context, this paper describes the framework and methodology defined to carry out the development of the security requirements and provides a discussion on the undertaken security risk and vulnerability analysis.Peer ReviewedPostprint (author's final draft

Developing Robust VoIP Router Honeypots Using Device Fingerprints

As the telegram was replaced by telephony, so to Voice over IP (VoIP) systems are replacing conventional switched wire telephone devices, these systems rely on Internet connectivity for the transmission of voice conversations. This paper is an outline of ongoing preliminary research into malfeasant VoIP activity on the Internet. 30 years ago PABX systems were compromised by hackers wanting to make long distance calls at some other entities expense. This activity faded as telephony became cheaper and PABX systems had countermeasures installed to overcome attacks. Now the world has moved onto the provision of telephony via broadband enabled Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) this service is now being provided as a replacement for conventional fixed wire telephony by major telecommunication providers worldwide. Due to increasing bandwidth it is possible for systems to support multiple voice connections simultaneously. The networked nature of the Internet allows for attackers of these VoIP systems to enumerate and potentially attack and compromise a wide range of vulnerable systems

Cloud Communication Based Avionics

This technology involves introduction of cloud computing technology inside aircraft for multiplexing data and transfer the multiplexed signal to a communication satellite where demultiplexing of data takes place. These data are then sent to various corresponding transmission towers and the response signal reaches the satellite from these transmission towers where multiplexing of various signals is done. Now the multiplexed signal is again sent to cloud inside aircraft thus making communication possible without any vulnerability or distortion

A Distributed Architecture for Spam Mitigation on 4G Mobile Networks

The 4G of mobile networks is considered a technology-opportunistic and user-centric system combining the economical and technological advantages of various transmission technologies. Part of its new architecture dubbed as the System Architecture Evolution, 4G mobile networks will implement an evolved packet core. Although this will provide various critical advantages, it will however expose telecom networks to serious IP-based attacks. One often adopted solution by the industry to mitigate such attacks is based on a centralized security architecture. This centralized approach nonetheless, requires large processing resources to handle huge amount of traffic, which results in a significant over dimensioning problem in the centralized nodes causing this approach to fail from achieving its security task.\\ In this thesis, we primarily contribute by highlighting on two Spam flooding attacks, namely RTP VoIP SPIT and SMTP SPAM and demonstrating, through simulations and comparisons, their feasibility and DoS impact on 4G mobile networks and subsequent effects on mobile network operators. We further contribute by proposing a distributed architecture on the mobile architecture that is secure by mitigating those attacks, efficient by solving the over dimensioning problem and cost-effective by utilizing `off the shelf' low-cost hardware in the distributed nodes. Through additional simulation and analysis, we reveal the viability and effectiveness of our approach

An Enhanced Entropy Approach to Detect and Prevent DDoS in Cloud Environment

Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attack launched in Cloud computing environment resulted in loss of sensitive information, Data corruption and even rarely lead to service shutdown. Entropy based DDoS mitigation approach analyzes the heuristic data and acts dynamically according to the traffic behavior to effectively segregate the characteristics of incoming traffic. Heuristic data helps in detecting the traffic condition to mitigate the flooding attack. Then, the traffic data is analyzed to distinguish legitimate and attack characteristics. An additional Trust mechanism has been deployed to differentiate legitimate and aggressive legitimate users. Hence, Goodput of Datacenter has been improved by detecting and mitigating the incoming traffic threats at each stage. Simulation results proved that the Enhanced Entropy approach behaves better at DDoS attack prone zones. Profit analysis also proved that the proposed mechanism is deployable at Datacenter for attack mitigation and resource protection which eventually results in beneficial service at slenderized revenu