A distributed key establishment scheme for wireless mesh networks using identity-based cryptography

In this paper, we propose a secure and efficient key establishment scheme designed with respect to the unique requirements of Wireless Mesh Networks. Our security model is based on Identity-based key establishment scheme without the utilization of a trusted authority for private key operations. Rather, this task is performed by a collaboration of users; a threshold number of users come together in a coalition so that they generate the private key. We performed simulative performance evaluation in order to show the effect of both the network size and the threshold value. Results show a tradeoff between resiliency and efficiency: increasing the threshold value or the number of mesh nodes also increases the resiliency but negatively effects the efficiency. For threshold values smaller than 8 and for number of mesh nodes in between 40 and 100, at least 90% of the mesh nodes can compute their private keys within at most 70 seconds. On the other hand, at threshold value 8, an increase in the number of mesh nodes from 40 to 100 results in 25% increase in the rate of successful private key generations

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

Integrating security solutions to support nanoCMOS electronics research

The UK Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) funded Meeting the Design Challenges of nanoCMOS Electronics (nanoCMOS) is developing a research infrastructure for collaborative electronics research across multiple institutions in the UK with especially strong industrial and commercial involvement. Unlike other domains, the electronics industry is driven by the necessity of protecting the intellectual property of the data, designs and software associated with next generation electronics devices and therefore requires fine-grained security. Similarly, the project also demands seamless access to large scale high performance compute resources for atomic scale device simulations and the capability to manage the hundreds of thousands of files and the metadata associated with these simulations. Within this context, the project has explored a wide range of authentication and authorization infrastructures facilitating compute resource access and providing fine-grained security over numerous distributed file stores and files. We conclude that no single security solution meets the needs of the project. This paper describes the experiences of applying X.509-based certificates and public key infrastructures, VOMS, PERMIS, Kerberos and the Internet2 Shibboleth technologies for nanoCMOS security. We outline how we are integrating these solutions to provide a complete end-end security framework meeting the demands of the nanoCMOS electronics domain

Building Trust Networks

The common agreement in the industry is that the Public Key Infrastructure is complex and expensive. From the year 1976 with the introduction of public key cryptography and the introduction of PKI concept in 1977 a lot of scientific resources has been spent on creation of usable key exchange systems and concepts to build trust networks. Most EU Member States have implemented their own national Public Key Infrastructure solutions mainly to enable strong authentication of citizens. They are however not the only systems within the EU to utilize PKI. Due to the nature of the PKI it is most convenient or suitable in an environment with stakeholders with similar agendas. This has resulted in several new PKI developments for specific purposes, within one industry or one vertical such as healthcare. Some Member States have tried to incorporate vertical needs with an all-purpose PKI solution, such as the Austrian eID card with so called sector specific certificates (http://ec.europa.eu/idabc/en/document/4486/5584). From the CIA (Confidentiality, Integrity, Availability) triangle public key cryptography provides confidentiality and integrity. The modern world however has more requirements in environments where sensitive information is being exchanged. It is not enough to know identity of the entity trying to access the information, but to also know the entity permissions or privileges regarding the requested resource. The authorization process grants the user specific permissions to e.g. access, modify or delete resources. A pure PKI does not allow us to build complex authorization policies, and therefore some of the Member States have built (authentication and) authorization solutions on top of existing authentication infrastructures, especially in the eGovernment sector. The scientific community has also tried to solve this issue by creating extensions to the basic PKI concept, and some of these concepts have been successful. Another problem with large scales systems is the key distribution. Managing a large number of keys using a central solution such as PKI has proven to be problematic in certain conditions. Either there are tradeoffs in security, or problems with application support. The last issue deals with public key cryptography itself. Current cryptography relies on the fact that it provides enough security based on availability of the resources, i.e. computational power. New approaches have been introduced both scientifically and commercially by moving away from the mathematics to other areas such as quantum mechanics. This paper is a quick review on some of the existing systems and their benefits and inherent challenges as well as a short introduction to new developments in the areas of authentication, authorization and key distribution.JRC.G.6-Security technology assessmen

Certificate Path Verification in Hierarchical and Peer-to-Peer Public Key Infrastructures

“Authentication of users in an automated business transaction is commonly realized by means of a Public Key Infrastructure(PKI). A PKI is a framework on which the security services are built. Each user or end entity is given a digitally signed data structure called digital certificate. In Hierarchical PKI, certificate path is unidirectional, so certificate path development and validation is simple and straight forward. Peer-to-Peer(also called Mesh PKI) architecture is one of the most popular PKI trust models that is widely used in automated business transactions, but certificate path verification is very complex since there are multiple paths between users and the certification path is bidirectional. In this paper, we demonstrate the advantage of certificate path verification in Hierarchical PKI based on forward path construction method over reverse path construction method with respect to the time requirement. We also propose a novel method to convert a peer-to-peer PKI to a Depth First Search(DFS) spanning tree to simplify the certificate path verification by avoiding multiple paths between users, since the DFS spanning tree equivalent of peer-to-peer PKI contains only one path between any two Certification Authorities

A survey on cyber security for smart grid communications

A smart grid is a new form of electricity network with high fidelity power-flow control, self-healing, and energy reliability and energy security using digital communications and control technology. To upgrade an existing power grid into a smart grid, it requires significant dependence on intelligent and secure communication infrastructures. It requires security frameworks for distributed communications, pervasive computing and sensing technologies in smart grid. However, as many of the communication technologies currently recommended to use by a smart grid is vulnerable in cyber security, it could lead to unreliable system operations, causing unnecessary expenditure, even consequential disaster to both utilities and consumers. In this paper, we summarize the cyber security requirements and the possible vulnerabilities in smart grid communications and survey the current solutions on cyber security for smart grid communications. © 2012 IEEE

Grid Infrastructure for Domain Decomposition Methods in Computational ElectroMagnetics

The accurate and efficient solution of Maxwell's equation is the problem addressed by the scientific discipline called Computational ElectroMagnetics (CEM). Many macroscopic phenomena in a great number of fields are governed by this set of differential equations: electronic, geophysics, medical and biomedical technologies, virtual EM prototyping, besides the traditional antenna and propagation applications. Therefore, many efforts are focussed on the development of new and more efficient approach to solve Maxwell's equation. The interest in CEM applications is growing on. Several problems, hard to figure out few years ago, can now be easily addressed thanks to the reliability and flexibility of new technologies, together with the increased computational power. This technology evolution opens the possibility to address large and complex tasks. Many of these applications aim to simulate the electromagnetic behavior, for example in terms of input impedance and radiation pattern in antenna problems, or Radar Cross Section for scattering applications. Instead, problems, which solution requires high accuracy, need to implement full wave analysis techniques, e.g., virtual prototyping context, where the objective is to obtain reliable simulations in order to minimize measurement number, and as consequence their cost. Besides, other tasks require the analysis of complete structures (that include an high number of details) by directly simulating a CAD Model. This approach allows to relieve researcher of the burden of removing useless details, while maintaining the original complexity and taking into account all details. Unfortunately, this reduction implies: (a) high computational effort, due to the increased number of degrees of freedom, and (b) worsening of spectral properties of the linear system during complex analysis. The above considerations underline the needs to identify appropriate information technologies that ease solution achievement and fasten required elaborations. The authors analysis and expertise infer that Grid Computing techniques can be very useful to these purposes. Grids appear mainly in high performance computing environments. In this context, hundreds of off-the-shelf nodes are linked together and work in parallel to solve problems, that, previously, could be addressed sequentially or by using supercomputers. Grid Computing is a technique developed to elaborate enormous amounts of data and enables large-scale resource sharing to solve problem by exploiting distributed scenarios. The main advantage of Grid is due to parallel computing, indeed if a problem can be split in smaller tasks, that can be executed independently, its solution calculation fasten up considerably. To exploit this advantage, it is necessary to identify a technique able to split original electromagnetic task into a set of smaller subproblems. The Domain Decomposition (DD) technique, based on the block generation algorithm introduced in Matekovits et al. (2007) and Francavilla et al. (2011), perfectly addresses our requirements (see Section 3.4 for details). In this chapter, a Grid Computing infrastructure is presented. This architecture allows parallel block execution by distributing tasks to nodes that belong to the Grid. The set of nodes is composed by physical machines and virtualized ones. This feature enables great flexibility and increase available computational power. Furthermore, the presence of virtual nodes allows a full and efficient Grid usage, indeed the presented architecture can be used by different users that run different applications