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

Educational and Laboratory System for Studying Man-in-the-Middle Attacks and Ways to Protect against Them

For the implementation of the Master’s program “Business Continuity and Information Security Maintenance” in the field of specialty 10.04.01 “Information Security”, a software shell of the educational laboratory complex (ELC) designed to study the “Man in the middle” network attacks has been developed in the NRNU MEPhI. In the framework of the ELC four basic attacks of this type are modeled: UDP Hijacking, Session Hijacking, TCP Hijacking and Bucket brigade attack. The paper presents two ELC applications: the instructor’s application and the student’s application. To assess the students’ knowledge after performing laboratory work, the “Testing” module for assessing progress testing has been created, which includes questions for testing using the ELC software shell. Methodical instructions on performance of laboratory work have been written. Within the framework of the “Protected Information Systems” discipline of the Information Security of Banking Systems Department of the NNIU MEPhI, implementing the above-mentioned Mastre’s program, a successful approbation of the developed ELC has been carried out. In conclusion the ways to further improvement of the ELC are suggested

Context-Aware Security for 6G Wireless The Role of Physical Layer Security

Sixth generation systems are expected to face new security challenges, while opening up new frontiers towards context awareness in the wireless edge. The workhorse behind this projected technological leap will be a whole new set of sensing capabilities predicted for 6G devices, in addition to the ability to achieve high precision localization. The combination of these enhanced traits can give rise to a new breed of context-aware security protocols, following the quality of security (QoSec) paradigm. In this framework, physical layer security solutions emerge as competitive candidates for low complexity, low-delay and low-footprint, adaptive, flexible and context aware security schemes, leveraging the physical layer of the communications in genuinely cross-layer protocols, for the first time.Comment: arXiv admin note: text overlap with arXiv:2011.0732

Adversarial reconfigurable intelligent surface against physical layer key generation

The development of reconfigurable intelligent surfaces (RIS) has recently advanced the research of physical layer security (PLS). Beneficial impacts of RIS include but are not limited to offering a new degree-of-freedom (DoF) for key-less PLS optimization, and increasing channel randomness for physical layer secret key generation (PL-SKG). However, there is a lack of research studying how adversarial RIS can be used to attack and obtain legitimate secret keys generated by PL-SKG. In this work, we show an Eve-controlled adversarial RIS (Eve-RIS), by inserting into the legitimate channel a random and reciprocal channel, can partially reconstruct the secret keys from the legitimate PL-SKG process. To operationalize this concept, we design Eve-RIS schemes against two PL-SKG techniques used: (i) the CSI-based PL-SKG, and (ii) the two-way cross multiplication based PL-SKG. The channel probing at Eve-RIS is realized by compressed sensing designs with a small number of radio-frequency (RF) chains. Then, the optimal RIS phase is obtained by maximizing the Eve-RIS inserted deceiving channel. Our analysis and results show that even with a passive RIS, our proposed Eve-RIS can achieve a high key match rate with legitimate users, and is resistant to most of the current defensive approaches. This means the novel Eve-RIS provides a new eavesdropping threat on PL-SKG, which can spur new research areas to counter adversarial RIS attacks

Physical-layer security in 6G networks

The sixth generation (6G) of mobile network will be composed by different nodes, from macro-devices (satellite) to nano-devices (sensors inside the human body), providing a full connectivity fabric all around us. These heterogeneous nodes constitute an ultra dense network managing tons of information, often very sensitive. To trust the services provided by such network, security is a mandatory feature by design. In this scenario, physical-layer security (PLS) can act as a first line of defense, providing security even to low-resourced nodes in different environments. This paper discusses challenges, solutions and visions of PLS in beyond-5G networks

Elucidation of the role of obesity and air pollution in the asthma etiology in adults

Non-communicable disease (NCD) epidemic threatens public health in all regions of the world. Asthma is one of the major NCDs along with cardiovascular diseases, cancer, diabetes, and other chronic respiratory diseases. Asthma etiology is poorly understood, hindering the efficient primary prevention. Recent findings indicate that asthma is a mixture of various phenotypes with potentially different mechanism. While obesity and air pollution have been indicated as risk factors for asthma, it is not clear yet whether they contribute to the development of asthma rather than exacerbation of already existing disease and through which mechanisms they exert the effects on asthma development. Elucidation of such mechanism, especially if it is shared by multiple exposures and/or multiple diseases, will critically benefit primary prevention. The research efforts for mechanistic understanding can be contextualized as part of exposome — the entirety of the exposures an individual experiences throughout the life course — and aging phenome — the diseases and morbidities often accompanied with aging — research, where systems approach e.g. omics analysis finds a critical usage. The Swiss Cohort Study on Air Pollution and Lung and Heart Diseases in Adults (SAPALDIA) is an on-going population cohort since 1991. With its detailed information on the participants' health, life style, and exposure, SAPALDIA offers a unique opportunity to investigate the NCD etiology. This PhD project aimed to contribute to better understanding the role of obesity and air pollution exposure in asthma etiology, taking the heterogeneity of the disease phenotype into account. We identified four asthma phenotypes using latent class analysis, which showed heterogeneity in the association with obesity. We conducted epigenomics — assessments of genome-wide DNA methylation — and metabolomics — assessments of the entirety ofsmall molecules — on the blood samples taken from the adult-onset asthma cases and controls. Epigenomics pathway analysis revealed that DNA methylation on the inflammation-related genes modifies the effect of BMI on non-atopic adult-onset asthma. This pathway analysis also provided evidence that the NLRP3-IL1B-IL17 axis, a component of innate immunity, plays a role in the asthma etiology in humans, confirming the previous research findings in mice experiments. Metabolomics pathway analysis pointed to the perturbation of inflammatory pathways as a potentially shared mechanism through which long-term air pollution exposure affects adult-onset asthma and cardio- and cerebrovascular diseases. Despite the cross-sectional study design and the limited statistical power, this PhD project achieved to demonstrate the importance of distinguishing asthma phenotypes to study etiology; to exemplify the usefulness of cohort studies with biobanks in exposome research and the applicability of systems approach in cohort studies; and to provide a proof-of-concept evidence of the disease mechanism shared by multiple NCDs. Our findings can be considered as the first step of the translational approach — innovation, validation, and application. Once validated by future research including replication in other populations and consolidation of causality using Mendelian randomization, the pursuit of mechanistic understanding can guide prevention strategies to efficiently tackle the NCD epidemic