18,157 research outputs found
Dependability in wireless networks: can we rely on WiFi?
WiFi - short for "wireless fidelity" - is the commercial name for the 802.11 products that have flooded the corporate wireless local area network (WLAN) market and are becoming rapidly ingrained in our daily lives via public hotspots and digital home networks. Authentication and confidentiality are crucial issues for corporate WiFi use, but privacy and availability tend to dominate pervasive usage. However, because a technology's dependability requirements are proportional to its pervasiveness, newer applications mandate a deeper understanding of how much we can rely on WiFi and its security promises. In this article, we present an overview of WiFi vulnerabilities and investigate their proximate and ultimate origins. The intended goal is to provide a foundation to discuss WiFi dependability and its impact on current and future usage scenarios. Although a wireless network's overall security depends on the network stack to the application layer, this article focuses on specific vulnerabilities at the physical (PHY) and data (MAC) layers of 802.11 network
BANZKP: a Secure Authentication Scheme Using Zero Knowledge Proof for WBANs
-Wireless body area network(WBAN) has shown great potential in improving
healthcare quality not only for patients but also for medical staff. However,
security and privacy are still an important issue in WBANs especially in
multi-hop architectures. In this paper, we propose and present the design and
the evaluation of a secure lightweight and energy efficient authentication
scheme BANZKP based on an efficient cryptographic protocol, Zero Knowledge
Proof (ZKP) and a commitment scheme. ZKP is used to confirm the identify of the
sensor nodes, with small computational requirement, which is favorable for body
sensors given their limited resources, while the commitment scheme is used to
deal with replay attacks and hence the injection attacks by committing a
message and revealing the key later. Our scheme reduces the memory requirement
by 56.13 % compared to TinyZKP [13], the comparable alternative so far for Body
Area Networks, and uses 10 % less energy
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
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
Securing personal distributed environments
The Personal Distributed Environment (PDE) is a new concept being developed by Mobile VCE allowing future mobile users flexible access to their information and services. Unlike traditional mobile communications, the PDE user no longer needs to establish his or her personal communication link solely through one subscribing network but rather a diversity of disparate devices and access technologies whenever and wherever he or she requires. Depending on the servicesâ availability and coverage in the location, the PDE communication configuration could be, for instance, via a mobile radio system and a wireless ad hoc network or a digital broadcast system and a fixed telephone network. This new form of communication configuration inherently imposes newer and higher security challenges relating to identity and authorising issues especially when the number of involved entities, accessible network nodes and service providers, builds up. These also include the issue of how the subscribed service and the userâs personal information can be securely and seamlessly handed over via multiple networks, all of which can be changing dynamically. Without such security, users and operators will not be prepared to trust their information to other networks
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