A Review of the Energy Efficient and Secure Multicast Routing Protocols for Mobile Ad hoc Networks

This paper presents a thorough survey of recent work addressing energy efficient multicast routing protocols and secure multicast routing protocols in Mobile Ad hoc Networks (MANETs). There are so many issues and solutions which witness the need of energy management and security in ad hoc wireless networks. The objective of a multicast routing protocol for MANETs is to support the propagation of data from a sender to all the receivers of a multicast group while trying to use the available bandwidth efficiently in the presence of frequent topology changes. Multicasting can improve the efficiency of the wireless link when sending multiple copies of messages by exploiting the inherent broadcast property of wireless transmission. Secure multicast routing plays a significant role in MANETs. However, offering energy efficient and secure multicast routing is a difficult and challenging task. In recent years, various multicast routing protocols have been proposed for MANETs. These protocols have distinguishing features and use different mechanismsComment: 15 page

A Survey on Wireless Sensor Network Security

Wireless sensor networks (WSNs) have recently attracted a lot of interest in the research community due their wide range of applications. Due to distributed nature of these networks and their deployment in remote areas, these networks are vulnerable to numerous security threats that can adversely affect their proper functioning. This problem is more critical if the network is deployed for some mission-critical applications such as in a tactical battlefield. Random failure of nodes is also very likely in real-life deployment scenarios. Due to resource constraints in the sensor nodes, traditional security mechanisms with large overhead of computation and communication are infeasible in WSNs. Security in sensor networks is, therefore, a particularly challenging task. This paper discusses the current state of the art in security mechanisms for WSNs. Various types of attacks are discussed and their countermeasures presented. A brief discussion on the future direction of research in WSN security is also included.Comment: 24 pages, 4 figures, 2 table

Secure and energy-efficient multicast routing in smart grids

A smart grid is a power system that uses information and communication technology to operate, monitor, and control data flows between the power generating source and the end user. It aims at high efficiency, reliability, and sustainability of the electricity supply process that is provided by the utility centre and is distributed from generation stations to clients. To this end, energy-efficient multicast communication is an important requirement to serve a group of residents in a neighbourhood. However, the multicast routing introduces new challenges in terms of secure operation of the smart grid and user privacy. In this paper, after having analysed the security threats for multicast-enabled smart grids, we propose a novel multicast routing protocol that is both sufficiently secure and energy efficient.We also evaluate the performance of the proposed protocol by means of computer simulations, in terms of its energy-efficient operation

A secure over-the-air programming scheme in wireless sensor networks

Over-The-Air dissemination of code updates in Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) have been researchers’ point of interest in past a few years and more importantly security challenges toward remote propagation of code update have taken the majority of efforts in this context. Many security models have been proposed to establish a balance between the energy consumption and security strengthen with having their concentration on constraint nature of WSN nodes. For authentication purposes most of them have used Merkle-Hash-Tree to avoid using multiple public cryptography operations. These models mostly have assumed an environment in which security has to be in a standard level and therefore they have not investigated the tree structure for mission-critical situations in which security has to be in maximum possible extent (e.g. military zones). Two major problems have been identified in Merkle Tree structure which is used in Seluge scheme, including: 1) an exponential growth in number of overhead packets when block size of hash algorithm used in design is increased. 2) Limitation of using hash algorithms with larger block size of 11 bytes when payload size is set to 72 bytes. Then several existing security models are investigated for possible vulnerabilities and a set of countermeasures correspondingly named Security Model Requirements (SMR) is provided. After concentrating on Seluge’s design, a new secure Over-The-Air Programming (OTAP) scheme named Seluge++ is proposed that complies with SMR and replaces the use of inefficient Merkle Tree with a novel method

Using quantum key distribution for cryptographic purposes: a survey

The appealing feature of quantum key distribution (QKD), from a cryptographic viewpoint, is the ability to prove the information-theoretic security (ITS) of the established keys. As a key establishment primitive, QKD however does not provide a standalone security service in its own: the secret keys established by QKD are in general then used by a subsequent cryptographic applications for which the requirements, the context of use and the security properties can vary. It is therefore important, in the perspective of integrating QKD in security infrastructures, to analyze how QKD can be combined with other cryptographic primitives. The purpose of this survey article, which is mostly centered on European research results, is to contribute to such an analysis. We first review and compare the properties of the existing key establishment techniques, QKD being one of them. We then study more specifically two generic scenarios related to the practical use of QKD in cryptographic infrastructures: 1) using QKD as a key renewal technique for a symmetric cipher over a point-to-point link; 2) using QKD in a network containing many users with the objective of offering any-to-any key establishment service. We discuss the constraints as well as the potential interest of using QKD in these contexts. We finally give an overview of challenges relative to the development of QKD technology that also constitute potential avenues for cryptographic research.Comment: Revised version of the SECOQC White Paper. Published in the special issue on QKD of TCS, Theoretical Computer Science (2014), pp. 62-8

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