4 research outputs found
Secure and Privacy-Preserving Authentication Protocols for Wireless Mesh Networks
Wireless mesh networks (WMNs) have emerged as a promising concept to meet the
challenges in next-generation wireless networks such as providing flexible,
adaptive, and reconfigurable architecture while offering cost-effective
solutions to service providers. As WMNs become an increasingly popular
replacement technology for last-mile connectivity to the home networking,
community and neighborhood networking, it is imperative to design efficient and
secure communication protocols for these networks. However, several
vulnerabilities exist in currently existing protocols for WMNs. These security
loopholes can be exploited by potential attackers to launch attack on WMNs. The
absence of a central point of administration makes securing WMNs even more
challenging. The broadcast nature of transmission and the dependency on the
intermediate nodes for multi-hop communications lead to several security
vulnerabilities in WMNs. The attacks can be external as well as internal in
nature. External attacks are launched by intruders who are not authorized users
of the network. For example, an intruding node may eavesdrop on the packets and
replay those packets at a later point of time to gain access to the network
resources. On the other hand, the internal attacks are launched by the nodes
that are part of the WMN. On example of such attack is an intermediate node
dropping packets which it was supposed to forward. This chapter presents a
comprehensive discussion on the current authentication and privacy protection
schemes for WMN. In addition, it proposes a novel security protocol for node
authentication and message confidentiality and an anonymization scheme for
privacy protection of users in WMNs.Comment: 32 pages, 10 figures. The work is an extended version of the author's
previous works submitted in CoRR: arXiv:1107.5538v1 and arXiv:1102.1226v
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
Analysis of the security and reliability of packet transmission in Wireless Mesh Networks (WMNs) : a case study of Malicious Packet drop attack
Wireless Mesh Networks (WMNs) are known for possessing good attributes such as low up-front cost, easy network maintenance, and reliable service coverage. This has largely made them to be adopted in various areas such as; school campus networks, community networking, pervasive healthcare, office and home automation, emergency rescue operations and ubiquitous wireless networks. The routing nodes are equipped with self-organized and self-configuring capabilities. The routing mechanisms of WMNs depend on the collaboration of all participating nodes for reliable network performance. However, it has been noted that most routing algorithms proposed for WMNs in the last few years are designed with the assumption that all the participating nodes will collaboratively be involved in relaying the data packets originated from a source to a multi-hop destination. Such design approach exposes WMNs to vulnerability such as malicious packet drop attack. Therefore, it is imperative to design and implement secure and reliable packet routing mechanisms to mitigate this type of attack. While there are works that have attempted to implement secure routing approach, the findings in this research unearthed that further research works are required to improve the existing secure routing in order to provide more secure and reliable packet transmission in WMNs, in the event of denial of service (DoS) attacks such black hole malicious pack drop attack. This study further presents an analysis of the impact of the black hole malicious packet drop attack with other influential factors in WMNs. In the study, NS-3 simulator was used with AODV as the routing protocol. The results show that the packet delivery ratio and throughput of WMN under attack decreases sharply as compared to WMN free from attack