IPv6 Network Mobility

Network Authentication, Authorization, and Accounting has been used since before the days of the Internet as we know it today. Authentication asks the question, “Who or what are you?” Authorization asks, “What are you allowed to do?” And fi nally, accounting wants to know, “What did you do?” These fundamental security building blocks are being used in expanded ways today. The fi rst part of this two-part series focused on the overall concepts of AAA, the elements involved in AAA communications, and highlevel approaches to achieving specifi c AAA goals. It was published in IPJ Volume 10, No. 1[0]. This second part of the series discusses the protocols involved, specifi c applications of AAA, and considerations for the future of AAA

Mobility management across converged IP-based heterogeneous access networks

This thesis was submitted for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy and awarded by Brunel University, 8/2/2010.In order to satisfy customer demand for a high performance “global” mobility service, network operators (ISPs, carriers, mobile operators, etc.) are facing the need to evolve to a converged “all-IP” centric heterogeneous access infrastructure. However, the integration of such heterogeneous access networks (e.g. 802.11, 802.16e, UMTS etc) brings major mobility issues. This thesis tackles issues plaguing existing mobility management solutions in converged IP-based heterogeneous networks. In order to do so, the thesis firstly proposes a cross-layer mechanism using the upcoming IEEE802.21 MIH services to make intelligent and optimized handovers. In this respect, FMIPv6 is integrated with the IEEE802.21 mechanism to provide seamless mobility during the overall handover process. The proposed solution is then applied in a simulated vehicular environment to optimize the NEMO handover process. It is shown through analysis and simulations of the signalling process that the overall expected handover (both L2 and L3) latency in FMIPv6 can be reduced by the proposed mechanism by 69%. Secondly, it is expected that the operator of a Next Generation Network will provide mobility as a service that will generate significant revenues. As a result, dynamic service bootstrapping and authorization mechanisms must be in place to efficiently deploy a mobility service (without static provisioning), which will allow only legitimate users to access the service. A GNU Linux based test-bed has been implemented to demonstrate this. The experiments presented show the handover performance of the secured FMIPv6 over the implemented test-bed compared to plain FMIPv6 and MIPv6 by providing quantitative measurements and results on the quality of experience perceived by the users of IPv6 multimedia applications. The results show the inclusion of the additional signalling of the proposed architecture for the purpose of authorization and bootstrapping (i.e. key distribution using HOKEY) has no adverse effect on the overall handover process. Also, using a formal security analysis tool, it is shown that the proposed mechanism is safe/secure from the induced security threats. Lastly, a novel IEEE802.21 assisted EAP based re-authentication scheme over a service authorization and bootstrapping framework is presented. AAA based authentication mechanisms like EAP incur signalling overheads due to large RTTs. As a result, overall handover latency also increases. Therefore, a fast re-authentication scheme is presented which utilizes IEEE802.21 MIH services to minimize the EAP authentication process delays and as a result reduce the overall handover latency. Analysis of the signalling process based on analytical results shows that the overall handover latency for mobility protocols will be approximately reduced by 70% by the proposed scheme

Security and Authentication for 802.11 Wireless Networks

Wireless Networks is a very growing market. However, the security measures are not strong enough; the WEP security protocol is flawed. The 802.11 Task Group I is working on new security measures in order to strengthen the access control of users, the privacy and the integrity of data. We will describe the WEP flaws and the new security measures of 802.11 Task Group I. Finally, we will propose a new architecture to improve user identification for the wireless network of our department

Inter-Domain Authentication for Seamless Roaming in Heterogeneous Wireless Networks

The convergence of diverse but complementary wireless access technologies and inter-operation among administrative domains have been envisioned as crucial for the next generation wireless networks that will provide support for end-user devices to seamlessly roam across domain boundaries. The integration of existing and emerging heterogeneous wireless networks to provide such seamless roaming requires the design of a handover scheme that provides uninterrupted service continuity while facilitating the establishment of authenticity of the entities involved. The existing protocols for supporting re-authentication of a mobile node during a handover across administrative domains typically involve several round trips to the home domain, and hence introduce long latencies. Furthermore, the existing methods for negotiating roaming agreements to establish inter-domain trust rely on a lengthy manual process, thus, impeding seamless roaming across multiple domains in a truly heterogeneous wireless network. In this thesis, we present a new proof-token based authentication protocol that supports quick re-authentication of a mobile node as it moves to a new foreign domain without involving communication with the home domain. The proposed proof-token based protocol can also support establishment of spontaneous roaming agreements between a pair of domains that do not already have a direct roaming agreement, thus allowing flexible business models to be supported. We describe details of the new authentication architecture, the proposed protocol, which is based on EAP-TLS and compare the proposed protocol with existing protocols

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

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

Securing a wireless network with EAP-TLS: perception and realities of itsimplementation

In the arena of wireless security, EAP-TLS is considered one of the most secure protocols. However since its inception the uptake has been poor and the investigation into the reasons for this are sparse. There is an industry perception that EAP-TLS is complex as well as difficult to configure and manage. One of the major barriers is in the use of public key infrastructure and the perceived difficulties in its application. The paper discusses why it is seemingly difficult to implement and how this may differ from the reality of its implementation. This premise is investigated using Windows Server 2003 to provide an argument that is in contradiction to the perception. This paper demonstrates that the processes with which the technology can now be applied have significantly improved through automation of public key infrastructure configuration and deployment

A Survey on Authentication and Key Agreement Protocols in Heterogeneous Networks

Unlike current closed systems such as 2nd and 3rd generations where the core network is controlled by a sole network operator, multiple network operators will coexist and manage the core network in Next Generation Networks (NGNs). This open architecture and the collaboration between different network operators will support ubiquitous connectivity and thus enhances users' experience. However, this brings to the fore certain security issues which must be addressed, the most important of which is the initial Authentication and Key Agreement (AKA) to identify and authorize mobile nodes on these various networks. This paper looks at how existing research efforts the HOKEY WG, Mobile Ethernet and 3GPP frameworks respond to this new environment and provide security mechanisms. The analysis shows that most of the research had realized the openness of the core network and tried to deal with it using different methods. These methods will be extensively analysed in order to highlight their strengths and weaknesses