Securing Coding Based Distributed Storage in Wireless Sensor Networks

We address the problem of pollution attacks in coding based distributed storage systems proposed for wireless sensor networks. In a pollution attack, the adversary maliciously alters some of the stored encoded packets, which results in the incorrect decoding of a large part of the original data upon retrieval. We propose algorithms to detect and recover from such attacks. In contrast to existing approaches to solve this problem, our approach is not based on adding cryptographic checksums or signatures to the encoded packets. We believe that our proposed algorithms are suitable in practical systems

Principles of Physical Layer Security in Multiuser Wireless Networks: A Survey

This paper provides a comprehensive review of the domain of physical layer security in multiuser wireless networks. The essential premise of physical-layer security is to enable the exchange of confidential messages over a wireless medium in the presence of unauthorized eavesdroppers without relying on higher-layer encryption. This can be achieved primarily in two ways: without the need for a secret key by intelligently designing transmit coding strategies, or by exploiting the wireless communication medium to develop secret keys over public channels. The survey begins with an overview of the foundations dating back to the pioneering work of Shannon and Wyner on information-theoretic security. We then describe the evolution of secure transmission strategies from point-to-point channels to multiple-antenna systems, followed by generalizations to multiuser broadcast, multiple-access, interference, and relay networks. Secret-key generation and establishment protocols based on physical layer mechanisms are subsequently covered. Approaches for secrecy based on channel coding design are then examined, along with a description of inter-disciplinary approaches based on game theory and stochastic geometry. The associated problem of physical-layer message authentication is also introduced briefly. The survey concludes with observations on potential research directions in this area.Comment: 23 pages, 10 figures, 303 refs. arXiv admin note: text overlap with arXiv:1303.1609 by other authors. IEEE Communications Surveys and Tutorials, 201

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

SurvSec: A New Security Architecture for Reliable Network Recovery from Base Station Failure of Surveillance WSN

AbstractSecuring surveillance wireless sensor networks (WSNs) in hostile environments such as borders, perimeters and battlefields during Base Station (BS) failure is challenging. Surveillance WSNs are highly vulnerable to BS failure. The attackers can render the network useless by only destroying the BS as the needed efforts to destroy the BS is much less than that is needed to destroy the network. This attack scenario will give the attackers the best chance to compromise many legitimate nodes. Previous works have tackled BS failure by deploying a mobile BS or by using multiple BSs. Despite the best electronic countermeasures, intrusion tolerance and anti-traffic analysis strategies to protect the BSs, an adversary still can destroy them. This paper proposes a novel security architecture called Surveillance Security (SurvSec) for reliable network recovery from single BS failure of surveillance WSN with single BS. SurvSec relies on a set of sensor nodes serve as Security Managers for management and storage of the security related data of all sensor nodes. SurvSec security architecture provides methodologies for choosing and changing the security managers of the surveillance WSN. SurvSec has three components: (1) Sensor nodes serve as Security Managers, (2) Data Storage System, (3) Data Recovery System. Furthermore, both the frame format of the stored data is carefully built and the security threats are encoded to allow minimum overheads for SurvSec security architecture. In this paper, we provide detailed specifications of SurvSec security architecture. We evaluate our designed security architecture for reliable network recovery from BS failure. Our evaluation shows that the proposed new security architecture can meet all the desired specifications and our analysis shows that the provided Security Managers are capable of network recovery from BS failure

Factors Impacting Key Management Effectiveness in Secured Wireless Networks

The use of a Public Key Infrastructure (PKI) offers a cryptographic solution that can overcome many, but not all, of the MANET security problems. One of the most critical aspects of a PKI system is how well it implements Key Management. Key Management deals with key generation, key storage, key distribution, key updating, key revocation, and certificate service in accordance with security policies over the lifecycle of the cryptography. The approach supported by traditional PKI works well in fixed wired networks, but it may not appropriate for MANET due to the lack of fixed infrastructure to support the PKI. This research seeks to identify best practices in securing networks which may be applied to new network architectures