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 Cloud Communication for Effective Cost Management System through MSBE

In Cloud Computing Architecture, Brokers are responsible to provide services to the end users. An Effective Cost Management System (ECMS) which works over Secure Cloud Communication Paradigm (SCCP) helps in finding a communication link with overall minimum cost of links. We propose an improved Broker Cloud Communication Paradigm (BCCP) with integration of security issues. Two algorithms are included, first is Secure Optimized Route Cost Finder (S-ORCF) to find optimum route between broker and cloud on the behalf of cost factor and second is Secure Optimized Route Management (S-ORM) to maintain optimum route. These algorithms proposed with cryptographic integrity of the secure route discovery process in efficient routing approaches between broker and cloud. There is lack in Dynamic Source Routing Approach to verify whether any intermediate node has been deleted, inserted or modified with no valid authentication. We use symmetric cryptographic primitives, which is made possible due to multisource broadcast encryption scheme. This paper outlines the use of secure route discovery protocol (SRDP)that employs such a security paradigm in cloud computing.Comment: 12 pages, 3 figures, International Journal on Cloud Computing: Services and Architecture(IJCCSA),Vol.2, No.3, June 201

Formal security analysis of registration protocols for interactive systems: a methodology and a case of study

In this work we present and formally analyze CHAT-SRP (CHAos based Tickets-Secure Registration Protocol), a protocol to provide interactive and collaborative platforms with a cryptographically robust solution to classical security issues. Namely, we focus on the secrecy and authenticity properties while keeping a high usability. In this sense, users are forced to blindly trust the system administrators and developers. Moreover, as far as we know, the use of formal methodologies for the verification of security properties of communication protocols isn't yet a common practice. We propose here a methodology to fill this gap, i.e., to analyse both the security of the proposed protocol and the pertinence of the underlying premises. In this concern, we propose the definition and formal evaluation of a protocol for the distribution of digital identities. Once distributed, these identities can be used to verify integrity and source of information. We base our security analysis on tools for automatic verification of security protocols widely accepted by the scientific community, and on the principles they are based upon. In addition, it is assumed perfect cryptographic primitives in order to focus the analysis on the exchange of protocol messages. The main property of our protocol is the incorporation of tickets, created using digests of chaos based nonces (numbers used only once) and users' personal data. Combined with a multichannel authentication scheme with some previous knowledge, these tickets provide security during the whole protocol by univocally linking each registering user with a single request. [..]Comment: 32 pages, 7 figures, 8 listings, 1 tabl