Mitigate denial of service attacks in mobile ad-hoc networks

Wireless networks are proven to be more acceptable by users compared with wired networks for many reasons, namely the ease of setup, reduction in running cost, and ease of use in different situations such as disasters recovery. A Mobile ad-hoc network (MANET) is as an example of wireless networks. MANET consists of a group of hosts called nodes which can communicate freely via wireless links. MANET is a dynamic topology, self-configured, non-fixed infrastructure, and does not have any central administration that controls all nodes among the network. Every device, used in day-to-day living, is assumed to be a network device, and it is managed using Internet Protocols (IP). Information on every electronic device is collected using infrared sensors, voice or video sensors, Radio-Frequency Identification (RFID), etc. The new wireless networks and communications paradigm known as Internet of Things (IoT) is introduced which refers to the range of multiple interconnected devices which communicate and exchange data between one another. MANET becomes prone to many attacks mainly due to its specifications and challenges such as limited bandwidth, nodes mobility and limited energy. This research study focuses specifically on detecting Denial of Service attack (DoS) in MANET. The main purpose of DoS attack is to deprive legitimate users from using their authenticated services such as network resources. Thus, the network performance would degrade and exhaust the network resources such as computing power and bandwidth considerably which lead the network to be deteriorated. Therefore, this research aims to detect DoS attacks in both Single MANET (SM) and Multi MANETs (MM). A novel Monitoring, Detection, and Rehabilitation (MrDR) method is proposed in order to detect DoS attack in MANET. The proposed method is incorporating trust concept between nodes. Trust value is calculated in each node to decide whether the node is trusted or not. To address the problem when two or more MANETs merge to become one big MANET, the novel technique of Merging Using MrDR (MUMrDR) is also applied to detect DoS attack. As the mobility of nodes in MANET, the chance of MANETs merge or partition occurs. Both centralised and decentralised trust concepts are used to deal with IP address conflict and the merging process is completed by applying the MUMrDR method to detect DoS attacks in MM. The simulation results validate the effectiveness in the proposed method to detect different DoS attacks in both SM and MM

From Intrusion Detection to Attacker Attribution: A Comprehensive Survey of Unsupervised Methods

Over the last five years there has been an increase in the frequency and diversity of network attacks. This holds true, as more and more organisations admit compromises on a daily basis. Many misuse and anomaly based Intrusion Detection Systems (IDSs) that rely on either signatures, supervised or statistical methods have been proposed in the literature, but their trustworthiness is debatable. Moreover, as this work uncovers, the current IDSs are based on obsolete attack classes that do not reflect the current attack trends. For these reasons, this paper provides a comprehensive overview of unsupervised and hybrid methods for intrusion detection, discussing their potential in the domain. We also present and highlight the importance of feature engineering techniques that have been proposed for intrusion detection. Furthermore, we discuss that current IDSs should evolve from simple detection to correlation and attribution. We descant how IDS data could be used to reconstruct and correlate attacks to identify attackers, with the use of advanced data analytics techniques. Finally, we argue how the present IDS attack classes can be extended to match the modern attacks and propose three new classes regarding the outgoing network communicatio

An Event Based Digital Forensic Scheme for Vehicular Networks

The software in today's cars has become increasingly important in recent years. The development of high-tech driver assistance devices has helped fuel this movement. This tendency is anticipated to accelerate with the advent of completely autonomous vehicles. As more modern vehicles incorporate software and security-based solutions, "Event-Based digital forensics," the analysis of digital evidence of accidents and warranty claims, has become increasingly significant. The objective of this study is to ascertain, in a realistic setting, whether or not digital forensics can be successfully applied to a state-of-the-art automobile. We did this by dissecting the procedure of automotive forensics, which is used on in-car systems to track the mysterious activity by means of digital evidence. We did this by applying established methods of digital forensics to a state-of-the-art car.Our research employs specialized cameras installed in the study areas and a log of system activity that may be utilized as future digital proof to examine the effectiveness of security checkpoints and other similar technologies. The goal is to keep an eye on the vehicles entering the checkpoint, look into them if there is any reason to suspect anything, and then take the appropriate measures. The problem with analyzing this data is that it is becoming increasingly complex and time-consuming as the amount of data that has been collected keeps growing. In this paper, we outline a high-level methodology for automotive forensics to fill in the blanks, and we put it through its paces on a network simulator in a state-of-the-art vehicle to simulate a scenario in which devices are tampered with while the car is in motion. Here, we test how well the strategy functions. Diagnostics over IP (Diagnostics over IP), on-board diagnostics interface, and unified diagnostic services are all used during implementation. To work, our solution requires vehicles to be able to exchange diagnostic information wirelessly.These results show that it is possible to undertake automotive forensic analysis on state-of-the-art vehicles without using intrusion detection systems or event data recorders, and they lead the way towards a more fruitful future for automotive forensics. The results also show that modern autos are amenable to forensic automotive analysis

Securing routing protocols in mobile ad hoc networks

A Mobile Ad Hoc Network (MANET) is more prone to security threats than other wired and wireless networks because of the distributed nature of the network. Conventional MANET routing protocols assume that all nodes cooperate without maliciously disrupting the operation of the protocol and do not provide defence against attackers. Blackhole and flooding attacks have a dramatic negative impact while grayhole and selfish attacks have a little negative impact on the performance of MANET routing protocols. Malicious nodes or misbehaviour actions detection in the network is an important task to maintain the proper routing protocol operation. Current solutions cannot guarantee the true classification of nodes because the cooperative nature of the MANETs which leads to false exclusions of innocent nodes and/or good classification of malicious nodes. The thesis introduces a new concept of Self- Protocol Trustiness (SPT) to discover malicious nodes with a very high trustiness ratio of a node classification. Designing and implementing new mechanisms that can resist flooding and blackhole attacks which have high negative impacts on the performance of these reactive protocols is the main objective of the thesis. The design of these mechanisms is based on SPT concept to ensure the high trustiness ratio of node classification. In addition, they neither incorporate the use of cryptographic algorithms nor depend on routing packet formats which make these solutions robust and reliable, and simplify their implementations in different MANET reactive protocols. Anti-Flooding (AF) mechanism is designed to resist flooding attacks which relies on locally applied timers and thresholds to classify nodes as malicious. Although AF mechanism succeeded in discovering malicious nodes within a small time, it has a number of thresholds that enable attacker to subvert the algorithm and cannot guarantee that the excluded nodes are genuine malicious nodes which was the motivation to develop this algorithm. On the other hand, Flooding Attack Resisting Mechanism (FARM) is designed to close the security gaps and overcome the drawbacks of AF mechanism. It succeeded in detecting and excluding more than 80% of flooding nodes within the simulation time with a very high trustiness ratio. Anti-Blackhole (AB) mechanism is designed to resist blackhole attacks and relies on a single threshold. The algorithm guarantees 100% exclusion of blackhole nodes and does not exclude any innocent node that may forward a reply packet. Although AB mechanism succeeded in discovering malicious nodes within a small time, the only suggested threshold enables an attacker to subvert the algorithm which was the motivation to develop it. On the other hand, Blackhole Resisting Mechanism (BRM) has the main advantages of AB mechanism while it is designed to close the security gaps and overcome the drawbacks of AB mechanism. It succeeded in detecting and excluding the vast majority of blackhole nodes within the simulation time

Optimized Monitoring and Detection of Internet of Things resources-constraints Cyber Attacks

This research takes place in the context of the optimized monitoring and detec- tion of Internet of Things (IoT) resource-constraints attacks. Meanwhile, the In- ternet of Everything (IoE) concept is presented as a wider extension of IoT. How- ever, the IoE realization meets critical challenges, including the limited network coverage and the limited resources of existing network technologies and smart devices. The IoT represents a network of embedded devices that are uniquely identifiable and have embedded software required to communicate between the transient states. The IoT enables a connection between billions of sensors, actu- ators, and even human beings to the Internet, creating a wide range of services, some of which are mission-critical. However, IoT networks are faulty; things are resource-constrained in terms of energy and computational capabilities. For IoT systems performing a critical mission, it is crucial to ensure connectivity, availability, and device reliability, which requires proactive device state moni- toring. This dissertation presents an approach to optimize the monitoring and detection of resource-constraints attacks in IoT and IoE smart devices. First, it has been shown that smart devices suffer from resource-constraints problems; therefore, using lightweight algorithms to detect and mitigate the resource-constraints at- tack is essential. Practical analysis and monitoring of smart device resources’ are included and discussed to understand the behaviour of the devices before and after attacking real smart devices. These analyses are straightforwardly extended for building lightweight detection and mitigation techniques against energy and memory attacks. Detection of energy consumption attacks based on monitoring the package reception rate of smart devices is proposed to de- tect energy attacks in smart devices effectively. The proposed lightweight algo- rithm efficiently detects energy attacks for different protocols, e.g., TCP, UDP, and MQTT. Moreover, analyzing memory usage attacks is also considered in this thesis. Therefore, another lightweight algorithm is also built to detect the memory-usage attack once it appears and stops. This algorithm considers mon- itoring the memory usage of the smart devices when the smart devices are Idle, Active, and Under attack. Based on the presented methods and monitoring analysis, the problem of resource-constraint attacks in IoT systems is systemat- ically eliminated by parameterizing the lightweight algorithms to adapt to the resource-constraint problems of the smart devices

Security aspects of OSPF as a MANET routing protocol

OSPF, Open Shortest Path First, is an Intra-gateway routing protocol first developed as an IETF effort. It is widely adopted in large enterprise-scale networks, being well regarded for its fast convergence and loop-free routing. It is versatile in terms of which interface types it supports, such as point-to-point links or broadcast networks. It also offers scalability through hierarchical routing and by using centralization to reduce the amount of overhead on networks which have broadcast or broadcast-similar properties. An interface type missing from the standard so far is that of a wireless network, characterized by non-guaranteed bidirectional links combined with unreliable broadcasting, and existing interface types generally perform poorly under these networks. The IETF has therefore instituted a Working Group to standardize such an interface type extension to the latest version, OSPF version 3. This interface type will permit mobility and multi-hop characteristics in addition to those of wireless links in general. Such networks are usually referred to as Mobile Ad-hoc Networks (MANET). MANET routing protocols are subject to more severe security issues than ordinary, wireline-oriented protocols are. This thesis aims to indentify key security aspects of OSPF as a MANET routing protocol