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

Protector Control PC-AODV-BH in The Ad Hoc Networks

In this paper we deal with the protector control that which we used to secure AODV routing protocol in Ad Hoc networks. The considered system can be vulnerable to several attacks because of mobility and absence of infrastructure. While the disturbance is assumed to be of the black hole type, we purpose a control named "PC-AODV-BH" in order to neutralize the effects of malicious nodes. Such a protocol is obtained by coupling hash functions, digital signatures and fidelity concept. An implementation under NS2 simulator will be given to compare our proposed approach with SAODV protocol, basing on three performance metrics and taking into account the number of black hole malicious nodesComment: submit 15 pages, 19 figures, 1 table, Journal Indexing team, AIRCC 201

A Survey on Wireless Sensor Network Security

Wireless sensor networks (WSNs) have recently attracted a lot of interest in the research community due their wide range of applications. Due to distributed nature of these networks and their deployment in remote areas, these networks are vulnerable to numerous security threats that can adversely affect their proper functioning. This problem is more critical if the network is deployed for some mission-critical applications such as in a tactical battlefield. Random failure of nodes is also very likely in real-life deployment scenarios. Due to resource constraints in the sensor nodes, traditional security mechanisms with large overhead of computation and communication are infeasible in WSNs. Security in sensor networks is, therefore, a particularly challenging task. This paper discusses the current state of the art in security mechanisms for WSNs. Various types of attacks are discussed and their countermeasures presented. A brief discussion on the future direction of research in WSN security is also included.Comment: 24 pages, 4 figures, 2 table

Resilient networking in wireless sensor networks

This report deals with security in wireless sensor networks (WSNs), especially in network layer. Multiple secure routing protocols have been proposed in the literature. However, they often use the cryptography to secure routing functionalities. The cryptography alone is not enough to defend against multiple attacks due to the node compromise. Therefore, we need more algorithmic solutions. In this report, we focus on the behavior of routing protocols to determine which properties make them more resilient to attacks. Our aim is to find some answers to the following questions. Are there any existing protocols, not designed initially for security, but which already contain some inherently resilient properties against attacks under which some portion of the network nodes is compromised? If yes, which specific behaviors are making these protocols more resilient? We propose in this report an overview of security strategies for WSNs in general, including existing attacks and defensive measures. In this report we focus at the network layer in particular, and an analysis of the behavior of four particular routing protocols is provided to determine their inherent resiliency to insider attacks. The protocols considered are: Dynamic Source Routing (DSR), Gradient-Based Routing (GBR), Greedy Forwarding (GF) and Random Walk Routing (RWR)

Secure Routing in Wireless Mesh Networks

Wireless mesh networks (WMNs) have emerged as a promising concept to meet the challenges in next-generation networks such as providing flexible, adaptive, and reconfigurable architecture while offering cost-effective solutions to the service providers. Unlike traditional Wi-Fi networks, with each access point (AP) connected to the wired network, in WMNs only a subset of the APs are required to be connected to the wired network. The APs that are connected to the wired network are called the Internet gateways (IGWs), while the APs that do not have wired connections are called the mesh routers (MRs). The MRs are connected to the IGWs using multi-hop communication. The IGWs provide access to conventional clients and interconnect ad hoc, sensor, cellular, and other networks to the Internet. However, most of the existing routing protocols for WMNs are extensions of protocols originally designed for mobile ad hoc networks (MANETs) and thus they perform sub-optimally. Moreover, most routing protocols for WMNs are designed without security issues in mind, where the nodes are all assumed to be honest. In practical deployment scenarios, this assumption does not hold. This chapter provides a comprehensive overview of security issues in WMNs and then particularly focuses on secure routing in these networks. First, it identifies security vulnerabilities in the medium access control (MAC) and the network layers. Various possibilities of compromising data confidentiality, data integrity, replay attacks and offline cryptanalysis are also discussed. Then various types of attacks in the MAC and the network layers are discussed. After enumerating the various types of attacks on the MAC and the network layer, the chapter briefly discusses on some of the preventive mechanisms for these attacks.Comment: 44 pages, 17 figures, 5 table

Securing IoT Attacks: A Machine Learning Approach for Developing Lightweight Trust-Based Intrusion Detection System

The routing process in the Internet of Things (IoT) presents challenges in industrial applications due to its complexity, involving multiple devices, critical decision-making, and accurate data transmission. The complexity further increases with dynamic IoT devices, which creates opportunities for potential intruders to disrupt routing. Traditional security measures are inadequate for IoT devices with limited battery capabilities. Although RPL (Routing Protocol for Low Energy and Lossy Networks) is commonly used for IoT routing, it remains vulnerable to security threats. This study aims to detect and isolate three routing attacks on RPL: Rank, Sybil, and Wormhole. To achieve this, a lightweight trust-based secured routing system is proposed, utilizing machine learning techniques to derive values for devices in new networks, where initial trust values are unavailable. The system demonstrates successful detection and isolation of attacks, achieving an accuracy of 98.59%, precision of 98%, recall of 99%, and f-score of 98%, thereby reinforcing its effectiveness. Attacker nodes are identified and promptly disabled, ensuring a secure routing environment. Validation on a generated dataset further confirms the reliability of the system

RTDSR protocol for channel attacks prevention in mobile ad hoc ambient intelligence home networks

In ambient intelligence home networks, attacks can be on the home devices or the communication channel. This paper focuses on the channel attacks prevention by proposing Real Time Dynamic Source Routing (RTDSR) protocol. The protocol adopted the observation based cooperation enforcement in ad hoc networks (oceans) and collaborative reputation mechanism built on Dynamic Source Routing (DSR) protocol. The RTDSR introduced lookup table on the source, destination and intermediate nodes. It also ensures that data path with high reputation are used for data routing and a monitoring watchdog was introduced to ensure that the next node forward the packet properly. The RTDSR protocol was simulated and benchmarked with DSR protocol considering network throughput, average delay, routing overhead and response time as performance metrics. Simulation result revealed a better performance of RTDSR protocol over existing DSR protocol.Keywords: RTDSR, Ambient, Home network, Channel attacks, Protocol, Packet, OPNE