VirtuWind – Security in a Virtual and Programmable Industrial Network Prototype Deployed in an operational Wind Park

Ioannis Askoxylakis, Nikolaos Petroulakis, (FORTH), Vivek Kulkami and Florian Zeiger (Siemens

Malicious traffic analysis in wireless sensor networks using advanced signal processing techniques

The recent advances in micro-sensor hardware technologies, along with the invention of energy-efficient protocols, have enabled a world-wide spread in wireless sensor networks deployment. These networks are used for a large number of purposes, while having small maintenance and deployment costs. However, as these are usually unattended networks, several security threats have emerged. In this work, we show how an adversary can overhear the encrypted wireless transmissions, and detect the periodic components of the wireless traffic that can further reveal the application used in the sensor network. Traffic analysis is performed in a very energy-efficient way using the compressed sensing principles. Furthermore, the periodic components are detected using the Lomb-Scargle periodogram technique. © 2013 IEEE

Denial-of-service attacks in wireless networks using off-the-shelf hardware

Wireless network technologies offer ubiquitous broadband access to millions of users at an affordable cost. However, the broadband nature of the wireless medium make these networks vulnerable to a number of attacks. Malicious interference at the physical layer, and extended packet collisions at the medium access layer can cause significant DoS attacks. In this work, we show how off-the-shelf hardware can be used to create devastating DoS attacks in a IEEE 802.11 network. Moreover, we present two algorithms for attack detection that are based on the cumulative sum algorithm. © 2014 Springer International Publishing Switzerland

A family of key agreement mechanisms for mission critical communications for secure mobile ad hoc and wireless mesh internetworking

Future wireless networks like mobile ad hoc networks and wireless mesh networks are expected to play important role in demanding communications such as mission critical communications. MANETs are ideal for emergency cases where the communication infrastructure has been completely destroyed and there is a need for quick set up of communications among the rescue/emergency workers. In such emergency scenarios wireless mesh networks may be employed in a later phase for providing advanced communications and services acting as a backbone network in the affected area. Internetworking of both types of future networks will provide a broad range of mission critical applications. While offering many advantages, such as flexibility, easy of deployment and low cost, MANETs and mesh networks face important security and resilience threats, especially for such demanding applications. We introduce a family of key agreement methods based on weak to strong authentication associated with several multiparty contributory key establishment methods. We examine the attributes of each key establishment method and how each method can be better applied in different scenarios. The proposed protocols support seamlessly both types of networks and consider system and application requirements such as efficient and secure internetworking, dynamicity of network topologies and support of thin clients. © 2011 Ioannis G. Askoxylakis et al

Towards a Security, Privacy, Dependability, Interoperability Framework for the Internet of Things

A popular application of ambient intelligence systems constitutes of assisting living services on smart buildings. As intelligence is imported in embedded equipment, the system becomes able to provide smart services (e.g. control lights, airconditioning, provide energy management services etc.). IoT is the main enabler of such environments. However, the interconnection of these cyber-physical systems and the processing of personal data raise serious security and privacy issues. In this paper we present a framework that can guarantee Security, Privacy, Dependability and Interoperability (SPDI) in IoT. Taking advantage of the underlying IoT deployment, the proposed framework not only implements the requested smart functionality but also provide modelling and administration that can guarantee those SPDI properties. Moreover, we provide an application example of the framework in a smart building scenario

Communications in emergency and crisis situations

In emergency and crisis situations (ECS) like earthquakes, tsunamis, terrorist attacks, it is very important that communication facilities are operative to provide services both to rescue teams and civilians. In ECS it is very common that communication premises are often unable to provide services, either due to physical damages or traffic overload. In such a case there is the need for rapid reestablishment of communication services. In this paper the communication services that can be exploited for ECS mitigation are discussed. The usage scenarios of such services are studied. Following that and looking from a network perspective view an ECS communication network architecture is presented. This architecture aims to provide seamless interoperability of varies communication technologies often present in ECS to provide an ECS communication solution. © 2014 Springer International Publishing Switzerland

Fault Tolerance Using an SDN Pattern Framework

Software Defined Networking (SDN) and Network Function Virtualization (NFV) are a promising combination for programmable connectivity, rapid service provisioning and service chaining as they offer the necessary end-to-end optimizations. However, with the actual exponential growth of connected devices, future networks such as SDN/NFV require an open-solutions architecture, facilitated by standards and a strong ecosystem. Such networks need to support communication services that offers guarantees about fault tolerance, redundancy, resilience and security. The construction of complex networks preserving Security and Dependability (S&D) properties is necessary to avoid system vulnerabilities, which may occur in the various layers of SDN architectures. In this work, we propose a pattern framework build in an SDN controller able to import design patterns in a rule-based language in order to provide fault tolerance in SDN networks. To evaluate the importance and the functionality of this framework, fault tolerance patterns are proposed to guarantee network connectivity, detection and restoration of network traffic in SDN network infrastructures

The impact of interference on the performance of a multi-path metropolitan wireless mesh network

Wireless mesh networks (WMNs) have attracted much attention lately for providing efficiently wireless services with high quality of service (QoS). Metropolitan WMNs are a low-cost solution for providing broadband wireless internet access in large areas. One of the fundamental issues of wireless communications is interference. In WMNs interference can be caused by simultaneous transmissions at links internal to the mesh network or by external sources. In this work we perform extensive measurements in a multi-radio metropolitan WMN deployed in the city of Heraklion, Greece. The basic goal is to investigate the impact of interference on the performance of the multi-path WMN. Towards that goal, we perform measurements with FTP, video streaming and raw data traffic for two scenarios, one with an efficient channel assignment (CA) that accounts for interference and another with a random CA that results in high internal and external interference in the network. The results prove that interference creates severe performance degradation, with regards to high delay, high packet losses, low throughput and low signal-to-interference and noise ratio (SINR). As a result, the metropolitan WMN becomes unable to support multi-path flows and demanding applications with an acceptable QoS. © 2011 IEEE