A collaborative trust management scheme for emergency communication using delay tolerant networks

Delay Tolerant Network (DTN) comprises of nodes with small and limited resources including power and memory capacity. We propose the use of DTN as an alternate means of communication for the dissemination of emergency information in a post-disaster evacuation operation. We investigate the performance of DTN in providing emergency communication support services under packet dropping attacks. We consider internally motivated attacks where the nodes that are part of the emergency rescue team are compromised with malicious behaviours thereby dropping packets to disrupt the message dissemination during the evacuation operation. A way to mitigating malicious behaviour and improve network performance of DTN is to use incentives in exchanging information between nodes. Unlike existing schemes, we consider the Basic Watchdog Detection System which detects and acts against misbehaving nodes to reduce their overall impact on the network performance. We design a Collaborative Trust Management Scheme (CTMS) which is based on the Bayesian detection watchdog approach to detect selfish and malicious behaviour in DTN nodes. We have evaluated our proposed CTMS through extensive simulations and compared our results with the other existing schemes. Our evaluations show that the use of adequate collaborative strategies between well behaved nodes could improve the performance of Watchdog schemes taking into account the delivery ratio, routing cost and the message delay from the source node to the destination node

A collaborative trust management scheme for emergency communication using delay tolerant networks

Delay Tolerant Network (DTN) comprises of nodes with small and limited resources including power and memory capacity. We propose the use of DTN as an alternate means of communication for the dissemination of emergency information in a post-disaster evacuation operation. We investigate the performance of DTN in providing emergency communication support services under packet dropping attacks. We consider internally motivated attacks where the nodes that are part of the emergency rescue team are compromised with malicious behaviours thereby dropping packets to disrupt the message dissemination during the evacuation operation. A way to mitigating malicious behaviour and improve network performance of DTN is to use incentives in exchanging information between nodes. Unlike existing schemes, we consider the Basic Watchdog Detection System which detects and acts against misbehaving nodes to reduce their overall impact on the network performance. We design a Collaborative Trust Management Scheme (CTMS) which is based on the Bayesian detection watchdog approach to detect selfish and malicious behaviour in DTN nodes. We have evaluated our proposed CTMS through extensive simulations and compared our results with the other existing schemes. Our evaluations show that the use of adequate collaborative strategies between well behaved nodes could improve the performance of Watchdog schemes taking into account the delivery ratio, routing cost and the message delay from the source node to the destination node

A Blockchain Based Certificate Revocation Scheme For Vehicular Communication Systems

Both the academy and industry believe that Intelligent Transportation System (ITS) would be achievable in one decade since modern vehicle and communication technologies advanced apace. Vehicular Communication System (VCS) introduces information technology to the ITS and aims to improve road safety and traffic efficiency. In recent year, security and privacy schemes in VCS are becoming important. However, recovery mechanisms to eliminate the negative effect of security and privacy attacks are still an important topic for research. Therefore, the certificate revocation scheme is considered as a feasible technique to prevent the system from potential attacks. The major challenge of the certificate revocation scheme is to achieve low-cost operation since the communication resources must be capable of carrying various applications apart from the security and privacy purposes. In this paper, we propose an efficient certificate revocation scheme in VCS. The Blockchain concept is introduced to simplify the network structure and distributed maintenance of the Certificate Revocation List (CRL). The proposed scheme embeds part of the certificate revocation functions within the security and privacy applications, aiming to reduce the communication overhead and shorten the processing time cost. Extensive simulations and analysis show the effectiveness and efficiency of the proposed scheme, in which the Blockchain structure costs fewer network resources and gives a more economic solution to against further cybercrime attacks

Blockchain-Based Dynamic Key Management for Heterogeneous Intelligent Transportation Systems

As modern vehicle and communication technologies advanced apace, people begin to believe that the Intelligent Transportation System (ITS) would be achievable in one decade. ITS introduces information technology to the transportation infrastructures and aims to improve road safety and traffic efficiency. However, security is still a main concern in vehicular communication systems (VCSs). This can be addressed through secured group broadcast. Therefore, secure key management schemes are considered as a critical technique for network security. In this paper, we propose a framework for providing secure key management within the heterogeneous network. The security managers (SMs) play a key role in the framework by capturing the vehicle departure information, encapsulating block to transport keys and then executing rekeying to vehicles within the same security domain. The first part of this framework is a novel network topology based on a decentralized blockchain structure. The blockchain concept is proposed to simplify the distributed key management in heterogeneous VCS domains. The second part of the framework uses the dynamic transaction collection period to further reduce the key transfer time during vehicles handover. Extensive simulations and analysis show the effectiveness and efficiency of the proposed framework, in which the blockchain structure performs better in term of key transfer time than the structure with a central manager, while the dynamic scheme allows SMs to flexibly fit various traffic levels

Academic Stress and Parental Pressure as Predictors of Psychological Health in Covid-19 Emergency Times among School Children with Intellectual Disabilities in Calabar Metropolis, Cross River State, Nigeria: The Implication for Counseling

Background: Academic stress and parental pressure have been shown to be important factors associated with psychological health. However, the internal mechanism between them is still not clear. Aim: This study assessed the joint significant influence of the predictor variables (academic stress and parental pressure) as predictors of psychological health in COVID-19 emergency times among school children with disabilities in Calabar metropolis, Cross River State, Nigeria: The implication for counseling. One study objective was stated, and one statement of hypothesis was posed. A literature review was carried out based on the variable under study. Method: The research design that was adopted in this study is correlational research design. A simple random sampling technique was adopted to select the 234 respondents sampled for the study from a population of 2,344. A validated 35-item four-point modified Likert scale questionnaire was the instrument used for data collection. The face and content validity of the instrument was established by experts in Test and Measurement. The reliability estimates 0.89 of the instruments were established using the Cronbach Alpha method. A multiple Linear regression statistical tool was used to test the hypotheses formulated for the study. The hypothesis was tested at a 0.05 level of significance. Results: The results obtained from the data analysis revealed that there is a joint significant influence of the predictor variables (academic stress and parental pressure) on psychological health in COVID-19 emergency times among school children with learning disabilities. Conclusion: Sometimes, stress and pressure can be motivating at the mild stage. However, at the severe stage, it could lead to frustration, social pressure, family workload, and cognitive overload, which in turn influences an individual to use and abuse substances in order to escape from unpleasant feelings of life situations. It was recommended that Parents should advise students on how to perform well academically rather than setting standards that may put so much pressure on students, which may have a negative impact on the psychological health of the students

A decentralised and context-aware trust management scheme for resource-constrained emergency communications.

Delay Tolerant Network (DTN) provides connectivity where there is uncertainty in end-to-end connectivity. In DTN, nodes exchange bu�ered messages upon an encounter. In disaster operations where the telecommunication and power infrastructures are completely broken down or destroyed, DTN can be used to support emergency communication till these infrastructures are restored. Security in DTN remains a major challenge because of its network characteristics such as frequent disruptions, dynamic topology, limited and constrained resources. One of the major threats in DTN is Denial of Service (DoS) attacks. This attack mainly comes from intermediary nodes that drop or fl ood packets in the network which often results in the degradation of the network performance. This thesis proposes strategies for mitigating routing misbehaviour in emergency communications using DTN. This thesis proposes three innovative contributions as follows. A Collaborative Content-aware Trust Management Scheme (CCTMS) is proposed for secure routing optimisation. CCTMS incorporates structural and content similarities into the routing decision process. A trust model is developed based on direct and indirect interactions between nodes using Beta distribution model, which is used to evaluate the forwarding behaviour of encountered nodes. To optimise the routing decision, the recurrence in mobility pattern of the nodes are also exploited to form transitive similarity. The logical properties of the contents generated by the mobile nodes are also exploited to form content similarity. However, since CCTMS still incurs a high overhead and signi�cant delay, a Distributed Trust Management Scheme (DTMS) is proposed. Energy trust is integrated into the direct trust computation model as a trust metric and inter-contact graph is introduced for the computation of transitive similarity. In DTMS, the inter-contact graph is formed by the encounter between two nodes where each vertex represents an encounter between two nodes. The novelty of the inter-contact graph is the capturing of the latency distributions for each encounter between nodes. Finally, the limitation in resource constrained networks is taken into consideration and energy is identi�ed as a vital resource to ensure availability of communication in a resource constrained networks. An Energy-e�cient Semi-distributed Trust Management Scheme (ESTMS) is proposed for resource constrained emergency response networks. ESTMS assumes that trusted entities are available at each emergency response centre and are responsible for computing and �ltering recommendations. Although ESTMS increases the delivery ratio and significantly reduces the overhead ratio, it has a higher delay when compared to CCTMS and DTMS. Extensive simulations and validations show that the proposed schemes outperform existing routing and trust management protocols in the presence of malicious nodes and are resilient to trust related attacks

Analysis of DoS Attacks in Delay Tolerant Networks for Emergency Evacuation

In the event of a disaster, there is a severe damage/destruction to physical infrastructures such as telecommunication and power lines which result in the disruption of communication in this areas. For such scenarios, Delay Tolerant Network (DTN) provides an alternative means of communication. In Delay Tolerant Networks (DTNs), a message from a source node may be delivered to the destination node despite the non-existence of an infrastructure and an end-to-end connectivity. However DTNs are susceptible to security threats such as DoS attacks targeted at disrupting relayed packets or dropping critical packets during a disaster rescue operation. DoS attacks consist of blackhole, grayhole, wormhole, packet flooding attacks etc. The scope of this paper is to study the impacts of blackhole and packet flooding attacks in a post disaster communication network using DTN. Various performance metrics in DTN have been used to study the impacts of different DoS attacks in DTN and a comprehensive analysis is presented

A Secure Key Management Scheme for Heterogeneous Secure Vehicular Communication Systems

Abstract Intelligent transportation system (ITS) is proposed as the most effective way to improve road safety and traffic efficiency. However, the future of ITS for large scale transportation infrastructures deployment highly depends on the security level of vehicular communication systems (VCS). Therefore, security key management schemes are considered as a critical research topic for network security. In this paper, we propose a framework for providing secure key management within heterogeneous network. The security managers (SMs ) Play a key role in the framework by retrieving the vehicle departure information, encapsulating block to transport keys and then executing rekeying to vehicles within the same security domain. The first part of this framework is a novel Group Key Management (GKM) scheme basing on (LP) of vehicles to depart current VCS region. Vehicle's LP factor is introduced into GKM scheme to achieve a more efficient rekeying scheme and less rekeying costs. The second component of the framework using the blockchain concept to simplify the distributed key management in Heterogeneous VCS domains. Extensive simulations and analysis are provided to show the effectiveness and efficiency of the proposed framework: Our GKM results demonstrate that probability-based BR reduces rekeying cost compared to the benchmark scheme, while the blockchain decreases the time cost of key transmission over heterogeneous networks

A Secure Key Management Scheme for Heterogeneous Secure Vehicular Communication Systems

Abstract Intelligent transportation system (ITS) is proposed as the most effective way to improve road safety and traffic efficiency. However, the future of ITS for large scale transportation infrastructures deployment highly depends on the security level of vehicular communication systems (VCS). Therefore, security key management schemes are considered as a critical research topic for network security. In this paper, we propose a framework for providing secure key management within heterogeneous network. The security managers (SMs ) Play a key role in the framework by retrieving the vehicle departure information, encapsulating block to transport keys and then executing rekeying to vehicles within the same security domain. The first part of this framework is a novel Group Key Management (GKM) scheme basing on (LP) of vehicles to depart current VCS region. Vehicle's LP factor is introduced into GKM scheme to achieve a more efficient rekeying scheme and less rekeying costs. The second component of the framework using the blockchain concept to simplify the distributed key management in Heterogeneous VCS domains. Extensive simulations and analysis are provided to show the effectiveness and efficiency of the proposed framework: Our GKM results demonstrate that probability-based BR reduces rekeying cost compared to the benchmark scheme, while the blockchain decreases the time cost of key transmission over heterogeneous networks