Privacy Protection in Vehicular Ad-Hoc Networks

The first main contribution of this chapter is to take a non-trivial step towards providing a robust and scalable solution to privacy protection in vehicular networks. To promote scalability and robustness the authors employ two strategies. First, they view vehicular networks as consisting of non-overlapping subnetworks, each local to a geographic area referred to as a cell. Each cell has a server that maintains a list of pseudonyms that are valid for use in the cell. Each pseudonym has two components: the cell’s ID and a random number as host ID. Instead of issuing pseudonyms to vehicles proactively (as virtually all existing schemes do) the authors issue pseudonyms only to those vehicles that request them. This strategy is suggested by the fact that, in a typical scenario, only a fraction of the vehicles in an area will engage in communication with other vehicles and/or with the infrastructure and, therefore, do not need pseudonyms. The second main contribution is to model analytically the time-varying request for pseudonyms in a given cell. This is important for capacity planning purposes since it allows system managers to predict, by taking into account the time-varying attributes of the traffic, the probability that a given number of pseudonyms will be required at a certain time as well as the expected number of pseudonyms in use in a cell at a certain time. Empirical results obtained by detailed simulation confirm the accuracy of the authors’ analytical predictions.

Security Issues in Mobile Ad Hoc Networks

A Mobile Ad hoc NETwork (MANET) is a self-organizing, infrastructure-less network of mobile nodes connecting by wireless links. In operation, the nodes of MANETs do not have a central control mechanism. It is known for its properties of routable network, where each node acts as a router to forward packets to other specific nodes in the network. The unique properties of MANET have made it useful for large number of applications and led to a number of security challenges. Security in the mobile ad hoc network is a very critical job and requires the consideration of different security issues on all the layers of communication. The countermeasures are the functions that reduce or eliminate security vulnerabilities and attacks. This chapter provides a comprehensive study of all prominent attacks in Mobile Ad Hoc Networks described in the literature. It also provides various proactive and reactive approaches proposed to secure the MANETs. Moreover, it also points to areas of research that need to be investigated in the future.

Misbehavior Detection in VANET

Vehicular Networks (VANETs) have received increased attention from researchers in recent years. VANETs facilitate various safety measures that help in controlling traffic and saving human lives. As VANETs consist of multiple entities, effective measures for VANET safety are to be addressed as per requirement. In this chapter, the authors review some existing schemes proposed for misbehavior detection. They categorize the schemes into two parts: data centric and non-data centric misbehaving detection. In data-centric misbehaving detection, the receiver believes the information rather than the source of the information. The authors compare schemes in each category with respect to their security strengths and weaknesses. The comparative results show that most of the schemes fail to address required security attributes that are essential for VANET safety.

Seamless Mobility Management

The next generation wireless networks will be heterogeneous wireless environments because of the coexistence of a large variety of wireless access technologies. The different networks have different architectures and protocols. So it is difficult for a user to roam from one radio system to another which can be solved by using the Internet protocol as a common interconnection protocol as it needs no assumptions about the characteristics of the underlying technologies. An all-IP wireless network is an IP-based wireless access system that makes wireless networks more robust, scalable, and cost effective. The nodes in such a network are mobile nodes as they change their location and point of attachment to the Internet frequently. The mobility management is an important research issue in an all-IP wireless network for providing seamless roaming facility to mobile nodes from one wireless system to another. The dynamic resource management is also required in this environment to ensure sufficient resource in the selected route for transmission or reception of the data packets during seamless roaming of the mobile nodes. This chapter is aimed at the researchers and the policy makers making them aware of the different means of mobility management and resource management for mobile nodes in all-IP wireless networks.

Mobile Cloud Computing and Its Security and Privacy Challenges

Mobile cloud computing has grown out of two hot technology trends, mobility and cloud. The emergence of cloud computing and its extension into the mobile domain creates the potential for a global, interconnected mobile cloud computing environment that will allow the entire mobile ecosystem to enrich their services across multiple networks. We can utilize significant optimization and increased operating power offered by cloud computing to enable seamless and transparent use of cloud resources to extend the capability of resource constrained mobile devices. However, in order to realize mobile cloud computing, we need to develop mechanisms to achieve interoperability among heterogeneous and distributed devices. We need solutions to discover best available resources in the cloud servers based on the user demands and approaches to deliver desired resources and services efficiently and in a timely fashion to the mobile terminals. Furthermore, while mobile cloud computing has tremendous potential to enable the mobile terminals to have access to powerful and reliable computing resources anywhere and anytime, we must consider several issues including privacy and security, and reliability in realizing mobile cloud computing. In this chapter, the authors first explore the architectural components required to realize a mobile cloud computing infrastructure. They then discuss mobile cloud computing features with their unique privacy and security implications. They present unique issues of mobile cloud computing that exacerbate privacy and security challenges. They also discuss various approaches to address these challenges and explore the future work needed to provide a trustworthy mobile cloud computing environment.

Security Challenges in Wireless Sensor Network

Wireless Sensor Networks are a subset of ad hoc networks. Their unique characteristics are smaller node size, high node density, unattended operation in remote areas. Dynamic topology and wireless communication make them vulnerable to numerous types of attacks. In addition to that, memory, processing, and energy constraint make it difficult to incorporate compute-intensive security solutions in these networks. Existing solutions for developing cost and energy efficient algorithms do not fit the security parameters for these resource constrained networks. As a result, these networks remain vulnerable to several types of attacks. This chapter presents a survey of various attacks at the different layers of WSN protocol stack, their detection, and countermeasures. Although every layer of the stack has its own security challenges, the network layer is most vulnerable to many security attacks because it provides an excellent basis for traffic monitoring activities, which helps the attacker form a strategy to perform the attack. The most common attacks on this layer are the Sybil attack, selective forwarding attack, wormhole attack, sinkhole attack, etc. This survey provides a comprehensive view of present attacking strategies to disrupt the normal functioning of WSN.

Trust Management and Modeling Techniques in Wireless Communications

Trust management is an emerging technology to facilitate secure interactions between two communicating entities in distributed environments where the traditional security mechanisms are insufficient due to incomplete knowledge about the remote entities. With the development of ubiquitous computing and smart embedded systems, new challenges and threats come up in a heterogeneous environment. Trust management techniques that depend on a centralized server are not feasible in wireless peer-to-peer communication networks. Hence, the trust management and modeling strategies are becoming increasingly complex to cope with the system vulnerabilities in a distributed environment. The aim of this chapter is to have a thorough understanding of the trust formation process and the statistical techniques that are used at different stages of the trust computation process. The functional components of a trust management framework are identified and some of the existing statistical techniques used in different phases of the trust management framework are analyzed.

Location Security in Vehicular Wireless Networks

In Vehicular Ad-Hoc Networks (VANETs), applications are based on one fundamental piece of information: location. Therefore, attackers will exploit location information to launch attacks. The authors present an in-depth survey of location security methods that have been recently proposed in literature. They present the algorithms or protocols of different methods and compare them with each other in this chapter. The methods are mainly in three aspects: position integrity, position confidentiality, and position availability. The position integrity methods focus on validating a vehicle’s position to ensure the position information is correct. Position confidentiality ensures not only the confidentiality of position information but also the authentication of location that a location related message can only decrypt by the receiver which is “physically” present inside a decryption region that is specified by location, time, and speed. The position availability methods create and maintain a reliable routing path to delivery position information. The selection and maintenance of routing paths in literature can be based on multiple resources, for example wireless signal strength, computation resources, and probability models. The three aspects, position integrity, position confidentiality, and position availability, are the three basic requirements of information security based on the standard 200 of NIST.

Physical Layer Security and Its Applications

This chapter provides a survey of physical layer security and key generation methods. This includes mainly an overview of ongoing research in physical layer security in the present and next generation communication networks. Although higher layer security mechanisms and protocols address wireless security challenges in large extent, more security vulnerabilities arise due to the increasingly pervasive existence of wireless communication devices. In this context, the focus of this chapter is mainly on physical layer security. Some security attacks in general are briefly reviewed. Models of physical layer security, information theoretic works, and key generation methods including quantization and reconciliation are discussed. Some latest developments for enhanced security like Multiple-Input Multiple-Output (MIMO) systems, reconfigurable antennas, and multiple relay systems are also presented. Finally, some existing and emerging application scenarios of physical layer security are discussed.

900MHz Spectrum Refarming Analysis for UMTS900 Deployment

Refarming means re-arrangement of the traditionally allotted spectrum for a technology/application/service and carving out a part of the spectrum for technology/application/service with higher value. The refarming concept can be used for 3G network deployment in 2G bands or for 4G network deployment in 2G/3G bands. Relative to the UMTS core band (2100MHz), in the 900MHz band radio signal propagation loss is lower. Fewer base stations can be deployed in 900MHz band to achieve the same coverage. Especially in the rural areas, villages, etc., covering limited areas, the UMTS900 band coverage advantages are more obvious. The lower carrier frequency penetration capability becomes much stronger. It reduces the loss while penetrating the wall. This chapter aims to focus on the global UMTS900 refarming status, key advantages of UMTS900 refarming, major challenges of transitioning to UMTS900, technical feasibility of GSM/UMTS co-existence band, and UMTS900 frequency refarming case study in sandwich mode. ECC interference analysis and simulation results are provided for study on co-existence of GSM900 and UMTS900. In the later part of the chapter a detailed case study on 900MHz refarming on sandwich mode is provided with system simulation, frequency planning, capacity migration, and deployment strategy.