EE5723/EE4723 - Course Projects

1. EE5723/EE4723 - Course Projects

2. Course Projects • The course research project can be a design of new secure algorithms/protocols; an analysis/evaluation/implementation of existing secure algorithms, protocols, or systems; Identifying new attacks and vulnerabilities in MANET/VANET & WSN algorithms or protocols. • Potential project topics will be distributed and discussed on the 4th week. Students are encouraged to identify the topics based on their own background and interests. • With a chosen topic, the students should identify an open problem, formulate a concrete proposal to address the problem, research related work, propose a new scheme or develop a novel analysis, and obtain results to evaluate their ideas. • A 1~2-page proposal is due on 6th week which describes with a clear statement of the specific problem of your focused topic,  and the expected results. A 2~3-page mid-term project progress report is due on week 10, which describes the research topic, prior work relevant to the problem, the methodology to be followed, and preliminary results. A 8~10-page high-quality final report is due on week 15. A final in-class presentation from all project teams will be given during that week. • Often a research project will demand performance evaluation via simulation. You are free to use whatever programming language (C/C++/Java, ns2, OPNET, MATLAB) for your project simulation. • Each project team is formed up to 2 students. The project teams should be formed by the end of 5th week. • The projects will be graded on the basis of both team success and individual effort. Spring 2010

3. Important Dates & Project Report • Important Dates • Project proposal due: Feb. 18, 2010 • Mid-term project progress due: March 18, 2010 • Final project report due: April 22, 2010 • Project presentations: April 20/22, 2010 • Project Report • Preferably using word document • 8-12 pages including figures and references, • 11pt, double column, single space Spring 2010

4. Projects: Tasks involved • Identify your favorite problem • Propose a solution • Implement and evaluate your solution on simulators (eg., ns-2, OPNET, Matlab, or C/C++/Java) • Run experiments to evaluate your solution • Write a technical report that is close to the quality of a conference paper • Present your results to the class • Demos (successful demos earn extra points) if necessary Spring 2010

5. Project Proposal • Group members (up to 2 students form a team) • Motivation • Problem formulation • Assumptions • Project goals • Approach, preliminary solutions, and their rationale • Sketch of design and algorithms • Simulation plan • What are you going to simulate? • What experiments are you going to run? • What metrics are you going to use? • References Spring 2010

6. Project 1: Trust Establishment, Management, and Modeling in MANET/VANET • Problem/Motivation: • MANET is distributed, nodes are non cooperative in nature. • No centralized certificate authority (CA), each node may sign its own certificate, therefore, trust evaluation is required since no PKI. • E.g., distributed (PGP): involve signature trust and key legitimacy. • In broad sense, trust evaluation among nodes in terms of various concerned behavior • (e.g., packet forwarding/dropping, recommendation,….) is needed for all protocol activities (distinguish “Well-behaved nodes” & “malicious nodes”) • Task: Develop trust evaluation (e.g. Credit/reputation-based strategy, Trust metrics), establishment and updating mechanisms • Goal: Scalable and less complex • Trust Relay: a trust must be transitive • Deliverables: Mechanism/theoretical study; simulation/analytical study Spring 2010

7. Project 2: Security vs. Network QoS (network tradeoffs): Security-QoS Co-design • Problem: Different performance metrics may be in (partial) conflict • Probably the most secure system is of minimal usability • E.g., energy efficiency/computation complexity vs cryptography strength • Tasks: • Incorporating network metrics and security: scalability, communication overhead, computation complexity, energy efficiency, device capability, … • Many conventional security solutions take a centralized approach: For the distributed WSN & MANET/VANET, how distributed mechanisms can be designed? • Deliverables: Mechanism/theoretical study; simulation/analytical study Spring 2010

8. Project 3: Countermeasure Misbehaviors at MAC Layer (including Intelligent Jamming) I • Problem: Misbehaving nodes may violate MAC rules • Disobey protocol specs for selfish gains (DoS attacks) • Possible Nodes Misbehaviors • Causing collisions with other hosts’ RTS or CTS; Those hosts will exponentially backoff on packet loss, giving free channel to the misbehaving host • Impatient Transmitter: Smaller backoff intervals; Shorter Interframe Spacings • Tasks: • Diagnose node misbehavior: Catch misbehaving nodes • Discourage misbehavior: Punish misbehaving nodes Spring 2010

9. Project 3: Countermeasure Misbehaviors at MAC Layer II: Existing/Potential Approach • Watch idle times on the channel to detect when hosts wait too little • Passive Single Observation: a receiver can try to diagnose behavior of nodes trying to send packets to the receiver • Wireless channel introduces uncertainties; Not all hosts see channel idle at the same time • Spatial channel variations bound the efficacy of misbehavior detection mechanisms • Many existing proposals ignore channel variation when performing evaluations, making the evaluations less reliable • Receiver does not know exact backoff value chosen by sender: Sender chooses random backoff; Hard to distinguish between maliciously chosen small values and a legitimate value • Variations – Multiple Observers • In an ad hoc networks, a node can only diagnose, on its own, misbehavior by senders in its vicinity • Potential for error due to channel variations • Different hosts can cooperate to improve accuracy • Open problem: How to cooperate? How to “merge” information to arrive at a diagnosis? Node mobility introduce more challenges • Task: Design efficient/scalable protocols that improve the ability to detect misbehavior Spring 2010

10. Project 3: Countermeasure Misbehaviors at MAC Layer III: Existing/Potential Approach • Protocols that discourage misbehavior: Certain game-theoretic approaches & Incentive based approaches: • It has been shown (MacKenzie’s contribution) that there exists a Nash equilibrium strategy • Problem: Game-theoretic solutions (so far) assume that all hosts see identical channel state • Not realistic • Limits usefulness of solutions • Task: Improvement • Incentive-Based Mechanisms: Use payment schemes, charging per packet (Sprite: A Simple, Cheat-Proof, Credit-Based System for Mobile Ad-Hoc Networks, Infocom 2003) • Misbehaving hosts can get more throughput, but at a higher cost • This solution does not ensure fairness • Also, misbehaving node can achieve lower delay at no extra cost • Problem: This suggests that per-packet payment is not enough • Task: Need to factor delay and fairness as well (harder) Spring 2010

11. Project 4: Adaptive Security Provisioning in MANET & WSN • Problem: Static security architectures cannot cope with rapidly changing security environment, including: • physical parameters • threats • network dynamics • mission goals • Goal: Adaptation to handle many dimensions of dynamics to enhance the overall security of system in an efficient way: • Adaptive to user requirements • Differential security services used in government and military • Adaptive to user devices: node security capability level adaptive to its resource • Adaptive to operation environment: • Adaptive to channel dynamics: • Partial connectivity, disconnectivity, full connectivity • Adaptive to mobility • Cross-domain service for roaming users • Adaptive to trust level among nodes • Adaptive to dynamic membership and network scalability • Node join, leave, fail • Task: • Systematic Security Provisioning Architecture and Framework • Develop Cross-layer adaptive security protocol scheme: Localized anonymity detection & reaction, global coordination Spring 2010

12. Project 5: Threat Model & Vulnerability Analysis & Security Metrics for Various MANET/VANET & WSN Applications • Problem: Modeling vulnerabilities • VERY POOR state of understanding • Needed by services and applications • Tasks: Threat Model, Vulnerability Analysis, Security Metrics, Security Assessment • Deliverables: Spring 2010

13. Project 6: Secure Communication (A view from Transport Layer): • Problem: Availability of an authentic key is not enough to prevent traffic analysis, demand anonymity • We may want to hide the source or the destination of a packet, or simply the amount of traffic between a given pair of nodes • Traditional approaches for anonymous communication, for instance, based on MIX nodes or dummy traffic insertion, can be used in wireless ad hoc networks as well • Task: Develop new anonymity mechanism for MANET/VANET or WSN • It is possible to develop new approaches considering the broadcast nature of the wireless channel Spring 2010

14. Project 7:MANET/VANET Network Layer (Routing) Misbehavior - Selfish & uncooperative behaviors I • Many potential misbehaviorsidentified in various papers • Route Discovery • May disrupt route discovery and maintenance: Force use of poor routes (e.g., long routes) • May degrade performance by making good routes look bad • Packet Forwarding • A node “agrees” to join a route (for instance, by forwarding route request in DSR) but fails to forward packets correctly: Delay, drop, corrupt, misroute packets • A node may do so to conserve energy, or to launch a denial-of-service attack, due to failure of some sort, or because of overload Spring 2010

15. Project 7:MANET/VANET Network Layer (Routing) Misbehavior -Selfish & uncooperative behaviors II • Misbehavior Detection & Reaction • Difficult in MANET/VANET & WSN environment • How to encourage Honesty in Wireless Networks (e.g., CONFIDANT Protocol: E.g. Hosts Bearing Grudges) • Reputation-based scheme • Honest mobile nodes will forward packets for one another • Cheaters will forward just for themselves • May be difficult to tell the difference … • Nodes prefer to route through & for nodes with higher reputation • Interesting concept, but cannot circumvent the difficulties in diagnosing misbehavior accurately • Each node determines whether its neighbor is misbehaving • A node ALARMs its “friends” when a misbehaving hosts is detected • Each node maintains reputation ratings for other nodes that are reduced on receipt of ALARMs • How to decide on friends? What if “friends” cheat? Spring 2010

16. Project 7:MANET Network Layer (Routing) Misbehavior -Selfish & uncooperative behaviors III • Problem: Anomaly detection-Detect deviation from “normal” behavior • Need to characterize “normal” • Normal behavior hard to characterize accurately • E.g., the MAC layer approach for detecting deviation from “normal” distribution of contention window parameters can be considered an “anomaly detection” scheme • Need to be able to determine when observed behavior departs significantly from the norm • Avoid false positives • Task: • Anomaly detection can be useful at network layer • How to characterize “normal” routing protocol behavior? • Some of the routing mechanisms detect specific forms of abnormal behavior, but a more generic approach is desired • Can we design a protocol-independent anomaly detection mechanism? Not clear Spring 2010

17. Project 8 : Secure localization (Authentication & Privacy) - Location Verification in WSN • Problem:Secure location discovery and verification of claims • Tasks: • Deliverables: Mechanism/theoretical study; simulation/analytical study Spring 2010

18. Project 9: Lightweight Security Primitives/Solutions in MANET & WSN (Including power-aware security mechanisms) • Problem: Severe Resource Constraints • Ref: U-Tesla • Tasks: • Deliverables: Mechanism/theoretical study; simulation/analytical study Spring 2010

19. Project 10: Security for In-Network Processing & Tolerating Malicious Data- Resilient Aggregation (In-network aggregation introduces new security challenges) for WSN • Problem: Secure aggregation and in-network processing • Tasks: • Deliverables: Mechanism/theoretical study; simulation/analytical study Spring 2010

20. Project 11: Authentication Architecture and Protocols in MANET & WSN • Problem: Lack of KDC & CA • Tasks: • Deliverables: Mechanism/theoretical study; simulation/analytical study Spring 2010

21. Project 12: Vulnerability & Threat Model for Smart Grid or other Critical Infrastructures • Problem: Modeling vulnerabilities • VERY Infant state of understanding • Tasks: Threat Model, Vulnerability Analysis, Security Metrics, Security Assessment • Deliverables: Spring 2010

22. Programming Project Option • IDEA Programming (10%) • At least two operation modes for choice • Due in March 18, 2010 • Secure Instant Messenger with RSA (15%) • Tentative • Or realize RSA and any hashing algorithm; sign the hash of a file or message with private key as its signature; verify the signature with the pubic key • Due in April 22,2010 Spring 2010

23. Survey Project Option • Individual project • Any topic from presentation or research project topics • Wider and deeper than presentation • More reference reading • Deeper critiques: remaining problems, potential solutions & future developments • Important Date • Same as research project Spring 2010

24. Project Proposal • Survey topic • Significance of specified topic • Preliminary reading notes • Planned directions for investigation • References Spring 2010