Camouflaging is about making something invisible or less visible. Network camouflaging is about hiding certain traffic information (e.g. traffic pattern, traffic flow identity, etc.) from internal and external eavesdroppers such that important information cannot be deduced from it for malicious use. It is one of the most challenging security requirements to meet in computer networks. Existing camouflaging techniques such as traffic padding, MIX-net, etc., incur significant performance degradation when protected networks are wireless networks, such as sensor networks and mobile ad hoc networks. The reason is that wireless networks are typically subject to resource constraints (e.g. bandwidth, power supply) and possess some unique characteristics (e.g. broadcast, node mobility) that traditional wired networks do not possess. This necessitates developing new techniques that take account of properties of wireless networks and are able to achieve a good balance between performance and security. In this three-part dissertation we investigate techniques for providing network camouflaging services in wireless networks. In the first part, we address a specific problem in a hierarchical multi-task sensor network, i.e. hiding the links between observable traffic patterns and user interests. To solve the problem, a temporally constant traffic pattern, called cover traffic pattern, is needed. We describe two traf- fic padding schemes that implement the cover traffic pattern and provide algorithms for achieving the optimal energy efficiencies with each scheme. In the second part, we explore the design of a MIX-net based anonymity system in mobile ad hoc networks. The objective is to hide the source-destination relationship with respect to each connection. We survey existing MIX route determination algorithms that do not account for dynamic network topology changes, which may result in high packet loss rate and large packet latency. We then introduce adaptive algorithms to overcome this problem. In the third part, we explore the notion of providing anonymity support at MAC layer in wireless networks, which employs the broadcast property of wireless transmission. We design an IEEE 802.11-compliant MAC protocol that provides receiver anonymity for unicast frames and offers better reliability than pure broadcast protocol.

Wireless network access protocols are used in numerous safety critical applications. Network availability is essential for safety critical applications,since loss of availability can cause personal or material damage. An adversary can disrupt the availability of a wireless network using denial of service (DoS) attacks. The most widely used wireless protocols are vulnerable to DoS attacks. Researchers have published DoS attacks against IEEE 802.11 local area networks (LANs), IEEE 802.16 wide area networks (WANs) and GSM andUMTS mobile networks. In this work, we analyze DoS vulnerabilities in wireless network protocols and define four categories of attacks:  jamming attacks, flooding attacks, semantic attacks and implementation specific attacks. We identify semantic attacks as the most severe threat to current andfuture wireless protocols, and as the category that has received the least attention by researchers. During the first phase of the research project we discover semantic DoS vulnerabilities in the IEEE 802.11 communication protocols through manual analysis. The 802.11 standard has been subject to manual analysis of DoS vulnerabilities for more than a decade, thus our results indicate that protocol vulnerabilities can elude manual analysis. We conclude that formal methods are required in order to improve protocol robustness against semantic DoS attacks.We propose a formal method that can be used to automatically discover protocol vulnerabilities. The formal method defines a protocol model, adversary model and cost model. The protocol participants and adversary are modeled as finite state transducers, while the cost is modeled as a function of time. Our primary goal is to construct a formal method that is practical, i.e. does not require a vast amount of resources to implement, and useful, i.e. able to discover protocol vulnerabilities. We verify and validate our proposed method by modeling the 802.11w amendment to the 802.11 standard using Promela as the modeling language. We then use the SPIN model checker to verify the model properties and experiments to validate the results. The modeling and experiments result in the discovery and experimental validation of four new deadlock vulnerabilities that had eluded manual analysis. We find one deadlock vulnerability in 802.11i and three deadlock vulnerabilitiesin 802.11w. A deadlock vulnerability is the most severe form of communication protocol DoS vulnerabilities, and their discovery and removal are an essential part of robust protocol design. Thus, we conclude that our proposed formal method is both practical and useful.

Nowadays every wireless radio-communication services encompass huge type of technology used for transfer video, voice or data. Wireless communication is the most expanded branch and many companies are using this technology because of low cost and simply management. The biggest advantage is easy connection to shared wireless medium and allows users of network to move around whole covered area. The most expanded types of wireless networks are called Wireless LAN (WLAN). With rising number of WLANs is rising chance to attack shared wireless medium by hacker and many sensitive information can be stolen or modified. To avoid this chance was created the first security protocol used in WLAN called WEP. Its goal was protect data transmitted trough WLAN as strong as were protected in wired networks. Unfortunately WEP was hiding a big weakness which can be used in a crack of WLAN in a minute with the aid of special software. Example of this kid of software can be Airsnort constructed to monitor shared medium and captured every packet transferred trough this medium. Based on statistical method Airsnort can obtain hidden password in a few minutes. The second type of this software can be Aircrack-ng, which can crack hidden password without any user connected to WLAN. Aircrack-ng uses active techniques to generate network load and can obtain password more effectively and faster. The result of both cases was successful and protection of WLAN was completely cracked. Later was created new security protocol called WPA, which had to fix the cryptography weakness of previous WEP. WPA was only temporary security protocol, during standard 802.11 was developing which had to offer highest security and integrity protection of transferred data trough WLAN. For this reasons was created new version of WPA called WPA2 which satisfy requirements of standard 802.11i. Both protocols WPA/WPA2 contain weakness, which can crash security of WLAN. This crack is based on authentication PSK. Attacker during authentication is using information from four-way handshake between user of WLAN and access point. Based on this information attacker can crack password with the aid of password list attack which took approximately 30 minutes. Based on previous result is important to chose strong password contains alphanumeric string or special strings with satisfy length.

Usage of mobile applications and wireless networks is growing rapidly at different sectors in the world. Mobile healthcare application is devotedly accepted by the healthcare organizations and also by patients. The reasons behind accepting mobile healthcare applications are as user friendly, reliable, low cost, time efficient, mobility etc. Though the use of mobile applications is rising day by day in the healthcare sectors still those applications are not completely secure to prevent disclosure and misuse of patient’s sensitive data. However, security issues in healthcare applications get attention by many organizations. In this thesis we have presented an integrated architecture for secure mobile healthcare system. This application provides management of patient medical records in a regional environment. Our mobile application is developed for Android platform. This solution is secure enough, because it fulfills important security requirements: integrity, confidentiality and availability.

Smart antenna technique has emerged as one of the leading technologies for enhancing the quality of service in wireless networks. Because of its ability to concentrate transmit power in desired directions, it has been widely adopted by academia and industry to achieve better coverage, improved capacity and spectrum efficiency of wireless communication systems. In spite of its popularity in applications of performance enhancement, the smart antenna's capability of improving wireless network security is relatively less explored. This dissertation focuses on exploiting the smart antenna technology to develop physical layer solutions to anti-eavesdropping and location security problems. We first investigate the problem of enhancing wireless communication privacy. A novel scheme named "artificial fading" is proposed, which leverages the beam switching capability of smart antennas to prevent eavesdropping attacks. We introduce the optimization strategy to design a pair of switched beam patterns that both have high directional gain to the intended receiver. Meanwhile, in all the other directions, the overlap between these two patterns is minimized. The transmitter switches between the two patterns at a high frequency. In this way, the signal to unintended directions experiences severe fading and the eavesdropper cannot decode it. We use simulation experiments to show that the artificial fading outperforms single pattern beamforming in reducing the unnecessary coverage area of the wireless transmitter. We then study the impact of beamforming technique on wireless localization systems from the perspectives of both location privacy protection and location spoofing attack. For the location privacy preservation scheme, we assume that the adversary uses received signal strength (RSS) based localization systems to localize network users in Wireless LAN (WLAN). The purpose of the scheme is to make the adversary unable to uniquely localize the user when possible, and otherwise, maximize error of the adversary's localization results. To this end, we design a two-step scheme to optimize the beamforming pattern of the wireless user's smart antenna. First, the user moves around to estimate the locations of surrounding access points (APs). Then based on the locations of the APs, pattern synthesis is optimized to minimize the number of APs in the coverage area and degenerate the localization precision. Simulation results show that our scheme can significantly lower the chance of being localized by adversaries and also degrade the location estimation precision to as low as the coverage range of the AP that the wireless user is connected to. As personal privacy preservation and security assurance at the system level are always conflictive to some extent, the capability of smart antenna to intentionally bias the RSS measurements of the localization system also potentially enables location spoofing attacks. From this aspect, we present theoretical analysis on the feasibility of beamforming-based perfect location spoofing (PLS) attacks, where the attacker spoofs to a target fake location by carefully choosing the beamforming pattern to fool the location system. The PLS problem is formulated as a nonlinear feasibility problem, and due to its intractable nature, we solve it using semidefinite relaxation (SDR) in conjunction with a heuristic local search algorithm. Simulation results show the effectiveness of our analytical approach and indicate the correlation between the geometry of anchor deployment and the feasibility of PLS attacks. Based on the simulation results, guidelines for guard against PLS attacks are provided. / Ph. D.

Wireless local area networks (WLAN) are beginning to play a much larger role in corporate network environments and are already very popular for home networking applications. This increase in accessibility has created large security holes for hackers and thieves to abuse, which is finally being addressed by stronger security methods such as advanced encryption algorithms and efficient authentication processes. However, these security methods often hamper network performance unbeknownst to engineers and users. This research examines the effects of Wired Equivalent Privacy (WEP), Temporal Key Integrity Protocol (TKIP), and Counter Mode/CBC-MAC Protocol (CCMP) encryption algorithms on throughput rates for IEEE 802.11 networks as well as the authentication times for Lightweight Extensible Authentication Protocol (LEAP) and Protected Extensible Authentication Protocol (PEAP). The research shows that today's wireless hardware is capable of reducing overhead of even the most advanced encryption schemes to less than five percent of the total bandwidth. / Master of Science

Cognitive radios are currently presented as the solution to the ever-increasing spectrum shortage problem. However, their increased capabilities over traditional radios introduce a new dimension of security threats. Cooperative Spectrum Sensing (CSS) has been proposed as a means to protect cognitive radio networks from the well known security threats: Primary User Emulation (PUE) and Spectrum Sensing Data Falsification (SSDF). I demonstrate a new threat to trust-based CSS protocols, called the Rogue Signal Framing (RSF) intrusion. Rogue signals can be exploited to create the illusion of malicious sensors which leads to the framing of innocent sensors and consequently, their removal from the shared spectrum sensing. Ultimately, with fewer sensors working together, the spectrum sensing is less robust for making correct spectrum access decisions. The simulation experiments illustrate the impact of RSF intrusions which, in severe cases, shows roughly 40\% of sensors removed. To mitigate the RSF intrusion's damage to the network's trust, I introduce a new defense based on community detection from analyzing the network's Received Signal Strength (RSS) diversity. Tests show a 95\% damage reduction in terms of removed sensors from the shared spectrum sensing, thus retaining the benefits of CSS protocols.

The work deals with design and implementation of multi-point wireless network connecting selected end devices (IP cameras). The Access Points (AP) using frequency band 2.4 GHz establish the connection. They are connected using wireless distribution system (WDS). The work briefly describes standard IEEE 802.11g which is base of the design. Practical part is composed of network throughput measuring, signal strength measuring of access points with description and description of all other used devices.

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Made available in DSpace on 2014-12-17T14:55:50Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 DISSERTACAO RODRIGO SOARES SEMENTE.pdf: 1203856 bytes, checksum: 4eaca6c76cb5befb0c8681343579bc26 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2011-07-22 / Wireless sensors and actuators Networks specified by IEEE 802.15.4, are becoming increasingly being applied to instrumentation, as in instrumentation of oil wells with completion Plunger Lift type. Due to specific characteristics of the environment being installed, it s find the risk of compromising network security, and presenting several attack scenarios and the potential damage from them. It`s found the need for a more detailed security study of these networks, which calls for use of encryption algorithms, like AES-128 bits and RC6. So then it was implement the algorithms RC6 and AES-128, in an 8 bits microcontroller, and study its performance characteristics, critical for embedded applications. From these results it was developed a Hybrid Algorithm Cryptographic, ACH, which showed intermediate characteristics between the AES and RC6, more appropriate for use in applications with limitations of power consumption and memory. Also was present a comparative study of quality of security among the three algorithms, proving ACH cryptographic capability. / As redes de sensores e atuadores sem-fio especificadas pelo padr?o IEEE 802.15.4, est?o cada vez mais sendo aplicadas ? instrumenta??o, como na instrumenta??o de po?os de petr?leo com completa??o do tipo Plunger Lift. Devido ?s caracter?sticas espec?ficas do ambiente que est?o sendo instaladas, foram observados riscos de comprometimento de seguran?a da rede, e estudados v?rios cen?rios de ataques e os danos potenciais dos mesmos. Verificou-se assim a necessidade de um estudo mais detalhado de seguran?a dessas redes, que preconiza o uso de algoritmos de criptografia, como o AES-128 bits e RC6. Assim foram implementados os algoritmos AES-128 e RC6, em um microcontrolador de apenas 8 bits, e realizados estudos detalhados de suas caracter?sticas de desempenho, crucial para aplica??es embarcadas. A partir desses resultados foi criado um Algoritmo Criptogr?fico H?brido, ACH, que apresentou caracter?sticas intermedi?rias entre o AES e o RC6, mais apropriadas para uso em aplica??es com limita??es de consumo de energia e mem?ria. Tamb?m foi realizado um estudo comparativo da qualidade de seguran?a entre os tr?s algoritmos, provando a capacidade criptogr?fica do ACH.