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.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:tamu.edu/oai:repository.tamu.edu:1969.1/3067 |
| Date | 12 April 2006 |
| Creators | Jiang, Shu |
| Contributors | Vaidya, Nitin H., Zhao, Wei |
| Publisher | Texas A&M University |
| Source Sets | Texas A and M University |
| Language | en_US |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Book, Thesis, Electronic Dissertation, text |
| Format | 625871 bytes, electronic, application/pdf, born digital |
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