EE5723/EE4723 Course Projects

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 8~10page 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.
EE5723/EE4723

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
EE5723/EE4723

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

EE5723/EE4723

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

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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

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Project 2: Security vs. Network QoS (network

tradeoffs): Security-QoS Co-design

Problem: Different performance metrics may be in

(partial) conflict

Tasks:

Probably the most secure system is of minimal usability

E.g., energy efficiency/computation complexity vs cryptography
strength

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

EE5723/EE4723

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
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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
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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 (MacKenzies 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)

EE5723/EE4723

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

Adaptive to user devices: node security capability level adaptive to its resource
Adaptive to operation environment:
Adaptive to channel dynamics:

Cross-domain service for roaming users

Adaptive to trust level among nodes

Adaptive to dynamic membership and network scalability

Partial connectivity, disconnectivity, full connectivity

Adaptive to mobility

Differential security services used in government and military

Node join, leave, fail

Task:

Systematic Security Provisioning Architecture and Framework

Develop Cross-layer adaptive security protocol scheme: Localized anonymity detection &
reaction, global coordination

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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:
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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

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Project 7:MANET/VANET Network Layer (Routing)

Misbehavior - Selfish & uncooperative behaviors I

Many potential misbehaviors identified 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-ofservice attack, due to failure of some sort, or because of overload

EE5723/EE4723

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

Nodes prefer to route through & for nodes with higher reputation
Interesting concept, but cannot circumvent the difficulties in diagnosing
misbehavior accurately

Honest mobile nodes will forward packets for one another

Cheaters will forward just for themselves
May be difficult to tell the difference

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?

EE5723/EE4723

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

Need to be able to determine when observed behavior departs significantly

from the norm

E.g., the MAC layer approach for detecting deviation from normal distribution of
contention window parameters can be considered an anomaly detection scheme

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

EE5723/EE4723

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

EE5723/EE4723

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
EE5723/EE4723

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
EE5723/EE4723

Project 11: Authentication Architecture

and Protocols in MANET & WSN

Problem: Lack of KDC & CA

Tasks:

Deliverables: Mechanism/theoretical study;

simulation/analytical study

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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:
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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

EE5723/EE4723

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

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Project Proposal

Survey topic

Significance of specified topic

Preliminary reading notes

Planned directions for investigation

References

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