Building Trustworthy Mesh Networks: Why Security and Fault-Tolerance Must Be Considered Together

Mesh networks were proposed as a promising low cost, easy to deploy network architecture for wired and wireless networks. Mesh overlays provide the ideal setting to react quickly to fluctuating performance, use application-specific metrics when selecting paths, and support concurrent data flows over multiple paths. In addition, in the context of wireless communication, mesh networks offer increased coverage and larger bandwidth, resulting in higher quality of service and information availability.

Providing secure and uninterrupted service within acceptable performance parameters is challenging in a complex network environment, as computers get so easily compromised and trust is pushed to the end-nodes. Any compromised computer gives to an attacker access to all cryptographic keys stored on that computer and the opportunity to attack the system from inside.

In this talk we show the effect one or several compromised nodes in the mesh can have on the mesh construction and management, preventing it from delivering the promised service. We show why although necessary, cryptographic techniques such as data integrity, authentication and confidentiality are not enough to defend against insider attacks. We emphasize why, in order to build trustworthy mesh networks, it is essential to understand the way security and fault-tolerance can work together or may work against each other. We propose some solutions and discuss their benefits and limitations, in different network contexts and applications.

Speaker Details

Cristina Nita-Rotaru is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Computer Science and a member of CERIAS (Center for Education and Research in Information Assurance and Security) at Purdue University. She leads the Dependable and Secure Distributed Systems Laboratory.Her research interests lie in designing distributed systems, network protocols and applications that are dependable and secure, while maintaining acceptable levels of performance. Her Ph.D. work, Secure Spread, focused on providing support for secure and robust services for group communication. Secure Spread was selected as one of the 12 technologies featured on a DARPA DVD summarizing the accomplishment of 6 programs (Cyber Panel, Dynamic Coalitions, Chats, OASIS, Fault Tolerant Networks, and IA OPX). It was also selected to participate in Joint Warrior Interoperability Demonstration (JWID) 2004, a large coalition experiment.Her current research focuses on designing intrusion-tolerant architectures for distributed services that scale to wide-area networks, investigating survivable services in multi-hop wireless networks and building robust and secure overlay networks.Her work is funded by the Center for Education and Research in Information Security and Assurance (CERIAS), by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), and by the National Science Foundation (NSF).Cristina Nita-Rotaru holds a Ph.D. in Computer Science from Johns Hopkins University and a M.Sc. from Politehnica University of Bucharest, Romania.More information available at http://homes.cerias.purdue.edu/~crisn/

Date:
Speakers:
Cristina Nita-Rotaru
Affiliation:
Purdue University
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