Daouda Ahmat

Reliable and Scalable Distributed Hash Tables Harnessing Hyperbolic Coordinates

Distributed hash tables (DHT) need to route requests in a scalable way. Although several solutions do exist, they often require nodes to connect to each others in a given way. Greedy routing schemes based on virtual coordinates taken from the hyperbolic plane have attracted some interest in recent years. Such schemes can be used for building distributed hash tables while letting the nodes connect to the others as they wish. In this paper, we define a new scalable and reliable DHT system based on the use of hyperbolic geometry. We provide a scalability analysis and we assess its efficiency by performing simulations. Results show that our DHT system brings more flexibility to the nodes while still being scalable and reliable in presence of churn.

MUSeS: Mobile User Secured Session

Mobility and security are very important services for both current and future network infrastructures. However, the integration of mobility in traditional virtual private networks is difficult due to the costs of reestablishing broken secure tunnels and restarting broken application connections. In order to address this issue, we propose a new communication system called Mobile User Secured Session. Based upon a peer-to-peer overlay network, it provides security services to the application layer connections of mobile users. The secure and resilient sessions allow user connections to survive network failures as opposed to regular transport layer secured connections. We have implemented a prototype and have assessed its proper functioning by running experimentations upon a simple virtual dynamic network.

Towards Securing Communications in Infrastructure-Poor Areas

Structured P2P networks have proven to be effective in the exchange of data between nodes whose identity and content are generally indexed in a DHT. For years, such DHT networks have allowed, among other users, third world inhabitants, such as African people, to exchange information among them and with the rest of the world without relying on a centralized infrastructure. Unfortunately, more than ever, reliability of communication across the Internet is threatened by various attacks, including usurpation of identity, eavesdropping or traffic modification. Thus, in order to overcome these security issues and allow peers to securely exchange data, we propose a new key management scheme that enables to handle public keys in the absence of a central coordination which would be required in a traditional PKI.

Sustainable ICT4D in Africa: Where Do We Go from Here?

In recent years many researchers in Africa and beyond have devoted considerable resources investigating ways to harness the potential of ICT for improving users’ livelihood in developing areas. Topics and domains of interest appear to be broad with recurring themes and solutions. Unfortunately there are no clear research roadmaps on what is urgent and of the state of the art solutions. In this position paper for the AFRICOMM series of conference, we propose to investigate some priorities for ICT4D in Africa. We believe that our work could motivate researchers and create a synergy around a few important challenges of ICT4D in Africa.

Blockchain Consensus Protocols

There is currently a big rush in the research and practice communities to investigate the blockchain technology towards leveraging its security, immutability and transparency features to create new services or improve existing ones. In developing countries, which are seen as a fertile ground for field testing disruptive technologies, blockchain is viewed as the “trust machine” that is necessary for accelerating development. Unfortunately, the internal working of blockchain as well as its constraints are often overlooked in the design of services. This, in conjunction with a poor regulatory framework, slows down any concrete attempt to build upon the technology. In this paper, we contribute towards accelerating the concrete adoption of blockchain by making explicit the constraints that affect their practical use in the context of developing countries such as African sub-saharan countries. Overall we recommend that the technology should be adjusted to the real-world constraints, in particular those that we currently witness on network latency, computation power as well as cultural gaps.

End-to-End Key Exchange through Disjoint Paths in P2P Networks

Due to their inherent features, P2P networks have proven to be effective in the exchange of data between autonomous peers. Unfortunately, these networks are subject to various security threats that cannot be addressed readily since traditional security infrastructures, which are centralized, cannot be applied to them. Furthermore, communication reliability across the Internet is threatened by various attacks, including usurpation of identity, eavesdropping or traffic modification. Thus, in order to overcome these security issues and allow peers to securely exchange data, we propose a new key management scheme over P2P networks. Our approach introduces a new method that enables a secret key exchange through disjoint paths in the absence of a trusted central coordination point which would be required in traditional centralized security systems.

Bootstrapping Software Engineering Training in Developing Countries

ICT4D research has the potential of drastically enhancing the daily life of millions of people in developing countries. However, this potential can only be realized if there is enough skilled professionals to transform research ideas into business opportunities. Thus, education in computer sciences is becoming a priority in many countries in Africa, although harsh conditions involving for example limitations in Internet bandwidth and strong academia staff, have negative impact on student motivation and teacher’s as well.

A Survey on Secure and Resilient Session Schemes: Technical Comparison and Assessment

Cyber threats become more and more pervasive on the Internet and on distributed/decentralized systems. In order to secure communication over these infrastructures and respond to mobility constraint, a new class of Virtual Private Networks (VPN), which support both security and mobility, has emerged in the course of last years. Mobile Virtual Private Networks, called mobile VPN, provide not only secure tunnels but also session continuity mechanism despite location change or connection disruptions. This mechanism enables secure sessions to survive in dynamic/mobile environments without requiring a renegotiation of security keys during the session resumption phase. In this paper, on the one hand, we survey the recent literature on the mobile VPN systems followed by a detailed analysis and a technical comparison in tabulated form of existing technologies. On the other hand, we carry out experiments on open source mobile VPN infrastructures. We subsequently outline and discuss major features and performances of various assessed mobile VPN infrastructures.

Vulnerabilities of Government Websites in a Developing Country – the Case of Burkina Faso

Slowly, but consistently, the digital gap between developing and developed countries is being closed. Everyday, there are initiatives towards relying on ICT to simplify the interaction between citizens and their governments in developing countries. E-government is thus becoming a reality: in Burkina Faso, all government bodies are taking part in this movement with web portals dedicated to serving the public. Unfortunately, in this rush to promote government actions within this trend of digitization, little regards is given to the security of such web sites. In many cases, government highly critical web sites are simply produced in a product line fashion using Content Management Systems which the webmasters do not quite master.