Dina Shehada

Recent Advances in VANET Security: A Survey

Vehicular ad hoc networks (VANET) are emerging as a prominent form of mobile ad hoc networks (MANETs) and as an effective technology for providing a wide range of safety applications for vehicle passengers. Nowadays, VANETs are of an increasing importance as they enable accessing a large variety of ubiquitous services. Such increase is also associated with a similar increase in vulnerabilities in these inter-vehicular services and communications, and consequently, the number of security attacks and threats. It is of paramount importance to ensure VANETs security as their deployment in the future must not compromise the safety and privacy of their users. The successful defending against such VANETs attacks prerequisite deploying efficient and reliable security solutions and services, and the research in this field is still immature and is continuously and rapidly growing. As such, this paper is devoted to provide a structured and comprehensive overview of the recent research advances on VANETS security services, surveying the state-of-the-art on security threats, vulnerabilities and security services, while focusing on important aspects that are not well-surveyed in the literature such as VANET security assessment tools.

Novel Performance Analysis of Multi-Access MIMO Relay Cooperative RM-DCSK over Nakagami-m Fading Subject to AWGGN

In this paper, a novel performance analysis of the multi-access multiple-input multiple-output relay reference-modulated differential chaos shift keying cooperative diversity (RM-DCSK-CD) is presented. New closed-form expressions for the average bit error rates are derived for multiple relaying protocols. The carried analysis is based on a novel approximation of the bit error rates of RM-DCSK systems that directly applies for high- efficiency DCSK (HE-DCSK). The analysis assumes Additive White Generalized Gaussian Noise (AWGGN) model, which includes many other noise models as special cases, and Nakagami-m fading (and hence the Rayleigh fading). Numerical results prove the accuracy of our derived expressions.

Novel secret key generation techniques using memristor devices

This paper proposes novel secret key generation techniques using memristor devices. The approach depends on using the initial profile of a memristor as a master key. In addition, session keys are generated using the master key and other specified parameters. In contrast to existing memristor-based security approaches, the proposed development is cost effective and power efficient since the operation can be achieved with a single device rather than a crossbar structure. An algorithm is suggested and demonstrated using physics based Matlab model. It is shown that the generated keys can have dynamic size which provides perfect security. Moreover, the proposed encryption and decryption technique using the memristor based generated keys outperforms Triple Data Encryption Standard (3DES) and Advanced Encryption Standard (AES) in terms of processing time. This paper is enriched by providing characterization results of a fabricated microscale Al/TiO2/Al memristor prototype in order to prove the concept of the proposed approach and study the impacts of process variations. The work proposed in this paper is a milestone towards System On Chip (SOC) memristor based security.

New secure healthcare system using cloud of things

Modern healthcare services are serving patients needs by using new technologies such as wearable devices or cloud of things. The new technology provides more facilities and enhancements to the existing healthcare services as it allows more flexibility in terms of monitoring patients records and remotely connecting with the patients via cloud of things. However, there are many security issues such as privacy and security of healthcare data which need to be considered once we introduce wearable devices to the healthcare service. Although some of the security issues were addressed by some researchers in the literature, they mainly addressed cloud of things security or healthcare security separately and their work still suffers from limited security protection and vulnerabilities to some security attacks. The proposed new healthcare system combines security of both healthcare and cloud of things technologies. It also addresses most of the security challenges that might face the healthcare services such as the man in the middle (MITM), eavesdropping, replay, repudiation, and modification attacks. Scyther verification tool was also used to verify the robustness and correctness of the proposed system.

Novel microscale memristor with uniqueness property for securing communications

A rewritable micro-thick low power memristor device is presented. The memristor is fabricated based on a novel structure that is composed of Al/TiO2/Cu. The device switches at 3X lower voltage compared to the existing bipolar memristor state of the art at the microscale. The fabricated device exhibits unique I-V characteristic among similar devices when operated without prior electroforming. Thus, a new secure communication technique is proposed based on the existence of third trust party (TTP). As each host has unique memristor device, messages can be encrypted and decrypted securely using memristor based keys. In addition, Scyther analysis are provided to prove the security of the proposed technique. This work takes advantage of the inherited variation of memristor device electric characteristics to strengthen security algorithm in cryptographic application.

Non-invasive extraction of fetal electrocardiogram using fast independent component analysis technique

Fetal electrocardiogram (fECG) provides clinically important information concerning the electrophysiological state of a fetus. The fECG contains activity of electrical depolarization and repolarization of fetal heart. In this paper a technique is proposed called Fast Independent Component Analysis (Fast ICA) to extract the fECG signals from the 20 sets of abdominal ECG signals. Using Fast ICA, 91.4% R peaks of fECG signals were extracted as validated by the direct fECG R peaks measured from scalp. The mother electrocardiogram (mECG) is extracted from the four channel abdominal ECGs, canceled and then the fECG is extracted. Bland Altman and correlation calculations showed no significant difference between the extracted fECG and direct fECG RR intervals. The correlation coefficient ρ was 0.84 and the p value was 0.

BROSMAP: A Novel Broadcast Based Secure Mobile Agent Protocol for Distributed Service Applications

Mobile agents are smart programs that migrate from one platform to another to perform the user task. Mobile agents offer flexibility and performance enhancements to systems and service real-time applications. However, security in mobile agent systems is a great concern. In this paper, we propose a novel Broadcast based Secure Mobile Agent Protocol (BROSMAP) for distributed service applications that provides mutual authentication, authorization, accountability, nonrepudiation, integrity, and confidentiality. The proposed system also provides protection from man in the middle, replay, repudiation, and modification attacks. We proved the efficiency of the proposed protocol through formal verification with Scyther verification tool.

A secure mobile agent protocol for vehicular communication systems

A Mobile agent (MA) is an intelligent software that performs tasks on behalf of its owner. MAs collect results migrating from one node to another. MAs have a small size and a low requirement of network bandwidth, they also reduce the load of the network making a Mobile Agent System (MAS) a preferred solution in distributed applications. Intelligent Vehicular Communication Systems are an excellent exemplary candidate for such applications. Although MAs flexibility is a great add on to application however, ensuring their security is considered a challenging task due to its network openness. In this paper, a novel Secure Mobile Agent Protocol (SMAP) dedicated for Vehicular Communication Systems is proposed. SMAP provides the essential security requirements e.g. mutual authentication, confidentiality, integrity, accountability, non repudiation and authorization. Using SMAP owner vehicles receive results as soon as they are requested and therefore, providing fast information retrieval process. Moreover, another important feature of SMAP is that unlike other protocols the loss of the MA does not necessary mean the loss of all the collected data. Furthermore, SMAP guarantees protection from many security attacks such as, Man In The Middle (MITM), replay, masquerade, modification and unauthorized access attacks. Verified using the well known formal verification tool Scyther, SMAP is proven to be a suitable protocol for securing vehicular communication links from malicious actions.

Secure Mobile Agent Protocol for Vehicular Communication Systems in Smart Cities

A Mobile agent (MA) is an intelligent software that performs tasks on behalf of its owner. MAs collect results migrating from one node to another. MAs have a small size and a low requirement of network bandwidth. They also reduce the load on the network making a Mobile Agent System (MAS) a preferred solution in distributed applications. Intelligent Vehicular Communication Systems are an excellent exemplary candidate for such applications. Although MAs flexibility is a great add on to such applications, however, ensuring their security is considered a challenging task due to their openness and flexibility in the network. In this paper, a novel Secure Mobile Agent Protocol (SMAP) dedicated for Vehicular Communication Systems is proposed. SMAP provides the essential security requirements e.g. mutual authentication, confidentiality, integrity, accountability, non-repudiation and authorization. Using SMAP vehicles’ owners receive results as soon as they are requested and therefore, providing fast information retrieval process. Moreover, another important feature of SMAP is that unlike other protocols, the loss of the MA does not necessarily mean the loss of all the collected data. Furthermore, SMAP guarantees protection from many security attacks such as, Man In The Middle (MITM), replay, masquerade, modification, and unauthorized access attacks. Verified using the well-known formal verification tool Scyther, SMAP is proven to be a suitable protocol for securing vehicular communication links from malicious actions. Moreover a security and complexity analysis of SMAP and other related protocols are presented in details. Also, simulation of a SMAP based vehicular communication system application is conducted.

A framework for comparison of trust models for multi agent systems

Agents technology plays an important role in the development of many major service applications. However, balancing between the flexible features agents provide, and their vulnerability to many security oriented attacks are considered a great challenge. In this paper we review trust models that are proposed in the literature to provide trustworthiness and security to Multi Agent Systems (MAS). We subsequently develop a framework for comparison of the various different trust models. Trust models are first compared and classified according to types of evaluations used, weight assignment, consideration of inaccurate evaluations and architecture. They are also compared according to suitability to MAS.