Sazia Parvin

Review: Cognitive radio network security: A survey

Recent advancements in wireless communication are creating a spectrum shortage problem on a daily basis. Recently, Cognitive Radio (CR), a novel technology, has attempted to minimize this problem by dynamically using the free spectrum in wireless communications and mobile computing. Cognitive radio networks (CRNs) can be formed using cognitive radios by extending the radio link features to network layer functions. The objective of CRN architecture is to improve the whole network operation to fulfil the users demands anytime and anywhere, through accessing CRNs in a more efficient way, rather than by just linking spectral efficiency. CRNs are more flexible and exposed to wireless networks compared with other traditional radio networks. Hence, there are many security threats to CRNs, more so than other traditional radio environments. The unique characteristics of CRNs make security more challenging. Several crucial issues have not yet been investigated in the area of security for CRNs. A typical public key infrastructure (PKI) scheme which achieves secure routing and other purposes in typical ad hoc networks is not enough to guarantee the security of CRNs under limited communication and computation resources. However, there has been increasing research attention on security threats caused specifically by CR techniques and special characteristics of CR in CRNs. Therefore, in this research, a survey of CRNs and their architectures and security issues has been carried out in a broad way in this paper.

A Framework for User Feedback Based Cloud Service Monitoring

The increasing popularity of the cloud computing paradigm and the emerging concept of federated cloud computing have motivated research efforts towards intelligent cloud service selection aimed at developing techniques for enabling the cloud users to gain maximum benefit from cloud computing by selecting services which provide optimal performance at lowest possible cost. Given the intricate and heterogeneous nature of current clouds, the cloud service selection process is, in effect, a multi criteria optimization or decision-making problem. The possible criteria for this process are related to both functional and nonfunctional attributes of cloud services. In this context, the two major issues are: (1) choice of a criteria-set and (2) mechanisms for the assessment of cloud services against each criterion for thorough continuous cloud service monitoring. In this paper, we focus on the issue of cloud service monitoring wherein the existing monitoring and assessment mechanisms are entirely dependent on various benchmark tests which, however, are unable to accurately determine or reliably predict the performance of actual cloud applications under a real workload. We discuss the recent research aimed at achieving this objective and propose a novel user-feedback-based approach which can monitor cloud performance more reliably and accurately as compared with the existing mechanisms.

Trust-Based Authentication for Secure Communication in Cognitive Radio Networks

Over the past few years, Cognitive Radio (CR) has been considered as a demanding concept for improving the utilization of limited radio spectrum resources for future wireless communications and mobile computing. Since a member of Cognitive Radio Networks may join or leave the network at any time, the issue of supporting secure communication in CRNs becomes more critical than for the other conventional wireless networks. This work thus proposes a secure trust-based authentication approach for CRNs. A CR node’s trust value is determined from its previous trust behavior in the network and depending on this trust value, it is decided whether or not this CR node will obtain access to the Primary User’s free spectrum. The security analysis is performed to guarantee that the proposed approach achieves security proof.

Towards Trust Establishment for Spectrum Selection in Cognitive Radio Networks

Cognitive Radio (CR) has been considered as a promising concept for improving the utilization of limited radio spectrum resources for future wireless communications and mobile computing. As cognitive radio network (CRN) is a general wireless heterogeneous network, it is very essential for detecting the misbehaving or false nodes in the network. So in this paper we propose a trust aware model which provides a reliable approach to establish trust for CRN. This approach combines all kinds of trust values together, including the direct trust and indirect trust value for the secondary users. Depending on this trust value, it is decided that whether the secondary user can user the primary user’s spectrum band or not. The mathematical results show that our trust model can efficiently take decision for assigning spectrums to the users.

Self-Healing Key Distribution Schemes for Wireless Networks

The objective of self-healing key distribution is to enable group users to recover session keys by themselves, without requesting additional transmissions from the group manager (GM), even when they miss some broadcast messages. One major benefit of the self-healing key distribution mechanism is the reduction of energy consumption due to the elimination of such additional transmission. Also in some applications, e.g., uni-directional broadcast channel from the GM, the self-healing key distribution mechanism seems to be the ideal solution. Desired features of self-healing key distribution schemes include energy awareness, short broadcast message, efficient users addition, revocation and so on. A primary challenge is managing the trade-off between providing an acceptable level of security and conserving scarce resources in particular energy which is critical for wireless network operations. Over a decade, a great number of self-healing key distribution schemes have been proposed for establishing a group key amongst a dynamic group of users over an unreliable, or lossy, network. In this paper a comprehensive survey is conducted on the state-of-the-art in the field of self-healing key distribution. First, we clarify the security requirements of self-healing key distribution scheme for their special application environment. Then, we present a classification of self-healing key distribution schemes according to different cryptographic primitives, and give an insight to their features and goals. Furthermore, we consider several problems, namely authentication on broadcast messages, sponsorization and mutual-healing, related to the robustness of self-healing key distribution schemes. At last, we delineate their similarities and differences and outline several future research directions.

Multi-cyber framework for availability enhancement of cyber physical systems

With the rapid growth of wireless communication, the deployment of cyber-physical system (CPS) is increasing day by day. As a cyber physical system involves a tight coupling between the physical and computational components, it is critical to ensure that the system, apart from being secure, is available for both the cyber and physical processes. Traditional methods have generally been employed to defend an infrastructure system against physical threats. However, this does not guarantee that the availability of the system will always be high. In this paper, we propose a multi-cyber (computational unit) framework to improve the availability of CPS based on Markov model. We evaluate the effectiveness of our proposed framework in terms of availability, downtime, downtime cost and reliability of the CPS framework.

A Key Management Protocol for Multiphase Hierarchical Wireless Sensor Networks

The security of Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) has a direct reliance on secure and efficient key management. This leaves key management as a fundamental research topic in the field of WSNs security. Among the proposed key management schemes for WSNs security, LEAP (Localized Encryption and Authentication Protocol) has been regarded as an efficient protocol over the last years. LEAP supports the establishment of four types of keys. The security of these keys is under the assumption that the initial deployment phase is secure and the initial key is erased from sensor nodes after the initialization phase. However, the initial key is used again for node addition after the initialization phase whereas the new node can be compromised before erasing the key. A time-based key management scheme rethought the security of LEAP. We show the deficiency of the time-based key management scheme and proposed a key management scheme for multi-phase WSNs in this paper. The proposed scheme disperses the damage resulting from the disclosure of the initial key. We show it has better resilience and higher key connectivity probability through the analysis.

Conjoint trust assessment for secure communication in cognitive radio networks

Abstract With the rapid development of wireless communication, the growth of Cognitive Radio (CR) is increasing day by day. Because CR is flexible and operates on the wireless network, there are more security threats to CR technology than to the traditional radio environment. In addition, there is no comprehensive framework for achieving security in Cognitive Radio Networks (CRNs), and the role of trust for achieving security in CRNs has not been explored previously. Security vulnerability in cognitive radio technology is unavoidable due to the intrinsic nature of the technology, so it is critical to ensure system security in CRNs. The issue of secure communication in CRNs thus becomes more important than it is in conventional wireless networks. In this paper, we propose a conjoint trust assessment approach (combining trust assessment from the Primary User Network and the Secondary User Network) in a CRN to solve the security threats brought about by untrustworthy entities, such as selfish, malicious, and faultless nodes, and to ensure secure spectrum sharing in CRNs. A numerical analysis shows the feasibility of our proposed approach.

Trust-Based Security for Community-Based Cognitive Radio Networks

Cognitive Radio (CR) is considered to be a necessary mechanism to detect whether a particular segment of the radio spectrum is currently in use, and to rapidly occupy the temporarily unused spectrum without interfering with the transmissions of other users. As Cognitive Radio has dynamic properties, so a member of Cognitive Radio Networks may join or leave the network at any time. These properties mean that the issue of secure communication in CRNs becomes more critical than for other conventional wireless networks. This work thus proposes a trust-based security system for community-based CRNs. A CR nodes trust value is analyzed according to its previous behavior in the network and, depending on this trust value, it is decided whether this member node can take part in the communication of CRNs. For security purposes, we have designed our model to ensure that the proposed approach is secure in different contexts.

Digital Signature-Based Secure Communication in Cognitive Radio Networks

Due to the rapid growth of wireless applications, Cognitive Radio (CR) has been considered as a demanding concept for improving the utilization of limited radio spectrum resources for future wireless communications and mobile computing. The unique characteristics of Cognitive Radio Networks (CRNs) make security more challenging. Since a member of Cognitive Radio Networks may join or leave the network at any time, the issue of supporting secure communication in CRNs becomes more critical than for other conventional wireless networks. This work thus proposes digital signature-based secure communication for identifying efficient primary users in CRNs. The security analysis is analyzed to guarantee that the proposed approach achieves security proof.