Wazir Zada Khan

Mobile Phone Sensing Systems: A Survey

Mobile phone sensing is an emerging area of interest for researchers as smart phones are becoming the core communication device in peoples everyday lives. Sensor enabled mobile phones or smart phones are hovering to be at the center of a next revolution in social networks, green applications, global environmental monitoring, personal and community healthcare, sensor augmented gaming, virtual reality and smart transportation systems. More and more organizations and people are discovering how mobile phones can be used for social impact, including how to use mobile technology for environmental protection, sensing, and to leverage just-in-time information to make our movements and actions more environmentally friendly. In this paper we have described comprehensively all those systems which are using smart phones and mobile phone sensors for humans good will and better human phone interaction.

Detection and Mitigation of Node Replication Attacks in Wireless Sensor Networks: A Survey

Wireless sensor networks are a collection of a number of tiny, low-cost, and resource-constrained sensor nodes which are commonly not tamper proof. As a result, wireless sensor networks (WSNs) are prone to a wide variety of physical attacks. In this paper, we deem a typical threat known as node replication attack or clone node attack, where an adversary creates its own low-cost sensor nodes called clone nodes and misinforms the network to acknowledge them as legitimate nodes. To instigate this attack, an adversary only needs to physically capture one node, and after collecting all secret credentials (ID, cryptographic keys, etc.), an adversary replicates the sensor node and deploys one or more clones of the compromised node into the network at strategic positions, damaging the whole network by carrying out many internal attacks. Detecting the node replication attack has become an imperative research topic in sensor network security, and designing detection schemes against node replication attack involves different threatening issues and challenges. In this survey, we have classified the existing detection schemes and comprehensively explore various proposals in each category. We will also take a glance at some technical details and comparisons so as to demonstrate limitations of the existent detections as well as effective contributions.

Detecting replicated nodes in Wireless Sensor Networks using random walks and network division

Wireless Sensor Networks are vulnerable to node replication attacks due to deployment in unattended environments and the lack of physical tamper-resistance. An adversary can easily capture and compromise sensor nodes and after replicating them, he inserts arbitrary number of replicas into the network to mount a wide variety of internal attacks. In this paper we propose a novel distributed solution (RAND) for the detection of node replication attack in static WSNs which combines random walks with network division and works in two phases. In the first phase called network configuration phase, the entire network is divided into different areas. In the second phase called replica detection phase, the clone is detected by following a claimer-reporter-witness framework and a random walk is employed within each area for the selection of witness nodes. Simulation results show that our scheme outperforms the existing witness node based strategies with moderate communication and memory overhead.

Scrutinising well-known countermeasures against clone node attack in mobile wireless sensor networks

Wireless Sensor Networks WSNs are often deployed in unattended environments where an adversary can easily physically capture and compromise sensor nodes. She then creates replicas of the compromised nodes instigating further attacks by spreading these replicas over the network, incurring serious damages to the network, so these replicas should be detected as early as possible. Most of the previous research efforts on detecting replica node attacks adopt static network models which are not suitable for mobile WSNs. In mobile WSN, sensor nodes are freely and randomly roaming all the time and they do not have any fixed neighbour to communicate with because these mobile nodes meet with one another occasionally and in an unpredictable manner. In this paper, we have surveyed all the existing solutions proposed so far for the detection of replica or clone nodes in mobile WSN by comparing them comprehensively and pointing out their drawbacks and shortcomings.

An overview of evaluation metrics for routing protocols in wireless sensor networks

With the maturity and development of Wireless Sensor Networks, a large body of research is being assembled and several routing protocols have been developed for wireless sensor networks. Routing metric is very important for the performance of wireless sensor networks. But a little attention has been paid by the researchers to the evaluation metrics and design principles for routing protocols that should never be neglected while designing and evaluating routing protocols for wireless sensor networks. This paper depicts some vital evaluation metrics that are essential while designing, developing and evaluating the performance of routing protocols for wireless sensor networks. This research is an effort towards hoarding all the general metrics and guiding the researchers for designing efficient, professional and valuable routing protocols.

Distributed Clone Detection in Static Wireless Sensor Networks: Random Walk with Network Division

Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) are vulnerable to clone attacks or node replication attacks as they are deployed in hostile and unattended environments where they are deprived of physical protection, lacking physical tamper-resistance of sensor nodes. As a result, an adversary can easily capture and compromise sensor nodes and after replicating them, he inserts arbitrary number of clones/replicas into the network. If these clones are not efficiently detected, an adversary can be further capable to mount a wide variety of internal attacks which can emasculate the various protocols and sensor applications. Several solutions have been proposed in the literature to address the crucial problem of clone detection, which are not satisfactory as they suffer from some serious drawbacks. In this paper we propose a novel distributed solution called Random Walk with Network Division (RWND) for the detection of node replication attack in static WSNs which is based on claimer-reporter-witness framework and combines a simple random walk with network division. RWND detects clone(s) by following a claimer-reporter-witness framework and a random walk is employed within each area for the selection of witness nodes. Splitting the network into levels and areas makes clone detection more efficient and the high security of witness nodes is ensured with moderate communication and memory overheads. Our simulation results show that RWND outperforms the existing witness node based strategies with moderate communication and memory overheads.

An automated vehicle parking monitoring and management system using ANPR cameras

Car parking has become a serious problem of everyday occurrence for educational institutions with the decreasing parking supply, increasing enrollments and high percentage of vehicle ownership, in result causing congestion, time and money wastage. This problem is getting worse and more frustrating in Jazan University due to the fact that majority of students, faculty and staff members own cars and drive through them to the University. The most common problem is to find out people (evidence) who are responsible for the damages (hitting, scraping, scratching and dents) to other cars. Another problem is the blockage of car due to wrong car parking which takes much time to locate the owner of the car. Moreover, another difficulty that is often faced by the students/faculty is to locate their cars on forgetting their car park location. The existing cameras located at the parking lots are only for video surveillance and cannot help in such situations as there is a lack of proper car parking management and guidance system. To remedy the above mentioned problems and to ensure a better parking experience by accommodating increasing number of vehicles in a proper convenient manner, we propose an automated car parking management and monitoring system (CPMMS) which employs Automatic Number Plate Recognition (ANPR) cameras to efficiently manage, monitor and protect the parking facilities of the University. We have also conducted a survey to analyze the parking problems around the University campus faced by the students, faculty and staff members.

A Comprehensive Study of Email Spam Botnet Detection

The problem of email spam has grown significantly over the past few years. It is not just a nuisance for users but also it is damaging for those who fall for scams and other attacks. This is due to the complexity intensification of email spamming techniques which are advancing from traditional spamming (direct spamming) techniques to a more scalable, elusive and indirect approach of botnets for distributing email spam messages. In this paper, we first discuss the sources and architectures used by the spamming botnets for sending massive amount of email spam. Then we present detailed chronicles of spamming botnets which systematically describes the timeline of events and notable occurrences in the advancement of these spamming botnets. This paper also aims to represent a comprehensive analysis of particular email spamming botnet detection techniques proposed in the literature. We attempt to categorize them according to both their nature of defense and method of detection, also revealing and comparing their advantages and disadvantages extensively. We also present a qualitative analysis of these techniques. Finally, we summarize the future trends and challenges in detecting email spamming botnets.

A cost analysis framework for claimer reporter witness based clone detection schemes in WSNs

A number of Claimer-Reporter-Witness based schemes (also called witness node based schemes) have been proposed to solve the problem of clone node attack or node replication attack which brings severe threats to WSNs. Node replication attack is an application independent attack in which an adversary first physically captures and then compromises a sensor node in the network and after creating clones or replicas of the compromised nodes; he/she surreptitiously deploys them at strategic positions of the network. The approaches used by the existing Claimer Reporter Witness-based detection schemes tradeoff between the higher detection probability for detecting clones and various overheads. The communication costs along with the memory and processing costs need to be measured to find out the gain from tradeoff. This is the first such work in which we have developed analytical framework to measure various costs for our proposed distributed clone detection protocol RAND and the other existing distributed schemes for clone detection. Moreover, we have also presented numerical results to demonstrate the impact of network size and the number of selected witnesses on these costs. Our results show that a significant amount of resources are required by the chosen CRW based schemes for detecting clones. Our comprehensive cost model can be used as a framework for estimating the costs of different CRW based protocols and can aid the researchers to choose the most efficient protocol for detecting clones in the network as well as estimate the resource requirements of the network to develop effective schemes in future.

CampusSense — A smart vehicle parking monitoring and management system using ANPR cameras and android phones

Vehicle parking monitoring and management has become a big challenge for educational institutions with increasing enrollments, high percentage of vehicle ownership and decreasing parking supply which in result triggering blockage of vehicle, congestion, wastage of time and money. In university campuses particularly in Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, vehicle parking monitoring and management problem is getting worse and more frustrating due to the fact that majority of students, faculty and staff members own cars and drive through them to the university campuses. These common problems include finding out people (evidence) who are responsible for the damages (hitting, scraping, scratching and dents) to other cars and the blockage of car due to wrong car parking which takes much time to locate the owner of the car. Moreover, locating or forgetting their car park location another difficulty that is often faced by the students, faculty and staff members. The existing cameras located at the parking lots are only for video surveillance and cannot help in such situations as there is a lack of proper vehicle parking monitoring and management system. To cope with above mentioned problems and to ensure a better parking experience by accommodating increasing number of vehicles in a proper convenient manner, we propose a smart vehicle parking monitoring and management system called CampusSense. In CampusSense, Automatic Number Plate Recognition (ANPR) cameras and android based mobile application is developed to efficiently monitor, manage and protect the parking facilities at university campuses. Parking problems around the university campus faced by the students, faculty and staff members are analyzed by conducting a survey.