Biblio

Highly distributed self-organizing CPS exhibit coordination schemata and communication requirements which are similar to structured overlay networks. To determine the resilience of such overlays, we analyze the connectivity of Kademlia, which has been successfully deployed in multiple applications with several thousands of nodes, e.g., BitTorrent. We measure the network connectivity within extensive simulations for different network configurations and present selected results.

Plenary Talk Our everyday life is more and more dependent on electronic communication and network connectivity. However, the threats of attacks and different types of misuse increase exponentially with the expansion of computer networks. In order to alleviate the problem and to identify malicious activities as early as possible Network Intrusion Detection Systems (NIDSs) have been developed and intensively investigated. Several approaches have been proposed and applied so far for these systems. It is a common challenge in this field that often there are no crisp boundaries between normal and abnormal network traffic, there are noisy or inaccurate data and therefore the investigated traffic could represent both attack and normal communication. Fuzzy logic based solutions could be advantageous owing to their capability to define membership levels in different classes and to do different operations with results ensuring reduced false positive and false negative classification compared to other approaches. In this presentation, after a short introduction of NIDSs a survey will be done on typical fuzzy logic based solutions followed by a detailed description of a fuzzy rule interpolation based IDS. The whole development process, i.e. data preprocessing, feature extraction, rule base generation steps are covered as well.

Blockchain, the technology behind the popular Bitcoin, is considered a "security by design" system as it is meant to create security among a group of distrustful parties yet without a central trusted authority. The security of blockchain relies on the premise of honest-majority, namely, the blockchain system is assumed to be secure as long as the majority of consensus voting power is honest. And in the case of proof-of-work (PoW) blockchain, adversaries cannot control more than 50% of the network's gross computing power. However, this 50% threshold is based on the analysis of computing power only, with implicit and idealistic assumptions on the network and node behavior. Recent researches have alluded that factors such as network connectivity, presence of blockchain forks, and mining strategy could undermine the consensus security assured by the honest-majority, but neither concrete analysis nor quantitative evaluation is provided. In this paper we fill the gap by proposing an analytical model to assess the impact of network connectivity on the consensus security of PoW blockchain under different adversary models. We apply our analytical model to two adversarial scenarios: 1) honest-but-potentially-colluding, 2) selfish mining. For each scenario, we quantify the communication capability of nodes involved in a fork race and estimate the adversary's mining revenue and its impact on security properties of the consensus protocol. Simulation results validated our analysis. Our modeling and analysis provide a paradigm for assessing the security impact of various factors in a distributed consensus system.

Naval Battlefield Network communications rely on wireless network technologies to transmit data between different naval entities, such as ships and shore nodes. Existing naval battle networks heavily depend on the satellite communication system using single-path TCP for reliable, non-interactive data. While satisfactory for traditional use cases, this communication model may be inadequate for outlier cases, such as those arising from satellite failure and wireless signal outage. To promote network stability and assurance in such scenarios, the addition of unmanned aerial vehicles to function as relay points can complement network connectivity and alleviate potential strains in adverse conditions. The inherent mobility of aerial vehicles coupled with existing source node movements, however, leads to frequent network handovers with non-negligible overhead and communication interruption, particularly in the present single-path model. In this paper, we propose a solution based on multi-path TCP and software-defined networking, which, when applied to mobile wireless heterogeneous networks, reduces the network handover delay and improves the total throughput for transmissions among various naval entities at sea and littoral. In case of single link failure, the presence of a connectable relay point maintains TCP connectivity and reduces the risk of service interruption. To validate feasibility and to evaluate performance of our solution, we constructed a Mininet- WiFi emulation testbed. Compared against single-path TCP communication methods, execution of the testbed when configured to use multi-path TCP and UAV relays yields demonstrably more stable network handovers with relatively low overhead, greater reliability of network connectivity, and higher overall end-to-end throughput. Because the SDN global controller dynamically adjusts allocations per user, the solution effectively eliminates link congestion and promotes more efficient bandwidth utilization.

Network security is an important issue in today's world with existence of network systems that communicate data and information about all aspects of our life, work and business. Network security is an important issue with connected networks and data communication between organisations of that specialized in different areas. Network security engineers spend a considerable amount of time to investigate network for security breaches and to enhance the security of their networks and data communications on their networks. They use Attack Graphs (AGs) which are graphical representation of networks to assist them in analysing large networks. With increase size of networks and their complexity, the use of attack graphs alone does not provide the necessary risk analysis and assessment facilities. There is a need for automated intelligent systems such as multiagent systems to assist in analysing, assessing and testing networks. Network systems changes with the increase in the size of organisation and connectivity of network of organisations based on the business needs or organisational or governmental rules and regulations. In this paper a multi-agent system is developed assist in analysing interconnected network to identify security risks. The multi-agent system is capable of security network analysis to identify paths using an attack graph of the network under consideration to protect network systems, as the networks grow and change, against possible attacks. The multiagent system uses a model developed by Mohammadian [3] for converting AGs to Fuzzy Cognitive Maps (FCMs) to identify attack paths from attack graphs and perform security risk analysis. In this paper a novel decision-making approach using FCMs is employed.

The emerging Internet of Things (IoT) applications that leverage ubiquitous connectivity and big data are facilitating the realization of smart everything initiatives. IoT-enabled infrastructures have naturally a multi-layer system architecture with an overlaid or underlaid device network and its coexisting infrastructure network. The connectivity between different components in these two heterogeneous networks plays an important role in delivering real-time information and ensuring a high-level situational awareness. However, IoT- enabled infrastructures face cyber threats due to the wireless nature of communications. Therefore, maintaining the network connectivity in the presence of adversaries is a critical task for the infrastructure network operators. In this paper, we establish a three-player three-stage game-theoretic framework including two network operators and one attacker to capture the secure design of multi- layer infrastructure networks by allocating limited resources. We use subgame perfect Nash equilibrium (SPE) to characterize the strategies of players with sequential moves. In addition, we assess the efficiency of the equilibrium network by comparing with its team optimal solution counterparts in which two network operators can coordinate. We further design a scalable algorithm to guide the construction of the equilibrium IoT-enabled infrastructure networks. Finally, we use case studies on the emerging paradigm of Internet of Battlefield Things (IoBT) to corroborate the obtained results.

Network connectivity is a primary attribute and a characteristic phenomenon of any networked system. A high connectivity is often desired within networks; for instance to increase robustness to failures, and resilience against attacks. A typical approach to increasing network connectivity is to strategically add links; however adding links is not always the most suitable option. In this paper, we propose an alternative approach to improving network connectivity, that is by making a small subset of nodes and edges “trusted,” which means that such nodes and edges remain intact at all times and are insusceptible to failures. We then show that by controlling the number of trusted nodes and edges, any desired level of network connectivity can be obtained. Along with characterizing network connectivity with trusted nodes and edges, we present heuristics to compute a small number of such nodes and edges. Finally, we illustrate our results on various networks.

Cyber-physical systems (CPS) are interconnections of heterogeneous hardware and software components (e.g., sensors, actuators, physical systems/processes, computational nodes and controllers, and communication subsystems). Increasing network connectivity of CPS computational nodes facilitates maintenance and on-demand reprogrammability and reduces operator workload. However, such increasing connectivity also raises the potential for cyber-attacks that attempt unauthorized modifications of run-time parameters or control logic in the computational nodes to hamper process stability or performance. In this paper, we analyze the effectiveness of real-time monitoring using digital and analog side channels. While analog side channels might not typically provide sufficient granularity to observe each iteration of a periodic loop in the code in the CPS device, the temporal averaging inherent to side channel sensory modalities enables observation of persistent changes to the contents of a computational loop through their resulting effect on the level of activity of the device. Changes to code can be detected by observing readings from side channel sensors over a period of time. Experimental studies are performed on an ARM-based single board computer.