Electric-Field-Based Routing: Secure Spatially Disjoint Routes in MANETs DARPA Proposer’s Day for Defense Against Cyber Attacks on Mobile Ad Hoc Networks An-I (Andy) Wang Florida State University awang@cs.fsu.edu Hello, everyone, I’m Andy Wang from the Florida State University. I’m going to tell you about the electric-field-based routing, an innovative way to form secure spatially disjoint routes in mobile ad hoc networks.
Goal Defend pair-wise communication channels in MANETs Electric-Field-Based Routing (EFR) defends against Black-hole routers Man-in-the-middle attacks Byzantine and geographically localized failures Service degradation The goal of EFR is to defend against pair-wise communication channels in MANETs. In particular, EFR is designed to defend against black-hole routers, certain types of man-in-the-middle attacks, Byzantine and geographically localized failures, and service degradation.
Electric-Field-Based Routing With two opposite poles Locally apply electric-field equations at each node Globally define spatially disjoint routes for all communicating pairs No further route coordination The idea of EFR is inspired by nature’s way of forming electric field lines. The observation is that with two opposite charges, you can easily construct spatially disjoint lines along the electric field lines. In the case of networking, we assign the source and the destination with opposite charges, and we can locally apply electric-field equations at each node. And by doing so, we have globally defined spatially disjoint routes for all communicating pairs at all possible positions. And the construction of spatially disjoint routes will require no further route coordination + -
Rapid Reconfiguration for Failures and Mobility One important property of EFR is that it can reconfigure rapidly and constantly for failures and mobility. Suppose you have some tanks. The red tank is the source, and the blue tank is the destination. If you want to talk through EFR, you just simply send out packets at distinct angles and they will reach the destination through disjoint paths. The route memberships are determined at packet arrival times; therefore, each node effectively functions as a switch and does not maintain states regarding its route participation.
Rapid Reconfiguration for Failures and Mobility As a consequence, if you have some helicopters that enters the scene, you can quickly use them to construct disjoint routes. In this case, EFR can statelessly construct 3D spatially disjoint routes. Stateless 3D routing
EFR vs. Black-Hole Routers STOP Now let’s see how EFR can handle black hole routers. Suppose one of the nodes is a black-hole router, and you will lose all the packets along that path. However, its surround nodes of the black hole are not affected because the forwarding decision is based on a node’s relative position to the source-destination pair. Therefore, a black hole router cannot claim to be on all field lines for all communication pairs. Contextual routing
EFR vs. Black-Hole Routers STOP The destination randomly sends acknowledgements to the source via different routes. After a while, the source will assume failure and find another path Contextual routing
EFR vs. Black-Hole Routers STOP Contextual routing
EFR vs. Localized Failures Now, let’s see how EFR can handle localized failures. Suppose a region of node fails simultaneously, possibly due to a bomb. This geographically localized failure is unlikely to break all disjoiint paths, since electric field lines are spatially disjoint. Spatially disjoint routes
EFR vs. Localized Failures Spatially disjoint routes
EFR vs. Localized Failures After a timeout period, the source will find alternative route to recover the broken route. Spatially disjoint routes
EFR vs. Integrity Breaches To handle integrity breaches, the source can send duplicate information over disjoint routes. If a node compromises a route, the destination can easily detect the integrity breaches Redundant routes and information
EFR vs. Integrity Breaches Redundant routes and information
EFR vs. Multiple Interceptions STOP To prevent interceptions, we need encryption. To survive multiple failures, we can apply threshold-based encryption on top of threshold-based encoding. In this case, we have 5 choose 3 encoding, where any three surviving paths can reconstruct the original encrypted message. STOP Threshold-based encryption + encoding
EFR vs. Multiple Interceptions STOP In this case, we have two intercepted paths, but we can still reconstruct the original encrypted message through the remaining three paths. STOP Threshold-based encryption + encoding
Research Challenges Evaluate EFR under different attacks Overcome practical deployment constraints Build obstacle/corridor conforming routes Balance energy consumptions Explore other stateless approaches of constructing secure spatially disjoint routes We still need to to quantify EFR’s performance characteristics in terms of security, under various types of attacks. Also, to be deployable, ideally EFR can construct spatially disjoint routes that can conform to physical obstacles and corridors. Currently, we are exploring ways to compute the local center of mass at each node to shape the electric-field lines. Of course, there are other extensions to better cope with the wireless environment. For example, we can adapt wear-leveling to lengthen the battery life of each node. We also want to explore other stateless approaches of constructing secure spatially disjoint routes.
Electric-Field-Based Routing Questions Electric-Field-Based Routing An-I (Andy) Wang awang@cs.fsu.edu
How to select the next hop min() min(D) Next hop Field line Current node Ideal next hop Transmission range