Big B

Bishal Thapa, PhD

Wireless Security Lab
PI: Dr. Guevara Noubir
College of Computer and Information Science
Northeastern University
208 West Village H
Boston, MA 02115
Email: b?@ccs.neu.edu (replace ? with my last name in all lower case)

Thesis Work

Title: Robust Wireless Communication in Adversarial Settings

Robust wireless communication is critical to the functioning of military, civilian and commercial systems. In this thesis, we explore the security of existing wireless communication systems in the presence of adversaries who are trying to interfere with ongoing communication. By broadcasting RF signals over an open medium, wireless networks make themselves vulnerable to jamming attacks. Furthermore, the growing demand for ubiquitous wireless technology has led to increasingly complex medium-access and resource-sharing mechanisms. This creates security bottlenecks for the whole system since an adversary can now focus all of its jamming on these control mechanisms in-turn enabling smart energy-efficient Denial of Service (DoS) attacks. In our work, we show that, with the help of readily available, low-cost, fully configurable software-defined radio platform, an adversary can deploy highly efficient DoS attacks by targeting these bottlenecks. We investigate their impact and devise energy-and-computationally efficient, resiliency mechanisms.

In the past, robust communication relied on the existence of pre-shared secret information used by legitimate clients to access the control information sent by the server on specific communication channels. Here, we consider a scenario where the adversary knows this information. Adversaries can be compromised users or ``traitors'' who are trying to deny the control channel communication. This leads to very efficient attacks, since jamming control channel communication results in the disruption of the longterm communication. In response, we first present several adversary-resilient control--information sharing mechanisms that allow users to receive medium--access information in the presence of adversaries, without requiring any hardware modifications. Then, we propose a method - based on Spread Spectrum (SS) - which, with hardware support, allows longterm communication without the need to pre-share secrets. This method significantly degrades the effects and efficiency of smart jamming attacks. We analyze the efficiency of proposed solutions and evaluate their resilience under various jamming regimes, using a USRP/GNURadio/GPU-aided network platform. Finally, we study the resilience of the longterm IEEE802.11 communication against jamming attacks. We specifically look at attacks that exploit the vulnerabilities within the IEEE802.11 MAC protocols and rate-adaptation algorithms, and devise jamming-resilient mechanisms to address the identified weaknesses. We evaluate these mechanisms using analysis, simulation, and where applicable, real-world experiments with carefully designed system prototypes.

Publications

[Names appear in Alphabetical Order]

Conference:

  1. G. Noubir, B. Thapa . “ Efficient Broadcast Communication in the Presence of Inside Attackers: A Non-cooperative Game ”, in the Proceedings of IEEE Data Security and Privacy in Adhoc Networks (D-SPAN 2012).
  2. G. Noubir, R. Rajaraman, B. Sheng, B. Thapa . Best Paper Award. “ On the Robustness of IEEE802.11 Rate Adaptation Algorithms against Smart Jamming ”, in the Proceedings of ACM Conferece on Wireless Network Security (WiSec 2011).
  3. T. Jin, G. Noubir, B. Thapa . “ Zero Pre-shared Secret Key Establishment in the presence of Jammers ” in the Proceedings of ACM International Symposium on Mobile Ad Hoc Networking and Computing (MobiHoc 2009).
  4. E. Bayraktaroglu, C. King, X. Liu, G. Noubir, R. Rajaraman, B. Thapa. “ On the Performance of IEEE802.11 under Jamming ” in the Proceedings of IEEE Conference on Computer Communications (INFOCOM 2007).
  5. A. Chan, G. Noubir, X. Liu, B. Thapa . “ Control Channel Jamming: Resilience and Identification of Traitors ”, in the Proceedings of IEEE Symposium on Information Theory (ISIT 2007).

Journal:

  1. E. Bayraktaroglu, C. King, X. Liu, G. Noubir, R. Rajaraman, B. Thapa. “ IEEE802.11 Communication under Adversarial Settings ”, set to appear in the Journal of ACM Mobile Networks and Applications (MONET 2012).
  2. A. Cassola, T. Jin, G. Noubir, B. Thapa. “ Efficient Spread Spectrum Communication without Pre-shared Secrets ”, published in the Journal of IEEE Transactions on Mobile Computing (ITMC 2012).
  3. G. Noubir, W. Qian, B. Thapa.“ Experimentation-oriented platform for development and evaluation of MANET cross-layer protocols ”, published in the Journal of AdHoc Networks 2009.
  4. A.Chan, X. Liu, G. Noubir, B. Thapa. “ Robust Broadcast Control Channel Communication in the presence of Traitors ” [Submitted].
  5. B. Thapa. “ Active Networks ”, published in the Journal of Computing Sciences in Colleges, 2005.

Poster Presentation:

  1. A. Cassola, B. Thapa. “ Search and Rescue Mission using Cell Phones and Mobile Base Station ”, in Northeastern Annual Research Expo, Boston, MA. April 2010.
  2. B. Thapa. “ Earthquake Disaster Preparedness in Nepal ”, in ASNEngr and CAN-USA First Joint Annual Conference, Boston, MA. July 2010.

Paper Presentation:

  1. B. Thapa. “ Efficient Broadcast Communication in the Presence of Inside Attackers: A Non-cooperative Game ”. IEEE D-SPAN - San Francisco, CA. June 2012.
  2. B. Thapa. Best Paper Award. “ On the Robustness of IEEE802.11 Rate Adaptation Algorithms against Smart Jamming ”. ACM WiSec - Hamburg, Germany. June 2011.
  3. B. Thapa. “ Zero Pre-shared Secret Key Establishment in the presence of Jammers ”. MobiHoc - New Orleans, Louisiana, May 2009.
  4. B. Thapa. “ Control Channel Jamming: Resilience and Identification of Traitors ”. ISIT - Nice, France. July 2007.