Research
Research Interests
The SecNet lab conducts research in the areas of network security, data privacy, applied cryptography, wireless networking, and mobile computing.
Recent Related Work
Network Security
The concept of Internet of Things (IoT), a distributed network of smart physical objects communicating with each other and distributing intelligence to humans, is now a norm in our society. There are a number of challenges associated with the design and implementation of IoT devices and systems. For example, how do we achieve secure and efficient communication in an IoT environment? This is partly achieved using routing protocols, such as the widely used Cisco‘s routing protocol for Low-Power and Lossy Networks. Similar to many other systems and protocols, functionality is often the design priority and security is an afterthought. As a result, many efficient routing protocols are not secure against common attacks, particularly in the increasingly complex cyberthreat environment. The objective of this research is to investigate various vulnerabilities in the IoT systems and develop the state-of-the-art countermeasures to minimize their adversarial effects.
Data Privacy
Thanks to rapid advancements in microprocessors, battery technologies, and lightweight materials, unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), commonly known as drones, have received significant interest in the past few years. As drone-related commercial and civilian applications are flourishing, Internet-of-Drones (IoD) is moving into the fast lane and quickly becoming a highly anticipated network paradigm, where drones and Zone Service Providers (ZSPs) coordinate knowledge sharing in a reliable, accurate, and efficient way. However, for the sake of both strategic and financial value to business and mission critical applications, it is of vital importance to address both data security and privacy preservation issues brought by drones’ inherent resource constraints and wide-open wireless medium. The objective of this research is to develop a secure data collection and storage mechanism using blockchain and cryptographic techniques for the IoD environment.
Applied Cryptography
As a major building block of Healthcare 4.0, wireless body area networks (WBANs) play an important role in collecting patient’s real-time physical phenomena through small wearable or implantable intelligent medical devices and communicating with remote medical experts using short-range wireless communication techniques. However, the challenges of securing information access are partly evidenced by the difficulty in designing secure and efficient security protocols. A telling example is the recent revelation that the medical gear maker Medtronic does not implement authentication or authorization in the Conexus telemetry protocol. As a result, any adversary who is located within a range of roughly 25 feet from Medtronic devices utilizing the Conexus telemetry protocol can compromise the communication. The objective of this research is to propose a lightweight and anonymous authentication and key agreement protocol for WBANs with the design consideration of balancing the tradeoff between performance and security.
Wireless Networking
Over the past decade, unmanned airborne vehicles (UAVs; widely known as drones) are quickly being deployed in various civilian as well as military applications. Drones can self-organize into a connected swarm (Flying Ad Hoc Networks - FANETs) to complete various challenging missions. As the primary building block of Internet-of-Drones (IoD), FANETs have an important role to play in governing the autonomous movement of drones and supporting drone-to-everything (D2X) communications. However, factors such as flying characteristics and the highly dynamic topology of FANETs compound the challenges of packet forwarding. The objective of this research is to develop a stochastic packet forwarding algorithm for FANETs, where the data packets can be efficiently transferred to the destination.
Mobile Computing
With the continuous miniaturization of sensors and processors and ubiquitous wireless connectivity, unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), also referred to as drones, are finding many new uses in enhancing our life, and paving the way to the realization of Internet of Drones (IoD). In the IoD, a myriad of multi-sized and heterogeneous drones seamlessly interact with Zone Service Providers (ZSPs) to achieve the goal of assisting drones in accessing controlled airspace and providing navigation services. However, due to the high mobility of drones and the limited communication bandwidth between drones and ZSP, service scheduling becomes a critical issue when a set of drones wants to upload/download data to/from ZSP. The objective of this research is to propose a priority-based service scheduling scheme to provide efficient data upload/download service at ZSP in the IoD.