Security in Mobile Peer-to-Peer Architectures – Introducing Mechanisms to Increase the Robustness of Overlay Routing Algorithms of Mobile Peer-to-Peer Architectures
Key: Got13-1
Author: Christian Gottron
Date: May 2013
Kind: @phdthesis
Abstract: A reliable communication platform is essential in disaster relief scenarios. Otherwise, an efficient coordination of the participating first response units cannot be ensured. However, during a disaster relief operation, a large amount of data is generated. Therefore, besides voice communication and the transmission of data such as text messages or pictures, storage and retrieval services are required. As a result, information such as medical data, a weather forecast, or data provided by other participating units can be stored in the network. Yet, recent large scale incidents like the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center in 2001, the tsunami in the Indian Ocean in 2004, or small scale disasters like the explosions at the S.E. Fireworks company in 2000, have shown that centralized systems as cellular networks do not provide reliable services in such a scenario. This may be either a result of the damaged infrastructure due to the disaster or a result of high channel load, which has been observed after a disaster. As a result, a more reliable communication platform is required, which satisfies the challenges introduced by a disaster relief scenario. This communication platform must not be based on a predefined infrastructure and needs to be able to handle the communication of mobile devices. Mobile Ad hoc networks are decentralized, mobile systems that are able to build a network on demand without a predefined infrastructure. Thus, those networks have been proposed by academia and industry to be used as communication platform for such a disaster relief scenario. However, those Mobile Ad hoc Networks do not provide a storage and retrieval functionality. In this thesis, we propose to build a Mobile Peer-to-Peer system as a combination of a Mobile Ad hoc Network as underlay with a Peer-to-Peer overlay. While the Mobile Ad hoc network serves as a communication infrastructure, the Peer-to-Peer overlay provides the object storage and retrieval functionality. Yet, the underlay and the overlay have to be adapted to meet the challenges introduced by the disaster relief scenario in order to provide reliable and efficient services. To this end, Clustered Pastry, a new location aware Mobile Peer-to-Peer system is developed in this thesis. The Clustered Pastry system inherits all the characteristics of the underlying architectures including multiple security issues. Therefore, an analysis of security threats in Mobile Peer-to-Peer scenarios is provided in the second part of this thesis. Known attacks against Mobile Ad hoc Networks and Peer-to-Peer networks are surveyed. Moreover, existing security mechanisms are discussed in the light of Mobile Peer-to-Peer scenarios in order to identify open security challenges. Based on those security challenges, new security mechanisms are developed for our Clustered Pastry system. Those mechanisms have to consider challenges introduced by the disaster relief scenario and by the characteristics of the Clustered Pastry system. In summary, this thesis develops Clustered Pastry, a Mobile Peer-to-Peer system that can be deployed in disaster relief scenarios. Moreover, Clustered Pastry provides robustness to the attacks that have been identified as open security challenges. Thus, a reliable and secure storage and retrieval services can be provided by our new Clustered Pastry system.
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