CIF: Small: Collaborative Research: Security in Dynamic Environments: Harvesting Network Randomness and Diversity

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The project aims at quantifying a general network's inner potentialfor supporting various forms of security by achieving secret commonrandomness between pairs or groups of its nodes. Statistical andcomputational secrecy measures are being considered against a generalpassive adversary. Common-randomness-achieving protocols are classifiedinto two groups: culture-building and crowd-shielding. The former achievescommon randomness between nodes situated in close proximity of each other,from correlated observations of specific (natural or induced) networkphenomena. The latter ties together the security of multiple communicationlinks, to the point where an adversary can no longer isolate and attacka single link without attacking the group as a whole. The broad range ofinvestigated protocols cover multiple topics, from multipath diversityto network tomography, from secure network coding to protocol coding,and from anonymous routing to the spread of epidemics. The protocolsharvest network randomness from diverse sources like ciphertext blocksoriginating at various terminals, contention protocols (delay randomness)or network topology (in highly-dynamic, or ad-hoc networks).Communication networks are naturally dynamic, inherently redundant,and largely unpredictable. While the former two features have longbeen recognized as a valuable resource for integrity, efficiencyand confidentiality, network unpredictability is often regarded as anincommodity. This project shows how network randomness can be harvested,and, together with diversity, exploited to enhance communicationsecurity. In doing so, it develops a more profound understanding aboutthe statistical nature of networks, which can be applied to a broad rangeof information-assurance objectives. The technical approaches and thegeneral philosophy developed in this project, and disseminated throughconferences and seminars, have the potential to inspire an abundance ofrelated research. The project will directly impact dozens of studentsthrough Senior Design projects, a research-and-open-project approach tocurriculum development, and three new graduate courses containing relatedtopics. The PIs are actively involved in programs aimed at increasingthe involvement of women, underrepresented minorities, and persons withdisabilities in engineering and computing sciences.