CAREER: Fundamental Security-Performance Tradeoffs for Active Attacks Against Communication Networks

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The vast and distributed nature of communication networks makes them inherently vulnerable to attack. This research focuses on combating active attacks, in which a malicious intruder acts to subvert the natural behavior of the system. These attacks include distributed denial of service attacks, wireless jamming, man-in-the-middle attacks, and Byzantine attacks. This research takes an information-theoretic approach to characterizing the fundamental trade-offs between security (degree of protection against attacks) and performance (achievable communication rates among legitimate users) in communication networks. To this end, this research effort investigates (i) secure strategies including polytope codes and hash-based verification, (ii) analytical tools for deriving bounds on fundamental limits, (iii) solutions for combating the unique challenges of attacks in the wireless environment, such as fading, mobility, and asynchronism, and (iv) applying attack-resilient strategies to timely applications such as distributed storage systems and the smart grid.If left unchecked, active attacks could significantly undermine the reliability of networks of connected devices just as they are becoming increasingly vital to modern society. This research provides new techniques to bolster the resilience of communication networks in the presence of these potentially damaging attacks. In addition, this project incorporates efforts to educate and engage students of all ages in thinking about the security problems in their lives. These efforts include security competitions for undergraduates, an outreach program for high school students, and a graduate course.