SaTC: CORE: Small: Towards Secure and Reliable Network Tomography in Wireline and Wireless Networks

当今的网络，诸如互联网、蜂窝网络和物联网，在大面积上提供无处不在的有线或无线连接。安全和可靠的操作是这些网络的最重要目标之一。网络断层扫描已经成为一种很有前途的网络运行状态的准确监测框架，这是至关重要的，以确保一个高效和可靠的网络环境。然而，恶意攻击者可以利用该测量过程来生成伪造的、误导性的测量或监视结果，这显著影响基于这些结果的后续网络操作，并且因此降低当今网络的操作可靠性和健康。该项目的目标是分析安全漏洞，了解潜在的安全攻击策略及其影响，并设计针对此类攻击的有效防御机制。本项目的研究将扩展网络测量过程中安全漏洞、攻击和防御的技术知识。该项目还将为本科生提供获得网络测量和安全研究经验的机会。该项目的重点是调查一类新的安全攻击，称为测量完整性攻击，在测量过程中的网络断层扫描。与通常可以通过标准安全方法（例如，加密和认证），测量完整性攻击中的关键挑战是网络事件数据（例如，测量期间的分组传输/递送定时和丢失）不受标准安全方法的保护，但是可以容易地被内部攻击者操纵。本计画的目的在于：（i）建立理论基础，以分析有线与无线环境下不同攻击策略下量测完整性攻击的可行性与影响;（ii）设计强健的攻击侦测与定位方法，并分析此等对抗措施的有效性;（iii）研究有效的量测管理方法，以增加网路的攻击弹性，以及（iv）对有线和无线网络中的攻击对策的效率和有效性进行综合评估。

Today's networks, such as the Internet, cellular networks, and the Internet of Things, provide ubiquitous wired or wireless connections over large areas. Secure and reliable operations are among the most important objectives in these networks. Network tomography has become a promising framework for accurate monitoring of network operation status, which is vital to ensure an efficient and reliable network environment. However, this measurement process can be exploited by malicious attackers to generate falsified, misleading measurement or monitoring results, which significantly affects follow-on network operations based on these results, and accordingly degrades the operational reliability and health of today's networks. The goal of this project is to analyze security vulnerabilities, understand potential security attack strategies and their impact, and design effective defense mechanisms against such attacks. The research in this project will extend the technical knowledge of security vulnerabilities, attacks and defense during network measurement. The project will also offer undergraduate students opportunities to gain research experiences in network measurement and security. The project focuses on investigating a new class of security attacks, called measurement integrity attacks, during the measurement process in network tomography. Unlike conventional data integrity problems that can be usually protected by standard security methods (e.g., encryption and authentication), a key challenge in measurement integrity attacks is that the network event data (e.g., packet transmission/delivery timings and loss) during measurement is not protected by standard security methods, but can be easily manipulated by an inside attacker. This project aims at (i) creating the theoretical foundation to analyze the feasibility and impact of measurement integrity attacks with different attack strategies in wireline and wireless scenarios, (ii) designing robust attack detection and localization methods, and analyzing the effectiveness of such countermeasures, (iii) investigating efficient management methods for network measurement to increase the attack resilience in a network, and (iv) conducting comprehensive evaluation of the efficiency and effectiveness of attack countermeasures in both wireline and wireless networks.