Topics in network security and data security

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This proposal includes several selected important research topics in network security and data security. Topics in network security consist of sensor network secure key management and access control in hierarchies. Wireless ad hoc sensor networks offer certain civilian applications as well as assisting against potential terrorist threats. Security is a very important issue in those applications. Nodes in a network should use secret keys for communication and authentication. So how to distribute keys in sensor networks is very important. In this proposal, we will consider secret key schemes for general sensor networks and  consider key management schemes for more specific sensor networks to fit various real world applications. In an organization hierarchy, a node at the higher level can access the node at the lower level, but not the inverse. How to distribute secret keys for access controls in that situation is a challenge. We willfind an efficient way to do that in this proposal. Topics for data security include inference problem in a database and digital fingerprinting. To simplify things, we may think that an inference problem in database means that one can infer some secret information from public databases. So we need methods to decide what kind data can be put in to public databases. Recently we proposed some schemes for inference problems in a single database. Next we will consider those problems in distributed databases. Digital files, such as software, music, movie, etc., are easy to copy and redistribute. Digital rights management(DRM) is an emerging area that deals with the copy right protection of digital files. Digital fingerprinting are used to protect against ownership hijacking and unlawful redistribution. Cryptography plays a key role in this research. In this proposal, we will undertake furtherinvestigation to find more efficient and easily implemented methods. We will then consider some specific digital files, such as image and music files, and modify the methods to fit the special requirements. All the solutions in this proposal will be explicit and easy to implement.