Network security and digital forensics in next generation communications
Jong Hyuk Park, Stefanos Gritzalis, Hai Jin, Jenlong Wang · Wireless Communications and Mobile Computing · 2011
Next Generation Communications (NGC) represent advanced communication environments featuring objects that are focused on users. NGC has rapidly emerged as an exciting new paradigm that includes ubiquitous, grid, and P2P computing. It provides computing and communication services in a much more convenient and pleasurable way, anytime, and anywhere. That is, a user will be able to remotely access and control all information and appliances used in the workplace, as well as at home and office, utilizing in an easy and convenient way various services without any limitations on space and time. In order to tackle the more sophisticated and powerful attack mechanisms that nowadays exist, it is crucial to build active and smart defence systems. Finding effective and efficient ways to protect information and digital forensics for NGC are very challenging research topics. This special issue aims to address network security and digital forensics for NGC and to encourage researchers to publish their results in WCMC journal. It will accept both original research papers and review articles that enhance the state-of-the-art in NGC security issues, including topics like security and digital forensics theory, services, business models, and novel applications that are associated with NGC utilization. The papers will be peer reviewed and will be selected on the basis of their quality and relevance to the theme of this special issue. This special issue brings together 12 contributions, with both theoretical and practical results of significance on aspects of network security and digital forensics in next generation communications. The contributions vary from themes like secure network middleware interactions to privacy and authentication schemes for next generation communications. Misra et al. present a Mobile Ad hoc Key Revocation Server (MAKeRS) scheme for key revocation in Mobile Ad Hoc Networks (MANETs). The scheme proposes to improve the performance and reliability of the existing system. Simulations show that the concept presented in the paper is more reliable, faster, and scalable than the existing usage of PKI over ad hoc networks. The various scenarios of mobility of nodes and servers are considered and the scheme is designed to suit such scenarios in an optimum way. The paper “Security analysis and improvements of IEEE standard 802.16 in next generation wireless metropolitan access network” is authored by Xiong Naixue. The paper “Secure handover for Proxy Mobile IPv6 in next-generation communications: scenarios and performance” by Jong-Hyouk Lee and Tai-Myoung Chung introduces two fast handover authentication scenarios for Proxy Mobile IPv6: namely, handover re-authentication (HORA) and handover early-authentication (HOEA). The introduced scenarios are based on the Handover Keying (HOKEY) working group in the IETF. In HORA, a mobile node utilizes the previously obtained root key for its handover so that the number of round trips for exchanging of authentication data and keying materials is reduced during its handover. In HOEA, the proactive signaling supported by link layer technologies is used to fast discover a candidate access network where a mobile node potentially attaches to so that the mobile node could perform authentication procedures before the mobile node attaches to the candidate access network. The paper “A secure and efficient RSU-aided bundle forwarding protocol for vehicular delay tolerant networks” by Xiaodong Lin and Hsiao-Hwa Chen studies data forwarding in vehicular delay tolerant networks. By using unique characteristics of vehicular delay tolerant networks, particularly, hybrid communication between the vehicles (V2V communications) and the roadside infrastructure (V2I communications), the authors propose a secure and efficient roadside unit (RSU) aided bundle forwarding protocol for vehicular delay tolerant networks. The paper “Security mechanism for voice over multipath mobile ad hoc networks” by Binod Vaidya, Meiso K. Denko, and Joel J.P.C Rodrigues not only presents a framework for secure voice transmission over multipath MANET but also proposes an efficient traffic allocation approach for it, then the proposed security mechanism was evaluated and its correctness was proved using formal verification. Hai-Cheng Chu, Der-Jiunn Deng, and Han-Chieh Chao present the paper whose scope encompasses the live data collection and analysis trying to disclose the digital trails that might be accidentally left behind with respect to the internal memory and the registry based on the IM session of Skype. A case review was conducted to illustrate the hidden digital trails within the PDA from the Registry of the Windows Mobile and volatile data in the RAM to discover the possible network security leakage scenarios that resulted in the vandalism of intangible digital assets of the organization. The paper “Authenticated key exchange protocol with selectable identities” by Hua Guo, Yi Mu, Xiyong Zhang, and Zhoujun Li deals with a key agreement protocol which allows a single private key to map multiple public keys (identities) that are selectable by the user. In the new protocol, the established session key is associated with an arbitrary subset of identities held by the user, while the unselected identities remain secret to other participants. The paper “Development of digital forensics practice and research in Japan” by Liu J., Uehara T., and Sasaki R. provide a nutshell of the Japanese political structures, legal systems, and law enforcement practice, and then present an overview of updated and new laws, awareness programs, and the research activities in digital forensics. The paper entitled “A lightweight block cipher based on a multiple recursive generator for wireless sensor networks and RFID” by Alina Olteanu, Yang Xiao, Fei Hu, Bo Sun, and Hongmei Deng use a Multiple Recursive Generator (MRG) to generate sequences of numbers with very long periods. The proposed cipher is a light weight cipher, which is very useful for resource limited resources such as sensor nodes in sensor networks and RFID tags. The paper “A cross-layer approach for integrating security mechanisms in sensor networks architectures” by Rodrigo Roman, Pablo Najera, and Javier Lopez analyzes how the security mechanisms used by sensor network applications should be integrated with existing architecture paradigms. The paper considers that a transversal layer is the optimal component forstoring the security mechanisms. Such layer retains the benefits of layered architectures, and adequately controls the disadvantages of cross-layer approaches. The paper “Hybrid security protocol for wireless body area networks” by dealt with the overall security including up to the in/on and out-body, and utilized two heterogeneous cryptosystems (the symmetric and asymmetric) for diverse environments of WBANs. Our protocol shows that it satisfies more security requirements than existing security protocols including the overall coverage of WBANs. The paper “Privacy preserving context transfer schemes for 4G networks” by Iosif Terzis, Georgios Kambourakis, Giorgos Karopoulos, and Costas Lambrinoudakis focuses on user's roaming between different administrative domains location privacy and proposes a number of privacy enhanced context transfer schemes. All the proposed schemes are analyzed in terms of message exchange, evaluated through simulations and compared with the ones been proposed by the Seamoby work group in CXTP RFC 4067. The results show that the proposed schemes are very efficient in terms of application handover times, while at the same time guarantee the privacy of the end-user. We wish to thank all the authors for their great work and for considering Wireless Communications & Mobile Computing journal for submitting their papers. Special thanks go to the anonymous reviewers for their help and dedication in reviewing the papers and providing useful comments to the authors for their papers improvement. Special thanks to the EiC Professor Mohsen Guizani for hosting this special issue in the prestigious John Wiley & Sons' Wireless Communications and Mobile Computing journal, and for their excellent support. We hope that this special issue will represent a timely and significant reference for future researches.