Robotics and Sensor Networks

Robotics in mines, aerospace, underwater, everyday unstructured environments and sensor networks with communicating devices that collect data.

Evaluation of Attacks and Countermeasures in Large Scale Networks

Computer worms represent a serious threat for modern communication infrastructures. These epidemics can cause great damage such as financial losses or interruption of critical services which support lives of citizens. These worms can spread with a speed which prevents instant human intervention. Therefore automatic detection and mitigation techniques need to be developed. However, if these techniques are not designed and intensively tested in realistic environments, they may cause even more harm as they heavily interfere with high volume communication flows. We present a simulation model which allows studies of worm spread and counter measures in large scale multi-AS topologies with millions of IP addresses.

Cross-layer design for traffic management in wireless networked control systems

Wireless networked control systems (WNCSs) have been increasingly deployed in industrial applications. As they require timely data packet transmissions, it is difficult to make efficient use of the limited channel resources, particularly in contention based wireless networks in the layered network architecture. Aiming to maintain the WNCSs under critical real-time traffic condition at which the WNCSs marginally meet the real-time requirements, a cross-layer design (CLD) approach is presented in this paper to adaptively adjust the control period to achieve improved channel utilization while still maintaining effective and timely packet transmissions. The effectiveness of the proposed approach is demonstrated through simulation studies.

Active security in multiparty computation over black-box groups

Most previous work on unconditionally secure multiparty computation has focused on computing over a finite field (or ring). Multiparty computation over other algebraic structures has not received much attention, but is an interesting topic whose study may provide new and improved tools for certain applications. At CRYPTO 2007, Desmedt et al introduced a construction for a passive-secure multiparty multiplication protocol for black-box groups, reducing it to a certain graph coloring problem, leaving as an open problem to achieve security against active attacks. We present the first n-party protocol for unconditionally secure multiparty computation over a black-box group which is secure under an active attack model, tolerating any adversary structure Δ satisfying the Q 3 property (in which no union of three subsets from Δ covers the whole player set), which is known to be necessary for achieving security in the active setting. Our protocol uses Maurer’s Verifiable Secret Sharing (VSS) but preserves the essential simplicity of the graph-based approach of Desmedt et al, which avoids each shareholder having to rerun the full VSS protocol after each local computation. A corollary of our result is a new active-secure protocol for general multiparty computation of an arbitrary Boolean circuit.

The role and future challenges of wireless communication networks for cooperative autonomous city vehicles

This paper elaborates on the use of future wireless communication networks for autonomous city vehicles. After addressing the state of technology, the paper explains the autonomous vehicle control system architecture and the Cybercars-2 communication framework; it presents experimental tests of communication-based real-time decision making; and discusses potential applications for communication in order to improve the localization and perception abilities of autonomous vehicles in urban environments.

Securing multicast groups in ad hoc networks

We propose a reliable and ubiquitous group key distribution scheme that is suitable for ad hoc networks. The scheme has self-initialisation and self-securing features. The former feature allows a cooperation of an arbitrary number of nodes to initialise the system, and it also allows node admission to be performed in a decentralised fashion. The latter feature allows a group member to determine the group key remotely while maintaining the system security. We also consider a decentralised solution of establishing secure point-to-point communication. The solution allows a new node to establish a secure channel with every existing node if it has pre-existing secure channels with a threshold number of the existing nodes.

Urban citizenship in a sensor rich society

Urban public spaces are sutured with a range of surveillance and sensor technologies that claim to enable new forms of ‘data based citizen participation’, but also increase the tendency for ‘function-creep’, whereby vast amounts of data are gathered, stored and analysed in a broad application of urban surveillance. This kind of monitoring and capacity for surveillance connects with attempts by civic authorities to regulate, restrict, rebrand and reframe urban public spaces. A direct consequence of the increasingly security driven, policed, privatised and surveilled nature of public space is the exclusion or ‘unfavourable inclusion’ of those considered flawed and unwelcome in the ‘spectacular’ consumption spaces of many major urban centres. In the name of urban regeneration, programs of securitisation, ‘gentrification’ and ‘creative’ and ‘smart’ city initiatives refashion public space as sites of selective inclusion and exclusion. In this context of monitoring and control procedures, in particular, children and young people’s use of space in parks, neighbourhoods, shopping malls and streets is often viewed as a threat to the social order, requiring various forms of remedial action. This paper suggests that cities, places and spaces and those who seek to use them, can be resilient in working to maintain and extend democratic freedoms and processes enshrined in Marshall’s concept of citizenship, calling sensor and surveillance systems to account. Such accountability could better inform the implementation of public policy around the design, build and governance of public space and also understandings of urban citizenship in the sensor saturated urban environment.

Urban citizenship in a sensor rich society

Urban public spaces are sutured with a range of surveillance and sensor technologies that claim to enable new forms of ‘data based citizen participation’, but also increase the tendency for ‘function-creep’, whereby vast amounts of data are gathered, stored and analysed in a broad application of urban surveillance. This kind of monitoring and capacity for surveillance connects with attempts by civic authorities to regulate, restrict, rebrand and reframe urban public spaces. A direct consequence of the increasingly security driven, policed, privatised and surveilled nature of public space is the exclusion or ‘unfavourable inclusion’ of those considered flawed and unwelcome in the ‘spectacular’ consumption spaces of many major urban centres. This paper suggests that cities, places and spaces and those who seek to use them, can be resilient in working to maintain and extend democratic freedoms and processes enshrined in Marshall’s concept of citizenship, calling sensor and surveillance systems to account. Such accountability could better inform the implementation of public policy around the design, build and governance of public space and also understandings of urban citizenship in the sensor saturated urban environment.

Practical attack on NLM-MAC scheme

The NLM stream cipher designed by Hoon Jae Lee, Sang Min Sung, Hyeong Rag Kim is a strengthened version of the LM summation generator that combines linear and non-linear feedback shift registers. In recent works, the NLM cipher has been used for message authentication in lightweight communication over wireless sensor networks and for RFID authentication protocols. The work analyses the security of the NLM stream cipher and the NLM-MAC scheme that is built on the top of the NLM cipher. We first show that the NLM cipher suffers from two major weaknesses that lead to key recovery and forgery attacks. We prove the internal state of the NLM cipher can be recovered with time complexity about nlog7×2, where the total length of internal state is 2⋅n+22⋅n+2 bits. The attack needs about n2n2 key-stream bits. We also show adversary is able to forge any MAC tag very efficiently by having only one pair (MAC tag, ciphertext). The proposed attacks are practical and break the scheme with a negligible error probability.

Green Falcon IV: An Unmanned Aerial System and an integrated Wireless Sensor Network for remote sensing tasks

This report summarises the development of an Unmanned Aerial System and an integrated Wireless Sensor Network (WSN), suitable for the real world application in remote sensing tasks. Several aspects are discussed and analysed to provide improvements in flight duration, performance and mobility of the UAV, while ensuring the accuracy and range of data from the wireless sensor system.