Reliable, secure, private, and fast communication in vehicular networks is extremely challenging due to the highly mobile nature of these networks. Contact time between vehicles is very limited and topology is constantly changing. Trusted communication in vehicular networks is of crucial importance because without trust, all efforts for minimizing the delay or maximizing the reliability could be voided. In this paper, we propose a trust-based framework for a safe and reliable information dissemination in vehicular networks. The proposed framework consists of two modules such that the first one applies three security checks to make sure the message is trusted. It assigns a trust value to each road segment and one to each neighborhood, instead of each car. Thus, it scales up easily and is completely distributed. Once a message is evaluated and considered to be trustworthy, our method then in the second module looks for a safe path through which the message is forwarded. Our frameworks are application-centric; in particular, it is capable of preserving traffic requirements specified by each application. Experimental results demonstrate that this framework outperforms other well-known routing protocols since it routes the messages via trusted vehicles.

Induced by incorporating the powerful data storage and data processing abilities of cloud computing (CC) as well as ubiquitous data gathering capability of wireless sensor networks (WSNs), CC-WSN integration received a lot of attention from both academia and industry. However, authentication as well as trust and reputation calculation and management of cloud service providers (CSPs) and sensor network providers (SNPs) are two very critical and barely explored issues for this new paradigm. To fill the gap, this paper proposes a novel authenticated trust and reputation calculation and management (ATRCM) system for CC-WSN integration. Considering the authenticity of CSP and SNP, the attribute requirement of cloud service user (CSU) and CSP, the cost, trust, and reputation of the service of CSP and SNP, the proposed ATRCM system achieves the following three functions: 1) authenticating CSP and SNP to avoid malicious impersonation attacks; 2) calculating and managing trust and reputation regarding the service of CSP and SNP; and 3) helping CSU choose desirable CSP and assisting CSP in selecting appropriate SNP. Detailed analysis and design as well as further functionality evaluation results are presented to demonstrate the effectiveness of ATRCM, followed with system security analysis.

By incorporating the advantages of cloud computing (CC) and wireless sensor networks (WSNs), the integration of CC and WSNs attracts a lot of attention from both academia and industry. However, trust and reputation management for CC and WSNs integration is a critical and barely explored issue, which could strongly prevent the cloud service users (CSUs) from choosing the desirable cloud service providers (CSPs) or hinder the CSP from selecting appropriate sensor network providers (SNPs). To fill the gap, this paper proposes a novel trust and reputation management system for CC and WSNs integration. Considering the attribute requirement of CSU and CSP as well as the cost, trust and reputation of the service of CSP and SNP, the proposed system achieves the following two goals: 1) calculate and manage the trust and reputation regarding the service of CSP and SNP; 2) help CSU choose CSP and assist CSP in choosing SNP. Evaluation results are also shown to verify effectiveness of the proposed system.

Reliable, secure, private and fast communication in vehicular networks (VNets) is extremely challenging due to the highly mobile nature of these networks. Contact time between vehicles is very limited and topology is constantly changing. Trusted communication in VNets is of crucial importance because without trust, all efforts for minimizing the delay or maximizing the reliability could be voided. In this paper, we propose a trust-based framework for communication in VNets that is capable of accommodating traffic from different applications. Our scheme assigns a trust value to each road segment and one to each neighborhood, instead of each car. Thus it scales up easily and is completely distributed. Experimental results demonstrate that this framework outperforms other well-known routing protocols since it routes the messages via trusted vehicles.

Several multiparty systems supporting group-based and cloud-based applications have been proposed in the context of smart grid. An important requirement of these systems is that the devices/parties need to communicate with each other as members of a group. In this paper, we present an efficient group key GK management scheme aimed at securing the group communications, for instance, from the utility to appliances and smart meters located in different homes. Our scheme is based on the X.1035 password-authenticated key exchange protocol standard and also follows the cluster-based approach to reduce the costs of the GK construction and maintenance for large groups. Our protocol enables secure communications utilizing any communication technology. Analysis using one of the best evaluation tools in the technical community shows that our constructed GK is valid and secure against well-known attacks. We also show that the proposed scheme supports forward and backward secrecy and is more efficient in comparison with other GK mechanisms in the literature. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

In this paper, we propose a new model of community cloud (ComC) interaction that is based on the demand of tenants and propose an intrusion detection mechanism for the proposed model. ComC is a solution that is more secure than the public cloud, and less costly than the private cloud. We argue that our proposed model of the ComC will be more beneficial to consumers as well as providers. Our evaluation shows the efficiency of the proposed model from cost and operation point of views. In addition, our analysis shows that our proposed IDS can make the ComC a safe environment and can guarantee the security and privacy of the customers.

Smart Grid (SG) uses communication technology to gather information about the actual and planned power usage in order to enable efficient power provisioning and consumption. Wireless multi-hop communications are used for exchanging data and control messages between smart meters and the utility. With the advent of cybercrimes, there is a growing concern on privacy of the clients. We argue that any communication paradigm used in the SG should support privacy, anonymity, unlinkability, unobservablity, and undetectablity. Due to the broadcast nature of wireless transmissions, many cyber-attacks such as traffic analysis and flow tracing compromise privacy of the clients. We propose an innovative scheme for traffic routing that benefits from the enhanced network coding technology. Our analysis shows that our scheme maintains privacy of the users despite the possibility of detecting transmitted traffic by an adversary. Moreover, our scheme has extra favourable features such as less computation complexity and robustness of communication.

In a smart grid system, the metering data collected by smart meters (SMs) and transferred via an Advanced Metering Infrastructure to the utility for billing purposes, and to the demand-response system to achieve cost effective resource allocation. The collected data at the SMs are sent to aggregators (AGRs), which in turn forward these data to a higher layer data collection system using secured communications. However, metering data are typically transferred between SMs and AGRs over wireless multi-hop communication networks. Due to the broadcast nature of wireless transmissions, the communications between a SM and AGR are susceptible to many security attacks. We argue that advanced network coding (NC) technology can be utilized to address this problem. We propose a novel system that supports data collection security at AGR by encrypting metering data transmitted between SMs and AGR using NC technology. Our innovative scheme eliminates the use of previously specified public key encryption system between SMs and AGR, which consequently makes our system very efficient. Analyses show that our proposed scheme enhances robustness and throughput of data routing in the wireless multi-hop network between SMs and AGR while maintaining a strong security.

The concept of Electric Vehicle as Power Energy Storage has gained much attention from the research community and market recently. The increasing capacity of the power storages in the electric vehicles (EV) motivates this concept and makes it more feasible. However, the privacy of the customers can be compromised by tracing the stations that an EV has been connected to during a period of the time. The stations that are providing power charging as well as purchasing the power back from EVs can be owned by third party businesses. EVs should be authenticated through these stations in order to give or receive appropriate credit for the power. In this paper, we identify potential privacy issues and propose a robust privacy-preserving authentication scheme for communication of the EV and the station to prevent customer information leakage. In our approach, the EV and the station communication utilizes pseudonym of the EV, in which only the smart grid server (a trusted entity) can map the pseudonym to the real vehicle identity and provide the identity management. The pseudonym of an EV changes when the EV moves from one station to another, which prevents the adversary from tracing foot prints of the EV. Our analysis shows that our model is robust enough to make sure the privacy of the customers is fully preserved, and at the same time, it is efficient by consuming very limited resources.

We consider the problem of energy consumption in sharing a viral file between peers over a wireless community network (e.g., students in campus). Wireless community networks such as Wireless Mesh Networks (WMNs) have been accepted as a new communication approach that enables users to share the network resources and reduce the cost of the Internet access. The common paradigm for sharing content between users in a community network is through the use of a centralized server. Another scheme is to exploit the upload capacity of peers who are interested in the same content (e.g., Peer-to-Peer (P2P) file sharing). In this paper, we consider a content distribution setting in a wireless mesh network wherein a number of infrastructure nodes (mesh routers) support the P2P content sharing and act as caches and participants. We model the performance of this content distribution scheme, and analytically compute the energy that is consumed in the network when a viral P2P object is shared between the peers in a WMN. We compare the energy consumption with the centralized server scheme using both numerical results and detailed simulations. The results shows significant reduction in energy consumption (more than an order of magnitude) when only few replicas of the object is cached at the infrastructure nodes.

Due to the extensive use of wireless technologies, security is one of the most important and challenging issues in smart grid networks. To secure data communications, strong authentication and key management mechanisms are needed. In this paper, we propose a mutual authentication scheme and key management protocol tailored for Home Area Network (HAN) with low overhead and enhanced robustness. Using identity-based cryptography technique, the proposed scheme broadcasts only a small packet to all HAN nodes to refresh their keys, thus significantly improving key management overhead cost by reducing network bandwidth. Analysis shows that the proposed scheme delivers required security against well-known HAN attacks, and can be easily adopted based on existing technologies.

In Multicast, since almost simultaneous communication take place along several branches of a Multicast distribution tree, these branches tend to mutually block each other due to interference. We utilized a model of scheduling in automobile production line called GORBY to divide the nodes in the Multicast distribution tree into three groups (GORby-Group or GG). We calculate the SINR of the node based on interferences caused by all the nodes within that GG, assuming when the given node is in the transmit state then all the nodes within its GG will also be in the transmit state. Finally we use the computed SINRs in our join Multicast group algorithm to achieve the most SINR, which we call it GORby Interference-Aware (GIA) metric in case of a node, and Path GIA (PGIA) in case of a path.

In this paper, we consider smart grid system demands on remote controlling a smart appliance from up to the central controller layer, in a confidential fashion and immune from any in-between principles' intrusion. For instance, we need to remotely turn off a low-priority high-demand appliance in case of crisis and emergency, or manage a plug-in electric vehicles recharging. Hence a Home Area Network (HAN) controller should be prevented from superimposing or differing caused by decryption and re-encryption these packets. Comparing to X.1035 standard, we use only one hash function and utilize a primitive password between the appliance and HAN controller, and state four individual consensus password-authenticated symmetric key establishments between the appliance and upstream controllers during only 12 packets. We improve security process data delivery time by 50% to 75% while provide various attacks resilience like replay, off-line guessing, Denning-Sacco, compromised impression, ephemeral key compromise impression, unknown key-share and man in the middle.