On Security in Wireless Mobile Networking

IPASJ International Journal of Information Technology (IIJIT)
Web Site: http://www.ipasj.org/IIJIT/IIJIT.htm

Email:editoriijit@ipasj.org
ISSN 2321-5976
A Publisher for Research Motivation ........
Volume 4, Issue 1, January 2016
On Security in Wireless Mobile Networking

Amin H. Al-Kabi
Australian College of Kuwait
ABSTRACT
Mobile wireless networking is a key technology in realizing the vision of ubiquitous computing, where communication and
computing activities are not disturbed while the user roams from one subnet to another. Instead, all the needed reconnection
occurs flawlessly. This paper is mainly a literature review and explanation of some security issues related to mobile wireless
networks, including different security protocols.
Keywords:mobile, wireless, networks, security
I- INTRODUCTION
Advanced mobile devices, known as smartphones, can offer many advantages in increased productivity and ubiquitous
availability of personal, client and corporate data. However, security has become a primary concern to provide secured
communication in mobile wireless networks. Unlike the wired networks, the unique features of mobile networks create a
number of tough challenges to security strategy, such as open peer-to-peer network architecture, joint wireless channel,
rigorous resource restraints, highly dynamic network topology, and lack of a trusted infrastructure. Pervasive roaming
influences on a radio access system by demanding that it sustains handover between neighboring cells and other
networks. Moreover, mobile networks are more vulnerable to interferences than wired networks. The primary
components that contribute to this situation are neighboring channels, co-channels, multipath, Doppler shifts, and fading.
The mobile networking consists of support for roaming, which allows global access, and backup for redirection of
communication flow, which allows current session persistence. Both roaming and redirection launches new opportunities
for hackers to stage assorted attacks, particularly, the redirect attacks, where the traffic flow is redirected to destinations
selected by the attackers [1]. Mobile networking assigns two IP addresses to the mobile node, a home address and a care
of address. The home address is an IP address assigned to the mobile node within its on its home subnet, and the care
of address is an interim address gained by the mobile node while communicating with a foreign subnet. This addressing
method allows packets to be routed to the mobile node irrespective of its recent point of connection. The main focus in
this paper will be on Mobile IP version 6 (MIPv6), where the operation in MIPv6 and the types of redirect attacks are
discussed. A review of two techniques for binding update security is conducted: the cryptographically generated
addresses (CGA) protocol [3], [4], and the home agent proxy (HAP) protocol [5]. A comparison between the two
protocols in terms of performance, security, and scalability is presented [8].
II- MIPV6 OPERATION AND DIRECT ATTACKS

II-1 Operation of MIPv6
The IPv6 address contains 128 bits and is split into two parts: a subnet prefix and an interface identifier. The home
addresses of all the mobile nodes related to a home link share the same home link subnet prefix and are distinguished by
their unique interface identifiers. As discussed earlier, every mobile node in MIPv6 has a home address (HoA), which is
an IP address assigned to a mobile node within its home subnet [2]. A mobile node is always accessed by its home
address, regardless of its current connection. While a mobile node moves away from its home and connected to another
remote subnet (see Fig.1), it is additionally accessed by one or more care-of addresses (CoAs).
Fig. 1 Basic operation of MIPv6
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The CoA can be assigned to the mobile subnet via the Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol version 6, (DHCPv6) [9],
and sent to the home agent through a binding update message:
whereHAA is the IP address of the home agent, which represents the destination address of the message. The home
binding update message forms a link between HoA and CoA for the mobile node with a certain life-time LT at the home
agent. Subsequently, all the IPv6 packets addressed to the mobile nodes HoA on the home subnet, are intercepted by a
proxy neighbor discovery, and tunneled to the mobile nodes CoA [2]. The packet tunneling is performed by using IPv6
encapsulation algorithm, with the outer IPv6 header forwarded to the CoA of the mobile node. On the other hand, a route
optimization operation can be initiated with the correspondent node by transmitting a correspondent binding update
message to the correspondent node:
whereCNA is the IP address of the correspondent node where it is used as a destination address of the message. The
purpose of this message is to allow the correspondent node to be continuously updated by the mobile nodes latest
CoA[1].
II.2 Attacks Redirection in MIPv6

It is obvious that, the implementation of binding update operation explained in the previous section is susceptible to
severe security threats.
Fig. 2 (a) Session hijacking; (b) Node flooding

Faking, replaying, and reformation of unsecured binding update messages, can be used by the hackers to redirect traffic
flow from correspondent nodes to some designated destinations identified by the hackers. The redirect attacks can be
categorized into two types, session hijacking and harmful mobile node flooding, as illustrated in Fig. 2.
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displaced to a new location (the victims location), where the victim could be either a network or a node. As an example,
the intruder could redirect an intense traffic flow from video-streaming servers to the victim, and floods the victims
network or node with overwhelming valid or legal traffic. This huge flow of traffic could cause Denial of Service (DoS)
at the victims network/node. This attack is an insider attack as the malicious mobile node is a genuine mobile node
and its actions are legitimate binding updates.
III. CRYPTOGRAPHIC DEFINITIONS
IV.
AUTHENTICATION PROTOCOLS
In order to authenticate binding update messages, we assume that mobile nodes and home agents recognize each other,
and they have a pre-established security connotation between them. A security connotation is a record of data shared by
two nodes which contains the mutually agreed cryptographic parameters, algorithms and secret keys. In IPv6 protocol,
the IPsecs encapsulating security payload (ESP) can be used to set up a secure tunnel between a mobile node and its
home agent [1].
However, one of the measures to counter the redirect attacks is to assume that there is no pre-established security
connotation between the mobile node and the other correspondent node. In this paper, two representative protocols for
authenticating correspondent binding updates are explained[8].
IV.1 Cryptographically Generated Addresses Protocol (CGA)
In this protocol an IPv6 home address for a mobile node is generated, where the interface identifier portion is created
from a one-way hash of the mobile nodes public key. The corresponding private key is used by the mobile node to sign
the correspondent binding update messages [3,4].Here, a binding update message from MN to a correspondent node CN
is given by
where,
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produce pairs of public and private keys, and by hashing the public keys, he can look for a match to a target nodes .
Once a match is located, the target node can be imitated and fake-binding updates can be generated. The computational
complexity of this type of attacks is on the order of
[4]. As a result, it can be concluded that the CGA
protocol is computationally exhaustive as every binding update message needs the mobile node to create a digital
signature and the correspondent node to conduct a verification of the received digital signature.
Here, it can be seen that an intruder can simply generate public/ private key pairs, hashes the public keys to form a home
addresses, sign a binding update messages that contain a victims address as CoA, and send the BU messages to a
correspondent node. When the correspondent node accepts the binding update, it starts transmitting flooding traffic to the
victim network/node.
As a conclusion, the CGA protocol does not provide any conclusive evidence of the identity of the mobile node, and its
authorization to use a particular HoA, thus it cant provide a categorical protection against the malicious and harmful
mobile node flooding attacks.
IV.2 Home Agent Proxy Protocol (HAP)
The HAP protocol [1],[5], has the following properties:
1. It is accessible and easy to control.
2. It implements an exchange of one-way authenticated key between CN and MN.
3. No cryptographic operations on the public key are accomplished at CNs.
4. It is protected against any authoritative rival who can initiate attacks.
5. Public key cryptosystems are used in this protocol.
The public & private keys,
and
in the digital signature, are combined with the home subnet. The certification
authority CA, generates the public key certificate for the home subnet:where, HS is the prefix of the home subnet, VI is the certificate validity duration, and
is CAs signature on HS, ,
and VI. A mutual secret value between the two sides of the protocol can be generated, by using the DiffieHellman key
exchange algorithm. Fig. 3 depicts the protocol exchanged messages between the mobile node MN, the home agent HA,
and the correspondent node CN.
Fig. 3 Message exchange in Home Agent Proxy Protocol.

In Fig. 3, it can be seen that the mobile node MN sends message REQ to home agent HA, and receives REP from it.
Likewise, the correspondent node CN, receives COOKIE0, EXCH0, and CONFIRMS from home agent HA and sends
COOKIE1 and EXCH1 back to it.In this case the intruder is able to produce a sequence of request packets to the other
protocol side with a different cheated source IP address. Thus, the cookies could create security vulnerability in this
protocol. When the other side of the protocol receives the request, it certifies cookies before executing elaborate
cryptographic computations of the public key. The route optimization request REQ is sent by the mobile node MN to
home agent HA, taking into consideration the HAP message contains the IP addresses of the source and destination in the
first two fields.
where, CNA is the IP address of the correspondent node CN, and

is a nonce value (present time) used to verify the
reply message REP. IPsec-protected secure tunnel is used to send the route optimization request REQ to MNs home
subnet. This may not always be possible, and manual keying might be preferred in certain circumstances. Here, Home
agent HA uses IPv6 neighbor discovery [2] to intercept REQ. The home agent HA does not pass REQ to CN directly;
but it generates a cookie and transmits
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to the correspondent node CN, where CN responds by creating a cookie
, and nonce
, and sends
as:-
to mobile node MN, taking into consideration that is MNs home address HoA, is used as a destination address in
. Thus, this message is received by MNs home subnet and intercepted by the home agent HA using IPv6
neighbor discovery. To check the authenticity of
in COOKIE1, the home agent HA creates a nonce
and a Diffie
Hellman secret value x such that x<p, then it calculates its DiffieHellman public value
and the corresponding
signature using home links private key :-
whereTS is a timestamp. This timestamp is used to trail the offender in the case malicious mobile node flooding attack
takes place, and there is no need for the recipient to check TS during the message exchange. Eventually, home agent HA
responds to correspondent node CN with the exchange message
In Home Agent Proxy Protocol, we can consider HA as a counterpart to web server, and CN and a counterpart to web
browser. CAs issue public key certificates directly to HAs. This protocol provides a resilient one-way authentication of
MN|HoA to CN and provides a secure sharing of a secret session key between CN and MN. As a result HAP counteracts
the session hijacking attack as illustrated in Fig. 2(a). Public key cryptographic operations in HAP protocol are usually
performed in correspondent nodes, while the mobile nodes are not required to perform such operations. However, if the
correspondent node is a server computer, there is nothing to worry about as the energy source and computational power is
available all the time.
Fig. 4 Correspondent node as a mobile node.

On the other hand, if the correspondent node is a mobile node with limited battery life and limited computational power
and battery life, this will constitute a problem, that can be resolved by offloading the cryptographic operations to its home
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agent, but at the expense of increasing the security threats. Fig. 4 illustrates this case, where
home agents of CN and MN, respectively.
and
are the
V.CONCLUSIONS
Security has become a primary concern to provide secured communication in mobile wireless networks. The unique
features of mobile networks create a number of tough challenges to security strategy, such as open peer-to-peer network
architecture, joint wireless channel, rigorous resource restraints, highly dynamic network topology, and lack of a trusted
infrastructure. Pervasive roaming influences on a radio access system by demanding that it sustains handover between
neighboring cells and other networks.
Mobile IP allows mobile nodes to have unbroken communications when they change their points of connection in the
Internet. However, the mobility of the communicating nodes has created new threats to data security, including redirect
attacks, which perhaps deserve significant consideration.
In this paper, two very different protocols that are designed to secure correspondent binding updates in order to prevent
redirect attacks are reviewed and presented. The major advantage of the Cryptographically Generated Addresses
Protocol (CGA) is that it does not presume the availability of an Internet wide public key infrastructure (PKI). Yet, it
provides only restricted protection against redirect attacks. The Home Agent Proxy Protocol (HAP) uses the Diffie
Hellman key exchange algorithm, and the digital signature structure, where public key certificates are issued for home
subnets according to home subnet prefixes, and they are not issued for every mobile node. This approach makes the
issuing, tracking, and revocation of certificates more controllable and practical.
REFERENCES
[1] R. Shorey, Mobile, wireless, and sensor networks technology, applications and future directions, by John
Wiley & Sons, Inc., 2006.
[2] D. Johnson, C. Perkins, and J. Arkko, Mobility Support in IPv6, IETF RFC 3775, June 2004.
[3] G. OShea and M. Roe, Child-proof authentication for MIPv6 (CAM), Computer & Communications. Rev.
April, 2001.
[4] T. Aura, Cryptographically generated addresses (CGA), Proc. 6th Information Security Conf., LNCS 2851,
Bristol, UK, 2003.
[5] R. Deng, J. Zhou, and F. Bao, Defending against redirect attacks in mobile IP, Proc. 9th ACM Conf.
Computer and Communications Security, pp. 5967, Nov., 2002.
[6] S. Thomas and T. Narten, IPv6 Stateless Address Auto-configuration, IETF RFC 2462, Dec. 1998.
[7] S. Kent and R. Atkinson, IP Encapsulating Security Payload (ESP), IETF RFC 2406, Nov. 1998.
[8] Amin Al-Kabi, Security in Mobile Wireless Networks Proceedings of IEEE International Conference on
Signal Processing and Communication (ICSC-2013), Noida, Uttar Pradesh, India, on 12-14 December, 2013.
[9] J. Bound et al., Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol for IPv6 (DHCPv6), IETF RFC 3315, July 2003.
AUTHOR
Amin Al Kabi was born in Jordan. He received his B.Sc. and M.Sc. degrees from the University of
Jordan in 1989 and 1992 respectively, majoring in Electrical Engineering. He got his Ph.D. from
the University of Queensland, Australia in 2006 in the field of Electrical
Engineering/Communications. He has long industrial and academic experience in reputable
financial and academic institutions before joining the Australian College of Kuwait as an Assistant
Professor. His current research interests focus on wireless communication systems and signal
processing.
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IPASJ International Journal of Information Technology (IIJIT)

Web Site: http://www.ipasj.org/IIJIT/IIJIT.htm

A Publisher for Research Motivation ........

Volume 4, Issue 1, January 2016