Mohammad Faisal

Bio: Mohammad Faisal is an academic researcher from University of Malakand. The author has contributed to research in topics: Handover & Throughput. The author has an hindex of 7, co-authored 22 publications receiving 110 citations. Previous affiliations of Mohammad Faisal include Information Technology University.

An Energy-Efficient and Cooperative Fault- Tolerant Communication Approach for Wireless Body Area Network

Abstract: The tremendous advancement in embedded systems, miniaturization, and wireless technology had allowed Wireless Body Area Networks (WBAN) to have overwhelming applications in e-healthcare, entertainment, sports/games training, etc. WBAN is a special type of wireless sensor network where bio-sensors are attached or embedded to a single human-body designed to connect various bio-sensors and applications, operate autonomously and observe different vital signs of a human body remotely. Despite its enormous benefits and applications, some of the key challenges in designing heterogeneous WBAN is their energy-efficiency, reliability, and fault-tolerance among the installed bio-sensors. Due to the criticality of services related to WBAN applications, it is imperative to have a high degree of reliability and fault-tolerance, especially in the case of health-care monitoring applications where continuous monitoring of patient's vital information is required for diagnosis. However, in health-care applications, interference and body fading occur, which affect the communication among nodes and gateway, which reduces the reliability and fault-tolerance of the network. To address these issues, in this paper, we have proposed an energy-efficient fault-tolerant scheme to improve the reliability of WBANs. The proposed scheme adopted the cooperative communication and network coding strategy to minimize channel impairment and body fading effect and hence reduces the ensued faults, bit error rate, and energy consumption. Based on the proposed scheme, a case study was designed for remote Sepsis monitoring. The system identifies tracking indicators using cooperative communication to reduce hospital re-admissions and mortality rates. The proposed scheme performance is also evaluated via extensive simulations using various metrics. From the results obtained, it is evident that the proposed scheme reduces energy consumption, delay, and bit error rate, thereby increasing the throughput and reliability in WBAN.

Identity attack detection system for 802.11-based ad hoc networks

Abstract: Due to the lack of centralized identity management and the broadcast nature of wireless ad hoc networks, identity attacks are always tempting. The attackers can create multiple illegitimate (arbitrary or spoofed) identities on their physical devices for various malicious reasons, such as to launch Denial of Service attacks and to evade detection and accountability. In one scenario, the attacker creates more than one identity on a single physical device, which is called a Sybil attack. In the other one, the attacker creates cloned/replicated nodes. We refer collectively to these attacks as identity attacks. Using these malicious techniques, the attacker would perform activities in the network for which the attacker may not be authorized. In the existing literature, these attacks are often counteracted separately. However, in this paper, we propose a solution to counteract both attacks jointly. Our proposed scheme uses the received signal strength for the detection without using extra hardware (such as GPS, antennae or air monitors) and centralized entities (such as trusted third party or certification authority). Upon the detection of malicious identities, they will be quarantined and will be blacklisted for future data communication by the mobile nodes. Our proposed attack detector detects the presence of Sybil attacks and replication attacks locally by analysing the received signal strength captured by each node. Moreover, we propose a technique that will identify these attacks in the overall network. In both local and global cases, we evaluate our solutions theoretically and via simulation in NS-2. The obtained results demonstrate that it is possible to detect identity attacks with considerable accuracy without causing extra overhead in the form of extra hardware, periodic beacons or expensive localization operations in the wireless ad hoc networks.

Masquerading Attacks Detection in Mobile Ad Hoc Networks

Abstract: Due to the lack of centralized identity management and the broadcast nature, wireless ad hoc networks are always a palatable target for masquerading attacks. The attackers can spoof identities of privileged legitimate users for various malicious reasons, such as to launch DoS or DDoS attacks, to access unauthorized information, and to evade the detection and accountability. In the current and limited literature, masquerading attacks are mostly counteracted by signal-strength-based detection systems. However, these schemes are mostly proposed to work for infrastructure-based IEEE 802.11 wireless networks using fixed access points, air monitors, or fixed anchor nodes, which are not suitable for the ad hoc architecture. In this paper, we propose a detection system for masquerading attacks without using fixed anchor nodes or air monitors. We develop an anomaly detection model based on the statistical significant testing for our masquerading detection system that takes into consideration the signal strength fluctuation. We conduct a test bed of Samsung Galaxy-based smartphones in order to analyze the real-world signal strength variation. We also plug the real-world signal strength variation in our model for the evaluation of the detection accuracy. We propose the received signal-strength-based masquerading attack detection scheme, which is carried out first by each node in its one-hop vicinity and then extended to five-hop proximity for broader detection scope and improved accuracy. The proposed scheme is evaluated using an NS-2 network simulator for detection accuracy in different environments. The results obtained indicate that our proposed scheme produces more than 90% true positives.

A Survey on Lightweight Authentication Schemes in Vertical Handoff

Abstract: Lightweight authentication is one of the solutions proposed in order to reduce the time required for authentication during vertical handoff across heterogeneous networks. Reducing the handoff latency is considered to be a challenging issue. It arises when a user requires maintaining its service continuity while traveling across heterogeneous networks. For example, a mobile user may change access networks while being engaged in different scenarios, such as browsing Internet, using real-time applications or collaborating in cooperative information systems. Delay in the vertical handoff creates many problems, i.e. packet loss, service interruption, security problems, etc. Fast and lightweight authentication schemes are always tempted in such application domains because of many benefits, for instance seamless and efficient handoff, service continuity, guaranteed quality of service (QoS) and suitability for real-time applications while maintaining security. Various techniques have been proposed in this domain to reduce authentication delay. However, these methods do not fully address all the issues in the problem domain; for example, these methods have deficiencies in terms of security, monetary cost, signaling cost and packet latency. In this paper, a comparative study of different lightweight authentication methods is presented but the main focus of this work is one of the different implementations. An overview of major problems and their solutions are presented along with their strengths and limitations. Different emerging research areas are also presented in the domain of lightweight authentication in the vertical handoff.

Survey of Authentication and Privacy Schemes in Vehicular ad hoc Networks

Abstract: Vehicular ad hoc networks (VANETs) have become increasingly common in recent years due to their critical role in the field of smart transportation by supporting Vehicle-to-Vehicle and Vehicle-to-Infrastructure communication. The security and privacy of VANET are of the utmost importance due to the use of an open wireless communication medium where messages are exchanged in plain text, something which allows attackers to intercept, tamper, replay, and delete them. Hence, there is a high probability that the safety of a VANET-based smart transportation system could be compromised. Nowadays, securing and safeguarding the exchange of messages in VANETs is the focus of many security research teams, as reflected by the number of authentication and privacy schemes that have been proposed. However, these schemes have not fulfilled all aspects of the security and privacy requirements. The present paper is an effort to provide a thorough background on VANETs and their components; various types of attacks on them; and all the security and privacy requirements for authentication and privacy schemes for VANETs. This paper is among the first to provide a comprehensive survey of the existing authentication and privacy schemes and compare them based on all security and privacy requirements, computational and communicational overheads, and the level of resistance to different types of attacks. It also provides a qualitative comparison with the existing surveys. This paper could serve as a guide and reference in the design and development of any new security and privacy techniques for VANETs.