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— Researchers find some smartphone models more vulnerable to attack — New research from North Carolina State University shows that some smartphones specifically designed to support the Android mobile platform have incorporated additional features that…
— MIT: New algorithm may improve defensive driving — In 2008, according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, 2.3 million automobile crashes occurred at intersections across the United States, resulting in some 7,000…
— Researchers use CT to recreate Stradivarius violin — Using computed tomography (CT) imaging and advanced manufacturing techniques, a team of experts has created a reproduction of a 1704 Stradivarius violin. Three-dimensional images of…
— Terminator-style info-vision takes step towards reality — The streaming of real-time information across your field of vision is a step closer to reality with the development of a prototype contact lens that could potentially provide the wearer…
— Scientists invent long-lasting, near infrared-emitting material — Materials that emit visible light after being exposed to sunlight are commonplace and can be found in everything from emergency signage to glow-in-the-dark stickers. But until now,…
— Team of researchers develop world's lightest material — A team of researchers from UC Irvine, HRL Laboratories and the California Institute of Technology have developed the world's lightest material - with a density of 0.9 mg/cc - about…
— Humans can control a cursor with power of thought — The act of mind reading is something usually reserved for science-fiction movies but researchers in America have used a technique, usually associated with identifying epilepsy, for…
— Nanoparticles improve solar collection efficiency — Using minute graphite particles 1000 times smaller than the width of a human hair, mechanical engineers at Arizona State University hope to boost the efficiency - and profitability…
Thwarting attacks on cell phone mesh networks
A Mobile Ad hoc NETwork (MANET) or cell phone mesh network uses software to transparently hook together numerous active cell phones in a location to provide greater bandwidth and better network connections by allowing users to share 'spare' resources while they use their phones, making data transfers faster and smoother.
However, the usefulness of such ad hoc networks can be offset by vulnerabilities. Like any network, a MANET can be susceptible to attack from people with malicious intent. Illicit users might, for instance, hook up to such a network and impersonate a legitimate user in an effort to access data and logins to which they do not have approval, others may implant harmful software, malware. The most worrying form of attack, however, is the distributed denial of service (DDoS), which effectively swamps the network with random data requests until it is overwhelmed. This might simply be for the sake of causing disruption but it a DDoS attack might also be used to hook into security loopholes and quickly and transparently implant malware to harvest logins, bank details and other private information.
Now, Yinghua Guo of the Defence and Systems Institute, at the University of South Australia, in Mawson Lakes and Sylvie Perreau of the Institute for Telecommunications Research, in Mawson Lakes, have developed a computer algorithm that runs on the network and rapidly, within 10-22 seconds, identifies when a DDoS is initiated based on the new, unexpected pattern of data triggered by the attack. The false positive rate is very low and it allows the system to trace the illicit activity back to the main nodes from which it is originating and to deny them access to the network, so thwarting the attack very quickly.
The researchers say that their technique can halt 80% of the DDoS attack traffic and so allow users to continue using their devices almost as normal and to block the window of opportunity through malware might be implanted during such an attack. More importantly, from a computer science point of view is that the study provides a model framework on which better security systems might be built for MANETs and other networks.
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