Practical defenses against pollution attacks in intra-flow network coding for wireless mesh networks

Recent studies show that network coding can provide significant benefits to network protocols, such as increased throughput, reduced network congestion, higher reliability, and lower power consumption. The core principle of network coding is that intermediate nodes actively mix input packets to produce output packets. This mixing subjects network coding systems to a severe security threat, known as a pollution attack, where attacker nodes inject corrupted packets into the network. Corrupted packets propagate in an epidemic manner, depleting network resources and significantly decreasing throughput. Pollution attacks are particularly dangerous in wireless networks, where attackers can easily inject packets or compromise devices due to the increased network vulnerability. In this paper, we address pollution attacks against network coding systems in wireless mesh networks. We demonstrate that previous solutions to the problem are impractical in wireless networks, incurring an unaccept...

• Type: Conference
• Year: 2009
• Where: WISEC
• Authors: Jing Dong, Reza Curtmola, Cristina Nita-Rotaru
• Keywords: Network Coding, Network Coding Systems, Pollution Attacks, Wireless Network, WISEC 2009