Masterarbeit
Conception and Simulation of Fallback Strategies against Cyber Attacks in Wireless Personal Area Networks
Completion
2021/05
Research Area
Students
Sagar Kafle
Advisers
Description
It is predicted that the Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) will grow enormously in the coming years. Radio technologies such as Wireless Personal Area Networks (WPAN) are also contributing to an increasing number of use cases. There are currently technical challenges regarding the integration of networks in the industrial environment. The requirements for mobile communication are significantly higher than in the consumer environment. However, the greatest concerns are related to the IT-security of the highly connected and integrated systems. Research and development projects such as the EU-project TRINITY deal with the integration of IT-security in robotics and industrial IoT scenarios and their transferability to other applications. The thesis shall contribute to this public funded project and shall investigate IT-security mechanisms in wireless sensor networks in the industrial environment.
A variety of devices and radio standards exist to establish WPANs. Various communication protocols are used within the applications, whereby access to the transmission channel, the environment and the number and type of connections vary greatly. Attack vectors and IT-security mechanisms of the networks can often only be simulated with great effort using testbed installations. Existing software-based simulators such as ns-3 or OMNeT ++ are characterized by a high level of complexity, since you have to create and simulate the network behaviour manually using proprietary scripts, and realistic scenarios can only be tested in a highly abstract manner. The simulation tool d3vs1m offers a user-friendly API for developers and end users can carry out simulations in realistic 3D scenarios even without programming knowledge.
As part of the thesis, the following tasks should be done to solve the challenges:
- Investigation and classification of possible attack scenarios on WPANs.
- Requirement analysis to simulate cyber attacks and their countermeasures in WPANs.
- Evaluation of at least one simulation tool, such as d3vs1m, ns-3 or OMNeT ++ and implementation of an attack scenario.
The objective of this thesis is to find an approach or combination of approaches for the previously mentioned problems and tasks in the context of Cyber Security in WPANs. This particularly includes the state of the art regarding Security of WPANs, cyber attacks and their countermeasures in WPANs. The demonstration of feasibility with an implementation prototype of the concept is part of this thesis as well as a suitable evaluation with exemplary use cases.
