DORA :: Browsing by Author "Khan, Sarmadullah"

Browsing by Author "Khan, Sarmadullah"

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Open Access
Elgamal Elliptic Curve Based Secure Communication Architecture for Microgrids
(MDPI, 2018-03-27) Khan, Sarmadullah; Khan, Rafiullah
Microgrids play an important role in today’s power systems as the distributed generation is becoming increasingly common. They can operate in two possible modes: (i) standalone and (ii) grid-connected. The transitional state from standalone to grid-connected mode is very critical and requires the microgrid to be synchronized with the main grid. Thus, secure, reliable and trustworthy control and communication is utmost necessary to prevent out-of-sync connection which could severely damage the microgrid and/or the main grid. Existing solutions consume more resources and take long time to establish a secure connection. The objective of the proposed work is to reduce the connection establishment time by using efficient computational algorithms and save the resources. This paper proposes a secure authentication and key establishment mechanism for ensuring safe operation and control of the microgrids. The proposed approach uses the concept of Elgamal with slight modification. Private key of the sender is used instead of a random number. The proposed modification ensures the non repudiation. This paper also presents a system threat model along with security network architecture and evaluates the performance of proposed algorithm in protecting microgrid communication against man in the middle attacks and replay attacks that could delay the packets to damage the system and need to be detected. Mathematical modeling and simulation results show that the proposed algorithm performs better than the existing protocols in terms of connection establishment, resource consumption and security level.
Open Access
From Conventional to State-of-the-Art IoT Access Control Models
(MDPI, 2020-10-15) Al-Bayatti, Ali Hilal; Malik, Ahmad Kamran; Khan, Sarmadullah; Emmanuel, N.; Zafar, S.; Khattack, H.A.; Raza, B.; Alassafi, M.O.; Alfakheeh, A.S.; Alqarni, M.A.
The advent in Online Social Networks (OSN) and Internet of Things (IoT) has created a new world of collaboration and communication between people and devices. The domain of internet of things uses billions of devices (ranging from tiny sensors to macro scale devices) that continuously produce and exchange huge amounts of data with people and applications. Similarly, more than a billion people are connected through social networking sites to collaborate and share their knowledge. The applications of IoT such as smart health, smart city, social networking, video surveillance and vehicular communication are quickly evolving people’s daily lives. These applications provide accurate, information-rich and personalized services to the users. However, providing personalized information comes at the cost of accessing private information of users such as their location, social relationship details, health information and daily activities. When the information is accessible online, there is always a chance that it can be used maliciously by unauthorized entities. Therefore, an effective access control mechanism must be employed to ensure the security and privacy of entities using OSN and IoT services. Access control refers to a process which can restrict user’s access to data and resources. It enforces access rules to grant authorized users an access to resources and prevent others. This survey examines the increasing literature on access control for traditional models in general, and for OSN and IoT in specific. Challenges and problems related to access control mechanisms are explored to facilitate the adoption of access control solutions in OSN and IoT scenarios. The survey provides a review of the requirements for access control enforcement, discusses several security issues in access control, and elaborates underlying principles and limitations of famous access control models. We evaluate the feasibility of current access control models for OSN and IoT and provide the future development direction of access control for the same
Metadata only
Limitations of HIL Test Architectures for Car2X Communication Devices and Applications
(2019-09-13) Al-Bayatti, Ali Hilal; Obermaier, Christina; Khan, Sarmadullah; Facchi, Christian; Riebl, Raphael
Open Access
Longitudinal performance analysis of machine learning based Android malware detectors
(2019-06) Yerima, Suleiman; Khan, Sarmadullah
This paper presents a longitudinal study of the performance of machine learning classifiers for Android malware detection. The study is undertaken using features extracted from Android applications first seen between 2012 and 2016. The aim is to investigate the extent of performance decay over time for various machine learning classifiers trained with static features extracted from date-labelled benign and malware application sets. Using date-labelled apps allows for true mimicking of zero-day testing, thus providing a more realistic view of performance than the conventional methods of evaluation that do not take date of appearance into account. In this study, all the investigated machine learning classifiers showed progressive diminishing performance when tested on sets of samples from a later time period. Overall, it was found that false positive rate (misclassifying benign samples as malicious) increased more substantially compared to the fall in True Positive rate (correct classification of malicious apps) when older models were tested on newer app samples.
Open Access
Measuring the Realtime Capability of Parallel-Discrete-Event-Simulations
(MDPI, 2021-03-10) Obermaier, Christina; Riebl, Raphael; Al-Bayatti, Ali Hilal; Khan, Sarmadullah; Facchi, Christian
Speeding up Discrete Event Simulations (DESs) is a broad research field. Promising Parallel Discrete Event Simulation (PDES) approaches with optimistic and conservative synchronisation schemes have emerged throughout the years. However, in the area of real-time simulation, PDESs are rarely considered. This is caused by the complex problem of fitting parallel executed DES models to a real-time clock. Hence, this paper gives an extensive review of existing conservative and optimistic synchronisation schemes for PDESs. It introduces a metric to compare their real-time capabilities to determine whether they can be used for soft or firm real-time simulation. Examples are given on how to apply this metric to evaluate PDESs using synthetic and real-world examples. The results of the investigation reveal that no final answer can be given if PDESs can be used for soft or firm real-time simulation as they are. However, boundary conditions were defined, which allow a use-case specific evaluation of the real-time capabilities of a certain parallel executed DES. Using this in-depth knowledge and can lead to predictability of the real-time behaviour of a simulation run.
Open Access
A Multi-User, Single-Authentication Protocol for Smart Grid Architectures
(MDPI, 2020-03-12) Khan, Sarmadullah; Alfakeeh, Ahmed; Al-Bayatti, Ali Hilal
In a smart grid system, the utility server collects data from various smart grid devices. These data play an important role in the energy distribution and balancing between the energy providers and energy consumers. However, these data are prone to tampering attacks by an attacker, while traversing from the smart grid devices to the utility servers, which may result in energy disruption or imbalance. Thus, an authentication is mandatory to efficiently authenticate the devices and the utility servers and avoid tampering attacks. To this end, a group authentication algorithm is proposed for preserving demand–response security in a smart grid. The proposed mechanism also provides a fine-grained access control feature where the utility server can only access a limited number of smart grid devices. The initial authentication between the utility server and smart grid device in a group involves a single public key operation, while the subsequent authentications with the same device or other devices in the same group do not need a public key operation. This reduces the overall computation and communication overheads and takes less time to successfully establish a secret session key, which is used to exchange sensitive information over an unsecured wireless channel. The resilience of the proposed algorithm is tested against various attacks using formal and informal security analysis.
Open Access
Multiple Authorities Attribute-Based Verification Mechanism for Blockchain Mircogrid Transactions
(MDPI, 2018-05-04) Khan, Sarmadullah; Khan, Rafiullah
Recently, advancements in energy distribution models have fulfilled the needs of microgrids in finding a suitable energy distribution model between producer and consumer without the need of central controlling authority. Most of the energy distribution model deals with energy transactions and losses without considering the security aspects such as information tampering. The transaction data could be accessible online to keep track of the energy distribution between the consumer and producer (e.g., online payment records and supplier profiles). However this data is prone to modification and misuse if a consumer moves from one producer to other. Blockchain is considered to be one solution to allow users to exchange energy related data and keep track of it without exposing it to modification. In this paper, electrical transactions embedded in blockchain are validated using the signatures of multiple producers based on their assigned attributes. These signatures are verified and endorsed by the consumers satisfying those attributes without revealing any information. The public and private keys for these consumers are generated by the producers and endorsement procedure using these keys ensures that these consumers are authorized. This approach does not need any central authority. To resist against collision attacks, producers are given a secret pseudorandom function seed. The comparative analysis shows the efficiency of proposed approach over the existing ones.
Embargo
Quantized adaptive decentralized control for interconnected nonlinear systems with actuator faults
(Elsevier, 2017-10-10) Khan, W.; Lin, Y.; Khan, Sarmadullah; Ullah, N.
This paper studies quantized adaptive decentralized output feedback control technique for a class of interconnected nonlinear systems with quantized input and possible number of actuator failures up to infinity. A modified backstepping approach is proposed by the use of high-gain k-filters, hyperbolic tangent function property and bound-estimation approach to compensate for the effect of possible number of actuator failures up to infinity and input quantization. It is proved both mathematically and by simulation that, all the signals of the closed-loop system are globally bounded despite of input quantization and possible number of actuator failures up to infinity.
Open Access
Resource Efficient Authentication and Session Key Establishment Procedure for Low-Resource IoT Devices
(IEEE, 2019-11) Khan, Sarmadullah; Alzahrani, Ahmed; Alfarrj, Osama; Alalwan, Nasser; Al-Bayatti, Ali Hilal
The Internet of Things (IoT) can includes many resource-constrained devices, with most usually needing to securely communicate with their network managers, which are more resource-rich devices in the IoT network. We propose a resource-efficient security scheme that includes authentication of devices with their network managers, authentication between devices on different networks, and an attack-resilient key establishment procedure. Using automated validation with internet security protocols and applications tool-set, we analyse several attack scenarios to determine the security soundness of the proposed solution, and then we evaluate its performance analytically and experimentally. The performance analysis shows that the proposed solution occupies little memory and consumes low energy during the authentication and key generation processes respectively. Moreover, it protects the network from well-known attacks (man-in-the-middle attacks, replay attacks, impersonation attacks, key compromission attacks and denial of service attacks).
Open Access
Secure Communication Architecture for Dynamic Energy Management in Smart Grid
(IEEE, 2019-03-25) Khan, Sarmadullah; Khan, Rafiullah; Al-Bayatti, Ali Hilal
Smart grid takes advantage of communication technologies for efficient energy management and utilization. It entails sacrifice from consumers in terms of reducing load during peak hours by using a dynamic energy pricing model. To enable an active participation of consumers in load management, the concept of home energy gateway (HEG) has recently been proposed in the literature. However, the HEG concept is rather new, and the literature still lacks to address challenges related to data representation, seamless discovery, interoperability, security, and privacy. This paper presents the design of a communication framework that effectively copes with the interoperability and integration challenges between devices from different manufacturers. The proposed communication framework offers seamless auto-discovery and zero- con figuration-based networking between heterogeneous devices at consumer sites. It uses elliptic-curve-based security mechanism for protecting consumers' privacy and providing the best possible shield against different types of cyberattacks. Experiments in real networking environment validated that the proposed communication framework is lightweight, secure, portable with low-bandwidth requirement, and flexible to be adopted for dynamic energy management in smart grid.
Open Access
A Secure Online Key Establishment Scheme for Mobile Heterogeneous Sensor Networks
(SAGE, 2014-11-04) Khan, Sarmadullah; Pastrone, Claudio; Lavagno, Luciano; Spirito, Maurizio
Advancement in wireless sensor network (WSN) technology makes it more attractive technology to be adopted in real world applications including home and industrial automation and e-health or infrastructure monitoring. However the mobility consideration in these applications makes the security requirements an essential and challenging task. To make the communication secure and the network robust against attacks, a proper key management scheme should be used. This paper presents a secure online key establishment and authentication scheme for mobility supported heterogeneous sensor networks. The performance evaluation of the proposed scheme is done using OMNET++ simulator while AVISPA tool is used to validate the security of the proposed scheme. It is clear from the obtained results that the proposed scheme provides better network connectivity at a low cost of memory occupation and communication overhead during the authentication and key establishment phases while improving its network resilience against attacks
Open Access
Smart Antennas and Intelligent Sensors Based Systems: Enabling Technologies and Applications
(Hindawi, 2019-07-14) Khan, Sarmadullah; Fawad, Zaman; Sungchang, Lee; Rahim, Mohamad K.A.
The growing communication and computing capabilities in the devices enlarge the connected world and improve the human life comfort level. The evolution of intelligent sensor networks and smart antennas has led to the development of smart devices and systems for real-time monitoring of various environments. The demand of smart antennas and intelligent sensors significantly increases when dealing with multiuser communication system that needs to be adaptive, especially in unknown adverse environment [1–3]. The smart antennas based arrays are capable of steering the main beam in any desired direction while placing nulls in the unwanted directions. Intelligent sensor networks integration with smart antennas will provide algorithms and interesting application to collect various data of environment to make intelligent decisions [4, 5]. The aim of this special issue is to provide an inclusive vision on the current research in the area of intelligent sensors and smart antenna based systems for enabling various applications and technologies. We cordially invite some researchers to contribute papers that discuss the issues arising in intelligent sensors and smart antenna based system. Hence, this special issue offers the state-of-the-art research in this field.
Open Access
VANSec Attack Resistant VANETs Security Algorithm in terms of Trust Computation Error and Normalized Routing Overhead
(Hindawi, 2018-07-16) Khan, Sarmadullah; Ahmed, S.; Rehman, M. Ur; Ishtiaq, A.; Ali, A.; Begum, S,
VANET is an application and subclass of MANETs, a quickly maturing, promising, and emerging technology these days. VANETs establish communication among vehicles (V2V) and roadside infrastructure (V2I). As vehicles move with high speed, hence environment and topology change with time. There is no optimum routing protocol which ensures full-pledge on-time delivery of data to destination nodes, and an absolutely optimum scheme design for flawless packet exchange is still a challenging task. In VANETs, accurate and on-time delivery of fundamental safety alert messages (FSAMs) is highly important to withstand against maliciously inserted security threats affectively. In this paper, we have presented a new security-aware routing technique called VANSec. The presented scheme is more immune and resistive against different kinds of attacks and thwarts malicious node penetration attempts to the entire network. It is basically based on trust management approach. The aim of the scheme is to identify malicious data and false nodes. The simulation results of VANSec are compared with already existing techniques called trust and LT in terms of trust computation error (TCE), end-to-end delay (EED), average link duration (ALD), and normalized routing overhead (NRO). In terms of TCE, VANSec is 11.6% and 7.3% efficient than LT and trust, respectively, while from EED comparison we found VANSec to be 57.6% more efficient than trust and 5.2% more efficient than LT. Similarly, in terms of ALD, VANSec provides 29.7% and 7.8% more stable link duration than trust and LT do, respectively, and in terms of NRO, VANSec protocol has 27.5% and 14% lesser load than that of trust and LT, respectively.

Browsing by Author "Khan, Sarmadullah"

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