SECURE, FAST, AND EFFICIENT HANDOFF PROTOCOLS FOR WIRELESS MESH NETWORKS by NAIF ALAMRI B.S., Taibah University, 2005 M.S., DePaul University, 2010 A dissertation submitted to the Graduate Faculty of the University of Colorado Colorado Springs in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Department of Computer Science 2018 2018 NAIF ALAMRI ALL RIGHTS RESERVED This dissertation for the Doctor of Philosophy degree by NAIF ALAMRI Has been approved for the Department of Computer Science by C. Edward Chow, Chair Jonathan Ventura Sang-Yoon Chang Yanyan Zhuang Mark Wickert Date _____________04/25/2018 ii Alamri, Naif (Ph.D, Engineering) Secure, Fast, and Efficient Handoff Protocols for Wireless Mesh Networks Thesis directed by Professor C. Edward Chow ABSTRACT In 2011, the IEEE 802.11s for wireless mesh networks (WMN) was introduced to provide the specifications and necessary changes to the MAC layer protocols which extend the network capabilities in establishing multi-hop and multi-path connections between wireless nodes within the same Mesh Basic Service Set (MBSS). However, this innovative and convenient approach to wireless communications is facing many challenges, most of which are influenced by the unique characteristics of WMN. These challenges include security, routing, and QoS. In WMN, it is important to utilize fast handoff authentication protocols to guarantee a certain level of seamless roaming for the clients. However, the lack of a fast and reliable handoff protocol in the 802.11s standard is a major drawback especially in a technology designed to accommodate clients with high mobility. The use of authentication methods such as 802.1X/EAP for handoff authentication requires intensive computational power in devices with restricted resources and will cause a significant delay and QoS degradation. In this dissertation, we propose fast, and efficient handoff authentication protocols for WMN. First, a token-based authentication protocol is designed to provide localized handoff for clients with linear movement patterns. Second, a ticket-based authentication protocol is designed to provide global handoff within the boundaries of the mobility domain. We provide a performance assessment framework which is to compare our protocols to currently used protocols such as EAP-TLS and iii EAP-PEAP. Performance analysis will prove that our protocols are 250 times faster than EAP-PEAP and 500 times faster than EAP-TLS. This improvement allows our protocols to provide seamless handoff and continuous operation for real-time applications with short-delay requirements such as VoIP, video conferences, and online games. iv DEDICATION To my parents, my wife, and my family, the driving forces behind my success. Thank you for your dedication and your unconditional support throughout this tremendous journey. v ACKNOWLEDGMENT To my passionate supporter, my lovely wife Mashael. No amount of thanks can ever express my gratitude. Your patience and devotion throughout the years have been the fuel of my motivation. I would like to thank my wonderful parents for their unconditional love and encouragement. It's through the values you instilled in me that I was able to realize my potentials. This is yet another chapter of our success story. I would like to express my sincere appreciation to my advisor and my mentor, Professor Edward Chow, whom I came to know and admire since I have met him during my first semester at UCCS. His guidance, thoughtfulness, and continuous support helped me achieve my research goals. It has been an honor to work with such an innovative mind for all these years. I would like to thank the committee members, Professor Jonathan Ventura, Professor Sang-Yoon Chang, Professor Yanyan Zhuang, and Professor Mark Wickert. Their constructive feedback and valuable opinions helped shape the course of my research. I would like to thank my faithful friends Amer Aljaedi and Abdelhamid Elgzil. Their kind support has been viable to my research effort especially during the preparation of my first published paper. Finally, I would like to thank my employer, Taibah University, and the Saudi Arabian Cultural Mission (SACM) for the life-changing opportunity and the generous financial support. vi TABLE OF CONTENTS CHAPTER I. INTRODUCTION ........................................................................................................ 1 1.1 Overview of Wireless Mesh Networks ............................................................... 1 1.2 Architectures of WMN ....................................................................................... 3 1.3 Components of WMNs ....................................................................................... 7 1.4 Routing Protocols and Metrics in WMNs ........................................................... 8 1.5 Security in WMN .............................................................................................. 22 1.6 Research Motivation ......................................................................................... 24 1.7 Dissertation Contributions ................................................................................ 28 1.8 Dissertation Outline .......................................................................................... 30 II. RELATED WORK .................................................................................................... 33 2.1 Cryptographic Methods Used in Authentication .............................................. 33 2.2 Current Wireless Security Schemes .................................................................. 41 2.3 Related Wireless Mesh Networks Research ..................................................... 62 III. HALA: THE HANDOFF AUTHENTICATION LATENCY ASSESSMENT FRAMEWORK ............................................................................................................... 85 3.1 Overview ........................................................................................................... 85 3.2 Android Security System .................................................................................. 91 3.3 iOS Security System ......................................................................................... 94 3.4 Experimental Setup of The HALA Framework on Android and iOS Devices. 98 3.5 Results and Analysis ....................................................................................... 101 vii IV. UFAP: ULTRA-FAST HANDOFF AUTHENTICATION PROTOCOL........ 111 4.1 Introduction ..................................................................................................... 111 4.2 Design Principles for Handoff Protocols in WMN ......................................... 112 4.3 Handoff Protocol Design ................................................................................ 113 4.4 Implementation and Experimental Setup ........................................................ 118 4.5 Performance Analysis ..................................................................................... 121 4.6 Security Analysis ............................................................................................ 124 V. GAP: THE GLOBAL HANDOFF AUTHENTICATION PROTOCOL .......... 127 5.1 GAP Protocol Design ...................................................................................... 127 5.2 Handoff Process .............................................................................................. 129 5.3 Performance Analysis ..................................................................................... 132 VI. CONCLUSION ...................................................................................................... 136 6.1 Conclusion ...................................................................................................... 136 6.2 Future Work .................................................................................................... 138 REFERENCES .............................................................................................................. 139 APPENDIX A ................................................................................................................ 146 APPENDIX B ................................................................................................................ 164 viii LIST OF TABLES TABLE 2.1 A comparison between DES, 3DES, AES, and Blowfish........................................... 39 2.2 Equivalent security comparison by key size ............................................................... 40 3.1 List of cryptographic methods and parameters can be utilized in the HALA framework ................................................................................................................. 89 3.2 List of tested mobile devices..................................................................................... 100 4.1 A detailed list of the devices used in this experiment ............................................... 120 A.1 Execution time of 8-bytes secure random number generation on Android and iOS devices in nanoseconds ........................................................................................... 146 A.2 Execution time of 16-bytes secure random number generation on Android and iOS devices in nanoseconds ........................................................................................... 147 A.3 Execution time of 32-bytes secure random number generation on Android and iOS devices in nanoseconds ..........................................................................................