Wireless connectivity has become the primary way most users access cyberspace. The wide use of the internet on wireless and mobile devices is further encouraged with new services that simultaneously engage and connect a large number of users. As a result, the society at large is quickly getting comfortable with the idea of conducting everyday lives on mobile devices most of which require communicating sensitive and confidential information over the wireless medium. Consequently, secure access to cyberspace necessitates wireless security. Wireless, being an open medium, is more prone to malicious cyber acts as compared to wired connectivity. On the other hand, this medium also presents unique opportunities to provide security guarantees through the interaction of nodes and advanced physical layer techniques. In particular, information theoretic security emerges with design insights that provide guaranteed security against computationally unlimited adversaries. In order to do so, information theory assumes a network of altruistic nodes and looks for fundamental performance limits which usually come with complex interaction and coordination requirements. The premise of this project is that this idealistic set-up can be successfully transformed into a practical one by amalgamating information theory with the theory of incentives in order to provide secure wireless cyber access.
Specific research topics being addressed include the development of: (1) mechanisms to incentivize non-altruistic cognitive nodes to participate in information theoretic security protocols; (2) incentive mechanisms for scenarios where all nodes have equal access to spectrum and need confidentiality, even from each other; (3) techniques for providing security to groups of cooperative nodes and the associated trust issues; (4) incentive mechanisms for combating active attacks; (5) strategies for combating colluding adversaries; and (6) mechanisms to ensure that nodes have the incentive to adopt a given security protocol.
Broader impacts of this work include: (1) providing secure access to cyberspace via the wireless medium; (2) new design insights for practical security protocols; and (3) amalgamating information theory and game theory via incentive mechanisms. Educational broader impacts include: (1) dissemination of research results in the form of tutorials and short courses; (2) enhancing graduate-student research experiences via a three-university research exchange program; (3) incorporating the research results into graduate and undergraduate communications courses; and (4) recruitment of and mentorship for women in engineering and science.
