NEST-ec: Network security testing of erasure codes

Abstract

Security is the key concern for every data transmitted through network as data in network is prone to various attacks (such as man in middle attack, smurf attack, denial of service attack, brute-force attack, dictionary attack, spoofing etc), thus it is important to ensure the security of data before transmission. Erasure coding based routing is an algorithm for routing the message from source to destination in delay tolerant networks. Erasure code blocks generated in Erasure coding based routing for DTN (Delay Tolerant Networks) transmitted over the network in unsecure mode. In this paper an algorithm which uses Stream and block cipher techniques has been proposed for secure transmission of erasure codes block. Two different attacks such as Brute-force Attack and Dictionary attack have been designed to check vulnerability in network. Further to check the level of vulnerability in network, testing has been performed and test cases have been generated using cause effect graphing technique techniques. Results show that network would provide better security options when the key value in the algorithm contains special characters and numbers.