Born to Win

Advanced Computer Networks

By Professor. Dr. Sebastian Nixon , Ph.D., MCSE , CCNA

Chapter - 5

Next Generation Networking:

Motivation and Challenges
Understanding the Importance of Information
Security

Prevents data theft

Avoids legal consequences of not securing information
Maintains productivity
Secure from cyber terrorism
 Challenges

A number of trends illustrate why security is

becoming increasingly difficult:

Speed of attacks
Sophistication of attacks
Faster detection of weaknesses
Distributed attacks
Difficulties of patching
 Latest security Trends

What are the latest security trends?

Identity theft
Malware
Patch Management failures
Distributed Denial of Service
 Latest Trends - Identity Theft

Crime of the 21st century

Involves using someone’s personal information, such as
social security numbers, to establish bank or credit card
accounts that are then left unpaid, leaving the victim with
the debts and ruining their credit rating National, state,
and local legislation continues to be enacted to deal with
this growing problem:

The Fair and Accurate Credit Transactions Act of

2003 is a federal law that addresses identity theft
 Latest Trends - Identity Theft - continued

Phishing is a method used by identity thieves to obtain

financial information from a computer user

The word “phishing” was made up by hackers as a cute

word to use for the concept of fishing for information

One of the most lucrative forms of spamming

Often used in conjunction with spoofed Web sites

Latest Trends - Malicious Software (Malware)

Designed to operate without the computer user’s

permission
May change or destroy data
May operate hardware without authorization
Can hijack your Web browser
Might steal information or otherwise aggravate a
computer user or organization
 Malware Trends

Spyware
Keyloggers
Rootkits
Mobile malware
Combined attack mechanisms
 Malware Trends - Spyware

Advertisement-focused applications that, much like

computer worms, install themselves on systems with little
or no user interaction
While such an application may be legal, it is usually
installed without the user’s knowledge or informed
consent
A user in an organization could download and install a
useful (often “free”) application from the Internet and in
doing so, unwittingly install a spyware component
 Malware Trends - Keyloggers

Used to capture user’s keystrokes:

Hardware and software-based

Useful purposes:
Help determine sources of errors on system
Measure employee productivity on certain clerical
tasks
 Malware Trends - Rootkits

Is a set of software tools intended to conceal running

processes, files or system data, thereby helping an intruder
to maintain access to a system while avoiding detection
Often modify parts of the operating system or install
themselves as drivers or kernel modules
Are known to exist for a variety of operating systems
Are difficult to detect
 Malware Trends - Mobile Malware

Increase in the number of mobile phone viruses being

written
Insignificant compared to the much larger number of
viruses being written which target Windows desktop
computers
 Malware Trends - Combined Attack
Mechanisms

SPAM with spoofed Web sites

Trojans installing bot software
Trojans installing backdoors
 What is Mobile IP

Definition:

Mobile IP is a standard communication protocol, defined to

allow mobile device users to move from one IP network to
another while maintaining their permanent IP address
 Self Organizing Networks

 Discover significant patterns or features in the input

data
 Discovery is done without a teacher

 Synaptic weights are changed according to

local rules
 The changes affect a neuron’s immediate environment

until a final configuration develops

 Ad Hoc Networks

An ad-hoc network is a wireless local area network (LAN)

that is built spontaneously as devices connect.

 Instead of relying on a base station to coordinate the flow

of messages to each node in the network, the individual

network nodes forward packets to and from each other.
 Applications of Ad hoc Wireless Networks
 Military applications
• Ad hoc wireless networks is useful in establishing communication in a
battle field.

 Collaborative and Distributed Computing

• A group of people in a conference can share data in ad hoc networks.
• Streaming of multimedia objects among the participating nodes.

 Emergency Operations
• Ad hoc wireless networks are useful in emergency operations such as search
and rescue, and crowd control.

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 Wireless Mesh Networks

A wireless mesh network (WMN) is a communications

network made up of radio nodes organized in a mesh topology.
Wireless mesh networks often consist of
 mesh clients
 mesh routers

Mesh routers contain additional routing functionality due to

the presence of wireless interface card in them
Nodes have two functions:
Generate/terminate traffic
Route traffic for other nodes
 Wireless Mesh Networks

 In a wireless mesh network, multiple nodes cooperate to relay a message to its

destination. The mesh topology enhances the overall reliability of the network,
which is particularly important when operating in harsh industrial environments.
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 Wireless Sensor Networks
 Wireless Sensor Networks are a special category of ad hoc
networks that are used to provide a wireless communication
infrastructure among the sensors deployed in a specific application
domain.
 A sensor network is a collection of a large number of sensor nodes
that are deployed in a particular region.

 Distinct properties of wireless sensor networks:

• Mobility of nodes are not needed in all cases in wireless sensor networks.
• The size of the network is much larger than that in a typical ad hoc wireless
network.
• The density of nodes in a sensor network varies with the domain of
application.
• The power constraints in sensor networks are much more stringent than those
in ad hoc wireless networks.
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 VOIP

A recent application of Internet technology – Voice over IP

(VoIP): Transmission of voice over Internet

How VoIP works

 Continuously sample audio

 Convert each sample to digital form
 Send digitized stream across Internet in packets
 Convert the stream back to analog for playback

Why VoIP
 IP telephony is economic; High costs for traditional telephone
switching equipments.

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RESEARCH AREAS
 Every 1 of us must
take steps to protect
our Earth's climate.

By
Prof. Dr. Sebastian Nixon