Security Mechanisms Over Delay Tolerant Infrastructures

Date
2020
Authors
Gonzales, Brian
Supervisor
Liu, William
Item type
Thesis
Degree name
Master of Information Security and Digital Forensics
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Volume Title
Publisher
Auckland University of Technology
Abstract

The motivation of this research is to seek a flexible encryption and authentication method to facilitate the secure delivery of data through a Delay-Tolerant Network Infrastructure. This work will demonstrate a proof-of-concept, by using the blockchain and Delay-Tolerant technologies. These two technologies have the characteristics of being both decentralised and distributed and emphasise the data accessibility and delivery on any type of data through a Delay-Tolerant Infrastructure. Part of this motivation is to conduct an academic enquiry to look in-depth into providing cryptographic attribution of transferred data from source to destination in a distributed environment. This work conducted both an academic study and a proof of concept for securing digital exchange between nodes on Delay-Tolerant Infrastructures. This work will provide a conceptual proposal on delivering digital services to the rural and remote areas. The remote areas (e.g., rural towns and villages) can only connect to a limited number of base stations where they can store their electronic transactions. Once there is a successful direct connection to the Internet, all stored data and transactions will be processed and recognised. Creating a prototype of using blockchains can be used to protect sensitive information, identification management, and protecting the integrity of logging user activity.

The research focuses on the use of security mechanisms throughout the Delay-Tolerant Network Infrastructure. This work has adopted the Threshold Cryptography, in a developed prototype to observe both hardware and software utilisation and processes using Raspberry Pi versions 2 and 3. The prototype will have two sets of clusters based on hardware types, which includes observations based on (1) the length of time for encryption and decryption, (2) the performance of hardware, and (3) the performance of network connectivity through Bluetooth and Wi-Fi.

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Keywords
Blockchains , 5G , Delay-tolerant infrastructures , Encryption , Decentralisation
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