Engineering Commons^™

User Security Behavior On Wireless Networks: An Empirical Study, Tim Chenoweth, Robert Minch, Sharon Tabor

Robert P. Minch

Wireless networks are rapidly becoming ubiquitous but are often insecure and leave users responsible for their own security. We empirically study whether users are successfully securing their client computers when using wireless networks. Automated techniques are used that scan users' machines after they associate with a university wireless network. This determines whether a firewall is being used and what TCP ports are open. Results show that over 9% of 3,331 unique computers scanned were not using a properly configured firewall. In addition, almost 9% had at least one TCP port open, with almost 6% having open ports with significant security …

Mitigation Of Control Channel Jamming Under Node Capture Attacks, Patrick Tague, Mingyan Li, Radha Poovendran

Patrick Tague

Availability of service in many wireless networks depends on the ability for network users to establish and maintain communication channels using control messages from base stations and other users. An adversary with knowledge of the underlying communication protocol can mount an efficient denial of service attack by jamming the communication channels used to exchange control messages. The use of spread spectrum techniques can deter an external adversary from such control channel jamming attacks. However, malicious colluding insiders or an adversary who captures or compromises system users are not deterred by spread spectrum, as they know the required spreading sequences. For …

Evaluating The Vulnerability Of Network Traffic Using Joint Security And Routing Analysis, Patrick Tague, David Slater, Jason Rogers, Radha Poovendran

Patrick Tague

Joint analysis of security and routing protocols in wireless networks reveals vulnerabilities of secure network traffic that remain undetected when security and routing protocols are analyzed independently. We formulate a class of continuous metrics to evaluate the vulnerability of network traffic as a function of security and routing protocols used in wireless networks. We develop two complementary vulnerability definitions using set theoretic and circuit theoretic interpretations of the security of network traffic, allowing a network analyst or an adversary to determine weaknesses in the secure network. We formalize node capture attacks using the vulnerability metric as a nonlinear integer programming …

Software Engineering Education At Carnegie Mellon University: One University; Programs Taught In Two Places, Ray Bareiss, Mel Rosso-Llopart

Ray Bareiss

Teaching Software Engineering to professional master’s students is a challenging endeavor, and arguably for the past 20 years, Carnegie Mellon University has been quite successful. Although CMU teaches Software Engineering at sites world-wide and uses different pedagogies, the goal of the curriculum -- to produce world-class software engineers -- remains constant. This paper will discuss two of the most mature versions of Carnegie Mellon’s Software Engineering program -- the main campus program and its “daughter program” at the Silicon Valley Campus. We discuss the programs with respect to the dimensions of curriculum, how students work and learn, how faculty teach, …

Tradeoffs Between Jamming Resilience And Communication Efficiency In Key Establishment, Patrick Tague, David Slater, Radha Poovendran, Brian Matt

Patrick Tague

We address the problem of allowing authorized users, who do not preshare a common key, to effectively exchange key establishment messages over an insecure channel in the presence of jamming and message insertion attacks. In this work, we jointly consider the security and efficiency of key exchange protocols, focusing on the interplay between message fragmentation, jamming resilience, and verification complexity for protocol optimization. Finally, we present three fragment verification schemes and demonstrate through analysis and simulation that in comparison with existing approaches, they can significantly decrease the amount of time required for key establishment without degrading the guaranteed level of …

Developing Software Engineering Leaders At Carnegie Mellon Silicon Valley, Ray Bareiss, Todd Sedano

Ray Bareiss

The Carnegie Mellon’s Silicon Valley Campus offers a master’s degree in Software Engineering, with technical and development management tracks, targeted at working software professionals in Silicon Valley. We believe the program to be unique in that it is entirely team-based and project-centered. Students learn by doing as they are coached just in time by faculty in the context of their work on authentic projects, and they are evaluated based on what they produce. In response to our interactions with an industry characterized by innovation and short project development timelines, the program evolved from one focused on “high ceremony” processes to …

Developing Software Engineering Leaders At Carnegie Mellon Silicon Valley, Ray Bareiss, Todd Sedano

Todd Sedano

The Carnegie Mellon’s Silicon Valley Campus offers a master’s degree in Software Engineering, with technical and development management tracks, targeted at working software professionals in Silicon Valley. We believe the program to be unique in that it is entirely team-based and project-centered. Students learn by doing as they are coached just in time by faculty in the context of their work on authentic projects, and they are evaluated based on what they produce. In response to our interactions with an industry characterized by innovation and short project development timelines, the program evolved from one focused on “high ceremony” processes to …

Building A Business On Open Source Software, Tony Wasserman

Tony Wasserman

For many years, free and open source software was exclusively associated with the research community, in contrast to the closed source products developed by commercial software vendors. Over the past decade, there has been a vast increase in the availability of open source software, growing from such projects as Linux and Apache. Open source software is being widely adopted in industry, which has led to numerous business opportunities for entrepreneurs and vendors. This activity is having a disruptive effect on the software industry that has affected even the largest software vendors. This paper describes the emergence of open source business, …

Throughput And Delay In Wireless Sensor Networks Using Directional Antennas, Hong-Ning Dai

Hong-Ning Dai

Most of studies only consider that wireless sensor networks are equipped with only omni-directional antennas, which can cause high collisions. It is shown that the per node throughput in such networks is decreased with the increased number of nodes. Thus, the transmission with multiple short-range hops is preferred to reduce the interference. However, other studies show that the transmission delay increases with the increased number of hops.

In this paper, we consider using directional antennas in wireless sensor networks. We have found that using directional antennas not only can increase the throughput capacity but also can decrease the delay by …