Summary
Investigators at UCLA have developed a novel secure routing protocol for data transfer that achieves optimal transfer rate with negligible decoding error even if communication nodes are compromised by a malicious adversary. This advancement will vastly improve internet security and communication safety.
Background
The Internet has become a ubiquitous tool in many aspects of society, yet remains surprisingly susceptible to attacks. Even a single malicious node along the pathway from sender to receiver can corrupt communication in a meaningful way. Secure routing protocols attempt to verify that packets of data are correctly delivered to their destination. However, the internet is large, heterogeneous, complex in topology, and dynamically changing. Failure localization and path-quality monitoring in the public key setting have therefore become two of the biggest challenges in communication. Current routing protocols such as link-state and distance-vector are susceptible to loops, slow convergence, oscillations, and suffer from high communication overhead. The number of network applications continues to increase, and the need for secure, dynamic routing that is resilient to malicious adversaries is evident.
Innovation
UCLA scientists have created the first adaptive routing technique for a public key network that accounts for the possibility of malicious nodes. This innovative protocol is resilient to a number of malicious attacks to include: edge failures, malicious nodes, dynamic network changes, and deletion, modification or insertion of false data. This innovative protocol achieves high throughput rate while simultaneously operating with highly efficient processor memory.
Applications
- Internet - Secure Banking; Purchasing; Identification and Communication Telephone Networks; Transportation; Networks; Highly Secure Military
- Communications - Soldier; System Network; Privacy
Advantages
- High end-to-end performance
- Low Error rate communication
- High Throughput Rate
- Highly Secure, Resistant to attacks by malicious adversaries