“Authentication and Message Integrity Verification for Vehicular and Underground Wireless Networks”

Wireless networks permeate our environment, encompassing devices in our homes to critical systems in autonomous vehicles and underground networks. In this presentation, I will show our novel methods for trust-establishment in unconventional wireless settings, focusing on underground wireless networks and autonomous vehicle systems. By leveraging hard-to-forge physical-layer characteristics such as received signal strength (RSS), channel impulse response (CIR), and trajectory-motion vectors (TMV), the presentation will highlight how our secret-free trust establishment protocols enhance security, scalability and robustness. Case studies will encompass our STUN protocol for agricultural Internet of Things (AgIoT), location fingerpinting using channel information, and the VET framework for vehicular communication. Attendees will gain insights of the system, threat models and how robust our system is to various attacks.

Committee:
Dr. Nirnimesh Ghose, Advisor
Dr. Can Vuran
Dr. Max Pierobon
Dr. Yi Qian