MIK is a unique R&D; and technology innovation center in Hungary for future wireless communication technologies (3G/4G), which is
based on university knowledge-base and existing industrial background. The goals of this center are the following:
- to support research in the field of high-speed mobile communication technologies, including new technologies
beyond third generation mobile networks;
- to promote the introduction of 3G/4G mobile technologies and network services, as well as the development and testing
of applications in an unbiased environment;
- to provide a ground for experiments for universities, industrial companies including SMEs, to promote close R&D; co-operation;
- to encourage and support the creation, development and practical implementation of the latest mobile communication
technologies/applications.
The center has several academic and industrial members. The center is led by the Department of Telecommunications of the
Budapest University of Technology and Economics. The center started its operation in July 2005.
More information: http://www.mik.bme.hu/
Wireless Sensor Networks (WSN)s are an exciting development with very large potential to have a significant
beneficial impact on every aspect of our lives while generating huge opportunities for European industry. What
is needed to kick off the development and exploitation of WSNs is an architecture for medium and large scale
wireless sensor networks integrating comprehensive security capabilities right form the concept stage. This would
support the rapid development of sensor networks and would open up the application domain for commercial activities.
UbiSec&Sens; intends to solve this by providing a comprehensive architecture for medium and large scale wireless
sensor networks with the full level of security that will make them trusted and secure for all applications. In addition,
UbiSec&Sens; will provide a complete tool box of security aware components which, together with the UbiSec&Sens; radically
new design cycle for secure sensor networks, will enable the rapid development of trusted sensor network applications.
The UbiSec&Sens; approach is to use three representative WSN scenarios to iteratively determine solutions for the key
WSN issues of scalability, security, reliability, self-healing and robustness. This will also give a clearer understanding
of the real-world WSN requirements and limitations as well as identifying how to achieve a successful rollout of WSNs.
The results of UbiSec&Sens; are a necessary step to progress the field of security and communication research in Europe
and, as well as advancing the competitiveness of the European industry, they assist the European Commission to develop
more comprehensive programs for innovative socially and economically beneficial sensor applications to be part of future
research programs after 2007.
UbiSec&Sens; is a STREP funded by the EU. The project runs for 3 years starting in 2006.
More information:
http://www.ist-ubisecsens.org/
Vehicular communications (VC) and inter-vehicular communications (IVC) bring the promise of improved road safety
and optimised road traffic through co-operative systems applications. To this end, a number of initiatives have been
launched, such as the Car-2-Car consortium in Europe, or the DSRC in North America. A prerequisite for the successful
deployment of vehicular communications is to make them secure. For example, it is essential to make sure that life-critical
information cannot be modified by an attacker; it should also protect as far as possible the privacy of the drivers and
passengers. The specific operational environment (moving vehicles, sporadic connectivity, ...) makes the problem very
novel and challenging.
SeVeCom addresses security of future vehicle communication networks, including both the security and privacy of
inter-vehicular and vehicle-infrastructure communication. Its objective is to define the security architecture of
such networks, as well as to propose a roadmap for progressive deployment of security functions in these networks.
SeVeCom will focus on communications specific to road traffic. This includes messages related to traffic information,
anonymous safety-related messages, and liability-related messages. The following research and innovation work is foreseen:
- Identification of the variety of threats: attacker’s model and potential vulnerabilities; in particular, study of attacks
against the radio channel and transferred data, but also against the vehicle itself through internal attacks, e.g., against
TCU (Telematics Control Unit), ECU (Electronic Control Unit) and the internal control bus.
- Specification of an architecture and of security mechanisms which provide the right level of protection. It will
address issues such as the apparent contradiction between liability and privacy, or the extent to which a vehicle can
check the consistency of claims made by other vehicles. The following topics will be fully addressed: Key and identity
management, Secure communication protocols (including secure routing), Tamper proof device and decision on crypto-system,
Privacy. The following topics will be investigated in preparation of further work: Intrusion Detection, Data consistency,
Secure positioning, Secure user interface.
- The definition of cryptographic primitives which take into account the specific operational environment. The challenge
is to address (1) the variety of threats, (2) the sporadic connectivity created by moving vehicles and the resulting
real-time constraints, (3) the low-cost requirements of embedded systems in vehicles. These primitives will be adaptations
of existing cryptosystems to the VC environment.
SeVeCom is a STREP funded by the EU. The project runs for 3 years starting in 2006.
More information: http://www.sevecom.org/
The motivation for BIONETS comes from emerging trends towards pervasive computing
and communication environments, where myriads of networked devices with very different
features will enhance our five senses, our communication and tool manipulation capabilities.
The complexity of such environments will not be far from that of biological organisms,
ecosystems, and socio-economic communities.
Traditional communication approaches are ineffective in this context, since they fail to
address several new features: a huge number of nodes including low-cost
sensing/identifying devices, a wide heterogeneity in node capabilities, high node mobility,
the management complexity, the possibility of exploiting spare node resources.
BIONETS aims at a novel approach able to address these challenges. Nature and society
exhibit many instances of systems in which large populations are able to reach efficient
equilibrium states and to develop effective collaboration and survival strategies, able to
work in the absence of central control and to exploit local interactions. BIONETS seeks inspiration
from these systems to provide a fully integrated network and service environment that scales
to large amounts of heterogeneous devices, and that is able to adapt and evolve in an
autonomic way.
The goal of BIONETS is to provide a biologically-inspired open networking paradigm for the
creation, dissemination, execution, and evolution of autonomic services able to adapt to the
surrounding environment and user needs, to evolve without direct human supervision, and
able to deal with large-scale networks of heterogeneous nodes ranging from small, cheap
devices to more complex network nodes. In order to achieve this goal, the project will
design and implement a new communication architecture and service framework inspired by
nature, and optimised for maximum adaptation to society.
BIONETS is an IP funded by the EU. The project runs for 2 years starting in 2006.
More information: http://www.bionets.org/ DESEREC: Dependable Security by Enhanced Reconfigurability
Most of European critical activities rely on networked Information Systems, highly interconnected.
The performance of such Information Systems could be jeopardized by incidents of various kinds. A multi-disciplinary
approach is compulsory to leverage their dependability by an alliance of three approaches:
- Modelling and simulation: DESEREC devises and develops innovative approaches and tools to design,
model, simulate, and plan ICT-based critical infrastructures to dramatically improve their resilience.
- Detection: DESEREC integrates various kinds of detection mechanism to ensure a fast detection of
severe incidents but also to be able to detect incidents based on a complex combination of unrelated
events or to an abnormal behaviour of the system.
- Response: DESEREC provides a framework for computer-aided and automated counter-measures initiatives
in order to respond in a quick and appropriate way to a large range of incident to mitigate the threats
to the dependability and rapidly thwarts the problem. Re-configuration of Information Systems is the
utmost mechanism for their survivability.
These three features respond both to attacks from the outside (e.g., aiming at Intrusion or Denial of
Service), and to intrinsic failures, whatever is the origin (hardware failure, software fault, environment).
The DESEREC framework includes three response loops working on 3 different timings:
- A few seconds to locally respond to a severe and well characterised incident and to launch
emergency curative procedures to avoid the escalation process or dramatic damage.
- Some minutes to detect a very complex problem and to allow time to adapt the system through
computer aided reactions.
- Some hours to model a new configuration of the information system optimised for a new situation.
The DESEREC approach, framework, and tools apply to critical information and communication systems in
order to improve their resilience and their depndability.
DESEREC is an IP funded by the EU. The project runs for 3 years starting in 2006.
More information: http://www.deserec.eu/
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