The Military Aims to Develop 'Smart' & Secure WiFi 91
Krishna Dagli writes to mention a Network World article about a military project to create a self-configuring, secure wireless network. From the article: "Academic concepts such as artificial intelligence and Tim Berners-Lee's 'Semantic Web,' combined with technologies such as the Mobile Ad-hoc Network (MANET), cognitive radio, and peer-to-peer networking, would provide the nuts and bolts of such a network. Although the project is intended for soldiers in the field, the resulting advances could trickle down to end users. 'Military networks are going to converge as closely as we can to civil technologies,' says Preston Marshall, the program manager of DARPA's Advanced Technology Office."
Does it use (Score:3, Funny)
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And they can prove it!
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Go Google! (Score:2)
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Not with Russian Brin in charge they won't.
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First acronym was not MANET (Score:2, Funny)
Do we learn from the past? (Score:5, Interesting)
I suppose they will use other frequencies (Score:1)
the US.... (Score:1, Interesting)
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The military knows they can't stop the genie from getting out of the bottle. They just want their three wishes first. If a technology provides an advantage in even one conflict, it is usually worth it from a military standpoint.
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Ah, yes. (Score:2)
Depends on the frequency (Score:4, Insightful)
Don't assume that it is so easily jammed.
You assume that the wireless will be on a normal frequency. They could use spead spectrum or UWB. They could use light frequencies like infrared to carry the signal.
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The more wideband you can get, the more money your adversary has to have in order to jam you. The downside to this of course, is how exponentially the power requirements grow for you as you become more and more wideband.
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Yes, because infrared is REAL hard to jam...
You might need... a piece of paper.
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Given that the standard radio voice communication systems we boots on the ground have used for the last 10-15 years (SINCGARS) has been capable of freq hopping, I'd say that it's a really stupid assumption. Honestly, when people bring up the possibility of jamming as if the US military hadn't even thought of it, I gott
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You could only transmit a sine wave and no information at all.
Re:Ah, yes. (Score:4, Informative)
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Then obviously you just use a precognitive radio jammer. It simply jumps to that clear part of the spectrum and starts jamming it just before the cognitive radio gets there.
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The military plans to relay video from the individual soldier's rifle scope to the C2 (Command and Control).
The military plans to relay GPS and operational data from soldiers and vehicles.
Currently, the military relies on radio broadcasting and satellite feeds for this, however enabling a flexible wireless networking device in vehicles would be far more cost effective and fl
Oblig Groucho Marx Quote (Score:1, Informative)
Just think what they could do with WiFi.
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Re:Oblig Groucho Marx Quote (Score:4, Informative)
A military intelligence.
Two words combined that can't make sense."
Megadeth - Hangar 18
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Hmm that doesn't sound sexist in any way. Why not call it the WOMANET?
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"smart" networks are vulnerable (Score:5, Interesting)
I would disagree with the assertion in the article that current routing protocols are insufficient to handle MANETs. MANET routing protocols are slightly different (most are adaptations of traditional protocols), but if implemented correctly, they can support networks with very high rates of topology change... this has been supported by the literature for years now.
What the protocols are lacking is resistance from spoofing attacks that confound or exploit the "intelligence" of the adaptive routing protocols, and attacks on battery energy that coax nodes to use more energy or target and overwhelm key nodes. This has to be addresses in the lower layers as suggested by the article. So it's no surprise that the trend has been to develop "underlay" meshing protocols instead of traditional layer 3 routing schemes, because all of the security has to be built into layers 1 and 2 anyway on account of the fact that traffic can be easily sniffer or injected by passers by.
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> I can easily envisision a routing technology that uses public-key encryption for the hand-shaking which would be
> unspoofable in this context.
If it's so easy to "envisision", I'm anxious to see your paper/RFC/code etc. Truly.
You're confusing "existing" with "traditional." Ad hoc routing protocol which work fine in practice have been existing for years. It's layer 2 and below that need to catch up,
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I'm arguing in view of the fact that key exchange and the higher probability for node (and key) compromise (due to both increased number and exposure of nodes) makes the ad-hoc routing problem a bit different that the problems alleviated by DNSSEC et al. The problem lies, practically, in the lower layer protocols. Fix those (as they should be fixed anyway) and the upper layer problem
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My impression is that this project is intended to move from MANET being supported in the literature to being supported by tech support.
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While true for generic networks, your first point does not apply to the network in this situation.
In a normal MANET, untrusted nodes are able to connect to the network and provide/receive services. However, in a military network, only trusted nodes will be allowed to join the network since you don't want an enemy to have access to your reso
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L2R has been doing this for more than 10 years (Score:1, Interesting)
it is stable, very mature, evolved, and installed in dozens of places.
It was also shown to the US Military back in 2001 around the time of the trade center stuff.
They were interested, but couldn't understand it.
yes, that's right, the best the US DOD (at the time) had from their research facilities
couldn't understand the damn thing.
They even had a prof from the UC try and steal it and he made an RFC out of his understandings,
unfort
They should call it "Darpanet" (Score:2)
Or has that name already been used?
Gives new meaning to the term... (Score:4, Funny)
Pull the other one (Score:2)
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Uhhhh wait [freesoft.org]....
Password (Score:1)
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I hope we get a comment from Phil Karn (Score:2)
"we'll probably keep the security work a little more isolated": offhand that sounds like it will never work. They're going to need security from the MAC layer upward and it's going to affect almost every decision they make.
It's a well studied problem, but one example of what you need to think through is the "hidden transmitter problem". It is possible to interfere with someone that you cannot hear.
TCP needs to be tweaked or replace
My company.. (Score:2)
Microwave Data Systems [microwavedata.com]
Another Use: Self-Configuring/Healing Minefields (Score:1)
From what I've learned about wireless (Score:1)
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Decentralized C&C (Score:2)
MANET? (Score:2)
What about?.... (Score:1)
Or how about getting senior members of government have a clue on what the internet even IS before you do one more god damned thing. Ted Stevens embarrassed us in front of the whole world a couple weeks ago.
Wait, series of tubes, pornotube.... I
Omninet (Score:4, Informative)
Use this network, which essentially configures and extends itself where needed, as needed, to deliver HDTV, phone and Internet over IP. Wired, wireless or satellite - the network should be smart enough to use whatever means it has, but dumb enough to not care about what kind of traffic it routes, just that it does as good a job as possible with the available hardware. Automatically multi-link, it would route most of your p2p traffic through fibers while your VoIP goes wireless to your headset. Built-in authentication and encryption to keep your gadgets in touch and your data secure, even though you use someone elses hardware as well as let other use yours.
It's mesh networking, FON, cellphones, multicast and wimax, all the hype rolled into one big network. And no, we shall not call it Skynet.