Communications System Security

Helping current and future system designers take a more productive approach in the field, Communication System Security shows how to apply security principles to state-of-the-art communication systems. The authors use previous design failures and security flaws to explain common pitfalls in security design.

Divided into four parts, the book begins with the necessary background on practical cryptography primitives. This part describes pseudorandom sequence generators, stream and block ciphers, hash functions, and public-key cryptographic algorithms.

The second part covers security infrastructure support and the main subroutine designs for establishing protected communications. The authors illustrate design principles through network security protocols, including transport layer security (TLS), Internet security protocols (IPsec), the secure shell (SSH), and cellular solutions.

Taking an evolutionary approach to security in today’s telecommunication networks, the third part discusses general access authentication protocols, the protocols used for UMTS/LTE, the protocols specified in IETF, and the wireless-specific protection mechanisms for the air link of UMTS/LTE and IEEE 802.11. It also covers key establishment and authentication in broadcast and multicast scenarios.

Moving on to system security, the last part introduces the principles and practice of a trusted platform for communication devices. The authors detail physical-layer security as well as spread-spectrum techniques for anti-jamming attacks.

With much of the material used by the authors in their courses and drawn from their industry experiences, this book is appropriate for a wide audience, from engineering, computer science, and mathematics students to engineers, designers, and computer scientists. Illustrating security principles with existing protocols, the text helps readers understand the principles and practice of security analysis.

Lidong Chen is a mathematician in the Computer Security Division of the National Institute of Standards and Technology. She earned a Ph.D. in applied mathematics from Aarhus University. Dr. Chen was an associate editor of IEEE Communications Letters and has been a program committee member for numerous conferences in cryptography and security. Her research areas include cryptographic protocols, network security, and security in wireless and mobile applications.

Guang Gong is a professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of Waterloo. She earned a Ph.D. in electrical engineering. Dr. Gong has been an associate editor of several journals, a co-chair and committee member of technical programs and conferences, and a recipient of awards such as the NSERC Discovery Accelerator Supplement Award and the Ontario Research Fund-Research Excellence Award. Her research interests are in the areas of sequence design, cryptography, and communication security.