Journal of Information Security and Applications 50 (2020) 102409

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Journal of Information Security and Applications

journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/jisa

Optimized in-network authentication against pollution attacks in

software-defined-named data networking
Ryma Boussaha a,∗, Yacine Challal a,b,c, Abdelmadjid Bouabdallah c, Malika Bessedik a
a
Laboratoire LMCS, Ecole Nationale Supérieure d’Informatique, Algiers, Algeria
b
Centre de Recherche sur l’Information Scientifique et Technique, Algiers, Algeria
c
Sorbonne Universités, Université de Technologie de Compiègne CNRS, HEUDIASYC UMR 7253, CS 60319, Compiègne Cedex 60203, France

a r t i c l e i n f o a b s t r a c t
MSC: The exponential growth of multimedia content in today’s Internet traffic and the increasing need of
00-01 bandwidth-consuming or location-independent services motivated the research community to design a
99-00
viable replacement for the current IP-based Internet architecture. Named Data Networking or NDN is a
Keywords: novel network architecture that uses universal in-network caching and routing by name functionalities
Named data networking to deliver content efficiently and to improve service quality. Network coding benefits named data net-
Network coding working with its inherent algebraic structure and the maximum flow rates performance it achieves in
Software defined networking multicast. With network coding, the content can be requested via multiple interfaces thus improving sig-
Homomorphic signature nificantly content delivery efficiency. However, it is vulnerable to pollution attacks, which can cause a
crucial degradation of network bandwidth. In this paper, we propose an efficient and optimized authenti-
cation technique for a content distribution NDN architecture based on network coding. Our solution uses
homomorphic signature mechanism, which allows intermediate nodes to verify the authenticity of flows
to overcome the pollution problem without having access to content. We formulate NDNAuth, an optimal
coding and homomorphic signature scheme as a MIP problem. Furthermore, we show how to leverage
Software Defined Networking to provide seamless implementation of the proposed solution. We mea-
sure the processing overhead and the dynamic system security state based on three metrics: (1) defence
power; (2) threat severity and (3) system vulnerability. Finally, we discuss how to minimize the compu-
tational cost of coding and signature scheme operations. Experimentation results prove the efficiency of
the proposed coding scheme, which achieves better performance than conventional NDN with random
coding especially in terms of transmission cost and security.
© 2019 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

1. Introduction uses universal in-network caching, in a manner that the closest

The exponential growth of multimedia content in today’s In-
ternet traffic and the increasing need of bandwidth-consuming or
location-independent services motivated the research community
to design a viable replacement for the current IP-based Internet
architecture. Information centric networking such as CCN or NDN1
[1] has emerged as one of the most promising network archi-
tectures that aims to address the inherent inefficiencies in the
host-oriented Internet architecture. The deployment of transparent
ubiquitous in-network caching and routing-by name functionalities
are the key features of NDN. Indeed content requesting, managing
and accessibility are determined by content name. Moreover, NDN
node in the network can potentially serve the solicited content
as efficiently as possible without connecting to the origin server.
Therefore, this will alleviate high bandwidth network demand and
keep up with users’ QoS2 requirements. To exploit the multisource
transmission in NDN, we propose in this paper to introduce
a network coding method, which allows to reduce bandwidth
consumption at in-network nodes in NDN. Network Coding is
different from the common routing principle. In fact, it deals with
data as algebraic information and allows intermediate nodes in
the network to code and create linear combinations of received
packets before forwarding them. The packet mixing principle can
achieve the optimal throughput for both multicast and unicast

∗
Corresponding author.
E-mail address: r_boussaha@esi.dz (R. Boussaha).
1 2
Content Centric Networking or Named Data Networking. Quality of Service.

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jisa.2019.102409
2214-2126/© 2019 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
2 R. Boussaha, Y. Challal and A. Bouabdallah et al. / Journal of Information Security and Applications 50 (2020) 102409
transmissions. Furthermore, it improves packet diversity in the
network, resulting in fewer redundant retransmission of lost
packets and reduced bandwidth cost.
Recent research efforts prove that network coding benefits
named data networking. Indeed, named data networking and
network coding are both dealing with content distribution, trading
storage and computation for efficient data delivery. Combining
named data networking with network coding was initially pro-
posed in [2], in which the authors propose a coding-caching
scheme for Information Centric Networking in order to increase
the cache hit rate and to improve network throughput.
In fact, the benefits of using network coding in Named Data
Networking are manifold. First of all, this consents to fully exploit
network coding in order to improve transmission efficiency and
scalability with the high potential to disseminate data in an
entirely independent and distributed fashion. Secondly, it takes
advantage of caching functionality of named data networking to
strengthen network robustness. In fact, NDN leverages in-network
caching for future use. Each node can cache forwarded content;
with this caching mechanism, content will be quickly spread in
the network. However, with NDN, consumer’s request can trigger
many responses from different caches and the consumer will
consider only the first coming back content, and any subsequent
copies will be discarded. Hence, superfluous traffic introduced by
these redundant copies returned to the consumer will devastate
network resource. In this paper, we propose to introduce Net-
work Coding to foster the entropy of the in-network information
collected through NDN-caching mechanism. Moreover, the use
of network coding can as well improve network robustness. If a
message is lost on some path due to path failure or congestion, it
could be recovered from any alternative linear combination that is
reachable through another path.
However, network coding systems are inherently vulnerable to a
severe attack, known as packet pollution, in which malicious nodes
insert invalid packets into the network intentionally to contami-
nate the whole downstream. The intermediate nodes are unaware
of receiving the erroneous messages and continue to encode and
forward the polluted packets. Hence, a single corrupted packet can
culminate to an epidemic propagation of polluted packets through
the process of intermediate coding, and prevent the receiver from
decoding correctly. This attack will cause a considerable waste of
network bandwidth and a crucial degradation of throughput.
Furthermore, the diffuse nature of NDN, and the use of caching
storage, which represents a potential source of the data makes
the pollution problem even more disastrous. Once the polluted
messages are transmitted in the network and without performant
detection mechanisms in terms of cost and reliability, receivers
cannot retrieve and reconstruct the original messages. To cope
with this attack, intermediate nodes need to verify the validity
and the authenticity of incoming packets at the first hop. Digital
signatures and MAC are insufficient to mitigate pollution attacks
and to ensure a “hop-by-hop containment”, as intermediate nodes
do not have the original message packets and therefore cannot
verify the proof of authenticity.
Network coding signature schemes relying on homomorphic
hash functions [3] or homomorphic signatures [4] can be used
to solve this problem. However, introducing security implies
additional cost. Security mechanisms require additional compu-
tations, introduces delays and increases storage requirements. In
this work, we propose an optimized collaborative authenticated
scheme NDNAuth that allows efficient containment while reducing
the induced overhead. We leverage Software-Defined Networking
(SDN) [5,6] technology to implement efficiently our optimized
proposal. We focus mainly on the question of how to deliver effi-
ciently authenticated encoded packets that are stored in different
locations and requested by various users. The aim of this work
is to reduce the cost of verifications and signature operations
carried out to solve the problem of pollution and to adapt the
optimization technique to the routing protocol of NDN. The main
contributions of this paper can be summarized as follows:
• In order to verify flow authenticity gradually in the network
and to maximize security level while minimizing the check-
points and resources required for verification, we formulate
an optimization encoding problem as a multiobjective MIP
model. In fact, the multi-path approach in which various paths
are established between the source and the destination may
generate an important overhead. Additionally, this may not
cover some application scenarios like transportation scenario,
express packet delivery, massively dense wireless multi-hop
where a typical path between two nodes consists of a large
number of hops. Hence, in this work, we consider two different
policies. The first allows to avoid the additional routing over-
head, since content is supposed to be encoded only along the
path from the producer to the consumer. We call this policy
Single-Path NDNAuth. The most obvious choice for paths are
the shortest paths, which state that the flow of each interest
must be transported along a single path from its source to its
destination. The other policy, called NDNauth, is intended to
improve the cache hit ratio with additional routing overhead.
Content can be encoded and cached at any place in the net-
work. Furthermore, we consider the impact of the link capacity
on encoding content assignment in the two approaches.
• We propose a cooperative authenticated network coding archi-
tecture based on Software-Defined Networking. SDN controllers
handle the caching decision, the network coding and the
homomorphic signature operations through the network. We
consider particularly the dynamic evolution of systems security
over time, where a system needs to deal with attackers and
employs various types of defence mechanisms. The security
state provides the potential to enhance decision-making ability
in highly dynamic situations in terms of assigning the role
of coding and controlling flow authenticity. We measure the
following three metrics [7]: (1) defence strength, (2) attack
severity and (3) system vulnerability.
• Our results suggest that our solution can consistently achieve
an increased gain across network topologies that have different
structural properties. We further find that the effectiveness
of our solution is correlated to the precise structure of the
network topology, in terms of node degree and link density,
whereby the scheme is effective in topologies that exhibit
Power Law distribution. Through experimentation results, we
argue that the proposed optimal coding scheme achieves better
performance than conventional NDN with random coding
especially in terms of transmission cost and security require-
ment. The proposed model reduces incredibly the processing
overhead generated by the authentication scheme, since the op-
erations of encoding, verification and computation of new ho-
momorphic signatures will be carried out in a cooperative way.
In the next sections, we first present some background def-
initions. We formulate the incentive authentication problem in
Sections 3–5. We further explain the design and features of our
SDN-based cooperative encoding architecture in Section 6. We
carry out a systematic evaluation study in Section 7 that explores
topology parameters of the authentication scheme. We delve
deeper into the characteristics of our proposed scheme and show
its effectiveness compared to other works. We review previous
work relating to Network Coding over Named Data Networks
and works on securing network coding in Section 8. We finally,
conclude the paper and give some directions for future work in
Section 9.
 R. Boussaha, Y. Challal and A. Bouabdallah et al. / Journal of Information Security and Applications 50 (2020) 102409
Fig. 1. Interest and Data forwarding procedures.
2. Background and definitions
2.1. Named data networking
Named Data Networking is the Content Centric Network design
we consider in this work. Basically, NDN uses a receiver-driven
communication model in which consumer requests content by
sending an Interest packet. The latter carries a name that identifies
the desired data. Once the Interest reaches a node that has the
requested content, a Data packet is sent back via the reverse path.
NDN nodes are made up of three special table structures, which
manage packets forwarding:
• The Pending Interest Table (PIT) - table responsible for keeping
track of the currently unsatisfied interest packets;
• The Content Store (CS) - persistent caching storage for the node;
• The Forwarding Information Base (FIB) - routing table including
the next hop information for prefix names.
When a router receives an Interest for some data, it delivers
this data directly from its cache (CS) if it has a copy. Otherwise,
it caches the corresponding Interest inside its own PIT with the
name of the arrival interface.3 If a new Interest for the same
content is gathered, its arrival interface is added to the arrival in-
terfaces list of that Interest. Then, the router forwards the Interest
packet by looking up the name in its FIB.
Upon receiving a data packet, the router finds the matching
PIT entry and forwards the data to all the interfaces listed within
the same entry. Furthermore, the router caches the data in its CS
and clears away the corresponding PIT entry. Data packet takes
the same path as the Interest that solicited it but in the reverse
direction. Fig. 1 illustrates the communication process.
3
The interface from which the Interest arrives.
3
2.2. Network coding
Network Coding is a new paradigm of information transmission
and processing, in which the network is modelled as a directed
graph (V, E) consisting of a set of vertices V (nodes) and a set of
edges E (links). A node that only transmits data is called a source
node, and the one that only receives data is called a target node.
If a source S wishes to transmit one file F through the network
to a subset of target nodes, then the file to be transmitted F
is divided by the source into a set of n − dimensional vectors
(v1 , v2 , . . . , vm ) over a ring or a field4 F (the dimensions n and m
are fixed parameters in the system). The source then attaches a
unit vector of length m to the vectors vi to create m augmented
vectors v˜1 , v˜2 . . . , v˜m given by:
m
  
v˜ i = (−vi −, 0, 0, . . . 1, 0, 0.0) ∈ Fn+m , ∀i ∈ [[1, m]]
  
i
The first n entries of v˜ i which correspond to vi are called data
component and the last m entries are named augmentation com-
ponent. We refer to primitive vectors those which have not been
mixed with any other (i.e. the augmentation components are equal
to unit vectors) and the aggregate vectors refer to the vectors that
have been formed as linear combination of other vectors (i.e. the
augmentation components represent the combination coefficients).
The coding part works as follows: After receiving l vectors
v˜ 1 , v˜ 2 , . . . , v˜ l , a honest intermediate node chooses l random coef-
ficients over a finite field F and computes a new vector for each
outgoing edge. Formally, at the jth outgoing edge, the node sends
the vector zj given by:

l
zj = αi j ∗ v˜ i
i=1
for some random coefficients (α1 j , α2 j . . . , αl j ) ∈ Fl .
4
For typical networks encountered in practice, taking |F| ≈ 256 has been shown
to give a probability of decoding failure of less than 1%.
4 R. Boussaha, Y. Challal and A. Bouabdallah et al. / Journal of Information Security and Applications 50 (2020) 102409

A target node reconstructs the original file sent by the source
−
→
using a set of m linearly independent vectors wi = (yi | αi )i=1,m
−
→
where ( αi )i=1,m are linearly independent. Then, the original file
can be recovered as Y = A−1 .W, such that A is the matrix whose
rows are the vectors α1 , α2 , . . . , αm and Y the matrix whose rows
are the vectors y1 , y2 , . . . , ym .
2.3. Homomorphic encryption
Homomorphic encryption is a cryptographic primitive used
to perform operations on encrypted data without knowing the
private key. Gentry [8] proposed the first Fully Homomorphic
encryption (FHE) scheme which makes it possible to carry out
arbitrary operations on the encrypted data by operating on cipher-
text directly without knowing the original data. The outcome of
the computation is represented in encrypted form and can only be
decrypted by a legitimate owner of the private decryption key.
In this paper, we use the more practical variant of the homo-
morphic encryption scheme recently proposed in [9]. It operates in
the ring R = Z[X ]/(X n + 1 ) for n being a power of 2, i.e. the objects
the scheme uses are all polynomials with integer coefficients of
degree less than n.
The homomorphic signature scheme is a tuple of five algo-
rithms:
1. KeyGen(n, q, t, χ key , χ err ): receives on input the system param-
eters and generates a public/private key pair and an evaluation
key evk ∈ Rlog2 (q ) , which will be used in the homomorphic
multiplication operation and contains information about the
private key in encrypted form;
2. Encrypt(h, m): encrypts a message m using the public key h
and outputs a ciphertext c given by5 :
c = [q/t [m]t + e + hs] ∈ R;
3. Decrypt(f, c): decrypts a cipher text c with the private decryp-
tion key f, the decryption process computes :
t
m = [ .[ f c]q ]t ∈ R;
q
4. Add(c1 , c2 ): given two ciphertexts c1 and c2 , this function
computes
cadd = [c1 + c2 ] encrypting the sum (m1 + m2 ) modulo t;
5. Mult(c1 , c2 , evk): given encryptions of m1 and m2 and the
evaluation key evk, compute cmult = [ qt c1 c2 ]t and perform
KeySwitch(cmult , evk). The latter will allow the ciphertext to be
decrypted with the original secret key. For further details, we
refer the reader to [9].
3. System model and problem statement
3.1. Network model
In our proposed architecture NDN-Auth6 , we assume that
the network is represented as a directed graph G = (V, E ), such
that V is the set of vertices (nodes) and E is the set of edges
(links between nodes). As illustrated in Fig. 2 the set V is partitioned
into three subsets, V = C ∪ P ∪ I. C is the set of consumers (called
also top component) which send Interest messages, P is the set of
producers which respond with Data messages and I is the set of
intermediate nodes which support the forwarding of Interest/data
messages and store the received chunks.
Assume a specified client node C intends to request a file F
from a producer P. Then P operates the following tasks:
5
Some operations reduce coefficients of polynomials in R modulo an integer
modulus q, this operation is symbolized by [.]q .
6 7
Network coding with homomorphic signatures in NDN.
• P (or the encoder) divides the file F into m chunks (or packets)
v1 , v2 , v3 , . . . , vm where the size of each packet is n, and creates
augmented vectors7 from these packets.
• The encoder generates and transmits linear combinations of
these vectors.
In fact, with linear network coding this set of m packets is
called a generation. The middle layer in our system is the set of
intermediate nodes, called also recoders. These network nodes
receive a series of encoded packets and perform new linear combi-
nations that are passed to the decoder (the bottom component of
the system) which will be able to reconstruct the original file after
receiving at least m linearly independent packets. We suppose that
the transmitted packets in the network are linearly independent.
In addition to the encoding operations that all the nodes must
perform, and in order to ensure authentication, the source and the
set of intermediate nodes must append homomorphic signatures
to the transmitted coded messages.
3.2. Problem statement
If we consider the network model described above, and in order
to formally state the problem, we introduce the following notation:
• h is the number of nodes between the producer and the con-
sumer of the file F.
• Css , Cse are respectively the homomorphic signature calculation
cost and the encoding cost of the source node.
• Cis , Cie , Civ are respectively the homomorphic signature calcula-
tion cost, the encoding cost and the signature verification cost
of intermediate nodes.
• Ccv , Ccd are respectively the signature verification cost and the
decoding cost of the consumer node.
In this case, the trivial cost induced by the several operations
performed by each node between the producer and the consumer
is given by:
C ost = (Css + Cse ) + h ∗ (Cis + Cie + Civ ) + (Ccv + Ccd )
We can clearly notice that this cost will counterbalance the data
transmission time, and will generate an important processing over-
head. In fact, in order to fix the pollution problem, we consider
two trivial situations:
1. Verify the signatures of received messages and calculate new
homomorphic signatures in each intermediate node after
performing network coding.
2. Sign the transmitted messages only once at the producer and
check the signatures particularly in the consumer node.
The first scheme allows to have a very high level of secu-
rity. Nevertheless, it generates very bad performance since the
calculation cost is very important. While the second scheme
can significantly reduce the processing overhead. However, the
system vulnerability is eminent. So, the purpose of this work is
to ensure a trade-offs between the aforementioned schemes and
to alleviate the signing and verification procedure by installing a
reduced number of compelling nodes responsible for operating
all the encoding and signature operations. In fact, we propose a
slight hop-by-hop containment to reduce homomorphic signature
scheme calculation cost. We assume that trust nodes are installed
in the network, these nodes should perform the encoding, signa-
ture verification and creation of new homomorphic signatures. In
contrast, the other nodes should only transfer packets to the re-
questing interfaces. This method will reduce the overall calculation
cost and ensure a trade-offs between it and security level. The
With random linear network coding, data is represented as vectors.
 R. Boussaha, Y. Challal and A. Bouabdallah et al. / Journal of Information Security and Applications 50 (2020) 102409 5

Fig. 2. Encoding and decoding process.

selection of trust nodes is ensured by means of a multiobjective a multiobjective optimization approach by assigning different
optimization model. We propose two variants of the optimization weights to those two different objectives.
model. In the first model NDNAuth, we consider that the content
could be coded and combined everywhere in the network. While 4.1. Input parameters
in the second model SP-NDNAuth, the nodes are selected along
the path from the source to the destination. Table 1 summarizes the parameters and their meanings. Let
I denote the set of intermediate nodes. F represents the set of
packet items, m denotes the generation size which is equal to the
4. Multiobjective optimization model
number of packets per file, L represents the set of directed links
of the network and n represents the packet size. In this paper, we
In this paper, we study the optimal coding assignment with
perform coding across one generation, we do not study mixing of
practical constraints such as the coding and signature cost, the
different generations. δ v is the number of vectors received at v ∈ I.
decoding and verification cost and the link capacity constraint. We
ωi denotes a weight selected by the network designer to reflect
consider the case of single source and single destination nodes.8
the relative importance of an objective function in the aggregating
We formulate a multiobjective mixed integer program (MIP) to
one. While ω0 is the calculation cost weight coefficient and ω1 is
find the optimal assignment of coding nodes and to determine
the security level weight coefficient. The encoding, homomorphic
the number of linear combinations operated by each one. We
signature, homomorphic verification and decoding costs of k
consider that the content is a complete file consisting of a bundle
packets { p1 , p2 , . . . , pk } ∈ Fnq are represented respectively by ck,q ,
of packets for convenience.
Our goal is to find the optimal coding assignment that min- sk,q , vk,q and dk,q .
imizes the total calculation cost while satisfying the required
security level. In fact, minimizing calculation cost and maximizing 4.2. NDNAuth MIP Model
security level are critical issues in nowadays networking systems,
which are usually conflicting. The present proposed model aims We present the MIP model to optimize the assignment of
to consider those conflicting issues simultaneously and proposes secure coding and verification role to network nodes. We assume
the nodes have homogeneous calculation capacity. Let r denote
the calculation cost of the producer node, which is given by:
8
The solution could be easily generalized to the multi-sender, multi-receiver case
if we use the signature scheme proposed in [10]. r = m ∗ (cm,q + sm,q )
6 R. Boussaha, Y. Challal and A. Bouabdallah et al. / Journal of Information Security and Applications 50 (2020) 102409

Table 1 4.3. SP-NDNAuth MIP model

Input parameters and decision variables in MIP.

Parameter Meaning In this case, we suppose that the packets are combined only on
P Producer node the path from the producer to the consumer. Therefore, the objec-
S Consumer node tive functions to minimize the calculation cost and to maximize
I Set of intermediate nodes the security level are given by:
F Set of packets 
L Set of directed links   
m Generation size min r + Tv,δv ,q ∗ vδv ,q + ηv ∗ cδv ,q + sδv ,q + t (8)
n Packet size v∈SVS,P
s Network size
dk, v Probability that node v has degree k max ( ft ) (9)
Cl Link capacity of l
SVv, w Set of nodes on path from v ∈ V to w ∈ I Furthermore, we replace v ∈ I by v ∈ SVS, P in all the constraints.
NLl Set of nodes on the link l Nodes that are not on the way from the source to the destination
SLv, w Set of links on path from v ∈ I to w ∈ I
are not chosen (14) and the average load of transmitted messages
δv Number of vectors received at v ∈ I
Mc, v, w Binary variable indicating whether it is the minimum must not exceed the capacity link (15).
cost of v ∈ I to get c ∈ F from w ∈ I
ft Security level function at time t
δv ≤ m, ∀v ∈ SVS,P (10)
 c
k,q
The encoding cost of { p1 , p2 , . . . , pk } ∈ Fnq
 s
k,q
The homomorphic signature cost of { p1 , p2 , . . . , pk } ∈ Fnq ηv ≥ Tv,δv ,q , ∀v ∈ SVS,P (11)
vk,q The homomorphic verification cost of { p1 , p2 , . . . , pk } ∈ Fnq
dk,q The decoding cost of { p1 , p2 , . . . , pk } ∈ Fnq
ωi A weight selected by the network designer to reflect the ηv ≤ Tv,δv ,q ∗ m, ∀v ∈ SVS,P (12)
relative importance of the ith objective function
Decision variable 
Tv, m, q Binary variable indicating whether to operate linear ηv = m (13)
combinations of { p1 , p2 , . . . , pm } ∈ Fnq at v ∈ I v∈SVS,P
ηv Number of linear combinations performed by v ∈ I
Tv,δv ,q = 0, ∀v ∈ SVS,P (14)

and t denote the calculation cost of the consumer node, which  

is given by:
 t
= vm,q + dm,q
We describe our multiobjective function to minimize the total
processing cost of all secure coding operations (1), and to maxi-
mize the security level in the whole network (2). Eq. (3) assures
that the maximum number of vectors received at each node is less
or equal to the generation size. If a given node performs coding
and signature operations, than the number of linear combinations
it should operate must be at least equal to one (4) and at most
equal to m (5). The total number of linear combinations created in
the network do not exceed the generation size m (6). The average
load of transmitted messages must not exceed the link capacity
(7).
 mathematical function f(.):
 
min r + Tv,δv ,q ∗ vδv ,q + ηv ∗ dδv ,v ∗ cδv ,q + sδv ,q
v∈I
max ( ft ) subject to
n∗ Mc,v,w ∗ (Ti,δi ,q ∗ ηi ) ≤ Cl , ∀l ∈ SL(v, w ), ∀v ∈ I, ∀w ∈ I
c∈F i∈ (NL )l
(15)
5. Security measuring
5.1. Security level objective function
We suppose that our system deals with malicious nodes and
uses defence mechanisms, and we are interested in the dynamic
evolution of our system security over time. We use the following
three metrics: (1) metric of system vulnerabilities; (2) metric of
attack (or threat) severity; (3) metric of defence strength. The
security state which is denoted by ft can be represented as a
 ft = f (V (t ), A(t ), D(t )) (16)
+ t
where V(t) is a function of vulnerabilities at time t, D(t) is a
(1) function of defences at time t, and A(t) is a function of attacks at
time t. We use the first two metrics coupled together to formulate
the attack-vulnerability-aware model, and we use the last metric to
(2) formulate the reliability-aware optimistic model.

5.1.1. Attack-vulnerability-aware model

δv ≤ m, ∀v ∈ I (3) The aforementioned metrics reflect that attackers attempt to
exploit system vulnerabilities despite the presence of defence
mechanisms. Furthermore, the attacks severity affects significantly
ηv ≥ Tv,δv ,q , ∀v ∈ I (4)
the systems security state. In fact, vulnerability metric refers to
how to measure a level of system vulnerability. The vulnerability
of a particular node i is given by:
ηv ≤ Tv,δv ,q ∗ m, ∀v ∈ I (5) 
pm
i + pi j ∗ pmj , (17)
 j∈I
ηv = m (6)
v∈I The vulnerability of the overall system is given by:

    
n∗ (Ti,δi ,q ∗ ηi ) ≤ Cl , ∀l ∈ SL(v, w ), ∀v, w ∈ I (7) V = pm
i + pmj ∗ pi j = pm
i + ( pi j ∗ pmj ) (18)
i∈(NL )l i∈I j∈I i∈I i∈I j∈I
 R. Boussaha, Y. Challal and A. Bouabdallah et al. / Journal of Information Security and Applications 50 (2020) 102409 7

such that pm
i
is the probability that the node i is malicious and pij We consider the case where intermediate nodes could accept,
is the probability that the node i is connected to the node j. combine and forward invalid packets as valid, and we calculate
Moreover, attack metric measures the strength of attacks per- the propagation rate of erroneous messages.
formed against a system. The attack severity performed over a In our system, we assume the honest sender is Alice, the
system at a given time t is given by: receiver is Bob, and Oscar is an intermediate malicious node. We
 describe the attack with a subspace dimension9 m = 2.
A= δi ∗ pmi (19)
i∈I • Honest node Alice. Alice sends a file described as two non-
zero vectors (vˆ 1 , vˆ 2 ) ∈ (Fnq )2 , and uses her secret key skα
In this case, the objective function (2) to maximize the security
to create two signatures τ 1 and τ 2 on the two-dimensional
level of the system or to minimize pollution damage is given by:
 subspace V ⊂ Fnq . Then she transmits the packets P1 = (vˆ1 , τ1 )
ft = − (1 − Tv,δv ,q ) ∗ (V ∗ A ) (20) and P2 = (vˆ2 , τ2 ).
v∈I • Malicious node Oscar. Oscar receives P1 and P2 and does the
following:
Such that:
 1. Generate a key pair (skμ , pkμ ).
   2. Choose two forged vectors (vˆ3 , vˆ4 ), such that vˆ1 , vˆ2 , vˆ3 , vˆ4
V ∗A= pm
i + pmj ∗ pi j ∗ δi ∗ pmi (21) are linearly independent.
i∈I j∈I i∈I
3. Use the secret key skμ to compute two signatures τ 3 and
  τ 4 and create the packets P3 = (vˆ3 , τ3 ) and P4 = (v ˆ4 , τ4 ).
  
= δi ∗ ( pmi )2 + δi ∗ pmi ∗ pi j ∗ pmj (22) 4. Compute two linear combinations v˜ 1 = zi=1 αi vˆ i ,
 
i∈I i∈I i∈I j∈I
v˜ 2 = zi=1 αi vˆ i and two signatures τ˜1 = zi=1 τiαi ,
 α 
  τ˜2 = zi=1 τi i such that z = 4 and transmits the two
   
= δi ∗ ( pm 2
) + δt ∗ pm pi j ∗ pmj (23) packets P˜1 = (v˜ 1 , τ˜1 ) and P˜2 = (v˜ 2 , τ˜2 ) to Bob.
i i
• Receiver Bob After receiving at least two packets from Oscar,
i∈I i∈I i I j∈I
Bob tries to decode the received data to recover Alice’s file.10
5.1.2. Reliability-aware model Then Bob will recover a corrupted file from Oscar.
The defence strength is related to security verification opera- Proposition 5.1. Given NDNAuth and SP-NDNAuth coding as-
tions, if the nodei does signature verification or it is connected to signment process as described in Section 3, with network size s,
trust nodes which make verifications, we say that it has strength generation size m, using Waxman probability for node connections,
defence mechanism. Hence, the strength defence function is given and uniform distribution of malicious nodes, the rate of erroneous
by : messages transmitted in the network is given by:

Dv = Tv,δv ,q + Tw,δw ,q ∗ pvw ∀v ∈ I (24) 1 1  −di j
w∈I . 1+ . αηi e β L (27)
s m
i∈I j∈I
In this case, the objective function (2) to maximize the security
level is given by: Where α > 0 and β ≤ 1, d is the Euclidian distance from node u to
  node v, and L is the maximum distance between any two nodes.
  
ft = Tv,δv ,q ∗ Tv,δv ,q + Tw,δw ,q ∗ pvw (25) Proof. In the attack scenario, with only three nodes in the network
v∈I v∈I w∈I and two packets transmitted by the intermediate node, the rate
⎡ ⎤ η
2
of erroneous transmitted messages is given by :  M η = 22 = 1. If
i∈I i
  we consider the case where Oscar belongs to a set of relay nodes
ft = ⎣ Tv,δv ,q + Tl,δl ,q ∗ T j,δ j ,q ∗ pi j ⎦ (26) which transmits valid or invalid packets and we denote as pv the
v∈I l∈I i∈I j∈I
probability that a node v ∈ I is malicious, we suppose that this
probability follows a uniform distribution. We use the Waxmanâs
5.2. Rate of erroneous messages probability model for interconnecting the nodes of the topology,
which is given by:
In this model, the adversary is particularly able to control one −d

or more nodes. Therefore, it can observe and modify all data pack- Pi j = α .e (β L) (28)
ets passing through the compromised nodes. Its aim is to inject a d is the Euclidian distance from node i to node j, and L is the
small number of forged packets in order to disrupt the decoding maximum distance between any two nodes. Then the rate of
process. Without loss of generality, we assume the source is al- erroneous messages at a time t is given by:
ways trusted. However, the relay nodes can be compromised by an   
adversary, which can observe the input, and manipulate the out- i∈I pm
i
+ j∈I pi j pmj ηi
r=  (29)
put. We also do not consider attacks on the physical or MAC layer. i ∈ I ηi
A target node reconstruct the original file sent by the source using

  −di j 
−
→ −
→
a set of m linearly independent vectors yi = (vi | αi )i=1,m where i∈I
1
s
+ 1
j∈I s . α .e βL ηi
( αi )i=1,m are linearly independent. We say a packet Y = (−
−
→ →
yi )i=1,m r=  (30)
i∈I ηi
is a corrupted packet, if the following equation does not hold :
V = A−1 .Y such that A is the matrix whose rows are the vectors 
  −di j 
ηi
α1 , α2 , . . . , αm and V the matrix whose rows are the vectors i∈I s 1+ j∈I α .e βL

v1 , v2 , . . . , vm of the original file sent by the source node. r=  (31)

i∈I ηi
We construct an attack against the network coding signature
process in the network. We make no assumptions about the 9
The attack easily generalizes to arbitrary m.
algorithms beyond their functionality. The malicious nodes are 10
For the sake of simplicity, we suppose that all the packets received by a node
randomly and uniformly distributed throughout the network. are innovative.
8 R. Boussaha, Y. Challal and A. Bouabdallah et al. / Journal of Information Security and Applications 50 (2020) 102409

Fig. 3. Network architecture.

• The Content Store (CS);

   −di j
ηi ηi • The Forwarding Information Base (OpenFlow FIB) - routing table
+ i∈I . s . j∈I α .e
i∈I βL
s
r=  (32) including a set of actions to redirect requests to data sources.
i∈I ηi
The OpenFlow FIB consists of flow entries that specify the
  −di j

j∈I ηi .α .e
m
s
+ 1s . i∈I
βL forwarding rules for the packet flow. A flow entry has three main
r= (33) components. First, we have the Matching rule, we use the entries
m
of this field to match incoming packets. Second, we have the
Action or the Interface field which represents a list of actions and
1 1  −di j
r= . 1+ . αηi e β L (34) instructions to execute on packets after matching process. Finally,
s m we have the Counter field which represents a set of statistics about
i∈I j∈I
the flows such as received packets, duration, sent packets, etc. The

main functionalities of an NDN switch are:
6. Cooperative coding mechanism based on software-defined • Forwarding data packets to clients directly if the data is avail-
networking able in local CS;
• Forwarding Interest packets to other nodes according to the
In this section, we describe our controller-based NDN coding openflow FIB;
and forwarding scheme where the SDN controller handles the • Forwarding Interest packets for unknown content to the con-
multiobjective program execution, the statistics collection and the troller;
packet forwarding in the network. Our MIP finds the optimal so- • Delivering the received data packets to the requesting nodes
lution for the coding and signature assignment in the network. An based on the PIT;
adaptation of the proposed coding model for NDN is done through • Sending statistics and caching information to the controller pe-
the proposal of the SDN-based architecture and the Interest/Data riodically.
forwarding strategies. We detail the architectural design of our
solution and describe its components. The SDN functionalities 6.1.2. The SDN controller
presented in this section represent a design. The controller communicates with switches using OpenFlow
communication protocol. It provides management functions like
6.1. Network architecture
topology control, and OpenFlow FIB11 construction for each NDN
switch. In our proposed architecture, the controller incorporates
The aim of our proposed network architecture is to adapt the
the following structures:
NDNAuth and the SP-NDNAuth solutions to the NDN architec-
ture using an SDN-based monitoring framework. As illustrated • The Global Data Topology Base (GDTB) is a table built into the
in Fig. 3, we partition the layout of the proposed system into controller. It contains the information about all the nodes in
three prominent layers: edge network corresponding to final users, the network and neighbouring connections between them.
openflow named data network corresponding to the simple for- • The Routing Management Base (RMB) is a table holding the
warding routers of NDN and openflow controller corresponding to shortest paths between nodes. These paths are deducted by
the control plane of SDN. applying dijkstra algorithm on the virtual network topology
memorized in GDTB.
6.1.1. The NDN switch • The Optimization Information Base (OIB) is a table built by
In our proposed architecture, each Openflow NDN switch con- the controller. It contains the information about all the files
tains the following structures:
• The Pending Interest Table (PIT); 11
Flow forwarding information base.
 R. Boussaha, Y. Challal and A. Bouabdallah et al. / Journal of Information Security and Applications 50 (2020) 102409
Fig. 4. Optimization Information Base structure.
shared in the network, the nodes holding those files and the
total number of coded12 packets available at each node. Fig. 4
illustrates the structure of the OIB.
Each controller involves several modules that realize NDN
functionalities, which are routing module, optimization module
and security module. The routing module maintains the network
topology and manage Interest/Data packet forwarding between
communicating nodes. The optimization module is responsible
for operating the multiobjective MIP model proposed in this
paper in order to minimize the overhead of coding and signature
operations and to maximize the security level of the network. The
security module refers to a third party authority or the public key
infrastructure (PKI) that distributes the public keys of publishers.
The main functionalities of an SDN controller are:
• Gathering content caching statistics;
• Configuring NDN switches and OpenFlow FIB to route Interest
messages to the appropriate nodes;
• Executing the optimal coding and signature scheme periodi-
cally;
• Configuring a set of trust nodes to verify the signatures of re-
ceived packets.
6.2. Network functions
Our system incorporates multiple functionalities. We will
explain the main operations related to coding management, in-
cluding how to cooperatively encode content in different NDN
switches and where to route content requests to fully exploit NDN
in-network caches.
6.2.1. Bootstrapping
During this phase, the controller discovers the nodes and the
network topology. It broadcasts a discovery interest message in
the network with < idController > as prefix to join the network.
Furthermore, each network device detects neighbouring devices,
discovers and selects one area controller, and then starts local
information awareness. The neighbour detection message can be
sent periodically to keep the neighbour information updated. In
fact, each node in the network launches active discovery of the
controller’s area. In our proposed architecture, node active mode
and controller active mode can be used in hybrid fashion. On
one side, when a new node joins the network, node messages
are flooded to obtain the controller information more rapidly. On
the other side, periodic flooding of controller messages is used
to update the controller information with less cost as long as the
number of controllers is less than the number of network nodes.
The nodes send a typical Data message containing their neighbours
to the controller. After this bootstrapping phase, the controller
discovers the network topology and the nodes determine how to
contact the controller to get forwarding rules.
6.2.2. Statistics collection and optimization
In order to perform the optimal coding strategy and the routing
decision, all NDN switches shall report content caching statistics
periodically with a fixed time period to the controller. In practice,
the time period can be chosen to balance the system processing
overheads. Upon caching one or more packets of a given file, the
12
Linear combinations.
9
NDN switch should indicate explicitly to the SDN controller the
prefix of the stored file and the number of cached packets. When a
node removes a content from its cache, it should also prevent the
controller, which updates its OIB table, to route further Interest
messages to the closest caching nodes.
6.2.3. Routing
In this phase, we make routing decisions. In fact, this step con-
sists of creating a path for routing an interest message to a content
store, asking the controller for forwarding rules and pushing them
on the path to the content provider. Indeed, the OpenFlow con-
troller accomplishes access control, computes the appropriate path
for the data flow and configures all switches suitably.
An NDN switch looks up its flow table. If the interest packet
prefix is similar to the flow table entry, then the switch executes
the action indicated in the matched entry. Additionally, when a
switch receives a packet for which it has not installed a flow yet,
it sends this packet to the SDN controller to learn the action to
perform on the packet. After receiving the controller response,
the switch inserts the corresponding flow entry in its flow table
in order to reduce the interactions with the controller for similar
Interest packets. The main two tasks of routing are Interest and
Data forwarding.
6.2.4. Interest forwarding strategy
The consumer sends a request containing mainly:
• Node Index which represents the identifier of the requesting
node;
• Data name;
• Number of encoded messages required to reconstruct the orig-
inal message r;
In some cases, the interest message could be sent by the SDN
controller, or an intermediate NDN router, it contains:
• Routing path, sent by the SDN controller to the node holding
the requested packets;
• Interest packet type, which could be a request for a content, a
caching announce message sent to the controller or an install
flow message sent by the controller.
Algorithm 1 describes the interest forwarding strategy. A final
user sends a request to the NDN openflow switch to retrieve r lin-
ear combinations of a data object. Upon receiving an Interest mes-
sage, an intermediate node checks whether it has the requested
content in its cache (3–6). In this case InCS() function returns true,
then it supplies all the independent linear combinations which
match the data name and updates the field r. If it has not delivered
all the necessary packets (7–16), it transfers the request to other
routers. To transfer the query, it must select the interfaces from the
Openflow FIB table (Select_ FIB), and then update the field r before
sending the query (Update(interest)). OutCS(dataname) function
returns the number of independent linear combinations stored
in the corresponding node, while Update_ PIT procedure updates
the PIT table with a new Interest entry. If a node has no entry in
its OpenFlow FIB to forward the Interest, instead of broadcasting
the message to all its interfaces, it transmits the interest to the
controller. The controllers have global knowledge of the network
(topology, paths, cached content) and can therefore reply with a
forwarding path inserted into the Interest message. The controller
provides information to the nodes to route the Interest message
to the closest node holding the requested content. If the controller
sends the received Interest message, its type will be a path an-
nounce (17–23). In this case, the NDN Openflow switch node must
fill its FIB table with the new path indicated in the received mes-
sage and forward the interest packet to the appropriate Interface.
10 R. Boussaha, Y. Challal and A. Bouabdallah et al. / Journal of Information Security and Applications 50 (2020) 102409

Algorithm 1 Interest forwarding strategy. Algorithm 2 Data forwarding strategy.

Input: Interest Input: Data
1: switch (Interest type) 1: switch (Data type)
2: case “Content request”: 2: case “Controller trust announce”:
3: if InCS(dataname) then 3: T=1;
4: k ← OutCS(dataname); 4: m=DATA–>RLNC;
5: r ← r − k; 5: case “Simple Data packet”:
6: end if 6: if T = 0 then
7: if r = 0 then 7: Select_ PIT(dataname, interfaces);
8: if FIB_ Match(dataname) then 8: Forward(Data, interfaces);
9: Select_ FIB(dataname,Interfaces); 9: Update_ PIT(dataname);
10: Update(Interest); 10: Update_ FIB(dataname);
11: Send(Interest,Interfaces); 11: if InCS(dataname)=false then
12: Update_ PIT(Interest); 12: CheckIndependance(Data);
13: else 13: Store(Data);
14: Forward_ Controller(Interest); 14: end if
15: end if 15: else
16: end if 16: Task_ Coding(m);
17: case “Controller announce path”: 17: end if
18: Extract_ path(Interest,path); 18: end switch
19: Fill_ FIB(path);
20: Select_ FIB(dataname,Interfaces);
21: Update(Interest); • Perform a predefined number of linear combinations (output of
22: Send(Interest,Interfaces); the MIP model);
23: Update_ PIT(Interest); • Append homomorphic signatures to the created messages.
24: end switch
If the received data packet is a trust announce message sent
by the controller then it should indicate that the corresponding
6.2.5. Data forwarding strategy node is a trust one and can operate all the RLNC, signature and
With random linear network coding (RLNC), data is represented verification operations. The node updates T and m information.
as vectors. The source breaks up the data into several vectors The variable m indicates the number of independent random
(packets) and creates the augmentation coefficients. linear combinations to operate (2–4).
⎛ ⎞ ⎛ ⎞
−ω1 − −γ1 − 1 0 ... 0
⎜ −ω2 − ⎟ ⎜ −γ1 − 0 1 ... 0 ⎟ 7. Performance evaluation
Data = ⎜ . ⎟=⎜ .. ⎟
⎝ .. ⎠ ⎝ .
..
. ⎠
7.1. Scenario and parameters setting
−ωm − −γm − 0 0 ... 1
The data packet contains: We consider arbitrary topologies (nodes uniformly distributed
within a square area) with various network sizes (20, 30, 40,
• Data type, which could be a simple data message sent by the 50, 60, 80, 100, 150, 20 0, 30 0, 40 0, 50 0). The number of vectors
content provider or a caching node. Otherwise, the data packet received at each node is distributed randomly across the net-
could be a trust announce message sent by the controller to work. We solved the MIP model using CPlex.13 The evaluation
indicate that the corresponding node can operate new random benchmarks are generated using HElib library for homomorphic
linear combinations of cached packets and append signatures to encryption [11] which implements an optimized version of the BGV
those created messages; (Brakerski-Gentry-Vaikuntanathan) fully homomorphic encryption
• Data name; scheme. For network coding calculation measurements, we used
• Linear combination of several vectors Kodo [12] which is a high-performance erasure coding library with

l a special focus on network coding algorithms and codecs.
Data = αi j ∗ γi In fact, we have implemented an NDN network using network
i=1 coding functionalities. We collected encoding and signature re-
• The augmentation coefficients; lated statistics from this implementation. We note the average
• The homomorphic signature. of the results obtained from 100 randomly generated instances.
Furthermore, we used an emulation of SDN based architecture
The coding assignment model obtained from the previous sec- using CPlex optimizer to get the optimal encoding and signature
tion will be used in the data forwarding processing. Algorithm 2 assignment in the network.
describes the data forwarding strategy. When a router receives a Our testbed experiments captured the following metrics:
data message, there are two possible cases: whether it represents
a compelling node or not. If (T = 0 ), the actual node should just 1. Key generation time: A measure of how long it takes to gen-
transfer the data message to the requesting interfaces provided by erate the private and public keys.
Select_ PIT procedure. Then, it must update the PIT and the FIB ta- 2. Encoding time: A measure of how long it takes to create a lin-
bles (6–10). Before forwarding the packet, it should store a copy of ear combination of packets.
the data if it does not have one in its content store (11–14). Other- 3. Decoding time: A measure of how long it takes to decode a set
wise if (T = 1 ), then the node invokes the Task_ Coding procedure, of packets and to create the original data.
which is responsible for doing the following tasks (15–17) :

• Verify the homomorphic signatures of received packets; 13

http://www-01.ibm.com/software/integration/optimization/cplexoptimizer.
 R. Boussaha, Y. Challal and A. Bouabdallah et al. / Journal of Information Security and Applications 50 (2020) 102409 11

Table 2 Table 3
Comparison of optimal overhead processing costs in NDNAuth coding Comparison of optimal overhead processing costs in SP-NDNAuth coding
model. model.

NDNAuth OPTC SP-NDNAuth SP-OPTC

|N| q = 22 q = 24 q = 28 q = 22 q = 24 q = 28 |N| q = 22 q = 24 q = 28 q = 22 q = 24 q = 28

20 55.2 54.4 66.9 64.1 64.5 78.5 20 56.8 55.6 68.6 62.1 62.2 75.9
40 90.2 86.7 108.9 112.9 111.9 137.5 40 91.2 87.8 110.4 105.5 103.8 128.3
60 126.3 121.6 153.6 162.1 161.1 197.9 60 128.3 123.5 156.2 145.1 142.5 177.1
80 162.6 156.3 198.6 212.1 210.4 260.1 80 162.9 156.9 199.3 188.8 185.2 231.5
100 199.4 189.8 241.5 262.6 259.1 319.8 100 200.4 190.5 242.1 232.6 226.4 282.9
150 341.7 325.4 415.4 420.8 415.1 578.2 150 347.3 331.8 422.5 372.8 360.9 450.2
200 435.7 423.1 539.8 470.2 457.1 578.2 200 437.4 428.9 546.6 447.2 434.5 552.6
300 673.6 652.6 827.9 877.6 874.9 1079.1 300 679.2 659 835.1 742.2 900.2 912.5
400 864.1 825.3 1054.1 1190.9 1047.4 1297.8 400 867.9 828.7 1058.5 974.3 900.2 1136.3
500 1066.1 1027.1 1314.1 1330.1 1328.4 1609.1 500 1068.4 1033.1 1321 1147.9 1120.5 1405.4

Table 4
Comparison of optimal attack-vulnerability-aware security level.
4. Encryption time: A measure of how long it takes to encrypt a
plaintext message. |N| NDNAuth SP-NDNAuth OPTS SP-OPTS
5. Evaluation time: A measure of how long it takes to evaluate a 20 627.6 680.8 2877.2 2157.9
circuit14 . 40 4385.6 6325.5 34743.8 23452.1
6. Decryption time: A measure of how long it takes to decrypt a 60 15167.1 10452.8 128883.1 70885.6
80 30322.4 22534.1 354912.1 195201.6
ciphertext.
100 30316.768 20146.1 784434.6 423594.7
150 197.3∗ 103 113.315∗ 103 492.4∗ 103 193.6∗ 103
We run the testbed experiments on an Intel(R) core(TM) i5-
200 166.9∗ 103 556.8∗ 103 166.4∗ 104 557.6∗ 103
7200U with 2,50 GHZ CPU performance and 8 GB of RAM. All 300 926.5∗ 103 123.6∗ 104 924.7∗ 104 113.2∗ 103
software was run on the 64-bit ubunto 16.10 Linux distribution. 400 145.7∗ 104 207.9∗ 104 279.1∗ 105 942.1∗ 104
Let us denote f1 the objective function to minimize the overall 500 326.4∗ 104 165.5∗ 104 657.3∗ 105 203.8∗ 105
calculation cost and f2 the objective function to maximize the
security level. The optimal cost is given by:
In order to evaluate the impact of the field size and the net-
OP T _Cost = ω0 ∗ f0 + ω1 ∗ f1 work size on the cumulative processing overhead we compare the
performance of different models including NDNAuth, SP-NDNAuth,
such that ω0 is the processing overhead cost weight and ω1 is the OPTC, and SP-OPTC.
security level weight coefficient. We make comparison between We notice that as we increase the network size, the gain gap
different models: in processing overhead of NDNAtuh over OPTC also increases.
Indeed, for a 20-nodes network the improvement is in the order
• NDNAuth: our optimal coding and homomorphic signature
of 10s while it goes to 60s for a 10 0-nodes network, and 30 0s for
scheme initially proposed in [13,14];
a 500-nodes network with a F22 finite field. The gain increases
• SP-NDNAuth: a single-path-based NDNAuth variant proposed
as we increase the q value. In fact, increasing the field size will
in this work;
increase the probability of successful decoding. However, it will
• OPTC: a trivial strategy where all the nodes must do coding and
also lead to increased computational complexity which results in
signature operations [15];
slower applications. We notice nearly the same behaviour with
• SP-OPTC: a single-path-based OPTC solution combining
SP-NDNAuth, which perform better than SP-OPTC, because in
[15,16] proposals;
the first model coding and signing operations are restricted to
• OPTS: a strategy where all the nodes avoid verifying homomor-
the selected nodes of the optimization model. Whereas in the
phic signatures and make the network vulnerable to pollution
second model all the nodes on the path from source to destination
attacks [1];
perform encoding and homomorphic encryption operations.
• SP-OPTS: a single-path-based OPTS solution combining
Furthermore, the reason why NDNAuth performs better than
[1,16] proposals.
the other models (SP-NDNAuth and SP-OPTC), as shown in Table 3,
is because in SP-NDNAuth as in SP-OPTC, we consider the shortest
7.2. Cumulative processing overhead path constraints. Therefore, the selection of trust nodes is more
constrained and the chosen nodes are those that fit the best the
We consider the first case where ω0 = 1 and ω1 = 0. Tables 2 topology restrictions.
and 3 compare the optimal cost achieved for ten different network
sizes (20, 40, 60, 80, 100, 150, 200, 300, 400, 500) of arbitrary 7.3. Performance evaluation of security level
topologies. For each size, we note the average of the results ob-
tained from 100 randomly generated instances. We fix the gener- In this case, we aim to study the security level. Assume ω0 = 0
ation size to (m = 8 ). For every instance, we compute the optimal and ω1 = 1. The size of the finite field is q = 24 . We evaluate the
cost when packets belong to the F22 finite field, the F24 finite security level of our scheme considering the attack-vulnerability-
field or the F28 finite field.15 The size of a field is denoted q. The aware (AV) model and the reliability-aware (TR) model.
obtained results represent the cumulative processing overhead16 of In the first case, Table 4 compares optimal AV security level
all the nodes in the network, the unit of measurement is second. encountered for different network sizes (20, 40, 60, 80, 100, 150,
20 0, 30 0, 40 0, 50 0). We Observe that the vulnerability of the
14 network is increased in OPTS and SP-OPTS models compared to
The linear combination function operated to the signatures.
15
A finite field (or Galois Field) is a mathematical construct where special rules NDNAuth scheme. This is due to the fact that in OPTS all the
are defined for the arithmetic operations. nodes in the network avoid making network coding and signature
16
The execution time of all the encoding and signature operations. operations, as well in SP-OPTC model all the nodes in the path
12 R. Boussaha, Y. Challal and A. Bouabdallah et al. / Journal of Information Security and Applications 50 (2020) 102409

Fig. 5. Node degree Impact on the Cumulative Processing Overhead.

Table 5 vertex has an inherent structural property: its degree, denoted by

Comparison of optimal reliability-
k. The basic property of a graph is the number of edges |E| and
the vertices |V|, and the average node degree k˜ = 2|V|E|| . We have
aware security level.

|N| NDNAuth SP-NDNAuth

also the degree distribution D(k), which calculates the probability
10 137.9 3.11 that a randomly selected node has a degree k. There are three
20 568.8 58.17 common degree distributions:
30 416.4 71.33
40 996.16 227.29 • Poisson distribution
50 519.71 232.51
150 1985 303.6 ˜ k˜ k
200 4865.01 275.6
D ( k ) = e −k . (35)
k!
300 6967.61 401.3
400 9054.77 2220.8 • Exponential distribution
500 8762.01 1676.5 k
D(k ) ∝ e− k˜ (36)
• Pawer Law distribution
from source to destination are vulnerable. Otherwise, we notice
D ( k ) ∝ k −γ , k  = 0 , γ > 0 (37)
that the system vulnerability in SP-NDNAuth is slightly reduced
compared to NDNAuth because in the former model we deal with In this paper, we make comparison between the aforemen-
the vulnerability of a single path between the producer and the tioned strategies. Our objective is to use a network model
consumer, the other nodes of the network are not considered. that strikes a good balance between structural properties and
In fact, in our proposed models, we assume a node is vulnera- degree-related properties. We also use the Waxmanâs probability
ble if it is malicious or is connected to malicious nodes. We further model for interconnecting the nodes of the topology, which is
notice that as we increase the network size the improvement of given by:
our models over OPTS increases. It goes from 4.5% for 20 nodes −d

to 26% for 100 nodes, and 21% for 500 nodes, between NDNAuth
and OPTS models. Furthermore, it goes from 3.4% for 20 nodes
to 14% for 100 nodes, and 6.5% for 500 nodes, between NDNAuth
and SP-OPTS models. Finally, it goes from 9% for 20 nodes to 21%
for 100 nodes, and 12.3% for 500 nodes, between SP-NDNAuth and
SP-OPTS models.
Table 5 compares TR security level, the network size ranges
from 10 to 500. In our model, we consider a node as secure
if it is a trusted node or is connected to trusted nodes. In this
case, we aim to maximize the security level. As we increase the
network size, we perceive that the gain of NDNAuth model over
SP-NDNAuth model decreases. It is in the order of 45.6% for 10
nodes, 6.5% for 150 nodes and 5.22% for 500 nodes. The security
level improvement decreases as we increase the topology size
because the number of encoded packets in the network is limited
to the generation size m. Thus the number of trusted nodes is
limited which will increase the vulnerability of the network and
deteriorate the trust level gain as we expand the network size.
7.4. Topology impact on performance
7.4.1. Topology generation model
Vertices and edges of the NDN graph model are extended with
attributes, e.g.weighted edges, which represent link costs. Each
Puv = α .e (β L) (38)
where α > 0 and β ≤ 1, d is the Euclidian distance from node u to
node v, and L is the maximum distance between any two nodes.
α represents the link density and β denotes the density of short
links relative to longer ones.
7.4.2. Node degree impact
Fig. 5 shows the influence of the node degree distribution
and the network size on the cumulative processing overhead. We
notice that the cumulative processing overhead exhibits nearly the
same values with the Poisson distribution, the Exponential dis-
tribution and the Power Law distribution. NDNAuth outperforms
slightly SP-NDNAuth strategy, the improvement is in the order of
2s to 3s.
For AV security level, we can see in Fig. 6 that NDNAuth
presents consistently a significant advantage compared to SP-
NDNAuth, OPTS and SP-OPTS under different network sizes. The
network with Power Law distribution is considerably vulnerable
to pollution attacks because the degree probability is relatively
important compared to the two other strategies. For example,
the probability that the node degree is equal to 8 is 0.59 with
Poisson distribution, 0.009 with Exponential distribution and
0.73 with Power Law distribution. Thus, the nodes are more
probably connected to each other and that makes the network
 R. Boussaha, Y. Challal and A. Bouabdallah et al. / Journal of Information Security and Applications 50 (2020) 102409 13

Fig. 6. Node degree Impact on Security Level.

more exposed to internal or external attacks. Moreover, OPTS and
SP-OPTS present the same values for the three degree distribution
strategies, because we suppose that all the nodes in the network
or in the path from the producer to the consumer must perform
coding operations independently of the degree of each node.
Considering TR security level, we observe that the comparative
advantage of Power Law distribution is larger than the two other
degree distribution technics. In this case, we consider also that
a node is secure if it is selected as a trusted node or if it is
connected to trusted nodes. Hence the biggest the node degree

Fig. 7. Link density impact on AV security level.

14 R. Boussaha, Y. Challal and A. Bouabdallah et al. / Journal of Information Security and Applications 50 (2020) 102409

Fig. 8. Link density impact on TR security level.

probability is, the larger the trust security level will be. The im-
provement is at minimum in the order of 45% in NDNAuth model,
and 55% in SP-NDNAuth model. In OPTS and SP-OPTS the values
of TR security level are null.

7.4.3. Link density impact

The generated overhead of coding and homomorphic signature
operations depends especially on the node degree distribution, the
number of stored messages in every node, the required time to
code, decode, sign and verify each packet, and the link density of
the network. We evaluate the processing overhead for different
link density values (0.2,0.4,0.6,0.8). We fix the field size to q = 24
and we use Exponential degree distribution. We notice that the
calculation cost remains the same even if we change the link
Fig. 9. Packets load in the network.
density, we find the same results presented in Fig. 5 for NDNAuth,
SP-NDNAtuh, OPTC and SP-OPTC models. On the other hand, AV
security level and TR security level increase as we increase link
is given by :
density as illustrated in Figs. 7 and 8. Indeed, that was expected
 
since the security level of the network depends on the neighbour-  δi ∗ pi j
hood security level for each node. If a node is vulnerable or even PL = m + (40)
N
a honest trusted node, this will affect its borders. i∈I j∈I

Fig. 9 compares the packets load encountered for different

7.5. Propagation rate of erroneous messages
7.5.1. Packets load
We differentiate between two cases. The messages exchanged
in the network can be either coded/combined messages or clear
messages. In the first case, the number of coded messages ex-
changed in the whole network is exactly equal to 2∗ m such that m
is the generation size or the number of packets per file. This value
is the same whatever is the topology or the number of nodes in
the network. The source (producer) sends exactly m messages in
the network and we set the number of coded messages that are
exchanged in the network by the intermediate nodes to m.
In the second case, we consider the number of clear messages
exchanged in the network. Here similarly, we study two particular
cases. In the first one, we suppose that the topology is represented
by a complete graph. The formula used to evaluate the number of
exchanged messages in the network is given by:
 and SP-NDNAuth compared to OPTC and SP-OPTC. We observe an
PL = m + δi
i∈I
In the second case, we consider the topology where the nodes
are connected using the waxman probability. The formula used to
measure the number of clear messages exchanged in the network
network sizes (10 0, 20 0, 30 0, 40 0, 50 0), and different link density
values (0.2,0.4,0.6,0.8). We fix the field size to q = 24 and we
use Exponential degree distribution. For every network size, we
compute the messages load when the topology is represented
by a complete graph (CMP), and when the nodes are connected
using waxman probability model. We observe that the number
of packets in the network increases as we increase the network
size. We notice that the load is more important in the complete
graph model. Moreover, increasing the link density will increase
the number of packets exchanged in the network.
7.5.2. Rate of erroneous messages
In Fig. 10, we examine the rate of erroneous messages of
different coding strategies including NDNAuth, SP-NDNAuth, OPTC
and SP-OPTC. In the first case, we consider only the objective
function aiming at minimizing the cumulative processing over-
head. Results reveal a significant improvement in both NDNAuth
(39)
imminent attitude with Exponential and Power Law distributions.
The difference is that the rate of erroneous messages is slightly
increased in the second one, because as explained in the previous
section the probabilities given by Power Law degree distribution
are higher compared to the Exponential one.
 R. Boussaha, Y. Challal and A. Bouabdallah et al. / Journal of Information Security and Applications 50 (2020) 102409
Fig. 10. Rate of erroneous messages with cumulative processing overhead.
Fig. 11. Rate of erroneous messages for Security Level objective function.
Results illustrated in Fig. 11 show a closer behaviour in the two
plots which consider AV security level and TR security level ob-
jective functions. The amount of nodes from which we select trust
nodes in NDNAuth is larger than SP-NDNAuth, which will increase
the probability of connection to malicious nodes and then this will
increase to some extent the rate of erroneous messages. The rate
of erroneous messages in both OPTS and SP-OPTS is equal to zero
since in both methods, we suppose that no intermediate node
perform coding and signature operations, packets are transmitted
directly.
7.5.3. Link density impact on the rate of faulty messages
Fig. 12 compares the rate of erroneous messages considering
cumulative processing overhead (CPO) objective function for differ-
ent network sizes (20, 40, 60, 80, 100), and different link density
values (0.2,0.4,0.6,0.8). We fix the field size to q = 24 and we use
Exponential degree distribution.
When α = 0.2, the rate of erroneous messages has the biggest
value for the two models NDNAuth and SP-NDNAuth. By increasing
the density of the links, the rate of the erroneous messages is
getting closer in the two models, because the links are constrained
by capacities and the existence of a shorter path between the
chosen nodes in SP-NDNAuth, which reduces the impact of link
density. Moreover, we notice that the rate of faulty messages in
NDNauth and SP-NDNAuth is considerably inferior to that of OPTC
and SP-OPTC, in which from a certain threshold, all the messages
circulating on the network are compromised.
15
We notice nearly the same behaviour considering AV or TR
security level, as shown in Figs. 13 and 14. The gap between the
rates of the erroneous messages is decreasing more and more.
The choice of the trusted nodes is almost the same considering
cumulative processing overhead, AV security level or TR security
level objective functions especially for SP-NDNAuth model even if
we increase the link density.
7.6. Performance trade-offs
The trade-offs between the achievable performance of the
network and the incurred security of the mechanism used should
be considered carefully when designing this specific authenticated
network coding system. In order to study the performance trade-
offs between processing overhead cost and security level, a set of
performance evaluation tests was performed. In each case, we vary
the weighting coefficients of the two objective functions. We sup-
pose that q = 24 , we use the Exponential node-degree distribution,
and we consider three different network sizes (20,40,60).
Fig. 15 illustrates the gain gap between the multiobjective
optimal solution for OPTC, OPTS, NDNAuth and SP-NDNAuth.
We notice that as we vary the processing overhead cost weight
the gap decreases. The OPTS and NDNAuth models, within the
AV security level measuring, exhibit nearly the same optimal
values by increasing the calculation cost weighting coefficient.
Furthermore, the results reveal nearly the same behaviour within
the TR security measuring between NDNAuth and SP-NDNAuth.
The SP-NDNAuth performance trade-offs evolve constantly within
16 R. Boussaha, Y. Challal and A. Bouabdallah et al. / Journal of Information Security and Applications 50 (2020) 102409

Fig. 12. Link density impact on the rate of erroneous messages with CPO.

Fig. 13. Link density impact on the rate of erroneous messages with AV security level.

the TR security level evaluation. Whereas, the trade-offs decrease
and tends to the same values of the other models as we increase
the processing overhead cost weight in the AV security model.
Furthermore, we notice clearly that NDNAuth mechanism presents
a good compromise between all the presented technics.
Fig. 16 illustrates the evaluation results for measuring the
execution time of the multi-objective optimization problem, con-
sidering AV security level and TR security level objective functions
for three network sizes (20, 20 0, 50 0), the unit of measurement is
second. By changing the value of ω0 , we notice that the OPTC and
OPTS models have close values. The average execution time for
the OPTC model is 2.26 s when |N| = 20, 3.84 s when |N| = 200,
and 4.84 s when |N| = 500. We find almost the same execution
time averages for OPTS. On the other side, we notice the same
behaviour for the NDNAuth and SP-NDNAuth models except that
SP-NDNAuth has slightly smaller values. The values in NDNAuth
and SP-NDNAuth are more important than OPTC and OPTS. This
is because in the two first models there are some conditions that
occur in the MIP and that require impressive execution time.
Tables 6 and 7 present the amount of memory used for the
same tests illustrated in Fig. 16. OPTC and OPTS have almost the
same values, NDNAuth is the most important and SP-NDNAuth
is slightly inferior than NDNAuth, the unit of measurement is
megabyte.
 R. Boussaha, Y. Challal and A. Bouabdallah et al. / Journal of Information Security and Applications 50 (2020) 102409 17

Fig. 14. Link density impact on the rate of erroneous messages with TR security level.

Fig. 15. Performance trade-offs.

7.7. Discussion
In this paper, we proposed two optimization models and
two different objective functions to assess the security level. We
consider several application scenarios:
1. Secured applications, which focus mainly on the goal of min-
imizing processing overhead of the MIP. We made comparison
between our models NDNAuth and SP-NDNAuth with the
previous works OPTC and SP-OPTC [15,16]. We have shown the
effectiveness of our proposal. The gain is in the order of 35%.
2. Applications that have a good computing capacity and are
mainly interested in improving the security level. Even in this
case we consider two types of systems. Those who consent
on the vulnerability of nodes and the severity of attacks in
the network and aim to minimize damage. Moreover, we
consider the case of systems that focus on the strength of
defence nodes in the network and aim to maximize it. To
study the case of these two systems we propose AV secu-
rity level and TR security level objective functions. We have
compared our models NDNAuth and SP-NDNAuth with the
two prior models OPTS and SP-OPTS [1,16]. We have shown
likewise the effectiveness of our approach in Section 7.3.
Previous systems are 25 times more vulnerable than our
models.
18 R. Boussaha, Y. Challal and A. Bouabdallah et al. / Journal of Information Security and Applications 50 (2020) 102409

Fig. 16. The cost of solving the multi-objective optimization problem.

Table 6 Table 7
The amount of memory used to solve the multi- The amount of memory used to solve the
objective optimization problem with AV security level multi-objective optimization problem with TR
function. security level function.

ω0 OPTC OPTS NDNAuth SP-NDNAuth ω0 OPTC NDNAuth SP-NDNAuth

|N| = 20 |N| = 20
0 4.16 3.89 8.23 3.82 0 4.03 6.88 3.65
0.2 3.84 3.08 8.57 3.16 0.2 3.93 6.25 3.7
0.4 4.03 4.26 9.12 4.37 0.4 3.02 6.95 4.86
0.6 2.9 3.99 8.41 3.32 0.6 2.88 7.13 3.48
0.8 3.83 3.78 8.43 4.16 0.8 4.25 8.26 5.01
1 3.93 4.02 4 4.69 1 3.69 4.03 3.34
|N| = 200 |N| = 200
0 8.01 7.84 24.81 214.51 0 8.91 220.15 214.51
0.2 7.86 7.57 24.57 214.68 0.2 8.82 218.79 214.68
0.4 7.7 7.69 23.67 216.02 0.4 8.80 217.58 216.01
0.6 7.93 7.84 24.69 214.69 0.6 9.43 218.86 214.89
0.8 8.06 6.72 24.84 214.67 0.8 8.98 215.88 214.69
1 6.83 7.78 21.58 20.01 1 8.17 20.07 20.01
|N| = 500 |N| = 500
0 23.18 23.25 123.85 108.63 0 27.3 > 500 > 500
0.2 23.36 22.08 124.32 139.39 0.2 27.37 > 500 > 500
0.4 23.03 23.04 124.43 108.02 0.4 27.52 > 500 > 500
0.6 23.29 23.27 123.57 109.12 0.6 27.23 > 500 > 500
0.8 23.26 22.38 124.09 109.9 0.8 27.38 > 500 > 500
1 23.3 22.35 110.55 100.32 1 23.24 109.14 99.73

3. Applications that aim to find a trade-offs between the calcu-
lation cost and the security level. These applications accord a
priority to the first objective (calculation cost weight between
0.6 and 1). The evaluation carried out makes it possible to de-
termine the difference between the value of the aggregated ob-
jective function and the optimal solution as shown in Tables 2,
3 and Fig. 15. We have shown that our proposed model ND-
NAuth presents the minimum gap compared to the other model
that we propose SP-NDNAuth and the previous works OPTC and
SP-OPTC, more precisely when the network size is less than 60.
4. Applications that are interested in finding a compromise be-
tween the cost of calculation and the security level with a
 R. Boussaha, Y. Challal and A. Bouabdallah et al. / Journal of Information Security and Applications 50 (2020) 102409
penchant for the second objective (calculation cost weight
between 0 and 0.4). Besides, the evaluation determine the dif-
ference between the value of the aggregated objective function
and the optimal solution. We notice that NDNAuth presents the
minimal gap compared to the other models with vulnerability-
attack-aware model. However, it displays nearly the same
behaviour as SP-NDNAuth with a reliability-aware model.
5. Applications that are interested in finding a fair compromise
between the calculation cost and the security level (calculation
cost weight is equal to 0.5). Based on the gap obtained between
the value of the aggregated objective function and the optimal
solution of the two objective functions, we notice that ND-
NAuth has an important divergence when the network size is
equal to 40. On the contrary, it exhibits nearly the same value
of the other models OPTC, OPTS and SP-NDNAuth when the
network size is equal to 20. Additionally, it displays the same
behaviour as SP-NDNAuth when the network size is equal to 60.
6. Regarding the impact of the topology, we found that the Power
Law node degree distribution has the greatest impact on our
system performances. In addition, the performance in terms of
the security level are proportional to the link density, which
does not affect the processing overhead.
In application scenario 1 we can consider the case of secured
wireless sensor networks [17] or smart grid networks [18]. In
application scenario 2, we can consider financial/cloud networks
[18], genomics/biometrics applications [19] and commercial en-
terprise systems. Whereas the last three scenario applications 3,
4 and 5 can deal with enterprise systems or individual entities
in the enterprise systems or even the broad range of potential
applications of network coding in the areas of networking, com-
munication and distributed storage [20]. In this case, the NDN
operator chooses the relative importance of each objective function
based on agreements with real-world content providers.
8. Related work
Named-Data Networking shifts the Internet towards data
awareness, so data sets become first class routable objects. In this
work, we propose to combine the network coding technique with
Named Data networking. Accordingly, we classify related work
into three parts: (1) Network coding in NDN; (2) Security in NDN;
and (3) Securing network coding in NDN.
8.1. Network coding in NDN
Network coding has been shown to be a very promising tech-
nique that can achieve the upper bound multicast capacity given
by the max-flow min-cut theorem [21]. Recently, it has been
shown that network coding benefits Named Data Networks. In
fact, applying network coding in NDN allows network nodes to
jointly perform data computation, forwarding and storage, which
can effectively reduce the complexity of cache coordination and
content delivery. Recently some initial attempts focuses mainly
on proposing new mechanisms for transmitting data or interest
packets, as well as improving the caching strategy with the use
of network coding in NDN. In [22], the authors investigate the
required architectural changes that arise from the semantic differ-
ence between naming. They utilize effectively multi-path parallel
forwarding, reduce the complexity of cache coordination and
simplify the transport design. In [23], the authors propose a novel
signature scheme compatible with network coding, they propose
also a forwarding plane to observe the network state, such as
network failure, link transmission and performance distribution
of coded packets. In [24], a modified architecture based on index
coding is proposed, where each group of nodes is served by a
19
unique router. The latter keeps track of which data are being
stored in which node. The request for different contents can be
satisfied by the coded messages that are encoded by the central
router. In [25], the authors design a special Interest coding and
forwarding strategies for getting linearly independent coded blocks
simultaneously from multiple nodes. Interests are aggregated, sep-
arated and forwarded in every node based on the strategy that
guarantees the responding coded blocks are linearly independent.
Some attempts were also proposed in order to use network
coding with different types of named data networks like mobile
and vehicular NDN. In [26], the authors propose an energy efficient
Context-Aware Cache Coding scheme (CACC). They use loss rate
and file size metrics to identify the context in which cache coding
could be used. They prove that CACC improves delivery rate and
reduce power consumption based on real-world deployment and
android smartphone emulations. In [27], the authors study the
problem of content distribution in vehicular network environ-
ments. They use a selective random network coding approach and
leverage the expansion properties of interacting nodes in a cluster
to be interpreted in terms of social connections among nodes.
In [28], the authors propose a controllable multi-source content
retrieval service over CCN in Vehicular ad hoc networks. They
use Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) to analyse routing interfaces
conditions. Requested symbols can be distributed adaptively to
different interfaces according to their weight, and forwarding
decisions will be made accordingly to obtain the information that
makes transmission more effective.
We investigate too research trends that aim at introducing ad-
vanced coding mechanism to NDN. In [29], Anastasiades et al. pro-
pose RC-NDN a Raptor coding-based NDN architecture. The au-
thors design a protocol that is compatible with the interest-data
NDN transmission scheme, and use pipelining to authorize concur-
rent request and to take advantage of the packet diversity carried
by Raptor Coding. Raptor codes are applied only at the content
sources and guarantee a moderate computational cost. In [30,31],
Parisis et al. combine ICN and fountain coding for efficient and
reliable content distribution in opportunistic networks. The pro-
posed approach bypasses redundancy associated to multi-source or
multi-path communication, without utilizing any error control pol-
icy or coordination process. In [32], Shu et al. assimilate Binary
Reed-Solomon (BRS) code with information centric fog network
architecture to ensure storage reliability at distributed fogs. The
content-centric communication process makes data indexing and
searching more efficient in network bandwidth and time resources.
8.2. Security in NDN
In NDN, Data is consistently fragmented into independent
encrypted chunks, though some critical information could be
accessed like content name, content size and timing. Accordingly,
malicious users can launch diverse attacks like, denial of service,
cache poisoning, time analysis, packet mistreatment, breaching
signer’s key, bogus announcement, jamming, etc. Therefore, a def-
inition of an appropriate mechanism to ensure privacy, integrity,
source authenticity, trust management or even access control
seems to be incontestably necessary.
• Privacy : NDN changes the mean to search data and how users
interact to retrieve it. Hence new privacy threats come into
sight like content privacy, name privacy, cache privacy or signa-
ture privacy. Some solutions were proposed in order to address
this issue. In [33], the authors propose PrivICN, a system based
on proxy encryption, which protects the confidentiality of
content name and content data. The proposed solution does
not require an end-to-end communication between consumers
and grants flexible user management. In [34], the authors
20 R. Boussaha, Y. Challal and A. Bouabdallah et al. / Journal of Information Security and Applications 50 (2020) 102409
propose an efficient mechanism that encapsulates NDN inside
NDN to create a secure virtual private network for Named
Data Networking. The scheme encrypts NDN packets of higher
security domains and encapsulates them inside the payload of
unencrypted NDN packets. In [35], Ghali et al., introduce an
extensive evaluation of CCN privacy issues in the presence of
numerous antagonists. They precise the constraints to achieve
different level of privacy for channel-based communication and
they review how to deploy CCN privacy mechanism.
• Trust management : A trust-based method for mitigating
cache poisoning attacks was proposed in [36]. The approach
stands on three principal factors: content popularity, negative
feedback and peers credibility. The authors propose an incen-
tive mechanism and evaluate it under proactive and reactive
attacks. They prove accordingly its superiority compared to
existing methods. Yu et al. [37] develop an assortment of trust
schemas, which ensure an automatic mean to authenticate and
sign individual data packets. The authors design a prototype
and make tests in a wide range of NDN applications.
• Access control : In [38], the authors propose ConfTrack-CCN, a
security layer that enforces confidential and trackable content
distribution and supports the evolution of control access policy.
They evaluate the computational overhead that encryption
scheme introduces and prove that the proposed solution
improves cache hit rate and is more efficient. Ghali et al.
[39] propose a flexible access control enforcement scheme,
which supports both hash and encryption-based name ob-
fuscation using particularly interest packet information. They
evaluate computational, storage and bandwidth cost of IBAC
(Interest-Based Access Control) and prove its effectiveness.
• Integrity and authentication : Data integrity and source
authentication are inherently integrated to NDN paradigm.
Each content producer should digitally sign data packet. How-
ever existing heavyweight signature and verification schemes
generate a significant overhead and may evoke various type
of attacks like denial of service or cache pollution. Different
solutions were proposed in order to address this challenge
like [40–43]. They focus mainly on reducing signature and
verification algorithms overhead with a low response time and
bandwidth consumption.
8.3. Securing network coding in NDN
The new way of handling data, that network coding offers
in actual networks presents several security challenges. The re-
search community investigates essentially Byzantine (creation,
modification and replay) and eavesdropping attacks. Among all
the threats of network coding considered so far, pollution at-
tacks are the most important. Recently, several schemes have
been proposed to grant protection against pollution attacks for
network coding applications. We consider mainly information the-
oretic approaches [44,45] and cryptographic approaches [46,47],
which are not specifically designed for named data networking.
Information-theoretic schemes mostly leverage error correction
codes to add redundancy to the messages at source nodes. In this
way, destination nodes can recover the original messages from
the received packets. However, these approaches set limitations
on the number of nodes, the number of packets or the number
of links the adversary can corrupt. Otherwise, Cryptographic
approaches allow to authenticate packets using the homomor-
phic hash function [3] or the homomorphic signatures [4]. With
cryptographic-based methods, the nodes set uses cryptographic
techniques to send additional verification information that allows
destination nodes to verify the authenticity and the integrity of
coded packets. Homomorphic signature was formally introduced
in [48]. Its definition was adapted to the network coding scenario
by Boneh et al. [3] who designed an efficient homomorphic NCS
scheme in the random oracle model using bilinear maps. In the
literature, the processing overhead of homomorphic cryptographic
operations has been studied mainly in [15,49].
Furthermore, in [50], the authors developed a framework that
investigates the probability of intercepting a sufficient number of
coded packets and recovering the confidential exchanged mes-
sages. They considered a multi-relay network and proposed a
cross-layer security scheme, and derived analytical expressions of
outage probability at the intended destination and the eavesdrop-
per. The interception probability for RLNC-enabled opportunistic
relaying is derived. The analysis shows that the proposed model
achieves a good balance between security and reliability. In [51],
the authors propose a Connected Dominating Set CDS-based and
Flow-oriented Coding aware routing (CFCR) strategy to enhance
throughput and to improve potential coding opportunities of
wireless mesh networks. In order to guarantee network coding
efficiency and reliability and considering the fixed backbone and
unlimited energy features of mesh networks, CFCR constructs the
approximate Minimum Connected Dominating Set and excludes
routing with coding collision using the confirmation process. The
routing with the most coding-aware routing metric benefit is
selected to decrease the packet loss ratio and reduce the failure
rate of decoding. In [52], the authors construct a reduction or a
mapping from the problem of multiple-unicast network coding to
the problem of unicast secure network coding and single-unicast
network error correction. They consider the case in which one
link is eavesdropped. They show that a rate tuple is achievable
in the multiple-unicast network coding instance if and only if a
corresponding rate is achievable in the unicast secure network
coding instance, or in the unicast network error correction in-
stance. The proposed reductions indicate that solving the simple
instances of the secure network coding problem or of the net-
work error correction problem are in fact as hard as solving the
multiple-unicast problem. They prove, moreover, that the capacity
of a unicast network error correction instance in general is not
achievable.
Nonetheless, the practical aspects of the secure network coding
implementation in a named data networking architecture have
not been well investigated in previous work. These schemes
generate an important computational overhead since they need
complex cryptographic computations like modular operations,
exponentiations, multiplications, etc. In addition, they require
the verification information (e.g., hashes or signatures) to be
transmitted separately to all nodes in advance, which is difficult to
achieve. Xu et al. [53] propose a reliable content delivery scheme
in lousy NDN networks. They use network coding as an error
control technique to reduce packet retransmissions. They assess
the performance of network coding compared to automatic repeat
request (ARQ) and forward error correction (FEC) techniques and
they demonstrate its efficiency based on real physical emulations.
In [54], the authors design the first Access Control mechanism for
Network coding-based Named Data Networking. They incorporate
a new technique called AONT (All or Nothing Transform) with
encryption to ensure secure access control to the encoding ma-
trix. Experimental evaluations assess that the proposed solution
reduces significantly the generated overhead.
In [55], TAN Xiaobin et al. focuses mainly on the proposition of
a copyright protection scheme in Information Centric Networking
based on linear network coding, which provides fast and efficient
data retrieval. In [56], the authors propose an Autonomous System
(AS-s) based security mechanism for network coding application
in CCN. The proposed solution provides the optimal throughput
of Network coding and insures integrity, origin authentication,
correctness of content packets and trustworthiness among border
routers.
 R. Boussaha, Y. Challal and A. Bouabdallah et al. / Journal of Information Security and Applications 50 (2020) 102409 21

Table 8
Classification of network coding and security approaches in NDN.

Mechanism Network type Coding Caching Routing Security Bandwidth Overhead

Network Coding in NDN

Zhang and Xu [22] CCN Network Coding ++ ++ − ++ ++
Liu et al. [23] ICN Network Coding ++ ++ − − ++
Sadjadpour [24] ICN Network Coding ++ ++ − ++ ++
Liu and Yu [25] CCN Network Coding − ++ − − ++
Joy et al. [26] Mobile ICN Network Coding ++ − − ++ ++
Fard and Leung [27] VANET CCN Network Coding − − − − −
Wang et al. [28] VANET CCN Network Coding − ++ − ++ ++
Anastasiades et al. [29] NDN Raptor Coding − − − − ++
Parisis et al. [30] NDN Fountain coding ++ ++ − − ++
Parisis et al. [31] NDN Fountain coding ++ ++ − ++ ++
Shu et al. [32] ICN Binary Reed-Solomon Coding − − − ++ −
Security in NDN
Bernardini et al. [33] ICN / − − Privacy − ++
Partridge et al. [34] NDN / − − Privacy − −
Ghali et al. [35] CCN / − − Privacy − −
Rezaeifar et al. [36] NDN / − ++ Trust − ++
Yu et al. [37] NDN / − − Trust − −
Mangili et al. [38] NDN / ++ ++ Access Control ++ ++
Ghali et al. [39] CCN / − ++ Access Control ++ ++
Yu et al. [40] NDN / − − Authentication − ++
Li et al. [41] NDN / ++ ++ Integrity Authenticity − ++
Kim et al. [42] NDN / ++ − Integrity − ++
Refaei et al. [43] NDN / − ++ authentication − ++
Securing network coding in NDN
Xu et al. [53] NDN Network Coding ++ ++ Reliability − −
Wu et al. [54] NDN Network Coding − ++ Access Control − ++
Tan et al. [55] ICN Network Coding − − Access control − −
Xu et al. [56] CCN Network Coding ++ ++ Authentication Integrity − −

Table 9
NDNAuth and SP-NDNAuth features.

Mechanism Network type Coding variant Caching Routing Security Bandwidth Overhead

NDNAuth and its variant NDN Network Coding ++ ++ Authentication ++ ++

Table 8 summarizes the works already mentioned and carries
out a classification based on the predominant characteristics. We
first mentioned the type of the network used by considering the
different variants of NDN architecture (namely CCN, ICN, mobile
CCN and Vehicular CCN). We also marked the work that defined
new routing and caching strategies by ++ (− if not). We have
specified the type of security service studied by each proposal
(privacy, access control, trust, integrity and authentication). As
we marked the solutions that evaluated the bandwidth and the
processing overhead of the proposed systems by ++ (− if not).
In summary, we noticed that, in all the mentioned solutions,
it is unclear to what extent the network architecture should be
modified to incorporate fully homomorphic encryption scheme
to ensure both authentication and integrity against pollution
attacks. Up to our knowledge, our proposal is the first such work
providing both an evaluation of fully homomorphic encryption
cost in Named Data Networking and an adaptation of the new
approach to Interest transmission strategy and Data forwarding
strategy relying on software-defined networking architecture.
Table 9 presents the main features of our solution and its
positioning regarding the investigated works.
9. Conclusion
In this work, we leverage network coding to improve NDN
paradigm performance. This changes radically transport network
and breaks with the forwarding principle of conventional commu-
nication by allowing any network node to recombine several input
packets into one coded packet. However, introducing network
coding in NDN exposes the network to a new threat relating to
data pollution attacks. In order to face this threat, we introduce
a novel MIP model called NDNAuth and we present SP-NDNAuth
variant for data coding and signature in single-path-based named
data networking. The purpose of these models is to select a set
of trusted nodes, which perform coding, homomorphic signature
and verification operations, instead of assigning these tasks to all
the nodes in the network. We present formal analysis to show
that our proposed models overcome security challenges in both
attack/vulnerability aware systems and reliability aware systems.
Furthermore, we perform extensive experiments to demonstrate
that NDNAuth and SP-NDNAuth maintain throughput and fairness
as seen in the standard coding paradigm. We use a centralized
approach based on Software-Defined Networking to manage the
deployment of the multiobjective optimization model. We, more-
over, introduce a new metric to measure the rate of erroneous
messages in the network and we evaluate its value with processing
overhead or security level objective function.
Our results suggest that our solution can consistently achieve
an increased gain across network topologies that have different
structural properties like node degree distribution and link density.
Evaluation results show improved performance cost and enhanced
security level of our proposed models NDNAuth and SP-NDNAuth
compared to existing solutions where all the nodes must perform
coding, signature and verification operations. We have shown
that Power Law node degree distribution has the most impact on
performance.
In this paper, the SDN controller is responsible for determining
the optimal encoding and signature assignment strategy in the
network and the optimal routing based on network coding and
homomorphic signature statistics collected from NDN nodes. In
22 R. Boussaha, Y. Challal and A. Bouabdallah et al. / Journal of Information Security and Applications 50 (2020) 102409
fact, centralized control can decrease the complexity related to sig-
nalling interaction between NDN switches. Hence, centralization in
SDN-based architecture brings many potential benefits; however,
it also creates some limitations for the system, like scalability, and
resilience. The SDN routing and monitoring tables must be care-
fully designed to avoid becoming the new bottleneck. Although
the controller is logically centralized in the network, it have to be
physically distributed in order to consider the above mentioned
issues. In fact, for a large scale NDN, the functionality of the con-
troller can be operated by several cooperative controllers. We leave
those enhancements for future work. Furthermore, the numerical
experiments are insightful for the future design and implemen-
tation of a data/interest forwarding strategy and a caching policy
in a distributed scenario. Finally, to gather practical feasibility
experience, we intend to use NDNAuth and SP-NDNAuth models in
some application scenarios in blockchain and 5G industry systems.
Declaration of Competing Interest
The authors declare that they have no known competing finan-
cial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to
influence the work reported in this paper.
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