DEPARTMENT OF ELECTRONICS AND COMMUNICATION ENGINEERING

A TECHNICAL SEMINOR ON

Under the SUPERVISION of by,

 CONTENTS

1. ABSTRACT
2. INTRODUCTION
3. METHODOLOGY
4. OUTCOMES
 ABSTRACT

In this paper, we study some of the most common formation

protocols for scatternets such as BlueTrees, BlueNet, and
BlueStars.
The paper focuses on security mechanisms that are needed to
provide secure communication among the nodes in the scatternet.
We propose a secure communication between two parties based
on encryption mechanisms.
In this approach secret keys are proposed for each pair.
The focus of the suggested method is the scatternet
communication security and in particular the secret key
exchange.
The paper describes a mechanism for the key agreement
procedure through a secure scatternet formation protocol.
 INTRODUCTION
Nowadays driven by the technology advancements and
introducing mobile computing networking capabilities have
been extended to mobile devices, such as mobile phones,
PDAs, etc.
In order to provide efficient communication capabilities
among these devices, the wireless networking technologies
play an important role.
Currently, Bluetooth is one of the most commonly uses ad-
hoc wireless networking technology.
Similar to the other wireless networking technologies the
Bluetooth uses open-air media that makes it involved with
the security and interference issues.
In this paper, the security of the Bluetooth-powered mobile
device network is discussed. We study the security issues of
the Bluetooth networks and then a new mechanism to
enhance the security level Bluetooth networks is proposed.
BLUETOOTH NETWORKING
The main objective of the Bluetooth development is
enabling two or more Bluetooth-enabled devices to
communicate and perform data exchange among each other.
In contrast with the wireless communication technology
used in wi-fi, Bluetooth network does not require an access
point or central infrastructure to allow several devices to
communicate.
Hence, Bluetooth is an ad-hoc networking technology.
Bluetooth ad hoc networking requires that each node to
manage its own properties.
These properties include the role (either slave or master), the
status/mode (standby, active, park, etc.) and any other
properties that form a station in a network.
Bluetooth Operations
Bluetooth has different characteristics in establishing
connection between two devices comparing to the Infrared
Data Association (IrDA) technology.
The Infrared data communication does not require any
connection initialization, but in Bluetooth, there are several
states that indicate the status of the communicating devices.
The status or modes are intended for power saving, since
most of the applications of Bluetooth are low-powered
devices.
Bluetooth Scatternet Formation
Bluetooth scatternet is a collection of more than one piconets.
The piconets should be within the range, and interconnected by
intermediate gateways.
There are two types of scatternet formation protocol, single-hop
and multi-hop network
. Single-hop protocol can only be applied if all of the nodes are
within each other’s transmission range (one-hop away of each
other).
In real-life application, the single-hop network is hardly exists.
Therefore the solution is using multi-hop scatternet formation
protocol.
BLUETOOTH SECURITY
The Bluetooth as a wireless communication technology would
have higher possibilities of security exposure comparing to the
conventional wired network.
This is because any attacker in an open area can intercept the
broadcasted radio signal.
In the following we study Bluetooth pairing and authentication
and discuss the main security concerns regarding these two
process in the Bluetooth networks.
Bluetooth Pairing
Pairing is the operation mode that two devices (pairs) are agreed
on a specific shared key to perform a secure communication.
The shared key is used to authenticate both parties when they
exchange data.
Authentication
The authentication in the Bluetooth system uses challenge
response scheme.
The aim of the authentication process is to make sure that
each party poses the same correct link key.
In the authentication process, both devices alternate the role
as claimant or verifier.
In the next section we study the security problems regarding
the mentioned processes.
 METHODOLOGY
The proposed solution to provide secure communication in a
scatternet, is to exchange the secret/combination key securely
between any two devices in the scatternet.
After that when there is an agreement on the shared secret key
between two devices, the communications in the scatternet
would be done through a secure channel.
In this section, the proposed formation algorithm is described.
The suggested formation method is based on the BlueTrees.
Hence, the new formation algorithm is tailored to provide
improvements and enhancements for a highly secured
scatternet.
The New Scatternet Formation Protocol
In order to achieve a highly secure data transmission, and in
particular key exchange, a special formation protocol is
designed.
The BlueTrees concept is used as the base for the proposed
formation method.
The method generates a tree-like structure for the scatternet.
BlueTrees has a unique property of single authority that can
be used as a central point of security control over the
scatternet.
Indeed, unlike the other two protocols, BlueStars and
BlueNet, BlueTrees formation is initiated by one single node.
This reduces the required time to select the initialisation
nodes.
Communication Channel Establishment and
Secret Key Exchange
• After the discovery process, all of the nodes are in standby
mode, waiting for any communication request.
• The secret key exchange is only performed along the
communication path from source to destination.
• Every two devices use distinct secret key (combination key)
to provide secure communication among the members in the
scatternet.
When there is an existing combination-key in any two nodes,
the communication can be performed faster and more efficient
because there is no more key exchange process required.
In other terms, as time goes by, the performance of the
scatternet would be increased.
The aim of the proposed scatternet algorithm is to construct a
Bluetooth network that provides high security in data
communications.
The proposed solution for Bluetooth scatternet
communication security comprises two main aspects: the
scatternet formation and the security mechanism. The security
mechanism utilises asymmetric encryption for key agreement
and then uses symmetric encryption for data communication.