Mics Newsletter - January 2009

NEWSLETTER January 2009 • The challenge of wireless security: Prof. Jean-Pierre Hubaux, from EPF Lausanne, explains how security has become an important issue within the MICS Center. Pages 2&3 • Moritz Köhler and Philipp Bolliger have received support by the MICS Spinfund for kicking off their Koubachi venture. Their idea is to use a wireless smart plant pot to enable people to interact with their plants in a completely new way. Pages 4&5 • Shockfish has improved its TinyNode platform. Find out more about it... Page 6

• Meet with Nesime Tatbul, an assistant professor of computer science at ETH Zurich. Pages 7&8

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THE CHALLENGE OF WIRELESS SECURITY Securing wireless networks is an ongoing process that requires greater effort than that required for other networks and systems. Prof. Jean-Pierre Hubaux, from EPF Lausanne, explains how security has become an important issue within the MICS Center. - When the NCCR MICS started, was wireless security already a concern? At the beginning, MICS was focused primarily on mobile ad hoc networks (used for person to per-

son communication). Security has been a major challenge from the beginning, because of the high vulnerability of those networks. In classical wireless networks such as cellular networks, most of the security operations (including user authentication) involve the local base station. In mobile ad hoc networks, this assumption cannot be made, because by definition there is no base station. - What were your goals when the MICS Center started? We designed security solutions for fully self-organized mobile ad hoc networks, namely ad hoc networks

Wormhole attack: the adversary sets up two nodes connected by an out-of-band link, relaying messages between two parts of the network. As a result, a large fraction of the routes traverse the wormhole, giving the adversary control over a significant portion of the network traffic.

in which there is no central authority (not even a certification authority). In particular, we have shown that, in contrast with intuition, mobility can facilitate security mechanisms such as the establishment of security associations. - Are the risks inherent in wireless technology greater than for wired networks? Absolutely. Perhaps the most significant source of risks in wireless networks is that the underlying communications medium, the radio wave, is open to intruders. Loss of confidentiality and integrity as well as the threat of denial of service attacks are risks that are particularly difficult to thwart in wireless communications. All sensors, cellular phones and similar equipment communicate through radio waves. - Where do we stand as far as MICS is concerned? Since the beginning of MICS, the understanding on security has well progressed. The VerSePro project led by Prof. David Basin, from ETH Zurich, and myself, was launched in 2005 to provide MICS with a set of correctly proved security protocols along with methods and tool support for such verification. Some of the challenges we are addressing include secure neighbor discovery and secure distance

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bounding (to securely estimate the distance between two nodes). The progress is concrete. Today we can formally prove properties of the above-mentioned protocols. Furthermore, a new generation of specialists is born. For example, former MICS PhD students such as Srdjan Čapkun, Levente Buttyan, and Mario Čagalj are now all in faculty positions. - Is securing a network expensive? Yes it is. We are investigating optimized techniques that reduce the costs. This can be achieved by more light-weight cryptographic algorithms, by reducing the number of crypto-related bits to be pushed over the air, or by avoiding redundant security mechanisms. - Do you interact with other projects? Yes, for example, with the Ultra Wide Band Communication project, led by Prof. Jean-Yves Le Boudec, for which we aim to strengthen the secure ranging protocol against attacks. We also contribute to the development of the Transportation Center, at EPFL. It involves all aspects of mobility of people and goods. Modern transportation systems rely heavily on information and communication technologies. Therefore, security has an important part to play in such a center.

Relay attack. Normal operation: a legitimate reader recognizes a legitimate card and grants access. Attack: the adversary uses a fake card and a fake reader to relay messages between the legitimate reader and card. As a result, the reader grants access to the adversary.

We are also partner of a European project on “Secure vehicle communication” (SeVeCom). Vehicle communication aims to improve road safety and to optimize the traffic through co-operative systems. These communications are clearly highly vulnerable to attacks, and SeVeCom is a response to this challenge.

For more information:

What are the plans for the future? The work will concentrate on reinforcing protocols formalization. We will also continue to look for solutions that have an acceptable overhead. In parallel with our MICS activities, we will continue investigating selfish behavior in security mechanisms. Interview by Florence Luy

http://secowinet.epfl.ch

- on the activities based on secure neighbor discovery: http://wiki.epfl.ch/snd - on the relation between malicious and selfish behavior in wireless networks:

- on the European project focused on secure vehicular communications : http://www.sevecom.org - on EPFL activities related to secure vehicular communications: http://ivc.epfl.ch.

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MICS NEWSLETTER

SMART PLANTS FOR THE SMART HOME Moritz Köhler and Philipp Bolliger have received support by the MICS Spinfund for kicking off their Koubachi venture. The company the two are founding is an official ETH spin-off coming out of the Distributed Systems Group led by Prof. Mattern.

smart home of the future. With Koubachi, our customers will be able to see on their cell-phone or on the Web, how their plants are doing. It is similar to the well-known Tamagotchi, except that it is about real living plants”, explains Philipp Bolliger, who will be Koubachi’s technical lead. “Our main technical challenge will be to turn sensor values into information people can un-

years, we are currently in the process of filing a number of patents in several countries for our sensor node and the service platform behind it. Our core business will be the management of the data that comes from the Koubachi sensor nodes, and goes to our customers. That is where we are coming from, it is what we know best”, says Moritz Köhler. “Initially we will focus on the German speaking markets, but we are already planning the expansion to further European countries and the US.” SENSOR DATA DISTRIBUTION

Philipp Bolliger (left) and Moritz Köhler

“Koubachi is a wireless smart plant pot which enables people to interact with their plants in a completely new way. It will be one of the first entertainment products for the

derstand. By incorporating a community-based learning approach, we will be able to provide better results overt time”, Philipp adds. “Following our research of the past

Their service platform allows them to receive, process, and store a wide range of sensor data, which then can be made available to other systems such as Web-applications through light-weight Web-services. “Our core competency is to process and distribute sensor data. It is a fundamental part of Koubachi. But we are already thinking about offering this competency to our partners, allowing them to build sensor based applications in the domains of entertainment, security, energy management, and health care. Due to our focus, we are still looking for a partner, who can provide an affordable sink, possibly a ZigBee to Ethernet bridge”, the two explain. “We hope to get in fruitful contact with other start-ups in the MICS en-

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vironment that focus on the smart home. Maybe this can be the start of a wide range of innovations for the smart home made in Switzerland”. Their expectations for the Spinfund period are to finalize IP protection, get in touch with partners and customers, and to build a production-ready prototype. After this time the two plan to acquire additional funding and to expand their business activities with the goal to generate positive cash-flow as soon as possible. Both founders have already previous entrepreneurial experience. Moritz started his first company in Munich at the age of 21. Back then his business focused on the implementation of ERP systems for large industrial companies. Philipp founded his first company at the age of 18 which provided IT support for SMEs as well as individuals. Florence Luy For more information: www.koubachi.com Contacts: [email protected] and [email protected]

A MICS Spinfund goes to “sreee!”

Nepomuk, the social semantic desktop

Under the project name «sreee!», ETH Zurich and MICS researchers Dr. Steffen P. Walz and Thomas Seibert have been granted a MICS Spinfund.Thomas and Steffen are hosted by Prof. Hovestadt (CAAD group at the ETH Zurich) and will prepare the start-up “sreee!” in the coming months.

“Technology Review” recently had a story looking at Nepomuk - the semantic tool that is bundled with the latest version of KDE. It seems that some Semantic Web researchers believe the tool will prove a breakthrough for semantic technology. By encouraging people to add semantic meta-data to the information stored on their machines they hope it could succeed where other semantic tools have failed.

“sreee!” evaluates the merging of social networks and emerging mobility patterns and seeks to combine these with game mechanics in order to achieve critical mass with the intended target audience. During their funding period, Steffen and Thomas will create a business plan and conceptualize an architectural draft of the platform’s engine. At the end of the funding phase, an architectural prototype will alleviate understanding of business value for interested VC investors. FL

Nepomuk brings together researchers, industrial software developers, and representative industrial users, to develop a comprehensive solution for extending the personal desktop into a collaboration environment which supports both the personal information management and the sharing and exchange across social and organizational relations. In the past, the project did exploit many P2P developments (P-Grid, Gridvine) that had occurred at the MICS Center. FL

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TinyNode184: Even lower consumption! module can be operated down to 1.8V. Shockfish SA develops and sells the TinyNode platform that is ideal for research projects and whose modules are ready to be “plugged” into industrial applications. Shockfish SA is an industrial partner for the MICS program and is supporting various projects that are using Tinynode modules, mainly in the area of environmental monitoring: Sensorscope (sensorscope. epfl.ch), Permasense (cn.cs.unibas. ch/projects/permasense/), CommonSense (commonsense.epfl.ch) to name a few. These deployments gather valuable data from the environment through different local sensors, which are then routed to a central station for further analysis. In November 2008, Shockfish SA has launched TinyNode184, a new module that is fully compatible to the existing TinyNode584. With its SX1211 radio chip from Semtech in combination with its MSP430F2417 microcontroller from TI, it offers an exceptionally low receive power consumption of only 3mA. This new module targets applications that require sophisticated 2-way protocols with battery lifetimes of over 10 years. Sleep mode current is reduced to 2uA typically and the

The TinyNode184 features extremely low power consumption of only 3mA in full receive mode and 25mA in transmit mode at +10dBm output power. The receivers sensitivity level is at -104dBm with 25kbps which translates into a LOS communication range of about 150m, using its built-in antenna. It features a packet handling mode with automatic CRC generation and data whitening. The bitrates can be programmed from 1.56 to 200kbps. For external antennas, SMA connector footprints that are compatible with the TinyNode584 are present. Both US (915MHz) and EU (868MHz) versions are available. On the TinyNode184, Shockfish added an on-board 8-Pin interface with 2 ADC channels, one interrupt pin, one UART channel and a power supply, which allows interfacing low-complexity sensor or actuators without any additional hardware. For more complex prototypes and sensor boards, as well as for pro-

gramming and debugging the module, the Tinynode184 is compatible with the Standard Extension Board (SEB) for PC connectivity through RS232/USB. Also, it can be plugged on a Mamaboard that can act as a bridge to GSM/ GPRS or to LAN/WLAN networks. The TinyNode584 is still the best choice for a various number of applications requiring long range communication. The new TinyNode184 is complementary, offering lower power consumption at the cost of reduced sensitivity and shorter range. It is the natural choice for denser networks. The TinyNode184 is fully TinyOS2.x compatible. All the applications provided in the TinyOS distribution work smoothly, without any code changes. Migration of existing TinyNode584 code to the TinyNode184 platform can be done with minimum effort. Roger Meier More information on: www.tinynode.com

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«THE RESEARCH WORLD IS FULL OF OPPORTUNITIES» Nesime Tatbul is an assistant professor of computer science at ETH Zurich. She is involved in a few data stream processing projects in MICS, including XTream, UpStream, and DejaVu. Interview with a young scientist who likes Switzerland and its mountains...

a PhD study also in the same field. My PhD work at Brown University was on data stream management systems, more specifically on the performance aspects. At Brown, I was involved in the design and implementation of the Aurora/Borealis projects, closely collaborating with a cast of researchers from Brandeis University

demonstration award at ACM SIGMOD’05, etc.) and a start-up company in the Boston area (StreamBase Systems, Inc.). In addition to my PhD work, I also spent a summer at the IBM Almaden Research Center as a research intern working on database caching, and worked as a consultant for the U.S. Army Research Institute of Environmental Medicine, on data management

and MIT. It was a large-scale effort that resulted in successful research results (e.g., numerous highly-cited VLDB/SIGMOD papers, best system

in personal area sensor networks. Since early 2007, I have been an assistant professor of computer science at ETH Zurich.

- Kindly introduce yourself... I am originally from Devrek/Turkey, a small town near the coast of western Black Sea (about 200km north of Ankara and 400km east of Istanbul). I had my high school education at TED Private High School in Zonguldak, and then studied computer engineering at METU (Middle East Technical University) in Ankara. After that, I went to USA for my graduate studies in Computer Science. I chose to study computer engineering after high school since I thought that this field was becoming more and more important into the future. Then I also liked the fact that it supports and is very essential in developments in almost all other fields of life and science as well. - What is your academic background? After doing my senior project and master thesis on data management systems, I decided to pursue

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- What is your involvement in MICS? I got involved in a couple of MICS projects shortly after I arrived in Switzerland, all in the field of data stream processing. First, with colleagues from the ETH Zurich Systems Group, we are working on the XTream project, where our goal is to develop a global-scale extensible data stream management system for pervasive applications. Additionally, I am leading two other MICS projects: UpStream and DejaVu. In UpStream, we are developing storage-centric load management techniques for high-speed data streams with update semantics. In DejaVu, we are building a complex event processing system that integrates pattern matching over live and archived event streams behind a uniform, declarative interface. Applications of these systems include financial market data analysis, RFID-based asset tracking, more general sensor-based monitoring, and so forth. More information about these projects can be found on the research pages under http://www.systems.ethz.ch/. - What are your expectations regarding your career? I would like my research to have high impact in academia as well as in practical life. I think that the

MICS NEWSLETTER

research environment at ETH Zurich is full of opportunities to make both of these happen. As examples, being part of the MICS program is one of them. Getting access to industry collaborations through structures such as the ETH Zurich Enterprise Computing Center (ECC) is another.

Interview by Florence Luy

Jean-Pierre Hubaux becomes an IEEE Fellow The world’s leading professional association for the advancement of technology has named 302 IEEE Senior among which Jean-Pierre Hubaux for his contributions to wireless security. For this MICS member and professor at the EPFL, this nomination confirms the value of his work. The Fellow title is the highest distinction given by the IEEE.

CEREMONY FOR INTERNET GIRLS

On January 10th, a new group of young ladies received their certificate for the course “Internet for girls” from the hands of Prof. Giorgio Margaritondo, Vice-President for Academic Affairs at EPFL. © Alain Herzog

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Towards a 3rd phase for the NCCR MICS The SNF has made a preliminary decision to support MICS in phase 3 with 50% of the phase 2 budget. This reflects the high appreciation of the excellent work done within in the centre over many years. We are therefore invited to make a final proposal, due in July 2009, based on this budget. More information will be provided soon in order to finalize this document. Thank you very much to all those who are collaborating to this effort! Jacques Bovay

NEW PUBLICATIONS Journal papers: • Zhou, Yongluan; Ooi, Beng Chin; Tan, Kian-Lee, Disseminating Streaming Data in a Dynamic Environment: an Adaptive and CostBased Approach, The VLDB Journal, Volume 17, Number 6, nov 2008.

MICS NEWSLETTER

Conference papers: • Shantanu Das, Matúš Mihalák, Rastislav Šrámek, Elias Vicari, Peter Widmayer, Rendezvous of Mobile Agents when Tokens Fail Anytime, 12th International Conference On Principles Of Distributed Systems (OPODIS), Luxor, 15-18 Dec 08. • Lochmatter, Thomas; Martinoli, Alcherio, Simulation Experiments with Bio-Inspired Algorithms for Odor Source Localization in Laminar Wind Flow, 7th International Conference on Machine Learning and Applications (ICMLA 2008); San Diego, CA, USA, December 11-13, 2008, p. 437443. • Poturalski, Marcin; Papadimitratos, Panos; Hubaux, Jean-Pierre, Towards Provable Secure Neighbor Discovery in Wireless Networks, 6th ACM Workshop on Formal Methods in Security Engineering; Alexandria, VA, October 27, 2008, p. 31-42. • Jan S. Rellermeyer, Oriana Riva, Gustavo Alonso, AlfredO: An Architecture for Flexible Interaction with Electronic Devices, 9th ACM/IFIP/ USENIX International Middleware Conference (Middleware), Leuven, 01-05 Dec 08. • Lochmatter, Thomas; Martinoli, Alcherio, Understanding the Potential Impact of Multiple Robots in Odor

Source Localization, 9th Symposium on Distributed Autonomous Robotic Systems (DARS 2008); Tsukuba, Japan, November 17-19, 2008. • A. Meier, M. Weise, J. Beutel, L. Thiele, Poster Abstract: NoSE: Neighbor Search and Link Estimation for a Fast and Energy Efficient Initialization of WSNs, 6th ACM Conf. on Embedded Networked Sensor Systems (SenSys 2008), Raleigh, 5-7 Nov 2008. • Barrenetxea, Guillermo; Ingelrest, François; Schaefer, Gunnar; Vetterli, Martin, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to Successful Wireless Sensor Network Deployments, 6th ACM Conference on Embedded Networked Sensor Systems (SenSys 2008); Raleigh, NC, USA, 5-7 November 2008. • A. Meier, M. Motani, H. Siquan, S. Künzli, DiMo: Distributed Node Monitoring in Wireless Sensor Networks, 11th ACM International Conference on Modeling, Analysis and Simulation of Wireless and Mobile Systems (MSWiM 2008), Vancouver, 27-31 Oct 08. • Jurca, Oana; Michel, Sebastian; Herrmann, Alexandre; Aberer, Karl, Query Driven Operator Placement for Complex Event Detection over Data Streams, 3rd IEEE European Conference on Smart Sensing and Context (EuroSSC); Zurich, Switzer-

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land, October 29-31, 2008. • Jan S. Rellermeyer, Michael Duller, Gustavo Alonso, Consistently Applying Updates to Compositions of Distributed OSGi Modules, ACM SIGPLAN 1st Workshop on Hot Topics in Software Updates (HotSWUp), Nashville, 20 Oct 08.

Upcoming conferences • 6th European Conference on Wireless Sensor Networks, Cork (Ireland), 11-13 February 2009. • 8th ACM/IEEE International Conference on Information Processing in Sensor Networks, San Francisco (USA), 13-16 April 2009. • 7th International Conference on Pervasive Computing, Nara (Japan), 11-14 May 2009. • 10th International Conference on Mobile Data Management: Systems, Services and Middleware, Taipei (Taiwan), 18-21 May 2009. • MICS Workshop, Lausanne, second week of June 2009. • International Conference on Wireless Algorithms Systems and Appli-

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cations, Boston (USA), 16-18 August 2009.

ACM SenSys 2010 in Zurich The ACM Conference on Embedded Networked Sensor Systems (SenSys) is the premier single-track and highly selective forum on the design, implementation, and application of systems issues in the area of embedded, networked sensors. After touring the US for a number of years and one visit to Australia, ACM SenSys is finally coming to Europe in 2010. With generous support by the NCCR MICS backing the candidacy and motivated by the large and active sensor networks community in Switzerland, ETH Zurich was selected among four candidate cities for hosting this prestigious event. The 8th ACM Conference on Embedded Networked Sensor Systems will take place at ETH Zurich on November 3-5, 2010 (general chair Jan Beutel).

Editor : Florence Luy Mail : [email protected] The National Centres of Competence in Research are a research instrument of the Swiss National Science Foundation

EPFL IC NCCR MICS Station 14 CH-1015 Lausanne Tel +41 (0)21 693 8106 Fax +41 (0)21 693 8140 www.mics.org | [email protected]