Resilient network coding in the presence of Byzantine adversaries

Abstract

Abstract-Network coding substantially increases network throughput. But since it involves mixing of information inside the network, a single corrupted packet generated by a malicious node can end up contaminating all the information reaching a destination, preventing decoding. This paper introduces distributed polynomial-time rate-optimal network codes that work in the presence of Byzantine nodes. We present algorithms that target adversaries with different attacking capabilities. When the adversary can eavesdrop on all links and jam zO links, our first algorithm achieves a rate of C 02zO, where C is the network capacity. In contrast, when the adversary has limited eavesdropping capabilities, we provide algorithms that achieve the higher rate of C 0 zO.Our algorithms attain the optimal rate given the strength of the adversary. They are information-theoretically secure. They operate in a distributed manner, assume no knowledge of the topology, and can be designed and implemented in polynomial time. Furthermore, only the source and destination need to be modified; nonmalicious nodes inside the network are oblivious to the presence of adversaries and implement a classical distributed network code. Finally, our algorithms work over wired and wireless networks.

Practical defenses against pollution attacks in intra-flow network coding for wireless mesh networks

“…The scheme provides only a partial solution, as it does not specify any mechanisms to recover from pollution attacks. Another approach [36] provides a distributed protocol to allow the receiver to recover native packets in the presence of pollution attacks. However, given that polluted packets are not filtered out, the throughput that can be achieved by the protocol is upper-bounded by the information-theoretic optimal rate of C − zO, where C is the network capacity from the source to the receiver and zO is the network capacity from the adversary to the receiver.…”

“…While these are elegant approaches from a theoretical perspective, they are highly inefficient when applied in practice in wireless networks, even under benign conditions when no attacks take place. Non-cryptographic solutions have also been proposed [35][36][37]. These solutions either provide only a partial solution by detecting the attacks without any response mechanism [35], or add data redundancy at the source, resulting in throughput degradation proportionally to the bandwidth available to the attacker [36,37].…”

Network Coding Applications

“…Additional coding schemes that operate under complexity constraints, such as fixed, finite memory at intermediate nodes have also been investigated by Pakzad et al [64] and Lun et al [57]. Non-ergodic failures were studied by Jaggi et al [41] and Ho et al [36], and for unicsat by El Rouayheb et al [73] from which the example shown in Figure 6.4 is taken. Network error correcting codes and bounds have been considered by Yeung and Cai [8,90], Zhang [92] and Yang et al [87,88].…”

“…The Byzantine modification detection in networks implementing random network coding was studied by Ho et al [35]. The algorithm we presented comes from Jaggi et al [41], where achievable rates and algorithms for other cases can be found as well.…”

Signatures for Content Distribution with Network Coding

“…They added a simple polynomial hash value into each packet, and a receiver node can detect the presence of a Byzantine attacker with high probability, given that the attacker is unable to design and supply modified packets with complete knowledge of other packets received by other nodes. Jaggi et al [10] proposed a distributed network coding scheme for multicast network that is resilient in the presence of Byzantine adversaries. They view the adversarial nodes as a second source, and judiciously add redundancy at the real source to help the receivers distill out the source information from the received mixtures.…”