Moving Targets: Geographically Routed Human Movement Networks

Loading...
Thumbnail Image
Penn collection
Technical Reports (CIS)
Degree type
Discipline
Subject
Human-to-Human networks
HumaNet
Geographic Routing
Botnets
Mobile Botnets
Other Computer Sciences
Software Engineering
Funder
Grant number
License
Copyright date
Distributor
Related resources
Contributor
Abstract

We introduce a new communication paradigm, Human-to-human Mobile Ad hoc Networking (HuManet), that exploits smartphone capabilities and human behavior to create decentralized networks for smartphone-to-smartphone message delivery. HuManets support stealth command-and-control messaging for mobile BotNets, covert channels in the presence of an observer who monitors all cellular communication, and distributed protocols for querying the state or content of targeted mobile devices. In this paper, we introduce techniques for constructing HumaNets and describe protocols for efficiently routing and addressing messages. In contrast to flooding or broadcast schemes that saturate the network and aggressively consume phone resources (e.g., batteries), our protocols exploit human mobility patterns to significantly increase communication efficiency while limiting the exposure of HuManets to mobile service providers. Our techniques leverage properties of smartphones – in particular, their highly synchronized clocks and ability to discern location information – to construct location profiles for each device. HuManets’ fully-distributed and heuristic-based routing protocols route messages towards phones with location profiles that are similar to those of the intended receiver, enabling efficient message delivery with limited effects to end-to-end latency.

Advisor
Date Range for Data Collection (Start Date)
Date Range for Data Collection (End Date)
Digital Object Identifier
Series name and number
Publication date
2010-03-01
Volume number
Issue number
Publisher
Publisher DOI
Journal Issue
Comments
Recommended citation
Collection