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The NARVAL (Network Analysis and Routing eVALuation) toolbox, presented by Foued Melakessou at the 2012 International Workshop on Scilab & OW2 (IWSO) in Nanjing, China (October 14-16, 2012), won the first prize in the 2012 Scilab Contest. The workshop brings together an international community of researchers and practitioners to present, discuss, and share new research results, future developments and applications relevant to Scilab and the OW2 Consortium.

NARVAL is built on the Scilab environment and focuses on the analysis of network protocols. The main goal of the toolbox is to provide a complete software environment enabling the understanding of available communication algorithms, as well as the design of new schemes. NARVAL can generate random topologies in order to study the impact of routing algorithms on the effectiveness of transmission protocols used by data communications. Its target audience includes academics, students, engineers and scientists. Each function is carefully documented to aid end users’ understanding. The module is self-sufficient and does not depend on other internal or external Scilab toolboxes. NARVAL runs on the current release Scilab, 5.3.3, and is free software, available under CeCILL licence.  It may be downloaded from the Scilab ATOMS portal.

Sheila Becker was awarded a Ph.D. in Computer Science for her research on conceptual approaches for securing networks and systems. Her work was performed in collaboration with LORIA-INRIA led by Dr. Hab. Olivier Festor at the Université de Lorraine (France) and with the Dependable and the Secure Distributed Systems Laboratory of Assoc. Prof. Cristina Nita-Rotaru at Purdue University, USA. The latter collaboration was established with the support of a Fulbright grant.

Sheila’s dissertation defines and uses a game theory framework in order to identify the best attack and defence strategies, assuming that the attacker is aware of the defence mechanisms. Her approach leverages concepts derived from the Nash equilibrium to model more powerful adversaries. The dissertation explores supervised machine learning techniques to mitigate more subtle yet highly effective attacks (frog-boiling, network partition) that are able to bypass existing defences. These techniques are then evaluated using the Vivaldi virtual coordinate system against a more complex attack strategy model, where attackers perform sequences of all known attacks against such systems, using both simulations and Internet deployments.

The latest newsletter of Luxembourg ICT Cluster features the FreeSIC project (Free Secure Interoperable Communications), to which researchers from SECAN-LAB, Aurel Machalek and Dr. Ralf Hoben, contribute.

Funded by the European Commission within its Seventh Framework Programme (FP7), the project aims to develop easier and more reliable communication tools for use by first responders such as police officers and firefighters. SECAN-LAB’s role in the project focuses on development, assessing the crisis communication needs of various countries and testing a new communication platform based on a secure Internet protocol (IP) network. More on the project can be found at www.freesic.eu.

Link to feature in newsletter http://www.ictcluster.lu/News/Security-Research-meets-Industry-How-the-FREESIC-Project-will-Keep-us-Safe-During-a-Crisis