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Secure Communication in Optical Fiber Network

Electronics & Communication Department

Fiber Optics Communications
ECN-539
Term Paper

IIT Roorkee

Aman Shivhare (14116011)

Amit Kumar (14116012)

Secure Communication in Optical Fiber Network


Aman Shivhare (14116011)
Dept. of ECE
IIT Roorkee
AbstractThe backbone of the Internet is optical
networks which is a major part of physical layer in
computer networks. According to Open System
Interconnection model (OSI), Physical Layer is the bottom
most layer in a network. Hence it is necessary to make this
layer secure as much as possible. Optical networks are
vulnerable to various attacks. These attacks include
confidentiality, availability, jamming, eavesdropping, and
interception. There are various techniques which can be
used in order to secure fiber optical networks including
XOR of optical signal, optical key distribution and
steganography. In this term paper, we are going to discuss
two techniques which are widely used; XOR of Optical
Signal & Steganography. We will also analyze Anti-
Jamming to prevent the Denial of Service (DoS) attack
(caused by Jamming). The aim of studying security
methods in optical network is to increase the capacity of
optical fiber channel instead of consuming the available
capacity. Also, real-time processing is required in order to
maintain the speed and robustness of optical fiber.
KeywordsOptical fibre, network security, Fiber
Security.
I. INTRODUCTION
Optical systems frame the foundation of the
Internet and are a basic constituent of the physical layer
of these systems. In open system interconnection (OSI)
model physical layer forms the bottom layer and other
layers securities are highly dependent on this layer. Due
to the increase in optical fibre communication, it is
essential that interchanges crossing these systems are
legitimately secured. Different types of attacks which
can injure communication confidentiality on physical
layer of optical fibre are jamming, physical
infrastructure attacks, eavesdropping, and interception.
The capacity availability in the optical network and
processing speed of information sent are two important
constraints for having secured upper layer
communication. Fibre-based methods can be used to
effectively protect optical network security such as
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Amit Kumar (14116012)
Dept. of ECE
IIT Roorkee
optical key distribution, optical signal processing, optical
steganography and optical chaos-based communication.
Optical Fibre devices are immune to
electromagnetic signal and also do not radiate EM
radiations. So the hacker neither intrude from the leaked
information to free space nor jam the fibre signal with
EM waves. Also, fibre-based devices have low latency
and high processing speed, network is protected without
compromising it transmission speed. Also, optical layer
security aims to increase the capacity of channel.
We characterize optical fiber security systems
by the risk they can address. We discuss confidentiality
of data communication and the optical-encryption uses
in the section titled Confidentiality. In the section titled
Availability we discuss methods for network
availability, including anti-jamming and optical chaos-
based communication.
We compare the different technique in terms of
application and inter-relation that exist in the network.
We also provide examples and results from experimental
effects that validates for securing optical fibre
communication.
II. VARIOUS THREATS IN OPTICAL NETWORK
Optical networks are varying in range from local
area network to the backbones of the internet and the
threat and defense implementations varies accordingly.
These threats can be categorized based on how an
adversary tries to listen and attack the network. There
are different ways in which an adversary can listen to
channel.
1. Confidentiality: An adversary tries to listen in on
communications.
2. Authentication: An unauthorized entity tries to
communicate.
3. Integrity: An entity manipulates the
communication data.

4. Availability: An adversary tries to jam the
communication channel.
5. Privacy Risks and Traffic Analysis: An
adversary tries to observe the existence of
communications.
Throughout this paper, we will briefly describe
and compare the physical techniques used to maintain
the confidentiality of optical network and to prevent the
jamming attack. We will also analyze the privacy risks.
III. CONFIDENTIALITY
Information privacy guarantees that private
information isn't unveiled to an unapproved client in the
arrange. Although there is no electromagnetic radiation
in optical fiber networks, there are various techniques
one can use in order to attack the optical network and
break the confidentiality of the communication. An
adversary can listen to a residual crosstalk from the
adjacent channel or he can physically tap the optical
fibers. If the optical fiber is exposed, one can easily tap
into it and try to listen to communication channel.
Although it looks very easy to tap but practically, it is
not so because one can easily notice that too much
power has been removed from communicating signal.
Tapping procedure requires peeling off the cladding and
the protective material over the fiber which can also
damage the optical fiber. To maintain the confidentiality
of communication channel (optical network), optical
encryption can be done and this encryption scheme is
invulnerable to attack because there is no radiation of
optical signature in fiber network.
A. Optical Encryption
Encryption is a process to convert a plain text into
ciphertext using a key. Mostly a secret key is used to
encrypt the data and without knowing the key, it is very
hard to decrypt the ciphertext. So an eavesdropper
cannot recover the data without having the proper key.
Encryption is an effective way to protect the data in
optical networks and helps in maintaining the
confidentiality of the network. Optical Encryption is
different from electronic encryption and it has limited
functionalities as compare to the electronic encryption
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because optical signal has higher speed and lower
latency.
To encrypt or decrypt any data, an
encryption/decryption key is used. There is key
distribution between transmitter and receiver in optical
encryption process. Optical XOR encryption is a
technique used to encrypt/decrypt optical network using
exclusive-OR logic. This is quite similar to electronic
XOR.
Over past years, various techniques has been
developed to implement XOR operation in optical
network. One method is to use four wave mixing (FWM)
in a semiconductor optical amplifier. This XOR gate
works at a speed of 20Gb/s. At transmitter side, the
signal and key are fed into encryption block and the
cipher signal and key are fed to decryption block at the
receiver side. The above described FWM encryption
methodology can also be extended to encrypt OCDMA
signals and improve the security using wavelength
hopping time spreading (WHTS). Diagram of optical
encryption can be seen in Fig. 1
IV. AVAILABILITY
Availability is a part of security that guarantees that
a system benefit isn't denied to authorised users.
Network security should be accessible to legal users.
B. Jamming and Anti Jamming
Jamming a signal channel with strong noise is
one of the possible threat to network availability. Optical
steganography is the technique which provides the
protection to signal when carried with noise which
covers the C band. Difficulty of carrying out hostile
jamming increases as well as if adversary could jam C
band, there would be no bandwidth is left for its own
communication. Another potential possible solution is to
make sure availability uses waveband conversion.
Multiple wavebands are used for communication
in this technique. The data channel can be either up-
converted or down-converted to a new waveband range,
if a current waveband gets jammed.

C. Optical Chaos Based Communication
For transmitting data securely with high level of
robustness Chaos-based communication can be used. To
increase the immunity of data transmission to a narrow
band interference or malicious jamming and also to jam
the communication of adversaries. The amplitude of
stealth signal is reduced to as small as possible in optical
steganography, but here the case is opposite. The
strategy here is to mask the data with much stronger
chaos. Input signal generates the chaos so now only
receiver that has now knowledge about the chaos
generates the chaos and cancel it to recover the original
signal. The diagram can be seen in Fig 2 below.
V. PRIVACY RISKS
Privacy is state of being free from being observed or
disturbed by the people. Privacy ensures what
information may be collected or distributed by a party
and to whom it can be disclosed. Although data is
encrypted which can not be decrypted without having
the knowledge of encryption key to adversary. but It can
not hide the channel or one can not protect the channel
from being discovered.
Optical Steganography is a technique which is used to
improve privacy of an optical channel such that no one
can have knowledge of transmission except the sender
and the receiver. In this approach, short optical pulses
are generated, also known as Stealth pulses, are stretched
using high group velocity dispersion. To receive the
signal at receiver side, it is necessary to use the right
compensation dispersive element. If right dispersive
element is not used, then the signal is lost in the noise of
the optical channel.
There are various steganography techniques has
which are also compatible with a variety of modulation
methods, including on-off-keying (OOK) return-to-zero
(NRZ), non-return-to-zero (RZ) OOK, OOK optical
CDMA, and differential (quadrature) phase-shift keying
(DPSK/DQPSK). While demodulating the data, it is
necessary that dispersion and phase mask should be
matched between the transmitter and receiver otherwise
it would not be possible to demodulate data. A few years
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ago, a new approach for optical steganography was
proposed to carry the stealth signal in the system noise.
In this approach, amplified spontaneous emission (ASE)
noise which are generated within the system by the
amplifiers to mimic the noise instead of creating and
stretching the stealth pulses.
VI. SUMMARY AND DISCUSSION
Several optical fibre based technique are proposed for
protecting physical layer communication. Optical XOR
logic gates Optical encryption is one of the main
technique to secure the network. Because of Low latency
and immune to EM radiation, optical encryption is
important to secure the network without compromising
the processing speed. Recently developed optical
steganography method which uses noise to carry the
transmission instead of minimizing it. Waveband
conversion technique and its uses on anti-jamming
provides channel availability assurance. To enhance the
robustness of data transmission or jamming an unwanted
channel to provide the assurance of security chaos-based
communication technique is used. To protect the
physical layer from multiple attacks various techniques
have been proposed and implemented. Also, the security
of optical communication is always the concern issue. A
lot of research is also going and we may expect some
new more secured techniques in future.
VII. REFERENCES
[1] Chan K, Chan CK, Chen LK, Tong F. Demonstration of
20-Gb/s all-optical XOR gate by four-wave mixing in
semiconductor optical amplifier with RZ-DPSK modulated
inputs. IEEE Photon Technol Lett 2004;16(3):897!9.
[2] B. B. Wu and E. E. Narimanov, A method for secure
communications over a public fiber-optical network, Opt.
Express, vol. 14, no. 9, pp. 37383751, May 2006.
[3] Argris A, Syvridis D, Larger L, Lodi VA, Colet P, Fischer
I, et al. Chaos-based communications at high bit rates using
commercial fibre-optic links. Nat 2006;438(17):343!6.
[4] Fok MP, Prucnal PR. All-optical encryption based on
interleaved waveband switching modulation for optical
network security. Opt Lett 2009;34(9):1315!7.
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[5] Kim JH, Jhon YM, Byun YT, Lee S, Woo DH, Im SH. All without additional input beam. IEEE Photon Technol Lett
optical XOR gate using semiconductor optical amplifier 2002;14(10):1436!8.
VIII. IMAGES

Tran Re
Fi

Data Opti Opti Data

cal cal

Key Key
Distr Distr

Fig. 1 Diagram of Optical Encryption

Fig. 2 Diagram of Optical Chaos Based Communication