Explore one of the major battles of the Civil War in detail. Who were Research Paper

Explore one of the major battles of the Civil War in detail. Who were the important figures What events or trends played a - Research Paper Example The significant figures of the battle are the generals from the Union and the Confederacy, while the critical events were Sherman’s earlier dismissals of reports of Confederate sightings, the initial fighting, Johnston’s death, and the successful counterattacks that Grant ordered and Buell reinforced. The effects of the Battle of Shiloh on the Civil War are the recognition of the true intensity, duration, and consequences of the Civil War and the importance of experienced soldiers and officers in winning the war. The Major Players of the Battle of Shiloh The decisive figures of the Battle of Shiloh were Major General Ulysses S. Grant and Major General Don Carlos Buell for the Union, and General Albert Sidney Johnston and General P.G.T. Beauregard for the Confederate, although General Sherman affected the unpreparedness of the Union too. Chuck Veit underlines that the first battle of Shiloh occurred five weeks before the April attack, one which already foreshadowed poor planning and intelligence assessment on the part of higher military officers of the Union. Winston Groom specifically blames General Sherman for his â€Å"folly† because he disregarded mounting reports regarding advancing Confederate lines (46). Groom narrates that, two days before the attack, Major Elbridge G. Ricker already reported to General Sherman that they encountered a Confederate group with artillery only two miles from the latter’s headquarters (46). Instead of verifying the veracity of this report, General Sherman easily dismissed Ricker and said: â€Å"Oh, tut-tut. You militia officers get scared too easy† (Groom 46). He also reproached Ricker for inciting a battle when the Union troops were not yet fully prepared (Groom 46). Groom lamented that instead of physically reinforcing the vulnerable Pittsburgh landing, where the Union soldiers were, Sherman focused on drilling exercises (46). General Grant, moreover, greatly relied on General Shermanâ€⠄¢s assessment of intelligence information and determination of enemy threat. Grant sent a telegram to Major General Henry Wager Halleck, a higher-ups officer in St. Louis, that the enemy stayed in Corinth and would not likely attack them, though they were prepared in case they did (Groom 47). Unknown to the Union generals, Confederate General Johnston wanted to take initiative after the defeat at Forts Henry and Donelson. Blair Howard describes Johnston’s awareness of the vulnerability of their Corinth position and that he knew that Grant was still waiting for Don Carlos Buell’s army as reinforcement (45). Johnston planned what seemed to be inconceivable to General Grant and General Sherman, doing an offensive on the Union’s own front yard (Howard 45). Johnston wanted to attack Grant’s forces on April 4, but bad weather delayed him (Howard 45). By the eve of the April 6 attack, Johnston’s army of 44,000 already moved around two miles south of Shil oh Church, the outermost border of the Union army, with the element of surprise on their side (Howard 45). The Turning Points in the Battle of Shiloh The opening attack happened at Fraley Field, as the sixth of April of 1862 began. Union officers in the high command constantly rebuffed reports of advancing Confederate soldiers, but Captain Gilbert D. Johnson, a company commander in the 12th Michigan, was already suspicious of

Poetry & art Essay Example for Free

Poetry art Essay Poetry is a form of art. Though I want to be an Economics Major in the University of Penn, I am a young aficionado of poetry and prose at heart. I would love to develop my skills through a disciplined and distinguished writing program and Penn’s School of Arts and Sciences offers to cater my aspirations. Believing that one must be a great reader before becoming a great writer, I indulge into books of every genre to harvest more knowledge. Literature brings out in me an overwhelming joy and I wish to carry my fondness for reading and writing into my college majors. The uniqueness cultivated by Penn’s English Department is perceptible by the de facto of education, wherein the emphasis is on creative writing. Through this facet of the University, I want to channel my passion for poetry into academia. As a Founder and President of our school’s Poetry Club, if accepted, I plan to visit the Kelly Writers House religiously, and satisfy my perpetual craving for literature. I can picture myself grabbing a turkey-and-cheese sandwich, without mayonnaise, at the 1920 Commons, and rushing off to the Kelly Writers House, carrying an armful of books by Maya Angelou and Eric Schlosser. Gathered in a close circle of chairs, my fellow literature lovers and I share professional works, with our own daring lines of free verses, swap suggestions, compliments, and light-hearted laughs. During these workshops, my very soul seeps steadily through an invisible tube from brain to ballpoint, the not-so-simple phenomenon of input-output fabricating ink on paper, a painting made of letters. On my way to a morning class on modern American poetry, I pass Oldenberg’s famed Split Button and acknowledge Mr. Franklin, sitting upright in his chair. After the lecture, Professor Josephine Park and I conduct research by analyzing the influence of conflicts between America and East-Asia. Being in the Penn family, I converse with colleagues, sisters and brothers that destiny lacked to give. I tutor secondary school students about reading and writing through the outreach program. Having been featured in a myriad of written works and publishing my own collections, I roll up my sleeves and organize literary pieces in the weekly undergraduate magazine, First Call. As the evening sinks, I bike to the Van Pelt Library, sit cross-legged in my favorite armchair and finalize the touches on a Second World War paper. Traveling to the other parts of the City of Brotherly Love, I gather up with study group friends for our fine dinner. When I reach home, my roommate chatters about the highlights of her day. I then read an article from The Daily Pennsylvanian. Turning off the lights and setting my alarm clock for 6:00 am, I drape my jogging shorts and shirt on a chair for the morning. Before drifting off to sleep, I reminisce those final months when I submitted my application to Penn and smile in the quietness of my room, happy to be here at last.

Security for Insider Attacks in Mobile Ad Hoc Networks

Security for Insider Attacks in Mobile Ad Hoc Networks Abstract Mobile ad hoc networks are collection of wireless mobile nodes forming a temporary network without the aid of any established infrastructure. Security issues are more paramount in such networks even more so than in wired networks. Despite the existence of well-known security mechanisms, additional vulnerabilities and features pertinent to this new networking paradigm might render the traditional solutions inapplicable. In particular these networks are extremely under threat to insider attacks especially packet dropping attacks. It is very difficult to detect such attacks because they comes in the category of attacks in mobile ad hoc networks in which the attacker nodes becomes the part of the network. In this research work we have proposed a two folded approach, to detect and then to isolate such nodes which become the part of the network to cause packet dropping attacks. First approach will detect the misbehavior of nodes and will identify the malicious activity in network, and then upon identification of nodes misbehavior in network other approach will isolate the malicious node from network. OMNET++ simulator is used to simulate and verify the proposed solution. Experimental results shows that E-SAODV (Enhanced Secure Ad hoc On Demand Distance Vector protocol) performs much better than conventional SAODV (Secure Ad hoc On Demand Distance Vector Protocol) Chapter 1 Introduction Overview Mobile Ad-hoc networks are a new paradigm of wireless communication for mobile hosts. As there is no fixed infrastructure such as base stations for mobile switching. Nodes within each others range communicate directly via wireless links while those which are far apart rely on other nodes to transmit messages. Node mobility causes frequent changes in topology. The wireless nature of communication and lack of any security infrastructure raises several security problems. The following flowchart depicts the working of any general ad-hoc network. Features of Mobile Ad hoc Networks Based on the characteristics, Mobile Ad hoc Networks has following main features. Because of the limited energy supply for the wireless nodes and the mobility of the nodes, the wireless links between mobile nodes in the Ad hoc Network are not consistent for the communication participants. Due to the continuous motion of nodes, the topology of the mobile ad hoc network changes constantly, the nodes can continuously move into and out of the radio range of the other nodes in the ad hoc network, and the routing information will be changing all the time because of the movement of the nodes. Lack of incorporation of security features in statically configured wireless routing protocol not meant for Ad hoc environments. Because the topology of the Ad hoc Networks is changing constantly, it is necessary for each pair of adjacent nodes to incorporate in the routing issue so as to prevent some kind of potential attacks that try to make use of vulnerabilities in the statically configured routing protocol. Mobile Ad hoc Network Routing Protocols Routing in Mobile Ad hoc Networks faces additional challenges when compared to routing in traditional wired networks with fixed infrastructure. There are several well-known protocols that have been specifically developed to cope with the limitations imposed by Ad hoc networking environments. The problem of routing in such environments is aggravated by limiting factors such as rapidly changing topologies, high power consumption, low bandwidth and high error rates [1]. Most of the existing routing protocols follow two different design approaches to confront the inherent characteristics of Ad hoc networks namely Proactive Routing Protocols, Reactive Routing Protocols. Proactive Routing Protocols Proactive ad hoc routing protocols maintain at all times routing information regarding the connectivity of every node to all other nodes that participate in the network. These protocols are also known as Table-driven Ad hoc Routing Protocols. These protocols allow every node to have a clear and consistent view of the network topology by propagating periodic updates [1]. Therefore, all nodes are able to make immediate decisions regarding the forwarding of a specific packet. Two main protocols that fall into the category of proactive routing protocols are Destination-Sequenced Distance-Vector (DSDV) protocol [2] and the Optimized Link State Routing (OLSR) protocol [3]. Reactive Routing Protocols An alternative approach to the one followed by Proactive Routing Protocols also known as source-initiated on-demand routing, is Reactive Routing Protocols. According to this approach a route is created only when the source node requires one to a specific destination. A route is acquired by the initiation of a route discovery function by the source node. The data packets transmitted while a route discovery is in process are buffered and are sent when the path is established. An established route is maintained as long as it is required through a route maintenance procedure. The Ad hoc On-demand Distance Vector (AODV) routing protocol [4], Temporally Ordered Routing Algorithm (TORA) [5] and the Dynamic Source Routing protocol [6] are examples of this category of protocols. Security issues in Mobile Ad hoc Routing Protocols Any routing protocol must encapsulate an essential set of security mechanisms. These are mechanisms that help prevent, detect, and respond to security attacks. We can classify these major security goals into five main categories, which need to be addressed in order to maintain a reliable and secure ad-hoc network environment. Confidentiality Confidentiality is the protection of any information from being exposed to unintended entities. In ad-hoc networks this is more difficult to achieve because intermediates nodes receive the packets for other recipients, so they can easily eavesdrop the information being routed. Availability Availability means that a node should maintain its ability to provide all the designed services regardless of the security state of it . This security criterion is challenged mainly during the denial-of-service attacks, in which all the nodes in the network can be the attack target and thus some selfish nodes make some of the network services unavailable, such as the routing protocol or the key management service. Authentication Authentication assures that an entity of concern or the origin of a communication is what it claims to be or from. Without which an attacker would impersonate a node, thus gaining unauthorized access to resource and sensitive information and interfering with operation of other nodes. Integrity Integrity guarantees the identity of the messages when they are transmitted. Integrity can be compromised through malicious and accidental altering. A message can be dropped, replayed or revised by an adversary with malicious goal, which is regarded as malicious altering while if the message is lost or its content is changed due to some failures, which may be transmission errors or hardware errors such as hard disk failure, then it is categorized as accidental altering. Non-Repudiation Non-repudiation ensures that sending and receiving parties can never deny their sending or receiving the message. In order to achieve the overall goal of Mobile Ad hoc Network security, above five mechanisms must be implemented in any ad-hoc networks so as to ensure the security of the transmissions along that network. Secure Ad hoc Routing As discussed earlier over the past decade, many Ad hoc routing protocols have been proposed in literature. Among them the most widely used are AODV (Ad hoc On Demand Distance Vector) [4] and DSR (Dynamic Source Routing) [2] which comes in the category of re-active routing protocols of Ad hoc Networks. All of these protocols have been studied extensively. But as there were no security considerations in the original design of these protocols, these protocols remain under threat from the attackers. The main assumption of these protocols was that all participating nodes do so in good faith and without maliciously disrupting the operation of the protocol. However the existence of malicious entities can not be disregarded in the systems especially the environment used for Ad hoc Networks. To overcome the security vulnerabilities in existing routing protocols, many security enhancements in these protocols have been proposed but unfortunately these secure Ad hoc Routing Protocols were either designed for a particular protocol or to address a specific problem operation of the protocol. For example SAODV (Secure Ad hoc On Demand Distance Vector Protocol) [7] was proposed to secure AODV (Ad hoc On Demand Distance Vector) protocol, Ariadne [10] was proposed to protect DSR (Dynamic Source Routing) protocol, ARAN [7] was proposed to protect the Ad hoc Routing in general while SEAD [8] was proposed to protect the DSDV (Destination Sequence Distance Vector Routing) protocol. The purpose of SAR [9] (Security Aware Routing) was also to protect the Routing in Ad hoc Networks. Problem definition Thus ongoing studies on MANETs pose many challenging research areas including MANETs security. Since MANETs are made up entirely of wireless mobile nodes, they are inherently more susceptible to security threats compared to fixed networks [11]. Access to wireless links is virtually impossible to control thus adverse security events such as eavesdropping, spoofing and denial of service attacks are more easily accomplished. These security risks must be reduced to an acceptable level while maintaining an acceptable Quality of Service and network performance. However, in order to work properly, the routing protocols in MANETs need trusted working environments, which are not always available. There may be situations in which the environment may be adversarial. For example some nodes may be selfish, malicious, or compromised by attackers. Most of the work done regarding network security in MANETs focuses on preventing attackers from entering the network through secure key distribution and secure neighbor discovery [10],[12]. But these schemes become ineffective when the malicious nodes have entered the network, or some nodes in the network have been compromised. Therefore, threats from compromised nodes inside the network are far more dangerous than the attacks from outside the network. Since these attacks are initiated from inside the network by the participating malicious nodes which behave well before they are compromised, it is very hard to detect these attacks. Keeping in view the security threats faced by MANETs we focus on Packet Dropping Attack which is a serious threat to Mobile Ad hoc Networks. Although many research efforts have been put on secure routing protocols but the attacks like packet dropping is not adequately addressed. We study the packet dropping attack in which a malicious node intentionally drops the packets they received. Unlike all previous researches which attempt to tolerate Packet Dropping Attacks, our work makes the first effort to detect the malicious activity and then identify the malicious or compromised nodes in the network. Research Objective The fundamental objective of this research is to discuss the security attacks faced by Mobile Ad hoc Networks specially insider attacks and to review the security in existing routing protocols especially secure routing protocols in MANETs. We particularly focus on packet dropping attack which is a serious threat to Mobile Ad hoc Networks. A novel security enhancement scheme to address packet dropping attack has been proposed. Thesis Organization Chapter 2 provides a brief introduction of security threats faced by Mobile Ad hoc Networks and secure routing to address these attacks. Chapter 3 discusses about the related work and flaws identified in the related work. Chapter 4 presents the possible solutions to address the packet dropping attack in Mobile Ad hoc Networks. Chapter 5 includes the implementation of proposed mechanisms and Results of the proposed mechanism and the thesis is concluded in Chapter 6. Chapter 2 Security Threats and Secure Ad hoc Routing Protocols Introduction This chapter includes the threats and types of attacks faced by Mobile Ad hoc Networks. Secure Ad hoc routing protocols like SAODV [7] (Secure Ad hoc On Demand Distance Vector), SAR [16] (Security Aware Routing), and ARAN [9] (Authenticated Routing for Ad hoc Networks) etc and how these protocols are still vulnerable to attacks, are discussed in this chapter. Types of attacks in MANETs There are numerous kinds of attacks in the mobile ad hoc networks, almost all of which can be classified into two types, External Attacks and Insider Attacks. External Attacks External Attacks are those attacks, in which the attacker aims to cause congestion, propagate fake routing information or disturb nodes from providing services. External attacks are similar to the normal attacks in the traditional wired networks such that the adversary is in the proximity but not a trusted node in the network, therefore, this type of attack can be prevented and detected by the security methods such as authentication or firewall, which are relatively conventional security solutions. Internal or Insider Attacks Due to the invasive nature and open network media in the mobile ad hoc network, internal also known as insider attacks are more dangerous than the external attacks because the compromised or malicious nodes are originally the legitimate users of the Ad hoc network, they can easily pass the authentication and get protection from the security mechanisms. As a result, the adversaries can make use of them to gain normal access to the services that should only be available to the authorized users in the network, and they can use the legal identity provided by the compromised nodes to conceal their malicious behaviors. Therefore, more attention should be paid to the internal attacks initiated by the malicious insider nodes when we consider the security issues in the mobile ad hoc networks. Internal or insider nodes when become part of the network can misuse the network in the following ways Packet Dropping A malicious node can attack at its level or at lower levels. Particularly in the context of Packet Dropping Attack, within a trust level, a malicious node or any other node which aims at saving its resources or intentionally launching a attack can successfully drop packets without being noticed and can get services from other nodes for forwarding its own packets. Node Isolation An internal malicious node can prevent nodes from communicating with any other node. Route Disruption A malicious node can break down an existing route or prevent a new route from being established. Route Invasion An inside attacker adds itself between two endpoints of a communication channel. Attacks based on modification A very simplest way for a malicious node to disturb the operations of an ad-hoc network is to perform an attack based on modification. The only task the malicious or compromised node needs to perform is to announce better routes than the ones presently existing. This kind of attack is based on the modification of the metric value for a route or by altering control message fields. There are various ways to perform this type of attacks; some of them are discussed below Altering the Hop Count This attack is more specific to the AODV [4] protocol wherein the optimum path is chosen by the hop count metric. A malicious node can disturb the network by announcing the smallest hop count value to reach the compromised node. In general, an attacker would use a value zero to ensure to the smallest hop count. Changing the Route Sequence Number When a node decides the optimum path to take through a network, the node always relies on a metric of values, such as hop count delays etc. The smaller that value, the more optimum the path. Hence, a simple way to attack a network is to change this value with a smaller number than the last better value. Altering Routing Information This type of attack leads network toward Denial of Service (DoS) attack. For example in a situation where a node M wants to communicate with node S. At node M the routing path in the header would be M-N-O-P-Q-R-S. If N is a compromised node, it can alter this routing detail to M-N-O-P. But since there exists no direct route from O to P, P will drop the packet. Thus, A will never be able to access any service from P. This situation leads the network towards a DoS attack. Impersonation Attacks Impersonation is also known as spoofing. In this type of attack the malicious node hides its IP address or MAC address and uses the addresses of other nodes present in the network. Since current ad-hoc routing protocols like AODV [4] and DSR [6] do not authenticate source IP address. By exploiting this situation a malicious node can launch variety of attacks using spoofing. For example in a situation where an attacker creates loops in the network to isolate a node from the remainder of the network, the attacker needs to spoof the IP address of the node he wants to isolate from the network and then announce new route to the others nodes. By doing this, he can easily modify the network topology as he wants. Fabrication Attacks Fabrication attacks can be classified into three main categories. Detection is very difficult in all of these three cases. Routing table poisoning Routing protocols maintain tables which hold information regarding routes of the network. In routing table poisoning attacks the malicious nodes generate and send fabricated signaling traffic, or modify legitimate messages from other nodes, in order to create false entries in the tables of the participating nodes. For example, an attacker can send routing updates that do not correspond to actual changes in the topology of the ad hoc network. Routing table poisoning attacks can result in selection of non-optimal routes, creation of routing loops and bottlenecks. Route Cache Poisoning This type of attack falls in the category of passive attacks that can occur especially in DSR [6] due to the promiscuous mode of updating routing tables. This type of situation arises when information stored in routing tables is deleted, altered or injected with false information. A node overhearing any packet may add the routing information contained in that packets header to its own route cache, even if that node is not on the path from source to destination. The vulnerability of this system is that an attacker could easily exploit this method of learning routes and poison route caches by broadcast a message with a spoofed IP address to other nodes. When they receive this message, the nodes would add this new route to their cache and would now communicate using the route to reach the malicious node. Rote Error Messages fabrication This attack is very common in AODV [4] and DSR [6], because when nodes move these two protocols use path maintenance to recover the optimum path. The weakness of this architecture is that whenever a node moves, the closest node sends an error message to the other nodes so as to inform them that a route is no longer accessible. If an attacker can cause a DoS attack by spoofing any node and sending error messages to the all other nodes. As a result malicious node can separate any node quite easily. Eavesdropping Eavesdropping is another kind of attack that usually happens in the mobile ad hoc networks. The goal of eavesdropping is to obtain some confidential information that should be kept secret during the communication. This information may include the location, public key, private key or even passwords of the nodes. Because such data are very important to the security state of the nodes, they should be kept away from the unauthorized access. Secure Ad hoc Routing Protocols Many solutions have been proposed for secure routing in ad hoc networks, in order to offer protection against the attacks discussed earlier. These proposed solutions are either completely new stand-alone protocols, or in some cases incorporations of security mechanisms into existing ones (like DSR [6] and AODV [4]). In order to analyze the proposed solutions and how they are still vulnerable to attacks we classified them into two main categories based on asymmetric cryptography and symmetric cryptography. Asymmetric Cryptographic Solution Protocols that use asymmetric cryptography to secure routing in mobile ad hoc networks require the existence of a universally trusted third party. This trusted third party can be either online or offline. The trusted third party issues certificates that bind a nodes public key with a nodes persistent identifier. Authenticated Routing for Ad hoc Networks ARAN [9] falls in this category of secure Ad hoc routing protocols; many of the other protocols presented in other categories that use asymmetric cryptography operate in a similar manner and have similar requirements. Authenticated Routing for Ad hoc Networks ARAN The Authenticated Routing for Ad hoc Networks (ARAN) proposed in [9] is a standalone solution for secure routing in ad hoc networking environments. ARAN use digital certificates and can successfully operate in the managed open scenario where no infrastructure is pre-deployed. The basic mechanism used in ARAN is certification that is achieved through the existence of a trusted certification authority (CA). All nodes are supposed to know their public key from the certification authority and also the public key of server. Prior to entering into the network, each node has to apply for a certificate that is signed by the certificate server. ARAN accomplishes the discovery of routes by a broadcast message from source node which is replied in a unicast manner. This route discovery of the ARAN protocol begins with a node broadcasting to its neighbors a route discovery packet (RDP). The RDP includes the certificate of the initiating node, a nonce, a timestamp and the address of the destinatio n node. Furthermore, the initiating node signs the RDP. Each node validates the signature with the certificate, updates its routing table with the neighbor from which it received the RDP, signs it, and forwards it to its neighbors after removing the certificate and the signature of the previous node (but not the initiators signature and certificate). The signature prevents malicious nodes from injecting arbitrary route discovery packets that alter routes or form loops [13]. The destination node eventually receives the RDP and replies with a reply packet (REP). The REP contains the address of the source node, the destinations certificate, a nonce, and the associated timestamp. The destination node signs the REP before transmitting it. The REP is forwarded back to the initiating node by a process similar to the one described for the route discovery, except that the REP is unicasted along the reverse path. The source node is able to verify that the destination node sent the REP by chec king the nonce and the signature. Figure 2 illustrates the process of route discovery in ARAN. All messages are authenticated at each hop from source to destination as well as on the reverse path. Due to heavy computation involved with the certificates, ARAN is vulnerable to many attacks e.g. DOS attacks. In situation when there are no malicious nodes in the network the load involved in the routing process force the legitimate nodes to drop the packets in order to save their resources. Symmetric Cryptography Solutions Symmetric cryptographic solutions rely solely on symmetric cryptography to secure the function of routing in wireless ad hoc networks. The mechanisms utilized is hash functions and hash chains. A one-way hash function is a function that takes an input of arbitrary length and returns an output of fixed length [14]. As hash functions are especially lightweight when compared to other symmetric and asymmetric cryptographic operations, they have been extensively used in the context of securing ad hoc routing. Secure Ad hoc On-demand Distance Vector Protocol (SAODV) The Secure Ad hoc On Demand Distance Vector (SAODV) [7] addresses the problem of securing a MANET network. SAODV is an extension of AODV[4] routing protocol that can be used to protect the route discovery mechanism by providing security features like authentication, integrity and non-repudiation. It uses digital signatures to authenticate the non-mutable fields of the message, and hash chains to secure the hop count information (the only mutable field in message) in both RREQ and RREP messages. The SAODV scheme is based on the assumption that each node possesses certified public keys of all network nodes . In order to facilitate the transmission of the information required for the security mechanisms, SAODV defines extensions to the standard AODV message format. These SAODV extensions consist of the following fields. The hash function field identifies the one-way hash function that is used. The field max hop count is a counter that specifies the maximum number of nodes a packet is al lowed to go through. The top hash field is the result of the application of the hash function max hop count times to a randomly generated number, and finally the field hash is this random number. When a node transmits a route request or a route reply AODV packet it sets the max hop count field equal to the time to live (TTL) field from the IP header, generates a random number and sets the hash field equal to it, and applies the hash function specified by the corresponding field max hop count times to the random number, storing the calculated result to the top hash field. Moreover, the node digitally signs all fields of the message, except the hop count field from the AODV header and the hash field from the SAODV extension header. An intermediate node that receives a route request or a route reply must verify the integrity of the message and the hop count AODV [4] field. The integrity requirement is accomplished by verifying the digital signature. The hop count field is verified by comparing the result of the application of the hash function max hop count minus hop count times to the hash field with the value of the top hash field. Before the packet is re-broadcasted by the in termediate node the value of the hash field is replaced by the result of the calculation of the one-way hash of the field itself in order to account for the new hop. In SAODV route error messages (RERR) that are generated by nodes that inform their neighbors that they are not going to be able to route messages to specific destinations are secured using digital signatures. A node that generates or forwards a route error message cryptographically signs the whole message, except the destination sequence numbers. Although SAODV provides reasonable security to MANETs routing, but it is still vulnerable to distance fraud attack [15] in which the forwarding node fails to increment the route metric because in SAODV there is no enforcement to do so. Further there is no method to detect the malicious nodes and DOS attacks because in SAODV it is assumed that DOS attacks are restricted to physical layer, but this assumption failed when colluding malicious nodes drop packets during the route discovery process. Security Aware Routing (SAR) SAR [16] (Security Aware Routing) is an extension to existing on demand routing protocols and used where nodes are grouped on the basis of trust level. In SAR each node has different security level which assigns them different trust levels. Two nodes can only communicate with each other if they have equal or greater trust values. If a node has lower security level it simply discards the packet. In case there is no node in the network with the desired level then communication cannot take place or we can say that, that particular packet cant be forwarded unless its security level is lowered. By exploiting this condition a malicious node can attack at its level or at lower levels. Particularly in the context of Packet Dropping Attack, within a trust level, a malicious node or any other node which aims at saving its resources or intentionally launching a attack can successfully drop packets without being noticed and can get services from other nodes for forwarding its own packets. SAR al so fails in the situations of secure routing in general because it only focuses on the situations in which certain groups are assumed to be trustworthy. Conclusion From the above discussion, we observe that all Secure Ad hoc routing protocols are still vulnerable to many attacks. Although proposed techniques provide security against external attacks, insider attacks are still an open issue in MANETs. Chapter 3 Literature Review Introduction Many solutions have been proposed to prevent selfishness in MANETs. The main goal of all the schemes proposed in the literature is to make decisions regarding trustworthy entities and to encourage behavior that leads to increasing trust. In this section we discuss some of the solutions presented in the literature in order to detect the malicious nodes in the network in context of packet dropping attack. Watchdog and Pathrater In [17] Marti el al, proposed a mechanism called as watchdog and pathrater on DSR[6] to detect the misbehavior of nodes in MANETs. Nodes in this scheme operate in a promiscuous mode. The watchdog monitors one hop neighbor by overhearing the medium to check whether the next neighbor forwards the packet or not. It also maintains a buffer of recently sent packets. If a data packet remains in the buffer too long, the watchdog declares the next hop neighbor to be misbehaving. Every node that participates in the ad hoc network employs the watchdog functionality in order to verify that its neighbors correctly forward packets. When a node transmits a packet to the next node in the path, it tries to promiscuously listen if the next node will also transmit it. Furthermore, if there is no link encryption utilized in the network, the listening node can also verify that the next node did not modify the packet before transmitting it . The watchdog of a node maintains copies of recently forwarded p ackets and compares them with the packet transmissions overheard by the neighboring nodes. Positive comparisons result in the deletion of the buffered packet and the freeing of the related memory. If a node that was supposed to forward a packet fails to do so within a certain timeout period, the watchdog of an overhearing node increments a failure rating for the specific node. This effectively means that every node in the ad hoc network maintains a rating assessing the reliability of every other node that it can overhear packet transmissions from. A node is identified as misbehaving when the failure rating exceeds a certain threshold bandwidth. The source node of the route that contains the offending node is notified by a message send by the identifying watchdog. As the authors of the scheme note, the main problem with this approach is its vulnerability to blackmail attacks. The pathrater selects the path with the highest metric when there are multiple paths for the same destination node. The algorithm followed by the pathrater mechanism initially assigns a rating of 1.0 to itself and 0.5 to each node that it knows through the route discovery function. The nodes that participate on the active paths have their ratings increased by 0.01 at periodic intervals of 200 milliseconds to a maximum rating of 0.8. A rating is decremented by 0.05 when a link breakage is Security for Insider Attacks in Mobile Ad Hoc Networks Security for Insider Attacks in Mobile Ad Hoc Networks Abstract Mobile ad hoc networks are collection of wireless mobile nodes forming a temporary network without the aid of any established infrastructure. Security issues are more paramount in such networks even more so than in wired networks. Despite the existence of well-known security mechanisms, additional vulnerabilities and features pertinent to this new networking paradigm might render the traditional solutions inapplicable. In particular these networks are extremely under threat to insider attacks especially packet dropping attacks. It is very difficult to detect such attacks because they comes in the category of attacks in mobile ad hoc networks in which the attacker nodes becomes the part of the network. In this research work we have proposed a two folded approach, to detect and then to isolate such nodes which become the part of the network to cause packet dropping attacks. First approach will detect the misbehavior of nodes and will identify the malicious activity in network, and then upon identification of nodes misbehavior in network other approach will isolate the malicious node from network. OMNET++ simulator is used to simulate and verify the proposed solution. Experimental results shows that E-SAODV (Enhanced Secure Ad hoc On Demand Distance Vector protocol) performs much better than conventional SAODV (Secure Ad hoc On Demand Distance Vector Protocol) Chapter 1 Introduction Overview Mobile Ad-hoc networks are a new paradigm of wireless communication for mobile hosts. As there is no fixed infrastructure such as base stations for mobile switching. Nodes within each others range communicate directly via wireless links while those which are far apart rely on other nodes to transmit messages. Node mobility causes frequent changes in topology. The wireless nature of communication and lack of any security infrastructure raises several security problems. The following flowchart depicts the working of any general ad-hoc network. Features of Mobile Ad hoc Networks Based on the characteristics, Mobile Ad hoc Networks has following main features. Because of the limited energy supply for the wireless nodes and the mobility of the nodes, the wireless links between mobile nodes in the Ad hoc Network are not consistent for the communication participants. Due to the continuous motion of nodes, the topology of the mobile ad hoc network changes constantly, the nodes can continuously move into and out of the radio range of the other nodes in the ad hoc network, and the routing information will be changing all the time because of the movement of the nodes. Lack of incorporation of security features in statically configured wireless routing protocol not meant for Ad hoc environments. Because the topology of the Ad hoc Networks is changing constantly, it is necessary for each pair of adjacent nodes to incorporate in the routing issue so as to prevent some kind of potential attacks that try to make use of vulnerabilities in the statically configured routing protocol. Mobile Ad hoc Network Routing Protocols Routing in Mobile Ad hoc Networks faces additional challenges when compared to routing in traditional wired networks with fixed infrastructure. There are several well-known protocols that have been specifically developed to cope with the limitations imposed by Ad hoc networking environments. The problem of routing in such environments is aggravated by limiting factors such as rapidly changing topologies, high power consumption, low bandwidth and high error rates [1]. Most of the existing routing protocols follow two different design approaches to confront the inherent characteristics of Ad hoc networks namely Proactive Routing Protocols, Reactive Routing Protocols. Proactive Routing Protocols Proactive ad hoc routing protocols maintain at all times routing information regarding the connectivity of every node to all other nodes that participate in the network. These protocols are also known as Table-driven Ad hoc Routing Protocols. These protocols allow every node to have a clear and consistent view of the network topology by propagating periodic updates [1]. Therefore, all nodes are able to make immediate decisions regarding the forwarding of a specific packet. Two main protocols that fall into the category of proactive routing protocols are Destination-Sequenced Distance-Vector (DSDV) protocol [2] and the Optimized Link State Routing (OLSR) protocol [3]. Reactive Routing Protocols An alternative approach to the one followed by Proactive Routing Protocols also known as source-initiated on-demand routing, is Reactive Routing Protocols. According to this approach a route is created only when the source node requires one to a specific destination. A route is acquired by the initiation of a route discovery function by the source node. The data packets transmitted while a route discovery is in process are buffered and are sent when the path is established. An established route is maintained as long as it is required through a route maintenance procedure. The Ad hoc On-demand Distance Vector (AODV) routing protocol [4], Temporally Ordered Routing Algorithm (TORA) [5] and the Dynamic Source Routing protocol [6] are examples of this category of protocols. Security issues in Mobile Ad hoc Routing Protocols Any routing protocol must encapsulate an essential set of security mechanisms. These are mechanisms that help prevent, detect, and respond to security attacks. We can classify these major security goals into five main categories, which need to be addressed in order to maintain a reliable and secure ad-hoc network environment. Confidentiality Confidentiality is the protection of any information from being exposed to unintended entities. In ad-hoc networks this is more difficult to achieve because intermediates nodes receive the packets for other recipients, so they can easily eavesdrop the information being routed. Availability Availability means that a node should maintain its ability to provide all the designed services regardless of the security state of it . This security criterion is challenged mainly during the denial-of-service attacks, in which all the nodes in the network can be the attack target and thus some selfish nodes make some of the network services unavailable, such as the routing protocol or the key management service. Authentication Authentication assures that an entity of concern or the origin of a communication is what it claims to be or from. Without which an attacker would impersonate a node, thus gaining unauthorized access to resource and sensitive information and interfering with operation of other nodes. Integrity Integrity guarantees the identity of the messages when they are transmitted. Integrity can be compromised through malicious and accidental altering. A message can be dropped, replayed or revised by an adversary with malicious goal, which is regarded as malicious altering while if the message is lost or its content is changed due to some failures, which may be transmission errors or hardware errors such as hard disk failure, then it is categorized as accidental altering. Non-Repudiation Non-repudiation ensures that sending and receiving parties can never deny their sending or receiving the message. In order to achieve the overall goal of Mobile Ad hoc Network security, above five mechanisms must be implemented in any ad-hoc networks so as to ensure the security of the transmissions along that network. Secure Ad hoc Routing As discussed earlier over the past decade, many Ad hoc routing protocols have been proposed in literature. Among them the most widely used are AODV (Ad hoc On Demand Distance Vector) [4] and DSR (Dynamic Source Routing) [2] which comes in the category of re-active routing protocols of Ad hoc Networks. All of these protocols have been studied extensively. But as there were no security considerations in the original design of these protocols, these protocols remain under threat from the attackers. The main assumption of these protocols was that all participating nodes do so in good faith and without maliciously disrupting the operation of the protocol. However the existence of malicious entities can not be disregarded in the systems especially the environment used for Ad hoc Networks. To overcome the security vulnerabilities in existing routing protocols, many security enhancements in these protocols have been proposed but unfortunately these secure Ad hoc Routing Protocols were either designed for a particular protocol or to address a specific problem operation of the protocol. For example SAODV (Secure Ad hoc On Demand Distance Vector Protocol) [7] was proposed to secure AODV (Ad hoc On Demand Distance Vector) protocol, Ariadne [10] was proposed to protect DSR (Dynamic Source Routing) protocol, ARAN [7] was proposed to protect the Ad hoc Routing in general while SEAD [8] was proposed to protect the DSDV (Destination Sequence Distance Vector Routing) protocol. The purpose of SAR [9] (Security Aware Routing) was also to protect the Routing in Ad hoc Networks. Problem definition Thus ongoing studies on MANETs pose many challenging research areas including MANETs security. Since MANETs are made up entirely of wireless mobile nodes, they are inherently more susceptible to security threats compared to fixed networks [11]. Access to wireless links is virtually impossible to control thus adverse security events such as eavesdropping, spoofing and denial of service attacks are more easily accomplished. These security risks must be reduced to an acceptable level while maintaining an acceptable Quality of Service and network performance. However, in order to work properly, the routing protocols in MANETs need trusted working environments, which are not always available. There may be situations in which the environment may be adversarial. For example some nodes may be selfish, malicious, or compromised by attackers. Most of the work done regarding network security in MANETs focuses on preventing attackers from entering the network through secure key distribution and secure neighbor discovery [10],[12]. But these schemes become ineffective when the malicious nodes have entered the network, or some nodes in the network have been compromised. Therefore, threats from compromised nodes inside the network are far more dangerous than the attacks from outside the network. Since these attacks are initiated from inside the network by the participating malicious nodes which behave well before they are compromised, it is very hard to detect these attacks. Keeping in view the security threats faced by MANETs we focus on Packet Dropping Attack which is a serious threat to Mobile Ad hoc Networks. Although many research efforts have been put on secure routing protocols but the attacks like packet dropping is not adequately addressed. We study the packet dropping attack in which a malicious node intentionally drops the packets they received. Unlike all previous researches which attempt to tolerate Packet Dropping Attacks, our work makes the first effort to detect the malicious activity and then identify the malicious or compromised nodes in the network. Research Objective The fundamental objective of this research is to discuss the security attacks faced by Mobile Ad hoc Networks specially insider attacks and to review the security in existing routing protocols especially secure routing protocols in MANETs. We particularly focus on packet dropping attack which is a serious threat to Mobile Ad hoc Networks. A novel security enhancement scheme to address packet dropping attack has been proposed. Thesis Organization Chapter 2 provides a brief introduction of security threats faced by Mobile Ad hoc Networks and secure routing to address these attacks. Chapter 3 discusses about the related work and flaws identified in the related work. Chapter 4 presents the possible solutions to address the packet dropping attack in Mobile Ad hoc Networks. Chapter 5 includes the implementation of proposed mechanisms and Results of the proposed mechanism and the thesis is concluded in Chapter 6. Chapter 2 Security Threats and Secure Ad hoc Routing Protocols Introduction This chapter includes the threats and types of attacks faced by Mobile Ad hoc Networks. Secure Ad hoc routing protocols like SAODV [7] (Secure Ad hoc On Demand Distance Vector), SAR [16] (Security Aware Routing), and ARAN [9] (Authenticated Routing for Ad hoc Networks) etc and how these protocols are still vulnerable to attacks, are discussed in this chapter. Types of attacks in MANETs There are numerous kinds of attacks in the mobile ad hoc networks, almost all of which can be classified into two types, External Attacks and Insider Attacks. External Attacks External Attacks are those attacks, in which the attacker aims to cause congestion, propagate fake routing information or disturb nodes from providing services. External attacks are similar to the normal attacks in the traditional wired networks such that the adversary is in the proximity but not a trusted node in the network, therefore, this type of attack can be prevented and detected by the security methods such as authentication or firewall, which are relatively conventional security solutions. Internal or Insider Attacks Due to the invasive nature and open network media in the mobile ad hoc network, internal also known as insider attacks are more dangerous than the external attacks because the compromised or malicious nodes are originally the legitimate users of the Ad hoc network, they can easily pass the authentication and get protection from the security mechanisms. As a result, the adversaries can make use of them to gain normal access to the services that should only be available to the authorized users in the network, and they can use the legal identity provided by the compromised nodes to conceal their malicious behaviors. Therefore, more attention should be paid to the internal attacks initiated by the malicious insider nodes when we consider the security issues in the mobile ad hoc networks. Internal or insider nodes when become part of the network can misuse the network in the following ways Packet Dropping A malicious node can attack at its level or at lower levels. Particularly in the context of Packet Dropping Attack, within a trust level, a malicious node or any other node which aims at saving its resources or intentionally launching a attack can successfully drop packets without being noticed and can get services from other nodes for forwarding its own packets. Node Isolation An internal malicious node can prevent nodes from communicating with any other node. Route Disruption A malicious node can break down an existing route or prevent a new route from being established. Route Invasion An inside attacker adds itself between two endpoints of a communication channel. Attacks based on modification A very simplest way for a malicious node to disturb the operations of an ad-hoc network is to perform an attack based on modification. The only task the malicious or compromised node needs to perform is to announce better routes than the ones presently existing. This kind of attack is based on the modification of the metric value for a route or by altering control message fields. There are various ways to perform this type of attacks; some of them are discussed below Altering the Hop Count This attack is more specific to the AODV [4] protocol wherein the optimum path is chosen by the hop count metric. A malicious node can disturb the network by announcing the smallest hop count value to reach the compromised node. In general, an attacker would use a value zero to ensure to the smallest hop count. Changing the Route Sequence Number When a node decides the optimum path to take through a network, the node always relies on a metric of values, such as hop count delays etc. The smaller that value, the more optimum the path. Hence, a simple way to attack a network is to change this value with a smaller number than the last better value. Altering Routing Information This type of attack leads network toward Denial of Service (DoS) attack. For example in a situation where a node M wants to communicate with node S. At node M the routing path in the header would be M-N-O-P-Q-R-S. If N is a compromised node, it can alter this routing detail to M-N-O-P. But since there exists no direct route from O to P, P will drop the packet. Thus, A will never be able to access any service from P. This situation leads the network towards a DoS attack. Impersonation Attacks Impersonation is also known as spoofing. In this type of attack the malicious node hides its IP address or MAC address and uses the addresses of other nodes present in the network. Since current ad-hoc routing protocols like AODV [4] and DSR [6] do not authenticate source IP address. By exploiting this situation a malicious node can launch variety of attacks using spoofing. For example in a situation where an attacker creates loops in the network to isolate a node from the remainder of the network, the attacker needs to spoof the IP address of the node he wants to isolate from the network and then announce new route to the others nodes. By doing this, he can easily modify the network topology as he wants. Fabrication Attacks Fabrication attacks can be classified into three main categories. Detection is very difficult in all of these three cases. Routing table poisoning Routing protocols maintain tables which hold information regarding routes of the network. In routing table poisoning attacks the malicious nodes generate and send fabricated signaling traffic, or modify legitimate messages from other nodes, in order to create false entries in the tables of the participating nodes. For example, an attacker can send routing updates that do not correspond to actual changes in the topology of the ad hoc network. Routing table poisoning attacks can result in selection of non-optimal routes, creation of routing loops and bottlenecks. Route Cache Poisoning This type of attack falls in the category of passive attacks that can occur especially in DSR [6] due to the promiscuous mode of updating routing tables. This type of situation arises when information stored in routing tables is deleted, altered or injected with false information. A node overhearing any packet may add the routing information contained in that packets header to its own route cache, even if that node is not on the path from source to destination. The vulnerability of this system is that an attacker could easily exploit this method of learning routes and poison route caches by broadcast a message with a spoofed IP address to other nodes. When they receive this message, the nodes would add this new route to their cache and would now communicate using the route to reach the malicious node. Rote Error Messages fabrication This attack is very common in AODV [4] and DSR [6], because when nodes move these two protocols use path maintenance to recover the optimum path. The weakness of this architecture is that whenever a node moves, the closest node sends an error message to the other nodes so as to inform them that a route is no longer accessible. If an attacker can cause a DoS attack by spoofing any node and sending error messages to the all other nodes. As a result malicious node can separate any node quite easily. Eavesdropping Eavesdropping is another kind of attack that usually happens in the mobile ad hoc networks. The goal of eavesdropping is to obtain some confidential information that should be kept secret during the communication. This information may include the location, public key, private key or even passwords of the nodes. Because such data are very important to the security state of the nodes, they should be kept away from the unauthorized access. Secure Ad hoc Routing Protocols Many solutions have been proposed for secure routing in ad hoc networks, in order to offer protection against the attacks discussed earlier. These proposed solutions are either completely new stand-alone protocols, or in some cases incorporations of security mechanisms into existing ones (like DSR [6] and AODV [4]). In order to analyze the proposed solutions and how they are still vulnerable to attacks we classified them into two main categories based on asymmetric cryptography and symmetric cryptography. Asymmetric Cryptographic Solution Protocols that use asymmetric cryptography to secure routing in mobile ad hoc networks require the existence of a universally trusted third party. This trusted third party can be either online or offline. The trusted third party issues certificates that bind a nodes public key with a nodes persistent identifier. Authenticated Routing for Ad hoc Networks ARAN [9] falls in this category of secure Ad hoc routing protocols; many of the other protocols presented in other categories that use asymmetric cryptography operate in a similar manner and have similar requirements. Authenticated Routing for Ad hoc Networks ARAN The Authenticated Routing for Ad hoc Networks (ARAN) proposed in [9] is a standalone solution for secure routing in ad hoc networking environments. ARAN use digital certificates and can successfully operate in the managed open scenario where no infrastructure is pre-deployed. The basic mechanism used in ARAN is certification that is achieved through the existence of a trusted certification authority (CA). All nodes are supposed to know their public key from the certification authority and also the public key of server. Prior to entering into the network, each node has to apply for a certificate that is signed by the certificate server. ARAN accomplishes the discovery of routes by a broadcast message from source node which is replied in a unicast manner. This route discovery of the ARAN protocol begins with a node broadcasting to its neighbors a route discovery packet (RDP). The RDP includes the certificate of the initiating node, a nonce, a timestamp and the address of the destinatio n node. Furthermore, the initiating node signs the RDP. Each node validates the signature with the certificate, updates its routing table with the neighbor from which it received the RDP, signs it, and forwards it to its neighbors after removing the certificate and the signature of the previous node (but not the initiators signature and certificate). The signature prevents malicious nodes from injecting arbitrary route discovery packets that alter routes or form loops [13]. The destination node eventually receives the RDP and replies with a reply packet (REP). The REP contains the address of the source node, the destinations certificate, a nonce, and the associated timestamp. The destination node signs the REP before transmitting it. The REP is forwarded back to the initiating node by a process similar to the one described for the route discovery, except that the REP is unicasted along the reverse path. The source node is able to verify that the destination node sent the REP by chec king the nonce and the signature. Figure 2 illustrates the process of route discovery in ARAN. All messages are authenticated at each hop from source to destination as well as on the reverse path. Due to heavy computation involved with the certificates, ARAN is vulnerable to many attacks e.g. DOS attacks. In situation when there are no malicious nodes in the network the load involved in the routing process force the legitimate nodes to drop the packets in order to save their resources. Symmetric Cryptography Solutions Symmetric cryptographic solutions rely solely on symmetric cryptography to secure the function of routing in wireless ad hoc networks. The mechanisms utilized is hash functions and hash chains. A one-way hash function is a function that takes an input of arbitrary length and returns an output of fixed length [14]. As hash functions are especially lightweight when compared to other symmetric and asymmetric cryptographic operations, they have been extensively used in the context of securing ad hoc routing. Secure Ad hoc On-demand Distance Vector Protocol (SAODV) The Secure Ad hoc On Demand Distance Vector (SAODV) [7] addresses the problem of securing a MANET network. SAODV is an extension of AODV[4] routing protocol that can be used to protect the route discovery mechanism by providing security features like authentication, integrity and non-repudiation. It uses digital signatures to authenticate the non-mutable fields of the message, and hash chains to secure the hop count information (the only mutable field in message) in both RREQ and RREP messages. The SAODV scheme is based on the assumption that each node possesses certified public keys of all network nodes . In order to facilitate the transmission of the information required for the security mechanisms, SAODV defines extensions to the standard AODV message format. These SAODV extensions consist of the following fields. The hash function field identifies the one-way hash function that is used. The field max hop count is a counter that specifies the maximum number of nodes a packet is al lowed to go through. The top hash field is the result of the application of the hash function max hop count times to a randomly generated number, and finally the field hash is this random number. When a node transmits a route request or a route reply AODV packet it sets the max hop count field equal to the time to live (TTL) field from the IP header, generates a random number and sets the hash field equal to it, and applies the hash function specified by the corresponding field max hop count times to the random number, storing the calculated result to the top hash field. Moreover, the node digitally signs all fields of the message, except the hop count field from the AODV header and the hash field from the SAODV extension header. An intermediate node that receives a route request or a route reply must verify the integrity of the message and the hop count AODV [4] field. The integrity requirement is accomplished by verifying the digital signature. The hop count field is verified by comparing the result of the application of the hash function max hop count minus hop count times to the hash field with the value of the top hash field. Before the packet is re-broadcasted by the in termediate node the value of the hash field is replaced by the result of the calculation of the one-way hash of the field itself in order to account for the new hop. In SAODV route error messages (RERR) that are generated by nodes that inform their neighbors that they are not going to be able to route messages to specific destinations are secured using digital signatures. A node that generates or forwards a route error message cryptographically signs the whole message, except the destination sequence numbers. Although SAODV provides reasonable security to MANETs routing, but it is still vulnerable to distance fraud attack [15] in which the forwarding node fails to increment the route metric because in SAODV there is no enforcement to do so. Further there is no method to detect the malicious nodes and DOS attacks because in SAODV it is assumed that DOS attacks are restricted to physical layer, but this assumption failed when colluding malicious nodes drop packets during the route discovery process. Security Aware Routing (SAR) SAR [16] (Security Aware Routing) is an extension to existing on demand routing protocols and used where nodes are grouped on the basis of trust level. In SAR each node has different security level which assigns them different trust levels. Two nodes can only communicate with each other if they have equal or greater trust values. If a node has lower security level it simply discards the packet. In case there is no node in the network with the desired level then communication cannot take place or we can say that, that particular packet cant be forwarded unless its security level is lowered. By exploiting this condition a malicious node can attack at its level or at lower levels. Particularly in the context of Packet Dropping Attack, within a trust level, a malicious node or any other node which aims at saving its resources or intentionally launching a attack can successfully drop packets without being noticed and can get services from other nodes for forwarding its own packets. SAR al so fails in the situations of secure routing in general because it only focuses on the situations in which certain groups are assumed to be trustworthy. Conclusion From the above discussion, we observe that all Secure Ad hoc routing protocols are still vulnerable to many attacks. Although proposed techniques provide security against external attacks, insider attacks are still an open issue in MANETs. Chapter 3 Literature Review Introduction Many solutions have been proposed to prevent selfishness in MANETs. The main goal of all the schemes proposed in the literature is to make decisions regarding trustworthy entities and to encourage behavior that leads to increasing trust. In this section we discuss some of the solutions presented in the literature in order to detect the malicious nodes in the network in context of packet dropping attack. Watchdog and Pathrater In [17] Marti el al, proposed a mechanism called as watchdog and pathrater on DSR[6] to detect the misbehavior of nodes in MANETs. Nodes in this scheme operate in a promiscuous mode. The watchdog monitors one hop neighbor by overhearing the medium to check whether the next neighbor forwards the packet or not. It also maintains a buffer of recently sent packets. If a data packet remains in the buffer too long, the watchdog declares the next hop neighbor to be misbehaving. Every node that participates in the ad hoc network employs the watchdog functionality in order to verify that its neighbors correctly forward packets. When a node transmits a packet to the next node in the path, it tries to promiscuously listen if the next node will also transmit it. Furthermore, if there is no link encryption utilized in the network, the listening node can also verify that the next node did not modify the packet before transmitting it . The watchdog of a node maintains copies of recently forwarded p ackets and compares them with the packet transmissions overheard by the neighboring nodes. Positive comparisons result in the deletion of the buffered packet and the freeing of the related memory. If a node that was supposed to forward a packet fails to do so within a certain timeout period, the watchdog of an overhearing node increments a failure rating for the specific node. This effectively means that every node in the ad hoc network maintains a rating assessing the reliability of every other node that it can overhear packet transmissions from. A node is identified as misbehaving when the failure rating exceeds a certain threshold bandwidth. The source node of the route that contains the offending node is notified by a message send by the identifying watchdog. As the authors of the scheme note, the main problem with this approach is its vulnerability to blackmail attacks. The pathrater selects the path with the highest metric when there are multiple paths for the same destination node. The algorithm followed by the pathrater mechanism initially assigns a rating of 1.0 to itself and 0.5 to each node that it knows through the route discovery function. The nodes that participate on the active paths have their ratings increased by 0.01 at periodic intervals of 200 milliseconds to a maximum rating of 0.8. A rating is decremented by 0.05 when a link breakage is

Carson McCullers - Exploring the Depths of the Human Heart :: Biography Biographies Essays

Carson McCullers   - Exploring the Depths of the Human Heart      Ã‚  Ã‚   "With poignant insight and compassion Carson McCullers (1917-1967) wrote of human loneliness, unfulfilled love, and the frailty of the human heart."    Of all the characters in the work of Carson McCullers, the one who seemed to her family and friends to be most like the author herself was Frankie Addams: the vulnerable, exasperating, and endearing adolescent of The Member of the Wedding who was looking for the "we of me." However, Carson once said that was, or became in the process of writing, all the characters in her work. This is probable true of most real writers who often with pain draw from their unconscious what the rest of us would just as soon keep hidden from ourselves and others. So accept the fact that Carson was not only Frankie Addams but J.T. Malone, Miss Amelia, and Captain Penderton; but familiarity with the work that she was not able to finish would only be only a partial clue to who and what she was. This was not simply because she had not finished what she had to say, but that she was the artist, and as she often quoted, "Nothing human is alien to me."    So many people were unable to acknowledge Carson's constant closeness to death, and many more resented her for trying to make them face it, but she had lived through enough close calls to convince everyone that she was indestructible.    Carson saw her life one way and those intimate with her often perceived it differently. Intentionally or unintentionally, she added to the confusion about herself. An interviewer was more likely to be cannily interviewed than to extract an interview from her. Besides, she simply liked a good story and frequently embellished the more amusing ones of her life. The one person who singled out this quality in a particularly loving way was Tennessee Williams in his unpublished essay "Praise to Assenting Angels":    The great generation of writers that emerged in the twenties, poets such as Eliot, Crane, Cummings, and Wallace Stevens, prose-writers such as Faulkner, Hemingway, Fitzgerald, and Katharine Anne Porter, has not been succeeded or supplemented by any new figures of corresponding stature with the sole exception of the prodigious young talent that first appeared in 1940 with the publication of her first novel, The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter.

Ib Business Steeple Analysis –

Every country has its own legislations however in the course of achieving their aims and objectives, businesses face challenges from both within and outside of their organizations. Those internal and external opportunities and risks will effect a firm’s gradual performance, therefore to analyze these factors and understand them to carry out effective decisions we use something called the STEEPLE analysis. STEEPLE analyses and examines the context in which the authority operates.Identifies key issues that exists (or are emerging) in the internal and external environment, by suggests how these will or may impact on the future strategy and resources. The factors are identified in these 7 areas: Social: Factors that include cultural aspects and include health consciousness that represents opportunities and threats to a business. They include aspects like income distribution, demographics, labor/social mobility, poverty levels e. t. c. For example Multiculturalism has led to a majo r boom in the trade of exports from different cultural backgrounds.Starbucks is known as a respectable employer and a business that values the workforce. They were even mentioned in the ‘Fortune Top 100 companies to work for’ in 2005. Technology: The efficiency of spending on technological advancements that may benefit or become a problem to the company. For example the new technological advancements can hinder the development of the business because of the high costs that are put into advancing the technology can interfere with the performance of the business.Hong Kong consumers are mostly capable in using computer based platforms because of highly technologically savvy population the consumers tend to look at the factor of convenience to their advantage. Therefore Starbucks has an opportunity to start a platform that will essentially provide to this need of consuming the wide public. Economic: The economic state of where the business operates is defined by inflation, unemployment, economic growth and international trade.Not only are there these four variables that determines the state of the economy but the consumer and business confidence level also determines the state of the economy that they are operating in. For example the actions of rival firms can alter performances of businesses. Hong Kong has faced a considerable flow of traffic involving tourist and travelers present in Hong Kong. A lot of mainlanders and travelers from neighboring regions have started swarming in Hong Kong due to the opening of Disneyland in 2002.The large rise of the number of consumers available in Hong Kong, whom are mostly very well off have therefore raise the consumer confidence overall. External environment: The factors that may effect any business activity and issues that should be addressed in any business strategy carried out. They include business strategies like the potential cost and benefits of a joint venture, marketing planning (like threats from othe r rival businesses), business propositions (whether to further expand the business internationally or not). Starbucks company has the opportunity to expand its global operations.Starbucks has already created branches located all globally. There are just as many Starbucks available in Hong Kong have opened over 60 new shops by the end of 2005. New markets for coffee such as India and the around the Pacific rims are beginning to emerge. Political: Government legislations like employment law, consumer protection rights, copyrights and trademark and regulations used as boundaries for the business to operate within. For example the Hong Kong government’s minimum wage policy that sets a boundary for all businesses to operate within.As Hong Kong (HKSAR) has been under the rule of mainland China for several years after the handover by the British government. Nevertheless it has business friendly laws in the land. These liberties allow Starbuck Coffee Company to be capable of operatin g internationally in Hong Kong. However it has to follow the general legislations and regulations imposed by the HK government. Legal: The government imposes various rules and regulations to ensure the protection of the general public from the negative aspects of businesses. These legislations are normally to protect consumers, competing firms, employees, the social environment e. . c. Ethics: The moral principle that should be considered during decision making in a business. For example, what is the right thing to do and what is the wrong thing to do. Minimum wage is morally right because there are people that work for the least amount of wage possible where you can not even afford a meal for a day. For those that are in need, minimum wage is morally right. Starbucks as an organization has strong ethical view and an ethical mission statement with strong ethical values as follows, ‘Starbucks is committed to a role of environmental leadership in all facts of our businessâ€℠¢.

Ethical behaviour in business Essay

In this task I will be explaining how my business (Ben and Jerry’s) could change or alter some of its practices and showing how these changes would contribute to improved ethical behaviour. The ethical issues I will be working on are CSR and trading fairly. Corporate social responsibility: Businesses do not exist in isolation nor is it simply just to make money; a lot of factors come into play. Customers, suppliers and the local community are all affected by the business and its operations. Ben and Jerry’s products, and the way they produce them all have an impact on the environment. CSR is all about businesses understanding the effects that they have on the community/wider world. Businesses will use this impact in a positive way to benefit both their business and the wider world. CSR means that business such as Ben and Jerry’s will have to take responsible attitude, going beyond the minimum legal requirements (as being ethical is strictly something you don’t have to do by law) and following basic principles that apply. How Ben and Jerry’s are responsible to society? Ben and Jerry’s take on corporate social responsibilities, taking action to achieve more desired goals to expand their business growth and also maintaining open line communication with employees to gain a better outcome. Ben and Jerry’s conduct various CSR activities, some of these include: Use of Fairtrade ingredients- Ben and Jerry’s first started using Fairtrade certified ingredients in 2005; they pledged in 2010 that by the end of 2013 they will go fully Fairtrade. Ben and Jerry’s work with dairy farmers and other farmers from third world countries, they source ingredients like cocoa, vanilla pods and various other ingredients. Fair Trade standards ensure that employees in these countries have good and safe working conditions, work reasonable hours and paid a fair amount for their work. Corporate Philanthropy- Corporate philanthropy in simple terms means a business’s care/love of humanity. Ben and Jerry’s a portion of its pre-tax profits to corporate philanthropy in attempts to become more socially responsible. Corporate philanthropy is led by employees through the B&J’s foundation and community action teams. Ben and Jerry’s award 1.8 million dollars to a philanthropy (an organisation that helps communities and the welfare of others) every year in and around Vermont, where Ben and Jerry’s  was initially set up. Engaging the Community through Community-based Projects- Another way in which Ben and Jerry’s is engaging in corporate responsibility to society is by setting up community –based development projects. The Vermont Dairy Farm Sustainability Project, which was launched by Ben & Jerry’s in 1999, set out to develop practical methods that could be used on day-to-day dairy operations to keep the water quality safe from nitrogen and phosphorus while not sacrificing the economic viability of the farm and making the farm a sustainable business. How can Ben and Jerry’s change/alter corporate social responsibilities (listed above) to contribute even more to improved business ethical behaviour? Ben and Jerry’s do all they can to make sure that they are socially responsible to stakeholders. They have engaged in a wide variety of activities/projects to insure that they do what they claim to do and that is to be as responsible to the wider community as much as they can, this includes Fairtrade, good working conditions, humanitarian concerns and other key factors in making sure that the community is affected in a positive manner. There is no denying that Ben and Jerry’s are very successful in their business operations and also their responsibility toward the society. But there are instances where they can improve on certain things. First of all the business follow all ethical procedures from Sourcing ingredients fairly to protecting the environment to the best of their ability’s, but if you were to be p icky Ben and Jerry’s are unethical in the sense that they are promoting unhealthy food. Now to most people this will not seem like a huge deal, but because obesity levels are on the increase and campaigns have been set up to tackle obesity and unhealthy eating, it seems somewhat of a contradictory move by Ben and Jerry’s to promote and sell Ice cream. This is being very, very picky however as they, like mentioned earlier, they ensure various factors are done ethically. You can argue that their advertisements and marketing techniques do not in any way state the products are healthy, so it’s not that they are misleading people. Some people may say that all Ben and Jerry’s do is sell unhealthy, fattening, chocolate rich ice creams, which can be considered a bit unethical. So in order to tackle this issue and make the company an even more ethically operating organisation, they can introduce healthier ice-cream or produce something alongside their standard ice-creams which is significantly healthier. They can use ingredients that  are healthier/low fat and implement a recipe that is just as good if not better than the original. This would contribute to better ethical behaviour by Ben and Jerry’s because it allows them to give people concerned an option of purchasing healthy (healthier) ice-cream. This will also mean that they are somewhat promoting healthier eating as people will look at them and think highly of them as they are taking these obesity concerns into consideration and doing something about it. Trading fairly: Trading fairly is a movement which strives for fair treatment for farmers. In a fair trade agreement, farmers will negotiate with the purchasers in order to receive a fair price for their products. Farmers who engage in fair trade also aim to pay their workers a fair price, and engage in environmentally-friendly practices. How Ben and Jerry’s trade fairly? Ben and Jerry’s have multiple tasks/missions they conduct to ensure that their operations are done fairly. First of all they are using fair trade. Using the Fairtrade method means that farmers who supply the ingredients get a fair pay, working and living environment. Another way in which they trade fairly is that they give back to society. This may seem like it is not directly trading fairly but Ben and Jerry’s do give something back to society. What they do is that they â€Å"operate the company in a way that actively recognizes the central role that business plays in society by initiating innovative ways to improve the quality of life locally, nationally and internationally† ( Source Ben and Jerry’s website). So while they are producing high quality ingredients at the same time they are giving back to society locally, nationally and internationally. How can Ben and Jerry’s change/alter trading fairly (listed above) to contribute even more to impro ved business ethical behaviour? Like with the previous point I struggled to really find an area within Ben and Jerry’s that they need improving on so I had to be picky, the same goes for trading fairly. Ben and Jerry’s seem to tick all the boxes when it comes to trading fairly; I mean they do everything from Fairtrade to providing the community that little something back. But If I were to be picky I think there is one thing that they might have to improve on ever so slightly and that is the marketing of  the products. The criticism that I have for their marketing is that they have allegedly a couple of times offended customers with the names of their ice creams. Now this may not seem like it has nothing to do with trading fairly but it is. The reason as to why it is because customers are ultimately the ones keeping your business going, now if they were offended with the marketing techniques such as naming then they will be put off in the future. Although Ben and Jerry’s have admitted to using â€Å"cheeky names† on their ice creams they do not do this with the intention of offending people although they have mislead/offended a few. Although they have now changed the names of those products and it was a one off incident they’ll be keen to make sure that this does not happen in the future. (The source where I found out about the names of products offending customers- http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/09/19/hazed-and-confused_n_5845650.html) So in order to alter the trading of products Ben and Jerry’s can make sure that in future releases of new Ice cream they choose names carefully and make sure that they do not refer to anything in a bad light . Ben and Jerry’s are known for their innovative names but in order to prevent people from getting offended they can make sure they choose names that are simple in the sense that people won’t get offended. They will have to take into consideration various factors that could offend people and make sure that names that are obvious to offend people are not used and well away from the products they make.

A History of the Horn, Better Known as the French Horn

A History of the Horn, Better Known as the French Horn Throughout the last six centuries, the evolution of horns has gone from the most basic of instruments used for hunting and announcements to more sophisticated musical versions designed to elicit the most melodious sounds. The First Horns The history of horns starts with the use of actual animal horns, hollowed out of the marrow, and blown into to create loud sounds announcing celebrations and the start of feasts, as well as for sharing warnings, such as the approach of enemies and threats. The Hebrew shofar is a classic example of an animal horn that was, and still is, widely used in celebrations. These culturally significant rams horns are used to announce major holidays and celebrations, such as Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur. However, the basic animal horn does not allow for much manipulation of sound other than what the user can do with his mouth. Rafael Ben-Ari/Getty Images Transitioning From Communication Tool to Musical Instrument Making the transition from a method of communication to a way to create music, horns were first formally seen being used as musical instruments during 16th-century operas. They were made from brass and mimicked the structure of the animal horn. Unfortunately, they provided a challenge for adjusting notes and tones. As such, horns of different lengths were introduced, and players had to switch between them throughout a performance. While this did provide some added flexibility, it wasnt an ideal solution, and horns werent widely used. During the 17th century, additional modifications to the horn were seen, including the enhancement of the bell end (larger and flared bells) of the horn. After this alteration was made, the cor de chasse, or French horn as the English called it, was born. The first horns were monotone instruments. But in 1753, a German musician called Hampel invented the means of applying movable slides (crooks) of various length that changed the key of the horn. In 1760, it was discovered rather than invented that placing a hand over the bell of the French horn lowered the tone, called stopping. Devices for stopping were later invented, which further enhanced the sound that performers could create. In the early 19th century, pistons and valves, instead of crooks, were used, giving birth to the modern French horn and eventually the double French horn. This new design allowed for an easier transition from note to note, without having to switch instruments, which meant performers could keep a smooth and uninterrupted sound. It also allowed for players to have a wider range of tones, which created more complex and harmonic sound. Despite the fact that the term French horn has been widely accepted as the proper name of this instrument, its modern design was actually developed by German builders and is most frequently manufactured in Germany. As such, many experts assert that the proper name for this instrument should simply be a horn. Who Invented the French Horn? Tracing the invention of the French horn to one person is tricky. However, two inventors are named as the first to invent a valve for the horn. According to the Brass Society, Heinrich Stoelzel (1777–1844), a member of the band of the Prince of Pless, invented a valve that he applied to the horn by July 1814 (considered the first French horn) and Friedrich Blà ¼hmel (fl. 1808–before 1845), a miner who played trumpet and horn in a band in Waldenburg, is also associated with the invention of the valve. Edmund Gumpert and Fritz Kruspe are both credited with inventing double French horns in the late 1800s. German Fritz Kruspe, who has been noted most often as the inventor of the modern double French horn, combined the pitches of the horn in F with the horn in B-flat in 1900.

The Social Transformation of American Medicine

The Social Transformation of American Medicine Starr divides the history of medicine into two books in order to emphasize two separate movements in the development of American medicine. The first movement was the rise of professional sovereignty and the second was the transformation of medicine into an industry, with corporations taking a large role. A Sovereign Profession In the first book, Starr begins with a look at the shift from domestic medicine in early America when the family wants the locus of care of the sick to the shift towards the professionalization of medicine in the late 1700s. Not all were accepting, however, as lay healers in the early 1800s saw the medical profession as nothing but privilege and took a hostile stance to it. But then medical schools began to emerge and proliferate during the mid-1800s and medicine was quickly becoming a profession with licensures, codes of conduct, and professional fees. The rise of hospitals and the introduction of telephones and better modes of transportation made physicians accessible and acceptable. In this book, Starr also discusses the consolidation of professional authority and the changing social structure of physicians in the nineteenth century. For instance, before the 1900s, the role of the doctor did not have a clear class position, as there was a lot of inequality. Doctors did not earn much and a physician’s status depended largely on their family’s status. In 1864, however, the first meeting of the American Medical Association was held in which they raised and standardized requirements for medical degrees as well as enacted a code of ethics, giving the medical profession a higher social status. Reform of medical education began around 1870 and continued through the 1800s. Starr also examines the transformation of American hospitals throughout history and how they have become central institutions in medical care. This happened in a series of three phases. First was the formation of voluntary hospitals that were operated by charitable lay boards and public hospitals that were operated by municipalities, counties, and the federal government. Then, beginning in the 1850s, a variety of more â€Å"particularistic† hospitals formed that were primarily religious or ethnic institutions that specialized in certain diseases or categories of patients. Third was the advent and spread of profit-making hospitals, which are operated by physicians and corporations. As the hospital system has evolved and changed, so has the role of the nurse, physician, surgeon, staff, and patient, which Starr also examines. In the final chapters of book one, Starr examines dispensaries and their evolvement over time, the three phases of public health and the rise of new specialty clinics, and the resistance to the corporatization of medicine by doctors. He concludes with a discussion of the five major structural changes in the distribution of power that played a major role in the social transformation of American medicine:1. The emergence of an informal control system in medical practice resulting from the growth of specialization and hospitals.2. Stronger collective organization and authority/the control of labor markets in medical care.3. The profession secured a special dispensation from the burdens of hierarchy of the capitalist enterprise. No â€Å"commercialism† in medicine was tolerated and much of the capital investment required for medical practice was socialized.4. The elimination of countervailing power in medical care.5. The establishment of specific spheres of professional authority. The Struggle for Medical Care The second half of The Social Transformation of American Medicine focuses on the transformation of medicine into an industry and the growing role of corporations and the state in the medical system. Starr begins with a discussion on how social insurance came about, how it evolved into a political issue, and why America lagged behind other countries with regards to health insurance. He then examines how the New Deal and the Depression affected and shaped insurance at the time. The birth of Blue Cross in 1929 and Blue Shield several years later really paved the way for health insurance in America because it reorganized medical care on a prepaid, comprehensive basis. This was the first time that â€Å"group hospitalization† was introduced and provided a practical solution for those who could not afford typical private insurance of the time. Shortly after, health insurance emerged as a benefit received via employment, which reduced the likelihood that only the sick would buy insurance and it reduced the large administrative costs of individually sold policies. Commercial insurance expanded and the character of the industry changed, which Starr discusses. He also examines the key events that formed and shaped the insurance industry, including World War II, politics, and social and political movements (such as the women’s rights movement). Starr’s discussion of the evolution and transformation of the American medical and insurance system ends in the late 1970s. A lot has changed since then, but for a very thorough and well-written look at how medicine has changed throughout history in the United States up until 1980, The Social Transformation of American Medicine is the book to read. This book is the winner of the 1984 Pulitzer Prize for General Non-Fiction, which in my opinion is well deserved. References Starr, P. (1982). The Social Transformation of American Medicine. New York, NY: Basic Books.

A Plan in the Business of Entrepreneurship

The clothing industry has been experiencing profitable growth in recent years. It has been seen that small and medium enterprises have been experiencing remarkable growth in the clothing industry. In this context, the researcher will discuss a business a plan for opening a clothing retail store in Singapore. The co-owners will operate the business in an effective manner. The venture will be named as Models boutique having a wide range of traditional and modern clothing for women. The stylish product collection and the affordable pricing will be the highlighted areas of the business. The organization will accumulate funds from equity investment, specific grants and owner’s investment. The primary competitive advantage is the absence of such clothing retail in the specific location. Moreover, the co-owners of the company have worked in the clothing industry for 20 years. Hence, the experience will facilitate them to establish a successful business in the domestic market. Singapore has 5.54 million population, and 49% of them are female (Akhtaruzzaman and Hasanuzzaman 2012). Hence, it indicates the growth opportunity for the Models boutique. The strong part of the business is that the organization will provide a huge discount on every product for market promotion. Moreover, Models boutique will include a huge range of new clothing collection for attracting teenagers and middle age women. Models boutique is a small retail venture, which will sell the stylish clothing to women in the society. Models boutiques will be located in Singapore. The initial objective of the organization is to open a boutique and expand its business to the large demographic areas. The aim of the boutique is to become the leader among small businesses. Models boutique will include the potential franchise for the expansion of the business. The vision of the organization is to obtain profitable outcome from the business. The mission of Models Boutique suggests that the company will establish a brand value in the domestic market within five years of time span. The prime motive of the organization is to engage a huge number of women in their business to enhance the profitability in an effective manner. By discussing the products and services, it can be assessed that the fashion industry is youth focused (Asuyama et al. 2013). We will tailor our inventory to meet customer’s requirement. Models boutique will include both traditional and modern clothes for women in the society. We will focus on the style, color, and fits of the products in order to satisfy our clients. Singapore has experienced $3.5 billion retail sales in 2015. There are roughly 5.54 million populations in Singapore (Davies 2012). 49.6% of them are women. Hence, it indicates the huge market potentiality for the clothing business. Models boutique will initially approach local customers. However, we will augment our accomplishment after building a strong brand image in the market. The industry size has been expanding as the population increases. The Huge market chain will facilitate to engage a huge number of customers in the business (Foerster et al. 2014). The structure of the business includes both macro and micro environments. Customers, shareholders, suppliers will be the key components of the business structure. The industry and market trends suggest that the clothing business will touch a new height within 2-3 years. The segmentation of market will be based on the demographic, social and cultural aspects. We will segregate the market as per the income level of families. At th e initial stage, we may face challenges to adopting the customer’s behavior towards our products and services. In the fashion industry, buyers behavior change frequently based on the current market trends (Gupta and Hodges 2012).   By analyzing the competitors, it can be assessed that the Models Boutique has some tough competition in the market. Huge growth in the clothing industry has increased the market competition for Models boutique. The strength of the company is that the Model boutique will focus on the pricing model for engaging women in the society. On the other hand, the major weakness of the company is that Model boutique does not have a strong financial background like other branded clothing store located in Singapore.   The target customers are women of all ages. In the initial stage, Models boutique will focus on targeting middle-class families. However, the wide range of the collection will attract women from all communities. Models boutique will try to build a strong customer’s base in the business for obtaining profitable outcome of the business. The company will consider demographic, social and cultural aspects for segmenting the market in an effective manner (Hwang, Fang Tan and Sathish 2013). The target of the company is to attract the teenage and middle-age women in the society. The unique selling point of the products is that customers will get both traditional and modern clothes with huge discounts. Moreover, the organization will engage tailoring services for providing best fittings to the customers. The model boutique will be able to attract women by the unique design of the products. It will also provide ethnic wear for women. The model boutique will consider the cultural value of the customers.   The organization will beat its competitors by a wide range of traditional and modern clothing collection along with a huge discount on each product.   The market strategy consists of several factors including pricing strategy, competitive reaction, launching strategy, sales plans, brand improvement, product and marketing development and growth potentials (Kochhan et al. 2014). Models boutique will be launched with a grand opening. The opening event will include the media coverage, print advertisement, and client’s direct-mail campaign. At the launching event, Models boutique will engage a famous face from the fashion industry for the brand enhancement. The primary sales tactics will be enhanced through several promotional activities including social media promotion, online promotion, printing promotion and digital media promotion (Kohpaiboon, Kulthanavit and Jongwanich 2012). Models boutique has a target of brand development within a year. The organization will include several survey methods for accumulating feedbacks from the customers. Consequently, it will facilitate in the brand development program. The products and marketing development will be executed in a systematic manner. Models boutique will implement new strategies for products and market development based on current market statistics. Finally, the pricing model will be implemented in the business considering economic condition of the society (Nattrass and Seekings 2013). However, the organization will be focused on the reasonable pricing strategy for enhancing brand promotion in the domestic market. Our goal is to keep the financial budget not exceeding 5% of the annual gross sales. Moreover, Models boutique will collaborate with local companies and various fashion malls. The operation plan includes the key operative activities, partnerships, business controls, IP issues, and scalability (Oh, Teo and Sambamurthy 2012). Models boutique will execute the business six days in a week from 9 am to 7 pm. The shop will be extended during the holiday seasons and special occasions. The trade store will include two floors of a building. In the business, two full-time co-owner and 5 employees will be hired for executing the business in an effective manner. Models boutique will protect the merchandise from the home manufacturers with a showroom in the city. Moreover, the organization will include whole-seller merchandise for the business. On the other hand, Models boutique will effort together with its sales regional representative. The company will also organize fashion shows in order to enhance the promotional activities. A cost inventory level will be set in the business in order to control cost, track inventory, and management stock levels. Models boutique will be very strict to avoid the intellectual property issues (Park and Noh 2012). The company will employ a team for handling brand logo, store design, and others. A standard bar code will be employed in the inventory system. Moreover, it includes the related software. Staffs will execute the annual inventory audits in the business.   They will hire external auditors for the enhancement of the process. Entire accounting and finances will be executed through Peachtree software. By discussing the organizational structure, it can be assessed that Models boutique will involve small staffs as the business venture is small. In this context, co-owners will take the leadership role within the business. Moreover, they will be liable for meeting efforts, buying merchandise, managing inventory, daily operations and other administrative works (Staritz and Morris 2013). Small sales staffs will facilitate co-owners with assisting customers, protecting sells, and common upholding of stock in the business. Both key owners will handle daily responsibilities in the business. One of the co-owners will handle several operations including inventory management, staffs supervising and bookkeeping. On the other hand, other co-owner will execute the process of merchandise buying for the stores. Moreover, he will be responsible for upholding the intense alertness of trends within the business. Owners will also manage the public relations in order to enhance the business effectiveness in the market. Models boutique will involve total 5 sales staffs. However, the management believes that the particular business operations do not require any high-qualified employee. Consequently, it makes easier for the recruitment system. The organization will provide a bonus to employees in every year.   The prime resource for the business is workforce. However, Models boutique does not engage the huge workforce. Initially, the organization will open its stores in a building including two floors. However, it will be expensive to open a store at the heart of Singapore (Yusuf and Nabeshima 2012). Hence, Models boutique will spend a large amount of capital on business premises. On the other hand, it will engage a team to decorate store properly so that it can attract customers in an effective manner. At the initial stage, five employees will be hired for the store, and they will be provided wages on an hourly basis. Models boutique will employ enhanced software and technology in the business for enhancing its effectiveness. It will engage whole sellers for managing the production of the business in an effective manner. Models boutique requires $282,000 to start-up their venture in the market. The founders of the business contribute $50,000 to the start-up cost. Models boutique is currently seeking for funds from business loans and outside investors. At this moment, the Models boutique has total $50,000 in equity capital and added $12,000 for a specific grant. Co-owners have invested $25,000 each into Models boutique. Hence, Models boutique needs investors for accumulating $170,000 in equity investment and $50,000 in loans. Funds will be utilized in several sections including construction management, computer equipment, sales counter, and overall decoration. The financial projection includes segments as follows: Models boutique is expecting to collect annual sales of $285,000 in the 1 st financial year, $375,000 in 2 nd FY and $525,000 in 3 rd FY.   This collection will be based on marketing plans, products offering, store size, and locations. The average cost of goods sold will be 40% that indicates a gross margin of 60%. It can be assessed that the minimum fixed costs are $15,500 per month. Hence, the organization needs to produce sales of $25,833 per month to break even. Ii indicates that Models boutique will be in a profitable position on a monthly basis before the end of the 1 st FY. In the third year, Models boutique will receive net income of $105,000. Hence, the income statement indicates company’s profitability states in the business. Models boutique will accumulate instant payment from clients in the market. Hence, the cash flow statement will be significantly similar to the income statement. The cash flow statement evidently indicates Models boutique’s ability to covers all bills timely. Models boutique will launch its business with $200,000 in equity capital and $50,000 in loans. Supplier’s term in inventory and the credit amount will appear on the balance sheet as short-term liabilities. The balance sheet will not include the jewelry consignment from vendors. It will be expensed as sold. Models boutique may face some challenges in launching the business in the market. There are some risks for the business. The primary risk for the business is that Models boutique may not be able to attract customers with their business policy, as there is huge competition in the market. The threat from new companies may affect the business. Hence, Models boutique needs to focus on the risk monitoring process in order to identify the potential risks in the market. At the initial stage, the organization will take time for building a good relationship with the suppliers, vendors, and others stakeholders. It indicates a barrier for the market entry (Nattrass and Seekings 2013). By analyzing the critical success factors, it can be assessed that Models boutique will focus on their cost effective pricing model to build huge customer’s base in the market. On the other hand, the healthy relationship with suppliers and other stakeholders will facilitate the company in enhancing business opportunity in the domestic market. Models boutique needs to incorporate the sell in the market. The key milestone for the organization indicates its growth in the domestic market. A strategic approach to the business facilitates organization in enhancing the productivity in an effective manner. In a growing market, the company needs to progress the business by overcoming several challenges. For achieving the key milestone, the business needs to consider several aspects including prototype completion, formalization of partnership, securing key customers and obtaining finance (Gupta and Hodges 2012). The business will hold a customer’s base in order to experience profitable outcome from the business. the organization will uphold healthy relationship with the suppliers and shareholders of the business to progress the business in an effective manner, With the involvement of collaborative approaches, the organization will be able to expand its business in large demographic areas.  Ã‚   Akhtaruzzaman, M. and Hasanuzzaman, S., 2012. Exploring Prospect of the Clothing and Textile Industry: Is Bangladesh Following a Right Growth Strategy?.  World Journal of Social Sciences,  2(4), pp.150-161. Asuyama, Y., Chhun, D., Fukunishi, T., Neou, S. and Yamagata, T., 2013. Firm dynamics in the Cambodian garment industry: firm turnover, productivity growth and wage profile under trade liberalization.  Journal of the Asia Pacific Economy,  18(1), pp.51-70. Davies, K., 2012. 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