Secure Communication in Disaster Scenarios

During disasters, existing telecommunication infrastructures are often congested or even destroyed. In these situations, mobile devices can be interconnected using wireless ad hoc and disruption-tolerant networking to establish a backup emergency communication system for civilians and emergency services. When available, a connection to cloud services in the Internet is a valuable aid in crisis and disaster management. However, such communication systems entail serious security risks, since adversaries may attempt to steal confidential data, fake notifications of emergency services, or perform denial-of-service (DoS) attacks. This thesis proposes novel emergency communication approaches for challenged networks of mobile devices, addressing issues ranging from mobile device communication to cloud services running on servers in the Internet. Using these approaches, the security of mobile device-to-device communication, the security of emergency apps running on mobile devices, and the security of server systems hosting cloud services are improved.