India Internet Engineering Society (IIESoc) & Industry Network Technology Council (INTC) will be organizing the 6th iteration of Connections as a joint fully online event on Feb 5-8 2024.
Internet Technology and Governance with talks from Amrita Choudhury and Simone Basso
Intersection of Tech and Policy from Indian Perspective
We are living in a digital age where technology has become an integral part of our lives. While technology has transformed our lives by ushering in new opportunities, we are also witnessing new challenges, which regulators are grappling to address. To keep up with the times, even in India, we are witnessing several new regulations that have been brought in (such as the Digital Personal Data Protection Act. The Telecommunications Bill 2023) and discussions underway to overhaul or bring in new regulations (such as the Digital India Act, Digital Competition Bill, Broadcasting Services Bill 2023, Cybersecurity Strategy, etc.). Additionally, there are ongoing discourses to address the challenge of misinformation and fake news (deep fakes), governance of AI, discussions on network usage fees, encryption, etc.
The talk would highlight these regulatory changes and trends and why all stakeholders especially the technical community must participate in such discourses so that India can come up with nuanced, implementable robust, forward-looking regulations. The talk would also discuss how the technical community can engage meaningfully in these discourses.
How Internet censorship changed in Russia during the 1st year of military conflict in Ukraine
As of today, last year, Russia started its military operation in Ukraine. This was followed by increased levels of internet censorship, as Internet Service Providers (ISPs) in Russia started blocking access to several news media websites. In early March 2022, OONI published a report documenting these blocks, as well as the blocking of a site (200rf.com) that shares information about captured and killed Russian soldiers in Ukraine. OONI also reported that Russian ISPs started throttling access to Twitter on 26th February 2022, and switched to blocking it by 4th March 2022 – at which point, they also started blocking access to Facebook. Information controls are known to occur during conflicts, and the increased censorship events in Russia suggest an attempt to control the narrative surrounding the conflict in Ukraine. But has internet censorship changed in Russia over the last year? In this report, we attempt to answer this question through the analysis of OONI measurements collected from Russia between January 2022 to February 2023. We supplement our findings with information from relevant legal analysis and desk research provided by Roskomsvoboda.
Several widely-deployed messaging applications have developed their own protocols. While these protocols are similar, no two are close enough to interoperate. As a result, each application vendor has had to maintain their own protocol stack and independently build trust in the quality of the protocol. The goal of the
working group is to develop a standard messaging security protocol for human-to-human(s) communication with the above security and deployment properties so that applications can share code, and so that there can be shared validation of the protocol (as there has been with TLS 1.3).
Neighbour Discovery for IPv6 forms the cornerstone of efficient network communication in the IPv6 realm. It facilitates address resolution, duplicate address detection, and router discovery, making it indispensable for seamless communication across IPv6 networks. However, as enterprises migrate to IPv6, the conventional ND6 protocol may face challenges in terms of scalability and performance.
To address these limitations, our research focuses on incorporating the enhancements proposed for 6lowpan in RFC 6775 and 8505 into the mainstream ND6 protocol. These RFCs present innovative solutions that improve the speed and accuracy of neighbour discovery while optimizing the use of multicast messages.
In particular, RFC 6775 outlines mechanisms for optimizing ND6 for low-power and lossy networks (6Lowpan). By bringing these optimizations into the mainstream ND6, we aim to enhance its performance and adaptability, especially in enterprise settings.
Additionally, RFC 8505 proposes solutions to reduce unnecessary traffic and processing overhead in ND6, further optimizing its performance in larger networks. This reduction in overhead is critical for scaling ND6 to meet the demands of modern enterprise environments.
In this presentation, NITK students Sudesh, Advaith, and Kavya will elaborate on our hypothesis, the advanced packet modifications, and their efforts in implementing these upgrades in FreeRtr – an open-source IPv6 routing software. They have been actively involved in the implementation of these enhancement.
Priyanka Sinha was most recently the IoT Analytics lead at Zenatix. She previously worked on Redback Networks’ SmartEdge 800, Itaas’ interactive TV, and TCS Research’s social IoT. She received her BTech in CSE from IIT Guwahati in 2004, her MS in Computer Engineering from Auburn University in 2007, and her PhD in CSE from IIT Kharagpur in 2022. She was a Vodafone fellow at Auburn, where she worked on autoconfiguration in multi-hop mobile adhoc networks.
TLS 1.3, the latest version of the Transport Layer Security protocol, brings forth significant advancements and improvements over its predecessors. In this discussion, we will delve into some of the key changes introduced by TLS 1.3, namely the increased encryption in the handshake process, deprecation of specific key exchange algorithms, and the introduction of new extensions. Additionally, we will explore the implications of TLS 1.3 on network management within enterprises.
Nalini started her career doing network design and monitoring for the Chevron network. She specializes in network performance analysis, measurement, monitoring, tuning, and troubleshooting of large enterprise networks.
One of her specialties is training and network design for IPv6 migration for large enterprises. Many of the Fortune 1000 level companies as well as the large US government organizations have taken her classes on various networking topics.
She has developed network monitoring and diagnostic products which IBM and other software companies later marketed. She received the A.A. Michelson award from the Computer Measurement Group for her contributions to the field. Nalini is on the Advisory Board of the India Internet Engineering Society (IIESoc).
The goal of this session is to understand the state of the art in Extension Header testing and support in the Internet. Using PDM, we conduct measurement experiments in different scenarios on the internet, such as how various CDNs and Cloud platforms support Extension Headers.
In this one-hour webinar, we will delve into the world of Transport Layer Security (TLS) and focus on one of its fundamental components, the handshake. TLS is a cryptographic protocol widely used to secure communication over computer networks. By analyzing packet traces, we will demystify the TLS handshake process, step by step, and gain a comprehensive understanding of how it establishes secure connections.
- The importance of TLS and secure communication
- Overview of the TLS protocol
- Explanation of its role in securing network communications
- Discussion on the importance of the handshake process
- A step-by-step breakdown of the TLS handshake process
- Highlighting key TLS handshake message types and their significance
Nalini Elkins is the President of the Industry Network Technology Council. She is also the CEO and Founder of Inside Products, Inc. Nalini is a recognized leader in the field of computer performance measurement and analysis. In addition to being an experienced software product designer, developer, and planner, she has been the founder or co-founder of four start-ups in the high-tech arena.
Nalini started her career doing network design and monitoring for the Chevron network. She specializes in network performance analysis, measurement, monitoring, tuning, and troubleshooting of large enterprise networks.
One of her specialties is training and network design for IPv6 migration for large enterprises. Many of the Fortune 1000 level companies as well as the large US government organizations have taken her classes on various networking topics.
She has developed network monitoring and diagnostic products which were later marketed by IBM and other software companies. She received the A.A. Michelson award from the Computer Measurement Group for her contributions to the field. Nalini is on the Advisory Board of the India Internet Engineering Society (IIESoc).
This webinar is a part of the Cryptography webinar series.
The goal of this session is to understand the state of the art in Extension Header testing and support in the Internet. Using PDM we conduct measurement experiments in different scenarios in the internet such as how various CDNs support Extension Headers.
As part of our ongoing collaboration with academia in India, NITK Surathkal students Balajinaidu V., Chinmaya Sharma, Amogh Umesh and Anirudh Munnur Achal shall also be presenting their experiments with eBPF and EH Testing.
The webinar series will be composed of 6 more sessions of one hour:
- Extension Headers-PDM results: May 4
- VPNs: June 1
- Extension Headers testing in Cloud: July 6
- Enhancements for Neighbour Discovery: August 24
- TBD: September 28
- IPv6 + CDN: November 30
The goal for the second security session is to understand some of the terms which are crucial to cryptography. The explanation will be for those implementing security protocols rather than academics or cryptographers. We will cover:
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DES
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3DES
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Asymmetric encryption / symmetric encryption
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Elliptic curve cryptography
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Certificate authorities
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Diffie-Hellman key exchange
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Diffie-Hellman groups
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Hashed message authentication code (HMAC)
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Message authentication code (MAC)
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Message digest algorithm 5 (MD5)
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Rivest Shamir Adleman (RSA)
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Secure hash algorithm (SHA)
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X.500 distinguished name
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X.509 digital certificates
Nalini Elkins is the President of the Industry Network Technology Council. She is also the CEO and Founder of Inside Products, Inc. Nalini is a recognized leader in the field of computer performance measurement and analysis. In addition to being an experienced software product designer, developer, and planner, she has been the founder or co-founder of four start-ups in the high-tech arena.
Nalini started her career doing network design and monitoring for the Chevron network. She specializes in network performance analysis, measurement, monitoring, tuning, and troubleshooting of large enterprise networks.
One of her specialties is training and network design for IPv6 migration for large enterprises. Many of the Fortune 1000 level companies as well as the large US government organizations have taken her classes on various networking topics.
She has developed network monitoring and diagnostic products which were later marketed by IBM and other software companies. She received the A.A. Michelson award from the Computer Measurement Group for her contributions to the field. Nalini is on the Advisory Board of the India Internet Engineering Society (IIESoc).