Special Issue on Secure Communications - Telecommunication Systems (Springer Journal; ISI Impact Factor 1.02)


Telecommunication Systems
Modeling, Analysis, Design and Management
Editor-in-Chief: Bezalel Gavish
ISSN: 1018-4864 (print version)
ISSN: 1572-9451 (electronic version)
Journal no. 11235
ISI Impact Factor 1.02


Special Issue on Secure Communications

Secure communication is when two entities are communicating and do not want a third party to listen in. For that they need to communicate in a way not susceptible to eavesdropping or interception. Secure communication includes means by which people can share information with varying degrees of certainty that third parties cannot intercept what was said. Other than spoken face-to-face communication with no possible eavesdropper, it is probably safe to say that no communication is guaranteed secure in this sense, although practical obstacles such as legislation, resources, technical issues (interception and encryption), and the sheer volume of communication serve to limit surveillance.
With many communications taking place over long distance and mediated by technology, and increasing awareness of the importance of interception issues, technology and its compromise are at the heart of this debate. For this reason, this special issue focuses on communications mediated or intercepted by technology. Trusted Computing also is an approach under present development that achieves security in general at the potential cost of compelling obligatory trust in corporate and government bodies.

Topics
Security can be broadly categorized under the following headings, with examples:
 Hiding the content or nature of a communication
o Code – a rule to convert a piece of information (for example, a letter, word, phrase, or gesture) into another form or representation (one sign into another sign), not necessarily of the same type. In communications and information processing, encoding is the process by which information from a source is converted into symbols to be communicated. Decoding is the reverse process, converting these code symbols back into information understandable by a receiver.
o Encryption
o Identity Based
o Steganography covers a broad spectrum of techniques, which include, among others:
 Digital Image Steganography - allows an average user to securely transfer text messages by hiding them in a digital image file.
 Digital Audio Steganography - based on the characteristics of digital audio signals and the human auditory system (HAS).
 Digital Video Steganography - embed small information in the digital video such that the message is imperceptible and robust against attempts to degrade it or remove it from the digital object.
 Steganalysis - The goal of steganalysis is to identify suspected packages, determine whether or not they have a payload encoded into them, and, if possible, recover that payload.

 Hiding the parties to a communication – preventing identification, promoting anonymity
o Crowds and similar anonymous group structures – it is difficult to identify who said what when it comes from a "crowd"
o Anonymous communication devices – unregistered cell phones, Internet cafes
o Anonymous proxies
o Hard to trace routing methods – through unauthorized third-party systems, or relays

 Hiding the fact that a communication takes place
o Security by obscurity – similar to needle in a haystack
o Random traffic – creating random data flow to make the presence of genuine communication harder to detect and traffic analysis less reliable


Submissions
 The manuscripts for this special issue have to be submitted in the form of a PDF file ONLY to the Corresponding Guest Editor - Dr. Mazdak Zamani (mazdak@utm.my) and NOT to the journal office.
 Guidelines for preparation of the manuscripts are provided at the Telecommunication Systems journal website, http://www.springer.com/journal/11235.
 The submission must include the title, abstract of your paper, and all the authors' names, affiliations and emails.
 All papers will be rigorously reviewed based on the quality: originality, high scientific quality, organization and clarity of writing, and support provided for assertions and conclusion.


Schedule
 Submission Deadline: December 31, 2013
 Notification of First Round of Review: March 31, 2014
 Submission of Revised Papers for Second Round of Review: April 30, 2014
 Notification of Second Round of Review: June 30, 2014
 Submission of Final Paper: July 31, 2014
 Publication Date (Hard Copy): 2017/2018 (Tentative)


Guest Editors
Prof. Dr. Azizah Abd Manaf
Universiti Teknologi Malaysia
54100 Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia
E-mail: azizah07@ic.utm.my

Assoc. Prof. Dr. Isao Echizen
National Institute of Informatics
2-1-2, Hitotsubashi, Chiyoda-ku, Tokyo, Japan
E-mail: iechizen@nii.ac.jp

Dr. Mazdak Zamani
Universiti Teknologi Malaysia
54100 Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia
E-mail: mazdak@utm.my

Prof. Dr. Shamsul Sahibuddin
Universiti Teknologi Malaysia
54100 Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia
E-mail: shamsul@utm.my

Prof. Dr. Yoshiro Imai
Kagawa University
2217-20 Hayashi-cho Takamatsu, Japan
E-mail: imai@eng.kagawa-u.ac.jp