MIDDLEWARE ARCHITECTURE FOR SECURING AND IMPROVING IP MULTIMEDIA SUBSYSTEM (IMS) BASED NEXT GENERATION NETWORK MULTIMEDIA SERVICES

Abstract

IP Multimedia Subsystem (IMS), an architectural framework for Next Generation Networks (NGN) planes to converge all the networks and services on one IP based platform. IMS application plane consists of various types of application servers those provides different types of services. These Services include Presence, Instant Messaging, Push to talk over cellular, multiparty conference etc. IMS application server and other servers are subject to various types of security threats including time dependent and time independent attacks. Moreover currently available service features are not enough to meet the needs of daily life communication. To secure the application plane we proposed a signature based role oriented Intrusion Detection and Prevention (IDP) system. An anomaly detection module is also added to increase the level of security. We also proposed few other solutions those add security in IMS application plane. These solutions include User preferences based instant messaging, presence based instant messaging, election based referring, location based deletion of malicious users etc. To enrich the IMS based multimedia services we developed different solutions for different services and these solutions include presence enabled call setup, media mixing through presence information, floor control mechanism, parameterized referring, election based right allocation mechanism etc. To test the developed solution we create an IMS testbed by using open source solutions. Prototypes of services are also developed. The results are obtained by implementing the proposed solution over the testbed. It is observed that the proposed solutions enhances the security of IMS based services, and include value added features to make them feasible for more daily life scenarios.