A Survey on Wireless Sensor Network Security

Wireless sensor networks (WSNs) have recently attracted a lot of interest in the research community due their wide range of applications. Due to distributed nature of these networks and their deployment in remote areas, these networks are vulnerable to numerous security threats that can adversely affect their proper functioning. This problem is more critical if the network is deployed for some mission-critical applications such as in a tactical battlefield. Random failure of nodes is also very likely in real-life deployment scenarios. Due to resource constraints in the sensor nodes, traditional security mechanisms with large overhead of computation and communication are infeasible in WSNs. Security in sensor networks is, therefore, a particularly challenging task. This paper discusses the current state of the art in security mechanisms for WSNs. Various types of attacks are discussed and their countermeasures presented. A brief discussion on the future direction of research in WSN security is also included.Comment: 24 pages, 4 figures, 2 table

Resilient networking in wireless sensor networks

This report deals with security in wireless sensor networks (WSNs), especially in network layer. Multiple secure routing protocols have been proposed in the literature. However, they often use the cryptography to secure routing functionalities. The cryptography alone is not enough to defend against multiple attacks due to the node compromise. Therefore, we need more algorithmic solutions. In this report, we focus on the behavior of routing protocols to determine which properties make them more resilient to attacks. Our aim is to find some answers to the following questions. Are there any existing protocols, not designed initially for security, but which already contain some inherently resilient properties against attacks under which some portion of the network nodes is compromised? If yes, which specific behaviors are making these protocols more resilient? We propose in this report an overview of security strategies for WSNs in general, including existing attacks and defensive measures. In this report we focus at the network layer in particular, and an analysis of the behavior of four particular routing protocols is provided to determine their inherent resiliency to insider attacks. The protocols considered are: Dynamic Source Routing (DSR), Gradient-Based Routing (GBR), Greedy Forwarding (GF) and Random Walk Routing (RWR)

Distribuirani obrambeni mehanizmi za clone napade temeljeni na algoritmu za istraživanje gravitacije (GSA) u WSN

Wireless Sensor Networks (WSN) are often deployed in hostile environment and are vulnerable to attacks because of the resource constrained nature of the sensors. Clone attack in WSN is one of the major issues where the messages are eavesdropped, the captured node is cloned, and multiple nodes with same identity are produced by attacker. In order to overcome these issues, in this paper, a Distributed Defense Mechanism for Clone Attacks based on Gravitational Search Algorithm (GSA) in WSN is proposed. For efficiently detecting the suspect nodes, the nodes in the channel can be divided into witness node and the claimer node. The witness nodes are responsible for the suspect nodes detection, whereas the claimer nodes should provide their identities for the detection process. For the witness nodes selection, we utilize the GSA to pick out the best witness nodes set. After selecting the witness nodes, clone attack detection is performed by observing the behavior of the neighbor nodes. On detecting the clone attack, revocation procedure is triggered to revoke the clone attack in the witness nodes. By simulation results, it can be concluded that the proposed algorithm provides better protection to clone attacks by reducing the packet drop and increasing the packet delivery ratio.Bežične senzorske mreže (WSN) često su raspoređene u neprijateljskom okruženju i ranjive su na napade zbog prirode senzora koji su tehnološki ograničeni. Clone napad u WSN jedan je od glavnih problema gdje se poruke prisluškuju, zarobljeni čvor se klonira te napadač proizvede višestruke čvorove istog identiteta. Kako bi nadvladali te probleme, ovaj rad predlaže distribuirani obrambeni mehanizam za clone napade temeljen na algoritmu za istraživanje gravitacije (GSA) u WSN. Kako bi se sumnjivi čvorovi efikasno detektirali, čvorovi u kanalu mogu se podijeliti u čvorove svjedoke i tražene čvorove. Čvorovi svjedoci odgovorni su za otkrivanje sumnjivih čvorova, dok traženi čvorovi trebaju za potrebe procesa detekcije navesti svoj identitet. Za izbor čvorova svjedoka, koristi se GSA kako bi se izabrala grupa čvorova koji su najprikladniji. Nakon izbora čvorova svjedoka, otkivanje clone napada vrši se promatranjem ponašanja susjednih čvorova. Otkrivanjem clone napada aktivira se proces opoziva kako bi se opozvao clone napad u čvorovima svjedocima. Prema rezultatima dobivenim iz simulacije može se zaključiti kako predloženi algoritam pruža bolju zaštitu od clone napada smanjivanjem odbacivanja paketa i povećavanjem omjera isporuke paketa

An Asynchronous Node Replication Attack in Wireless Sensor Networks

Abstract Applications of wireless sensor network (WSN) are growing significantly, and many security protocols meant for WSN have been proposed. One of the unique problems of WSN is that the sensor nodes are not tamper resistant as the main attraction of deploying WSN is its low cost. Node replication attack exploits this weakness to launch an attack, in which cryptographic secrets from the compromised sensor nodes are used to create duplicate sensor nodes in large number. Then these sensor nodes are placed in critical locations of the WSN to mount attacks. Several protocols were proposed to defend WSN against the replication attack, and one of the promising among them is distributed detection protocol presented by Parno et al. at IEEE S&P 2005. However, we show in this paper that their distributed detection protocol is vulnerable to an asynchronous node replication attack. Further, we modify the protocol to make it secure for dynamic WSN supporting node mobility

Node replica detection in wireless sensor networks

In various applications of wireless sensor network, nodes are mostly deployed unattended and unsupervised in hostile environment. They are exposed to various kinds of security threat, and node replication attack is one among them. In this attack, an adversary captures a legitimate node from the network. Then, she creates a number of clones of the original node, and deploys them back into the network. The adversary can gain control of various network activities and launch other insider attacks using these replicas. Most of the replica detection schemes reported in the literature are centralized and location dependent. Centralized schemes are vulnerable to a single point of failure. Forwarding location information incurs additional overhead in location dependent schemes. Most replica detection schemes require exchange of membership information among nodes. To reduce communication overhead we propose two techniques called transpose bit-pair coding (TBC), and sub-mat coding (SMC) for efficient exchange of group membership information among the nodes in wireless sensor network. These schemes are lossless and do not generate false positive. Next, we propose two replica detection schemes for static wireless sensor networks called zone-based node replica detection (ZBNRD), and node coloring based replica detection (NCBRD). In ZBNRD, nodes are divided into a number of zones. Each zone has a zone-leader, who is responsible for detecting replica. ZBNRD is compared with a few existing schemes such as LSM, P-MPC, SET and RED. It is observed that ZBNRD has higher detec-tion probability and lower communication cost. In NCBRD, each node is assigned with a color (value), which is unique within its neighborhood. A color conflict within the neighborhood of a node is detected as a replica. The performance of NCBRD is compared with LSM, SET, and RED. It is found that NCBRD has higher detection probability than the above schemes and lower communication overhead than LSM and RED. The techniques for replica detection in static wireless sensor networks cannot be applied to mobile wireless sensor networks (MWSN) because of nodes mobility. We propose a technique called energy based replica detection (EBRD) for MWSN. In EBRD, the residual energy of a node is used to detect replicas. Each node in the network monitors and is monitored by a set of nodes. Conflict in the timestamp-residual energy pair of a node is detected as replica. EBRD is compared with two existing schemes EDD, and MTLSD. It is found that EBRD has excellent detection probability in comparison to EDD and MTLSD, and the communication overhead of EBRD is higher than EDD and lower than MTLSD. Simulations were performed using Castalia simulator