Efficient key management in wireless sensor network security

Wireless sensor network is a multi-hop ad hoc network formed by a large number of low-cost micro-sensor nodes which communicate through radio channels. It is widely used in many areas in modern society and attracts a lot of attention from researchers. This research is on wireless sensor network security and it focuses on key management in hierarchical wireless sensor networks. Through literature review, the drawback and weakness of existing key management schemes are analyzed from various aspects including key establishment, key distribution, key update, authentication and node operation mechanism. Assessment criteria for key management scheme are proposed under different requirements and constraints of wireless sensor networks. The security criteria cover keying model, key distribution, key update, node operation and resilience. For cluster based hierarchical wireless sensor networks, an assistant node is introduced in a cluster to deal with the situation of cluster head compromise and to keep the member nodes securely staying in the network. With introduction of assistant nodes, a complete secure efficient hierarchical key management scheme (SEHKM) for wireless sensor network is proposed. The scheme supports three types of keys and the big improvement over existing key management schemes is on group key update, which is based on pseudo-random numbers and group Diffie-Hellman. The analysis and evaluation have shown that that SEHKM offers strong security with efficient operation from energy consumption point of view

Group-Based Key Management Protocol for Energy Efficiency in Long-Lived and Large-Scale Distributed Sensor Networks

As wireless sensor networks grow, so does the need for effective security mechanisms. We propose a cryptographic key-management protocol, called energy-efficient key-management (EEKM) protocol. Using a location-based group key scheme, the protocol supports the revocation of compromised nodes and energy-efficient rekeying. The design is motivated by the observation that unicast-based rekeying does not meet the security requirements of periodic rekeying in long-lived wireless sensor networks. EEKM supports broadcast-based rekeying for low-energy key management and high resilience. In addition, to match the increasing complexity of encryption keys, the protocol uses a dynamic composition key scheme. EEKM also provides group-management protocols for secure group communication. We analyzed the energy efficiency and security of EEKM and compared it to other key-management protocols using a network simulator

Denial of service mitigation approach for IPv6-enabled smart object networks

Denial of service (DoS) attacks can be defined as any third-party action aiming to reduce or eliminate a network's capability to perform its expected functions. Although there are several standard techniques in traditional computing that mitigate the impact of some of the most common DoS attacks, this still remains a very important open problem to the network security community. DoS attacks are even more troublesome in smart object networks because of two main reasons. First, these devices cannot support the computational overhead required to implement many of the typical counterattack strategies. Second, low traffic rates are enough to drain sensors' battery energy making the network inoperable in short times. To realize the Internet of Things vision, it is necessary to integrate the smart objects into the Internet. This integration is considered an exceptional opportunity for Internet growth but, also, a security threat, because more attacks, including DoS, can be conducted. For these reasons, the prevention of DoS attacks is considered a hot topic in the wireless sensor networks scientific community. In this paper, an approach based on 6LowPAN neighbor discovery protocol is proposed to mitigate DoS attacks initiated from the Internet, without adding additional overhead on the 6LoWPAN sensor devices.This work has been partially supported by the Instituto de Telecomunicacoes, Next Generation Networks and Applications Group (NetGNA), Portugal, and by National Funding from the FCT - Fundacao para a Ciencia e Tecnologia through the Pest-OE/EEI/LA0008/2011.Oliveira, LML.; Rodrigues, JJPC.; De Sousa, AF.; Lloret, J. (2013). Denial of service mitigation approach for IPv6-enabled smart object networks. Concurrency and Computation: Practice and Experience. 25(1):129-142. doi:10.1002/cpe.2850S129142251Gershenfeld, N., Krikorian, R., & Cohen, D. (2004). The Internet of Things. Scientific American, 291(4), 76-81. doi:10.1038/scientificamerican1004-76Akyildiz, I. F., Su, W., Sankarasubramaniam, Y., & Cayirci, E. (2002). Wireless sensor networks: a survey. Computer Networks, 38(4), 393-422. doi:10.1016/s1389-1286(01)00302-4Karl, H., & Willig, A. (2005). Protocols and Architectures for Wireless Sensor Networks. doi:10.1002/0470095121IEEE Std 802.15.4-2006 Part 15.4: wireless medium access control (MAC) and physical layer (PHY) specificationsfor low-rate wireless personal area networks (LR-WPANs) 2006ZigBee Alliance ZigBee Specification 2007WirelessHARThomepage 2012 http://www.hartcomm.org/Hui, J. W., & Culler, D. E. (2008). Extending IP to Low-Power, Wireless Personal Area Networks. IEEE Internet Computing, 12(4), 37-45. doi:10.1109/mic.2008.79Kushalnagar N Montenegro G Schumacher C IPv6 over Low-Power Wireless Personal Area Networks (6LoWPANs): Overview, Assumptions, Problem Statement, and Goals 2007Montenegro G Kushalnagar N Hui J Culler D Transmission of IPv6 Packets over IEEE 802.15.4 Networks 2007Shelby Z Thubert P Hui J Chakrabarti S Bormann C Nordmark E 6LoWPAN Neighbor Discovery 2011Zhou, L., Chao, H.-C., & Vasilakos, A. V. (2011). Joint Forensics-Scheduling Strategy for Delay-Sensitive Multimedia Applications over Heterogeneous Networks. IEEE Journal on Selected Areas in Communications, 29(7), 1358-1367. doi:10.1109/jsac.2011.110803Roman, R., & Lopez, J. (2009). Integrating wireless sensor networks and the internet: a security analysis. Internet Research, 19(2), 246-259. doi:10.1108/10662240910952373Wang, Y., Attebury, G., & Ramamurthy, B. (2006). A survey of security issues in wireless sensor networks. IEEE Communications Surveys & Tutorials, 8(2), 2-23. doi:10.1109/comst.2006.315852Xiaojiang Du, & Hsiao-Hwa Chen. (2008). Security in wireless sensor networks. IEEE Wireless Communications, 15(4), 60-66. doi:10.1109/mwc.2008.4599222Pelechrinis, K., Iliofotou, M., & Krishnamurthy, S. V. (2011). Denial of Service Attacks in Wireless Networks: The Case of Jammers. IEEE Communications Surveys & Tutorials, 13(2), 245-257. doi:10.1109/surv.2011.041110.00022Zhou, L., Wang, X., Tu, W., Muntean, G., & Geller, B. (2010). Distributed scheduling scheme for video streaming over multi-channel multi-radio multi-hop wireless networks. IEEE Journal on Selected Areas in Communications, 28(3), 409-419. doi:10.1109/jsac.2010.100412Lin, K., Lai, C.-F., Liu, X., & Guan, X. (2010). Energy Efficiency Routing with Node Compromised Resistance in Wireless Sensor Networks. Mobile Networks and Applications, 17(1), 75-89. doi:10.1007/s11036-010-0287-xLi, H., Lin, K., & Li, K. (2011). Energy-efficient and high-accuracy secure data aggregation in wireless sensor networks. Computer Communications, 34(4), 591-597. doi:10.1016/j.comcom.2010.02.026Oliveira, L. M. L., de Sousa, A. F., & Rodrigues, J. J. P. C. (2011). Routing and mobility approaches in IPv6 over LoWPAN mesh networks. International Journal of Communication Systems, 24(11), 1445-1466. doi:10.1002/dac.1228Narten T Nordmark E Simpson W Soliman H Neighbor Discovery for IP version 6 (IPv6) 2007Singh H Beebee W Nordmark E IPv6 Subnet Model: The Relationship between Links and Subnet Prefixes 2010Roman, R., Lopez, J., & Gritzalis, S. (2008). Situation awareness mechanisms for wireless sensor networks. IEEE Communications Magazine, 46(4), 102-107. doi:10.1109/mcom.2008.4481348Sakarindr, P., & Ansari, N. (2007). Security services in group communications over wireless infrastructure, mobile ad hoc, and wireless sensor networks. IEEE Wireless Communications, 14(5), 8-20. doi:10.1109/mwc.2007.4396938Tsao T Alexander R Dohler M Daza V Lozano A A Security Framework for Routing over Low Power and Lossy Networks 2009Karlof C Wagner D Secure Routing in Wireless Sensor Networks: Attacks and Countermeasures First IEEE International Workshop on Sensor Network Protocols and Applications 2003 113 127 10.1109/SNPA.2003.1203362Hui J Thubert P Compression Format for IPv6 Datagrams in 6LoWPAN Networks 2009Elaine Shi, & Perrig, A. (2004). Designing Secure Sensor Networks. IEEE Wireless Communications, 11(6), 38-43. doi:10.1109/mwc.2004.1368895Akkaya, K., & Younis, M. (2005). A survey on routing protocols for wireless sensor networks. Ad Hoc Networks, 3(3), 325-349. doi:10.1016/j.adhoc.2003.09.01

LMGROUP: A Lightweight Multicast Group Key Management for IoT Networks

Due to limitations of IoT networks including limited bandwidth, memory, battery, etc., secure multicast group communication has gained more attention, and to enable that a group key establishment scheme is required to share the secret key among the group members. The current group key establishment protocols were mostly designed for Wireless Sensor Network, and they require device interaction, high computation costs, or high storage on the device side. To address these drawbacks, in this paper we design LMGROUP, a lightweight and multicast group key establishment protocol for IoT networks, that is based on Elliptic Curve Integrated Encryption Scheme and HMAC verification and does not require device interaction. We also suggest an algorithm for unpredictable group member selection. Our experimental result of implementing LMGROUP indicates it has low storage, low computation, and low communication costs. Furthermore, the formal security verification indicates LMGROUP is secure and robust against different attacks

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

An Authentication Protocol for Future Sensor Networks

Authentication is one of the essential security services in Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) for ensuring secure data sessions. Sensor node authentication ensures the confidentiality and validity of data collected by the sensor node, whereas user authentication guarantees that only legitimate users can access the sensor data. In a mobile WSN, sensor and user nodes move across the network and exchange data with multiple nodes, thus experiencing the authentication process multiple times. The integration of WSNs with Internet of Things (IoT) brings forth a new kind of WSN architecture along with stricter security requirements; for instance, a sensor node or a user node may need to establish multiple concurrent secure data sessions. With concurrent data sessions, the frequency of the re-authentication process increases in proportion to the number of concurrent connections, which makes the security issue even more challenging. The currently available authentication protocols were designed for the autonomous WSN and do not account for the above requirements. In this paper, we present a novel, lightweight and efficient key exchange and authentication protocol suite called the Secure Mobile Sensor Network (SMSN) Authentication Protocol. In the SMSN a mobile node goes through an initial authentication procedure and receives a re-authentication ticket from the base station. Later a mobile node can use this re-authentication ticket when establishing multiple data exchange sessions and/or when moving across the network. This scheme reduces the communication and computational complexity of the authentication process. We proved the strength of our protocol with rigorous security analysis and simulated the SMSN and previously proposed schemes in an automated protocol verifier tool. Finally, we compared the computational complexity and communication cost against well-known authentication protocols.Comment: This article is accepted for the publication in "Sensors" journal. 29 pages, 15 figure

An Outline of Security in Wireless Sensor Networks: Threats, Countermeasures and Implementations

With the expansion of wireless sensor networks (WSNs), the need for securing the data flow through these networks is increasing. These sensor networks allow for easy-to-apply and flexible installations which have enabled them to be used for numerous applications. Due to these properties, they face distinct information security threats. Security of the data flowing through across networks provides the researchers with an interesting and intriguing potential for research. Design of these networks to ensure the protection of data faces the constraints of limited power and processing resources. We provide the basics of wireless sensor network security to help the researchers and engineers in better understanding of this applications field. In this chapter, we will provide the basics of information security with special emphasis on WSNs. The chapter will also give an overview of the information security requirements in these networks. Threats to the security of data in WSNs and some of their counter measures are also presented