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

A Survey on Wireless Security: Technical Challenges, Recent Advances and Future Trends

This paper examines the security vulnerabilities and threats imposed by the inherent open nature of wireless communications and to devise efficient defense mechanisms for improving the wireless network security. We first summarize the security requirements of wireless networks, including their authenticity, confidentiality, integrity and availability issues. Next, a comprehensive overview of security attacks encountered in wireless networks is presented in view of the network protocol architecture, where the potential security threats are discussed at each protocol layer. We also provide a survey of the existing security protocols and algorithms that are adopted in the existing wireless network standards, such as the Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, WiMAX, and the long-term evolution (LTE) systems. Then, we discuss the state-of-the-art in physical-layer security, which is an emerging technique of securing the open communications environment against eavesdropping attacks at the physical layer. We also introduce the family of various jamming attacks and their counter-measures, including the constant jammer, intermittent jammer, reactive jammer, adaptive jammer and intelligent jammer. Additionally, we discuss the integration of physical-layer security into existing authentication and cryptography mechanisms for further securing wireless networks. Finally, some technical challenges which remain unresolved at the time of writing are summarized and the future trends in wireless security are discussed.Comment: 36 pages. Accepted to Appear in Proceedings of the IEEE, 201

Secure Cloud Communication for Effective Cost Management System through MSBE

In Cloud Computing Architecture, Brokers are responsible to provide services to the end users. An Effective Cost Management System (ECMS) which works over Secure Cloud Communication Paradigm (SCCP) helps in finding a communication link with overall minimum cost of links. We propose an improved Broker Cloud Communication Paradigm (BCCP) with integration of security issues. Two algorithms are included, first is Secure Optimized Route Cost Finder (S-ORCF) to find optimum route between broker and cloud on the behalf of cost factor and second is Secure Optimized Route Management (S-ORM) to maintain optimum route. These algorithms proposed with cryptographic integrity of the secure route discovery process in efficient routing approaches between broker and cloud. There is lack in Dynamic Source Routing Approach to verify whether any intermediate node has been deleted, inserted or modified with no valid authentication. We use symmetric cryptographic primitives, which is made possible due to multisource broadcast encryption scheme. This paper outlines the use of secure route discovery protocol (SRDP)that employs such a security paradigm in cloud computing.Comment: 12 pages, 3 figures, International Journal on Cloud Computing: Services and Architecture(IJCCSA),Vol.2, No.3, June 201

A Survey of Access Control Models in Wireless Sensor Networks

Copyright 2014 by the authors; licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/)Wireless sensor networks (WSNs) have attracted considerable interest in the research community, because of their wide range of applications. However, due to the distributed nature of WSNs and their deployment in remote areas, these networks are vulnerable to numerous security threats that can adversely affect their proper functioning. Resource constraints in sensor nodes mean that security mechanisms with a large overhead of computation and communication are impractical to use in WSNs; security in sensor networks is, therefore, a challenge. Access control is a critical security service that offers the appropriate access privileges to legitimate users and prevents illegitimate users from unauthorized access. However, access control has not received much attention in the context of WSNs. This paper provides an overview of security threats and attacks, outlines the security requirements and presents a state-of-the-art survey on access control models, including a comparison and evaluation based on their characteristics in WSNs. Potential challenging issues for access control schemes in WSNs are also discussed.Peer reviewe

Security and Privacy Issues in Wireless Mesh Networks: A Survey

This book chapter identifies various security threats in wireless mesh network (WMN). Keeping in mind the critical requirement of security and user privacy in WMNs, this chapter provides a comprehensive overview of various possible attacks on different layers of the communication protocol stack for WMNs and their corresponding defense mechanisms. First, it identifies the security vulnerabilities in the physical, link, network, transport, application layers. Furthermore, various possible attacks on the key management protocols, user authentication and access control protocols, and user privacy preservation protocols are presented. After enumerating various possible attacks, the chapter provides a detailed discussion on various existing security mechanisms and protocols to defend against and wherever possible prevent the possible attacks. Comparative analyses are also presented on the security schemes with regards to the cryptographic schemes used, key management strategies deployed, use of any trusted third party, computation and communication overhead involved etc. The chapter then presents a brief discussion on various trust management approaches for WMNs since trust and reputation-based schemes are increasingly becoming popular for enforcing security in wireless networks. A number of open problems in security and privacy issues for WMNs are subsequently discussed before the chapter is finally concluded.Comment: 62 pages, 12 figures, 6 tables. This chapter is an extension of the author's previous submission in arXiv submission: arXiv:1102.1226. There are some text overlaps with the previous submissio

KALwEN+: Practical Key Management Schemes for Gossip-Based Wireless Medical Sensor Networks

The constrained resources of sensors restrict the design of a key management scheme for wireless sensor networks (WSNs). In this work, we first formalize the security model of ALwEN, which is a gossip-based wireless medical sensor network (WMSN) for ambient assisted living. Our security model considers the node capture, the gossip-based network and the revocation problems, which should be valuable for ALwEN-like applications. Based on Shamir's secret sharing technique, we then propose two key management schemes for ALwEN, namely the KALwEN+ schemes, which are proven with the security properties defined in the security model. The KALwEN+ schemes not only fit ALwEN, but also can be tailored to other scalable wireless sensor networks based on gossiping