An Energy Aware and Secure MAC Protocol for Tackling Denial of Sleep Attacks in Wireless Sensor Networks

Wireless sensor networks which form part of the core for the Internet of Things consist of resource constrained sensors that are usually powered by batteries. Therefore, careful energy awareness is essential when working with these devices. Indeed,the introduction of security techniques such as authentication and encryption, to ensure confidentiality and integrity of data, can place higher energy load on the sensors. However, the absence of security protection c ould give room for energy drain attacks such as denial of sleep attacks which have a higher negative impact on the life span ( of the sensors than the presence of security features. This thesis, therefore, focuses on tackling denial of sleep attacks from two perspectives A security perspective and an energy efficiency perspective. The security perspective involves evaluating and ranking a number of security based techniques to curbing denial of sleep attacks. The energy efficiency perspective, on the other hand, involves exploring duty cycling and simulating three Media Access Control ( protocols Sensor MAC, Timeout MAC andTunableMAC under different network sizes and measuring different parameters such as the Received Signal Strength RSSI) and Link Quality Indicator ( Transmit power, throughput and energy efficiency Duty cycling happens to be one of the major techniques for conserving energy in wireless sensor networks and this research aims to answer questions with regards to the effect of duty cycles on the energy efficiency as well as the throughput of three duty cycle protocols Sensor MAC ( Timeout MAC ( and TunableMAC in addition to creating a novel MAC protocol that is also more resilient to denial of sleep a ttacks than existing protocols. The main contributions to knowledge from this thesis are the developed framework used for evaluation of existing denial of sleep attack solutions and the algorithms which fuel the other contribution to knowledge a newly developed protocol tested on the Castalia Simulator on the OMNET++ platform. The new protocol has been compared with existing protocols and has been found to have significant improvement in energy efficiency and also better resilience to denial of sleep at tacks Part of this research has been published Two conference publications in IEEE Explore and one workshop paper

A framework for formal analysis and simulative evaluation of security attacks in wireless sensor networks

AbstractWhen designing Wireless Sensor Networks it is important to analyze their security risks and provide adequate solutions for protecting them from malicious attacks. Unfortunately, perfect security cannot be achieved, for performance reasons. Therefore, designers have to devise security priorities, and select security mechanisms accordingly. However, in the early stages of the design process, the concrete effects of security attacks on the system may not be clearly identified. In this paper, we propose a framework that integrates formal verification and network simulation for enabling designers to evaluate the effects of attacks, identify possible security mechanisms, and evaluate their effectiveness, since design time. Formal methods are used to build the abstract model of the application, together with a set of attacks, and to state properties of general validity. The simulator measures the impact of the attacks in terms of common network parameters, like energy consumption or computational effort. Such information can be used to select adequate security mechanisms, then the initial abstract model can be refined to adopt them, and finally prove that former system properties are still verified. The framework relies on UPPAAL for formal modeling and verification and uses the Attack Simulation Framework on top of Castalia as a network simulator. As proof of concept, a case study is shown

FUZZY BASED SECURITY ALGORITHM FOR WIRELESS SENSOR NETWORKS IN THE INTERNET OF THINGS PARADIGM

Published ThesisThe world is embracing the idea of Internet of Things and Industrial Revolution 4.0. However, this acceptance of computerised evolution is met with a myriad of challenges, where consumers of this technology are also growing ever so anxious about the security of their personal data as well as reliability of data collected by the millions and even billions of sensors surrounding them. Wireless sensor networks are the main baseline technology driving Internet of things; by their very inherent nature, these networks are too vulnerable to attacks and yet the network security tools designed for conventional computer networks are not effective in countering these attacks. Wireless sensors have low computational resources, may be highly mobile and in most cases, these networks do not have a central point which can be marked as an authentication point for the sensors, any node can join or leave whenever they want. This leaves the sensors and the internet of things applications depending on them highly susceptible to attacks, which may compromise consumer information and leave security breaches in situation that need absolute security such as homes or even the cars they drive. There are many possibilities of things that could go wrong when hackers gain control of sensors in a car or a house. There have been many solutions offered to address security of Wireless Sensor Networks; however, most of those solutions are often not customised for African context. Given that most African countries have not kept pace with the development of these underlying technologies, blanket adoption of the solutions developed for consumption in the developed world has not yielded optimal results. The focus of this research was the development of an Intrusion Detection System that works in a hierarchical network structured Wireless Sensor Network, where cluster heads oversee groups of nodes and relay their data packets all the way to the sink node. This is a reactive Intrusion Detection System (IDS) that makes use of a fuzzy logic based algorithm for verification of intrusion detections. This system borrows characteristics of traditional Wireless Sensor Networks in that it is hosted external to the nodes; that is, on a computer or server connected to the sink node. The rational for this is the premise that developing the system in this manner optimises the power and processing resource of nodes because no part of the IDS is found in the nodes and they are left to focus purely on sensing. The Intrusion Detection System makes use of remote Over The Air programming to communicate with compromised nodes, to either shut down or reboot and is designed with the ZigBee protocol in mind. Additionally, this Intrusion Detection System is intended to being part of a larger Internet of Things integration framework being proposed at the Central University of Technology. This framework is aimed at developing an Internet of Things adoption strategy customised for African needs and regionally local consumers. To evaluate the effectiveness of the solution, the rate of false detections being picked out by the security algorithm were reduced through the use of fuzzy logic systems; this resulted in an accuracies of above 90 %. The algorithm is also very light when asymptotic notation is applied, making it ideal for Wireless Sensors. Lastly, we also put forward the Xbee version of the Triple Modular Redundancy architecture, customised for Wireless sensor networks in order to beef-up on the security solution presented in this dissertation

Intrusion Tolerant Routing Protocols for Wireless Sensor Networks

This MSc thesis is focused in the study, solution proposal and experimental evaluation of security solutions for Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs). The objectives are centered on intrusion tolerant routing services, adapted for the characteristics and requirements of WSN nodes and operation behavior. The main contribution addresses the establishment of pro-active intrusion tolerance properties at the network level, as security mechanisms for the proposal of a reliable and secure routing protocol. Those properties and mechanisms will augment a secure communication base layer supported by light-weigh cryptography methods, to improve the global network resilience capabilities against possible intrusion-attacks on the WSN nodes. Adapting to WSN characteristics, the design of the intended security services also pushes complexity away from resource-poor sensor nodes towards resource-rich and trustable base stations. The devised solution will construct, securely and efficiently, a secure tree-structured routing service for data-dissemination in large scale deployed WSNs. The purpose is to tolerate the damage caused by adversaries modeled according with the Dolev-Yao threat model and ISO X.800 attack typology and framework, or intruders that can compromise maliciously the deployed sensor nodes, injecting, modifying, or blocking packets, jeopardizing the correct behavior of internal network routing processing and topology management. The proposed enhanced mechanisms, as well as the design and implementation of a new intrusiontolerant routing protocol for a large scale WSN are evaluated by simulation. For this purpose, the evaluation is based on a rich simulation environment, modeling networks from hundreds to tens of thousands of wireless sensors, analyzing different dimensions: connectivity conditions, degree-distribution patterns, latency and average short-paths, clustering, reliability metrics and energy cost

Anomaly detection in smart city wireless sensor networks

Aquesta tesi proposa una plataforma de detecció d’intrusions per a revelar atacs a les xarxes de sensors sense fils (WSN, per les sigles en anglès) de les ciutats intel·ligents (smart cities). La plataforma està dissenyada tenint en compte les necessitats dels administradors de la ciutat intel·ligent, els quals necessiten accés a una arquitectura centralitzada que pugui gestionar alarmes de seguretat en un sistema altament heterogeni i distribuït. En aquesta tesi s’identifiquen els diversos passos necessaris des de la recollida de dades fins a l’execució de les tècniques de detecció d’intrusions i s’avalua que el procés sigui escalable i capaç de gestionar dades típiques de ciutats intel·ligents. A més, es comparen diversos algorismes de detecció d’anomalies i s’observa que els mètodes de vectors de suport d’una mateixa classe (one-class support vector machines) resulten la tècnica multivariant més adequada per a descobrir atacs tenint en compte les necessitats d’aquest context. Finalment, es proposa un esquema per a ajudar els administradors a identificar els tipus d’atacs rebuts a partir de les alarmes disparades.Esta tesis propone una plataforma de detección de intrusiones para revelar ataques en las redes de sensores inalámbricas (WSN, por las siglas en inglés) de las ciudades inteligentes (smart cities). La plataforma está diseñada teniendo en cuenta la necesidad de los administradores de la ciudad inteligente, los cuales necesitan acceso a una arquitectura centralizada que pueda gestionar alarmas de seguridad en un sistema altamente heterogéneo y distribuido. En esta tesis se identifican los varios pasos necesarios desde la recolección de datos hasta la ejecución de las técnicas de detección de intrusiones y se evalúa que el proceso sea escalable y capaz de gestionar datos típicos de ciudades inteligentes. Además, se comparan varios algoritmos de detección de anomalías y se observa que las máquinas de vectores de soporte de una misma clase (one-class support vector machines) resultan la técnica multivariante más adecuada para descubrir ataques teniendo en cuenta las necesidades de este contexto. Finalmente, se propone un esquema para ayudar a los administradores a identificar los tipos de ataques recibidos a partir de las alarmas disparadas.This thesis proposes an intrusion detection platform which reveals attacks in smart city wireless sensor networks (WSN). The platform is designed taking into account the needs of smart city administrators, who need access to a centralized architecture that can manage security alarms in a highly heterogeneous and distributed system. In this thesis, we identify the various necessary steps from gathering WSN data to running the detection techniques and we evaluate whether the procedure is scalable and capable of handling typical smart city data. Moreover, we compare several anomaly detection algorithms and we observe that one-class support vector machines constitute the most suitable multivariate technique to reveal attacks, taking into account the requirements in this context. Finally, we propose a classification schema to assist administrators in identifying the types of attacks compromising their networks

Emerging Communications for Wireless Sensor Networks

Wireless sensor networks are deployed in a rapidly increasing number of arenas, with uses ranging from healthcare monitoring to industrial and environmental safety, as well as new ubiquitous computing devices that are becoming ever more pervasive in our interconnected society. This book presents a range of exciting developments in software communication technologies including some novel applications, such as in high altitude systems, ground heat exchangers and body sensor networks. Authors from leading institutions on four continents present their latest findings in the spirit of exchanging information and stimulating discussion in the WSN community worldwide

The Secure and Energy Efficient Data Routing in the IoT based Network

The business applications such as weather forecasting, traffic management, weather forecasting, traffic management, etc., are enormously adopting Internet of Things(IoT). While scaling of these applications are fast, the device/sensor capabilities, particularly in terms of battery life and energy efficiency is limited. Despite of intensive research conducted to address these shortcomings, Wireless IoT Sensor Network(WIoTSN) still cannot assure 100\% efficient network life. Therefore, the core objective of the thesis is to provide an overview of energy efficiency of proactive(OLSR) and reactive(DSR and AODV) data routing protocols by scaling the size of network, i.e. number of sensor nodes, data packet size, data transmission rate and speed of mobile sink node. It also reviews the importance of security in WIoTSN. The two approaches, such as literature review and simulation testing, are used to achieve the objective of the thesis. The literature review provides information about reactive and proactive protocols and their mechanism for route discovery. Similarly, the network simulator tool NS3 is used for running simulation to evaluate the performance of selected routing protocols for energy efficiency. The thesis results showed the effect of scaling the parameters selected for experimental purpose on the energy efficiency of proactive and reactive data routing protocols. The simulation results prove that the reactive protocol DSR outperforms another reactive protocol AODV and proactive protocol OLSR in energy efficiency. From the security perspective, the thesis also emphasizes its need in IoT and suggest to minimize wasteful resources in WIoTSN and use them by restructuring the network for secure energy-efficient data routing protocols

Federated Sensor Network architectural design for the Internet of Things (IoT)

An information technology that can combine the physical world and virtual world is desired. The Internet of Things (IoT) is a concept system that uses Radio Frequency Identification (RFID), WSN and barcode scanners to sense and to detect physical objects and events. This information is shared with people on the Internet. With the announcement of the Smarter Planet concept by IBM, the problem of how to share this data was raised. However, the original design of WSN aims to provide environment monitoring and control within a small scale local network. It cannot meet the demands of the IoT because there is a lack of multi-connection functionality with other WSNs and upper level applications. As various standards of WSNs provide information for different purposes, a hybrid system that gives a complete answer by combining all of them could be promising for future IoT applications. This thesis is on the subject of `Federated Sensor Network' design and architectural development for the Internet of Things. A Federated Sensor Network (FSN) is a system that integrates WSNs and the Internet. Currently, methods of integrating WSNs and the Internet can follow one of three main directions: a Front-End Proxy solution, a Gateway solution or a TCP/IP Overlay solution. Architectures based on the ideas from all three directions are presented in this thesis; this forms a comprehensive body of research on possible Federated Sensor Network architecture designs. In addition, a fully compatible technology for the sensor network application, namely the Sensor Model Language (SensorML), has been reviewed and embedded into our FSN systems. The IoT as a new concept is also comprehensively described and the major technical issues discussed. Finally, a case study of the IoT in logistic management for emergency response is given. Proposed FSN architectures based on the Gateway solution are demonstrated through hardware implementation and lab tests. A demonstration of the 6LoWPAN enabled federated sensor network based on the TCP/IP Overlay solution presents a good result for the iNET localization and tracking project. All the tests of the designs have verified feasibility and achieve the target of the IoT concept