10,070 research outputs found
Attack-resistant location estimation in wireless sensor networks
Many sensor network applications require sensors’ locations to function correctly. Despite the recent advances, location discovery for sensor networks in hostile environments has been mostly overlooked. Most of the existing localization protocols for sensor networks are vulnerable in hostile environments. The security of location discovery can certainly be enhanced by authentication. However, the possible node compromises and the fact that location determination uses certain physical features (e.g., received signal strength) of radio signals make authentication not as effective as in traditional security applications. This paper presents two methods to tolerate malicious attacks against range-based location discovery in sensor networks. The first method filters out malicious beacon signals on the basis of the “consistency” among multiple beacon signals, while the second method tolerates malicious beacon signals by adopting an iteratively refined voting scheme. Both methods can survive malicious attacks even if the attacks bypass authentication, provided that the benign beacon signals constitute the majority of the beacon signals. This paper also presents the implementation and experimental evaluation (through both field experiments and simulation) of all the secure and resilient location estimation schemes that can be used on the current generation of sensor platforms (e.g., MICA series of motes), including the techniques proposed in this paper, in a network of MICAz motes. The experimental results demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed methods, and also give the secure and resilient location estimation scheme most suitable for the current generation of sensor networks
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
On the Security of the Automatic Dependent Surveillance-Broadcast Protocol
Automatic dependent surveillance-broadcast (ADS-B) is the communications
protocol currently being rolled out as part of next generation air
transportation systems. As the heart of modern air traffic control, it will
play an essential role in the protection of two billion passengers per year,
besides being crucial to many other interest groups in aviation. The inherent
lack of security measures in the ADS-B protocol has long been a topic in both
the aviation circles and in the academic community. Due to recently published
proof-of-concept attacks, the topic is becoming ever more pressing, especially
with the deadline for mandatory implementation in most airspaces fast
approaching.
This survey first summarizes the attacks and problems that have been reported
in relation to ADS-B security. Thereafter, it surveys both the theoretical and
practical efforts which have been previously conducted concerning these issues,
including possible countermeasures. In addition, the survey seeks to go beyond
the current state of the art and gives a detailed assessment of security
measures which have been developed more generally for related wireless networks
such as sensor networks and vehicular ad hoc networks, including a taxonomy of
all considered approaches.Comment: Survey, 22 Pages, 21 Figure
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
Quarantine region scheme to mitigate spam attacks in wireless sensor networks
The Quarantine Region Scheme (QRS) is introduced to defend against spam attacks in wireless sensor networks where malicious antinodes frequently generate dummy spam messages to be relayed toward the sink. The aim of the attacker is the exhaustion of the sensor node batteries and the extra delay caused by processing the spam messages. Network-wide message authentication may solve this problem with a cost of cryptographic operations to be performed over all messages. QRS is designed to reduce this cost by applying authentication only whenever and wherever necessary. In QRS, the nodes that detect a nearby spam attack assume themselves to be in a quarantine region. This detection is performed by intermittent authentication checks. Once quarantined, a node continuously applies authentication measures until the spam attack ceases. In the QRS scheme, there is a tradeoff between the resilience against spam attacks and the number of authentications. Our experiments show that, in the worst-case scenario that we considered, a not quarantined node catches 80 percent of the spam messages by authenticating only 50 percent of all messages that it processe
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
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