Solutions and Tools for Secure Communication in Wireless Sensor Networks

Secure communication is considered a vital requirement in Wireless Sensor Network (WSN) applications. Such a requirement embraces different aspects, including confidentiality, integrity and authenticity of exchanged information, proper management of security material, and effective prevention and reaction against security threats and attacks. However, WSNs are mainly composed of resource-constrained devices. That is, network nodes feature reduced capabilities, especially in terms of memory storage, computing power, transmission rate, and energy availability. As a consequence, assuring secure communication in WSNs results to be more difficult than in other kinds of network. In fact, trading effectiveness of adopted solutions with their efficiency becomes far more important. In addition, specific device classes or technologies may require to design ad hoc security solutions. Also, it is necessary to efficiently manage security material, and dynamically cope with changes of security requirements. Finally, security threats and countermeasures have to be carefully considered since from the network design phase. This Ph.D. dissertion considers secure communication in WSNs, and provides the following contributions. First, we provide a performance evaluation of IEEE 802.15.4 security services. Then, we focus on the ZigBee technology and its security services, and propose possible solutions to some deficiencies and inefficiencies. Second, we present HISS, a highly scalable and efficient key management scheme, able to contrast collusion attacks while displaying a graceful degradation of performance. Third, we present STaR, a software component for WSNs that secures multiple traffic flows at the same time. It is transparent to the application, and provides runtime reconfigurability, thus coping with dynamic changes of security requirements. Finally, we describe ASF, our attack simulation framework for WSNs. Such a tool helps network designers to quantitatively evaluate effects of security attacks, produce an attack ranking based on their severity, and thus select the most appropriate countermeasures

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

Secure and robust multi-constrained QoS aware routing algorithm for VANETs

Secure QoS routing algorithms are a fundamental part of wireless networks that aim to provide services with QoS and security guarantees. In Vehicular Ad hoc Networks (VANETs), vehicles perform routing functions, and at the same time act as end-systems thus routing control messages are transmitted unprotected over wireless channels. The QoS of the entire network could be degraded by an attack on the routing process, and manipulation of the routing control messages. In this paper, we propose a novel secure and reliable multi-constrained QoS aware routing algorithm for VANETs. We employ the Ant Colony Optimisation (ACO) technique to compute feasible routes in VANETs subject to multiple QoS constraints determined by the data traffic type. Moreover, we extend the VANET-oriented Evolving Graph (VoEG) model to perform plausibility checks on the exchanged routing control messages among vehicles. Simulation results show that the QoS can be guaranteed while applying security mechanisms to ensure a reliable and robust routing service

Factors Impacting Key Management Effectiveness in Secured Wireless Networks

The use of a Public Key Infrastructure (PKI) offers a cryptographic solution that can overcome many, but not all, of the MANET security problems. One of the most critical aspects of a PKI system is how well it implements Key Management. Key Management deals with key generation, key storage, key distribution, key updating, key revocation, and certificate service in accordance with security policies over the lifecycle of the cryptography. The approach supported by traditional PKI works well in fixed wired networks, but it may not appropriate for MANET due to the lack of fixed infrastructure to support the PKI. This research seeks to identify best practices in securing networks which may be applied to new network architectures

A Graph Theoretic Approach for Optimizing Key Pre-distribution in Wireless SensorNetworks

Finding an optimal key assignment (subject to given constraints) for a key predistribution scheme in wireless sensor networks is a difficult task. Hence, most of the practical schemes are based on probabilistic key assignment, which leads to sub-optimal schemes requiring key storage linear in the total number of nodes. A graph theoretic framework is introduced to study the fundamental tradeoffs between key storage, average key path length (directly related to the battery consumption) and resilience (to compromised nodes) of key predistribution schemes for wireless sensor networks. Based on the proposed framework, a lower bound on key storage is derived for a given average key path length. An upper bound on the compromising probability is also given. This framework also leads to the design of key assignment schemes with a storage complexity of the same order as the lower bound

Digital certificates and threshold cryptography

This dissertation discusses the use of secret sharing cryptographic protocols for distributing and sharing of secret documents, in our case PDF documents. We discuss the advantages and uses of such a system in the context of collaborative environments. Description of the cryptographic protocol involved and the necessary Public Key Infrastructure (PKI) shall be presented. We also provide an implementation of this framework as a “proof of concept” and fundament the use of a certificate extension as the basis for threshold cryptography. Details of the shared secret distribution protocol and shared secret recovery protocol shall be given as well as the associated technical implementation details. The actual secret sharing algorithm implemented at this stage is based on an existing well known secret sharing scheme that uses polynomial interpolation over a finite field. Finally we conclude with a practical assessment of our prototype

SECURITY, PRIVACY AND APPLICATIONS IN VEHICULAR AD HOC NETWORKS

With wireless vehicular communications, Vehicular Ad Hoc Networks (VANETs) enable numerous applications to enhance traffic safety, traffic efficiency, and driving experience. However, VANETs also impose severe security and privacy challenges which need to be thoroughly investigated. In this dissertation, we enhance the security, privacy, and applications of VANETs, by 1) designing application-driven security and privacy solutions for VANETs, and 2) designing appealing VANET applications with proper security and privacy assurance. First, the security and privacy challenges of VANETs with most application significance are identified and thoroughly investigated. With both theoretical novelty and realistic considerations, these security and privacy schemes are especially appealing to VANETs. Specifically, multi-hop communications in VANETs suffer from packet dropping, packet tampering, and communication failures which have not been satisfyingly tackled in literature. Thus, a lightweight reliable and faithful data packet relaying framework (LEAPER) is proposed to ensure reliable and trustworthy multi-hop communications by enhancing the cooperation of neighboring nodes. Message verification, including both content and signature verification, generally is computation-extensive and incurs severe scalability issues to each node. The resource-aware message verification (RAMV) scheme is proposed to ensure resource-aware, secure, and application-friendly message verification in VANETs. On the other hand, to make VANETs acceptable to the privacy-sensitive users, the identity and location privacy of each node should be properly protected. To this end, a joint privacy and reputation assurance (JPRA) scheme is proposed to synergistically support privacy protection and reputation management by reconciling their inherent conflicting requirements. Besides, the privacy implications of short-time certificates are thoroughly investigated in a short-time certificates-based privacy protection (STCP2) scheme, to make privacy protection in VANETs feasible with short-time certificates. Secondly, three novel solutions, namely VANET-based ambient ad dissemination (VAAD), general-purpose automatic survey (GPAS), and VehicleView, are proposed to support the appealing value-added applications based on VANETs. These solutions all follow practical application models, and an incentive-centered architecture is proposed for each solution to balance the conflicting requirements of the involved entities. Besides, the critical security and privacy challenges of these applications are investigated and addressed with novel solutions. Thus, with proper security and privacy assurance, these solutions show great application significance and economic potentials to VANETs. Thus, by enhancing the security, privacy, and applications of VANETs, this dissertation fills the gap between the existing theoretic research and the realistic implementation of VANETs, facilitating the realistic deployment of VANETs

Lightweight wireless network authentication scheme for constrained oracle sensors

x, 212 leaves : ill. (some col.) ; 29 cmIncludes abstract and appendices.Includes bibliographical references (leaves 136-147).With the significant increase in the dependence of contextual data from constrained IoT, the blockchain has been proposed as a possible solution to address growing concerns from organizations. To address this, the Lightweight Blockchain Authentication for Constrained Sensors (LBACS) scheme was proposed and evaluated using quantitative and qualitative methods. LBACS was designed with constrained Wireless Sensor Networks (WSN) in mind and independent of a blockchain implementation. It asserts the authentication and provenance of constrained IoT on the blockchain utilizing a multi-signature approach facilitated by symmetric and asymmetric methods and sufficient considerations for key and certificate registry management. The metrics, threat assessment and comparison to existing WSN authentication schemes conducted asserted the pragmatic use of LBACS to provide authentication, blockchain provenance, integrity, auditable, revocation, weak backward and forward secrecy and universal forgeability. The research has several implications for the ubiquitous use of IoT and growing interest in the blockchain