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

Elliptic curve and pseudo-inverse matrix based cryptosystem for wireless sensor networks

Applying asymmetric key security to wireless sensor network (WSN) has been challenging task for the researcher of this field. One common trade-off is that asymmetric key architecture does provide good enough security than symmetric key but on the other hand, sensor network has some resource limitations to implement asymmetric key approach. Elliptic curve cryptography (ECC) has significant advantages than other asymmetric key system like RSA, D-H etc. The most important feature of ECC is that it has much less bit requirement and at the same time, ensures better security compared to others. Hence, ECC can be a better option for implementing asymmetric key approach for sensor network. We propose a new cryptosystem which is based on Pseudo-inverse matrix and Elliptic Curve Cryptography. We establish a relationship between these two different concepts and evaluate our proposed system on the basis of the results of similar works as well as our own simulation done in TinyOS environment