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

A Pseudo DNA Cryptography Method

The DNA cryptography is a new and very promising direction in cryptography research. DNA can be used in cryptography for storing and transmitting the information, as well as for computation. Although in its primitive stage, DNA cryptography is shown to be very effective. Currently, several DNA computing algorithms are proposed for quite some cryptography, cryptanalysis and steganography problems, and they are very powerful in these areas. However, the use of the DNA as a means of cryptography has high tech lab requirements and computational limitations, as well as the labor intensive extrapolation means so far. These make the efficient use of DNA cryptography difficult in the security world now. Therefore, more theoretical analysis should be performed before its real applications. In this project, We do not intended to utilize real DNA to perform the cryptography process; rather, We will introduce a new cryptography method based on central dogma of molecular biology. Since this method simulates some critical processes in central dogma, it is a pseudo DNA cryptography method. The theoretical analysis and experiments show this method to be efficient in computation, storage and transmission; and it is very powerful against certain attacks. Thus, this method can be of many uses in cryptography, such as an enhancement insecurity and speed to the other cryptography methods. There are also extensions and variations to this method, which have enhanced security, effectiveness and applicability.Comment: A small work that quite some people asked abou

Sequential Circuit Design for Embedded Cryptographic Applications Resilient to Adversarial Faults

In the relatively young field of fault-tolerant cryptography, the main research effort has focused exclusively on the protection of the data path of cryptographic circuits. To date, however, we have not found any work that aims at protecting the control logic of these circuits against fault attacks, which thus remains the proverbial Achilles’ heel. Motivated by a hypothetical yet realistic fault analysis attack that, in principle, could be mounted against any modular exponentiation engine, even one with appropriate data path protection, we set out to close this remaining gap. In this paper, we present guidelines for the design of multifault-resilient sequential control logic based on standard Error-Detecting Codes (EDCs) with large minimum distance. We introduce a metric that measures the effectiveness of the error detection technique in terms of the effort the attacker has to make in relation to the area overhead spent in implementing the EDC. Our comparison shows that the proposed EDC-based technique provides superior performance when compared against regular N-modular redundancy techniques. Furthermore, our technique scales well and does not affect the critical path delay

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

Model for cryptography protection of confidential information

УДК 004.056 Борсуковський Ю.В., Борсуковська В.Ю. Модель криптографічного захисту конфіденційної інформації В даній статті проведено детальний аналіз вимог щодо формування моделі криптографічного захисту конфіденційної інформації. Розглянуто використання засобів криптографічного захисту інформації з метою реалізації організаційних та технічних заходів по запобіганню витокам конфіденційної інформації на об’єктах критичної інфраструктури. Сформульовані базові вимоги та рекомендації щодо структури та функціональних складових моделі захисту конфіденційної інформації. Формалізовані вимоги щодо створення, впровадження та експлуатації превентивних процедур управління багатоступінчатим захистом конфіденційної інформації. Наведено приклад використання моделі криптографічного захисту інформації для створення захищеної і прозорої в використанні бази аутентифікаційних даних користувача. Запропонована модель захисту дозволяє мати кілька ступенів програмного та апаратного захисту, що із однієї сторони спрощує їх використання при виконанні чинних політик безпеки і зменшує ймовірність дискредитації аутентифікаційних даних, а із іншої сторони підвищує ймовірність виявлення зловмисних дій третьої сторони за рахунок багатоступінчатої системи захисту. Враховано практичний досвід створення типових моделей захисту конфіденційної інформації для розробки, впровадження та управління сучасними політиками інформаційної безпеки щодо питань використання засобів криптографічного захисту конфіденційної інформації на підприємствах різних форми власності.UDC 004.056 Borsukovskyi Y., Borsukovska V. Model for Cryptography Protection of Confidential Information Current article provides the detailed analysis of requirements for creation of model for cryptography protection of confidential information. Article defines the use of information cryptography protection tools in order to ensure the application of organizational and technical actions to prevent leakage of confidential information at critical infrastructure assets. It provides the basic requirements for the structure and functional elements of model for protection of confidential information. Formalize requirements on creation, implementation and exploitation of preventive procedure in management of multi-level protection of confidential information. The article includes example of use of model for cryptography protection of information for creation of secure and transparent in use the authenticating data base of user. The presented model of protection ensures to have a few levels of firewalls, that, on one hand, simplifies its use in execution of acting security policies and decrease the probability of discrediting of authenticating data, and, on other hand, increase the probability to detect the criminal actions of third party by means of multi-level protection system. It considers the practical experience in creation of standard models for protection of confidential information for development, implementation and management of modern policies on information security in part of use of cryptography protection tools for confidential information at enterprises of different forms of incorporation

Enhancing an Embedded Processor Core with a Cryptographic Unit for Performance and Security

We present a set of low-cost architectural enhancements to accelerate the execution of certain arithmetic operations common in cryptographic applications on an extensible embedded processor core. The proposed enhancements are generic in the sense that they can be beneficially applied in almost any RISC processor. We implemented the enhancements in form of a cryptographic unit (CU) that offers the programmer an extended instruction set. The CU features a 128-bit wide register file and datapath, which enables it to process 128-bit words and perform 128-bit loads/stores. We analyze the speed-up factors for some arithmetic operations and public-key cryptographic algorithms obtained through these enhancements. In addition, we evaluate the hardware overhead (i.e. silicon area) of integrating the CU into an embedded RISC processor. Our experimental results show that the proposed architectural enhancements allow for a significant performance gain for both RSA and ECC at the expense of an acceptable increase in silicon area. We also demonstrate that the proposed enhancements facilitate the protection of cryptographic algorithms against certain types of side-channel attacks and present an AES implementation hardened against cache-based attacks as a case study