Secure Precise Clock Synchronization for Interconnected Body Area Networks

Secure time synchronization is a paramount service for wireless sensor networks (WSNs) constituted by multiple interconnected body area networks (BANs). We propose a novel approach to securely and efficiently synchronize nodes at BAN level and/or WSN level. Each BAN develops its own notion of time. To this effect, the nodes of a BAN synchronize with their BAN controller node. Moreover, controller nodes of different BANs cooperate to agree on a WSN global and/or to transfer UTC time. To reduce the number of exchanged synchronization messages, we use an environmental-aware time prediction algorithm. The performance analysis in this paper shows that our approach exhibits very advanced security, accuracy, precision, and low-energy trade-off. For comparable precision, our proposal outstands related clock synchronization protocols in energy efficiency and risk of attacks. These results are based on computations

MOBILE DATA COLLECTOR FOR SECURE TIME SYNCHRONIZATION IN CLUSTERED WIRELESS SENSOR NETWORK

Secure time synchronization is a key requirement for many sophisticated application running on these networks. Most of the existing secure time synchronization protocols incur high communication and storage costs and are subject to a few known security attacks. In wireless sensor network (WSN), lifetime of the network is determined by the amount of energy consumption by the nodes. To improve the lifetime of the network, nodes are organized into clusters, in which the cluster head (CH) collects and aggregates the data. A special node called mobile data collector (MDC) is used to collect the data from the CH and transfer it to the base station (BS) By using proposed method MDC authenticated to CH by computing shared secret keys on the fly. Once the MDC and CH are authenticated, all the sensor nodes in the cluster are synchronized, time synchronization reduce the communication and storage requirements of each CH. Security analysis of this proposed system shows that it is highly robust against different attacks namely compromised CH, reply attack, message manipulation attack as well as pulse delay attack

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

Attack-Tolerant Time-Synchronization in Wireless Sensor Networks

Abstract—Achieving secure time-synchronization in wireless sensor networks (WSNs) is a challenging, but very important problem that has not yet been addressed effectively. This pa-per proposes an Attack-tolerant Time-Synchronization Protocol (ATSP) in which sensor nodes cooperate to safeguard the time-synchronization service against malicious attacks. ATSP exploits the high temporal correlation existing among adjacent nodes in a WSN to achieve (1) adaptive management of the profile of each sensor’s normal behavior, (2) distributed, cooperative detection of falsified clock values advertised by attackers or compromised nodes, and (3) significant improvement of syn-chronization accuracy and stability by effectively compensating the clock drifts with the calibrated clock. To reduce the risk of losing time-synchronization due to attacks on the reference node, ATSP utilizes distributed, mutual synchronization and confines the impact of attacks to a local area (where attacks took place). Furthermore, by maintaining an accurate profile of sensors’ normal synchronization behaviors, ATSP detects various critical attacks while incurring only reasonable communication and computation overheads, making ATSP attack-tolerant and ideal for resource-constrained WSNs. I

A secure communication framework for wireless sensor networks

Today, wireless sensor networks (WSNs) are no longer a nascent technology and future networks, especially Cyber-Physical Systems (CPS) will integrate more sensor-based systems into a variety of application scenarios. Typical application areas include medical, environmental, military, and commercial enterprises. Providing security to this diverse set of sensor-based applications is necessary for the healthy operations of the overall system because untrusted entities may target the proper functioning of applications and disturb the critical decision-making processes by injecting false information into the network. One way to address this issue is to employ en-route-filtering-based solutions utilizing keys generated by either static or dynamic key management schemes in the WSN literature. However, current schemes are complicated for resource-constrained sensors as they utilize many keys and more importantly as they transmit many keying messages in the network, which increases the energy consumption of WSNs that are already severely limited in the technical capabilities and resources (i.e., power, computational capacities, and memory) available to them. Nonetheless, further improvements without too much overhead are still possible by sharing a dynamically created cryptic credential. Building upon this idea, the purpose of this thesis is to introduce an efficient and secure communication framework for WSNs. Specifically, three protocols are suggested as contributions using virtual energies and local times onboard the sensors as dynamic cryptic credentials: (1) Virtual Energy-Based Encryption and Keying (VEBEK); (2) TIme-Based DynamiC Keying and En-Route Filtering (TICK); (3) Secure Source-Based Loose Time Synchronization (SOBAS) for WSNs.Ph.D.Committee Chair: Copeland, John; Committee Co-Chair: Beyah, Raheem; Committee Member: Li, Geoffrey; Committee Member: Owen, Henry; Committee Member: Zegura, Ellen; Committee Member: Zhang, Fumi

Smart Wireless Sensor Networks

The recent development of communication and sensor technology results in the growth of a new attractive and challenging area - wireless sensor networks (WSNs). A wireless sensor network which consists of a large number of sensor nodes is deployed in environmental fields to serve various applications. Facilitated with the ability of wireless communication and intelligent computation, these nodes become smart sensors which do not only perceive ambient physical parameters but also be able to process information, cooperate with each other and self-organize into the network. These new features assist the sensor nodes as well as the network to operate more efficiently in terms of both data acquisition and energy consumption. Special purposes of the applications require design and operation of WSNs different from conventional networks such as the internet. The network design must take into account of the objectives of specific applications. The nature of deployed environment must be considered. The limited of sensor nodes� resources such as memory, computational ability, communication bandwidth and energy source are the challenges in network design. A smart wireless sensor network must be able to deal with these constraints as well as to guarantee the connectivity, coverage, reliability and security of network's operation for a maximized lifetime. This book discusses various aspects of designing such smart wireless sensor networks. Main topics includes: design methodologies, network protocols and algorithms, quality of service management, coverage optimization, time synchronization and security techniques for sensor networks