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

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

Resilient networking in wireless sensor networks

This report deals with security in wireless sensor networks (WSNs), especially in network layer. Multiple secure routing protocols have been proposed in the literature. However, they often use the cryptography to secure routing functionalities. The cryptography alone is not enough to defend against multiple attacks due to the node compromise. Therefore, we need more algorithmic solutions. In this report, we focus on the behavior of routing protocols to determine which properties make them more resilient to attacks. Our aim is to find some answers to the following questions. Are there any existing protocols, not designed initially for security, but which already contain some inherently resilient properties against attacks under which some portion of the network nodes is compromised? If yes, which specific behaviors are making these protocols more resilient? We propose in this report an overview of security strategies for WSNs in general, including existing attacks and defensive measures. In this report we focus at the network layer in particular, and an analysis of the behavior of four particular routing protocols is provided to determine their inherent resiliency to insider attacks. The protocols considered are: Dynamic Source Routing (DSR), Gradient-Based Routing (GBR), Greedy Forwarding (GF) and Random Walk Routing (RWR)

Optimization and Applications of Modern Wireless Networks and Symmetry

Due to the future demands of wireless communications, this book focuses on channel coding, multi-access, network protocol, and the related techniques for IoT/5G. Channel coding is widely used to enhance reliability and spectral efficiency. In particular, low-density parity check (LDPC) codes and polar codes are optimized for next wireless standard. Moreover, advanced network protocol is developed to improve wireless throughput. This invokes a great deal of attention on modern communications

A Routing Path Construction Method for Key Dissemination Messages in Sensor Networks

Authentication is an important security mechanism for detecting forged messages in a sensor network. Each cluster head (CH) in dynamic key distribution schemes forwards a key dissemination message that contains encrypted authentication keys within its cluster to next-hop nodes for the purpose of authentication. The forwarding path of the key dissemination message strongly affects the number of nodes to which the authentication keys in the message are actually distributed. We propose a routing method for the key dissemination messages to increase the number of nodes that obtain the authentication keys. In the proposed method, each node selects next-hop nodes to which the key dissemination message will be forwarded based on secret key indexes, the distance to the sink node, and the energy consumption of its neighbor nodes. The experimental results show that the proposed method can increase by 50–70% the number of nodes to which authentication keys in each cluster are distributed compared to geographic and energy-aware routing (GEAR). In addition, the proposed method can detect false reports earlier by using the distributed authentication keys, and it consumes less energy than GEAR when the false traffic ratio (FTR) is ≥10%

Improving IF Algorithm for Data Aggregation Techniques in Wireless Sensor Networks

In Wireless Sensor Network (WSN), fact from different sensor nodes is collected at assembling node, which is typically complete via modest procedures such as averaging as inadequate computational power and energy resources. Though such collections is identified to be extremely susceptible to node compromising attacks. These approaches are extremely prone to attacks as WSN are typically lacking interfere resilient hardware. Thus, purpose of veracity of facts and prestige of sensor nodes is critical for wireless sensor networks. Therefore, imminent gatherer nodes will be proficient of accomplishment additional cultivated data aggregation algorithms, so creating WSN little unresisting, as the performance of actual low power processors affectedly increases. Iterative filtering algorithms embrace inordinate capacity for such a resolution. The way of allocated the matching mass elements to information delivered by each source, such iterative algorithms concurrently assemble facts from several roots and deliver entrust valuation of these roots. Though suggestively extra substantial against collusion attacks beside the modest averaging techniques, are quiet vulnerable to a different cultivated attack familiarize. The existing literature is surveyed in this paper to have a study of iterative filtering techniques and a detailed comparison is provided. At the end of this paper new technique of improved iterative filtering is proposed with the help of literature survey and drawbacks found in the literature

Practical security scheme design for resource-constrained wireless networks

The implementation of ubiquitous computing (or pervasive computing) can leverage various types of resource-constrained wireless networks such as wireless sensor networks and wireless personal area networks. These resource-constrained wireless networks are vulnerable to many malicious attacks that often cause leakage, alteration and destruction of critical information due to the insecurity of wireless communication and the tampers of devices. Meanwhile, the constraints of resources, the lack of centralized management, and the demands of mobility of these networks often make traditional security mechanisms inefficient or infeasible. So, the resource-constrained wireless networks pose new challenges for information assurance and call for practical, efficient and effective solutions. In this research, we focus on wireless sensor networks and aim at enhancing confidentiality, authenticity, availability and integrity, for wireless sensor networks. Particularly, we identify three important problems as our research targets: (1) key management for wireless sensor networks (for confidentiality), (2) filtering false data injection and DoS attacks in wireless sensor networks (for authenticity and availability), and (3) secure network coding (for integrity). We investigate a diversity of malicious attacks against wireless sensor networks and design a number of practical schemes for establishing pairwise keys between sensor nodes, filtering false data injection and DoS attacks, and securing network coding against pollution attacks for wireless sensor networks. Our contributions from this research are fourfold: (1) We give a taxonomy of malicious attacks for wireless sensor networks. (2) We design a group-based key management scheme using deployment knowledge for wireless sensor networks to establish pair-wise keys between sensor nodes. (3) We propose an en-route scheme for filtering false data injection and DoS attacks in wireless sensor networks. (4) We present two efficient schemes for securing normal and XOR network coding against pollution attacks. Simulation and experimental results show that our solutions outperform existing ones and are suitable for resource-constrained wireless sensor networks in terms of computation overhead, communication cost, memory requirement, and so on

Secure Routing in Wireless Mesh Networks

Wireless mesh networks (WMNs) have emerged as a promising concept to meet the challenges in next-generation networks such as providing flexible, adaptive, and reconfigurable architecture while offering cost-effective solutions to the service providers. Unlike traditional Wi-Fi networks, with each access point (AP) connected to the wired network, in WMNs only a subset of the APs are required to be connected to the wired network. The APs that are connected to the wired network are called the Internet gateways (IGWs), while the APs that do not have wired connections are called the mesh routers (MRs). The MRs are connected to the IGWs using multi-hop communication. The IGWs provide access to conventional clients and interconnect ad hoc, sensor, cellular, and other networks to the Internet. However, most of the existing routing protocols for WMNs are extensions of protocols originally designed for mobile ad hoc networks (MANETs) and thus they perform sub-optimally. Moreover, most routing protocols for WMNs are designed without security issues in mind, where the nodes are all assumed to be honest. In practical deployment scenarios, this assumption does not hold. This chapter provides a comprehensive overview of security issues in WMNs and then particularly focuses on secure routing in these networks. First, it identifies security vulnerabilities in the medium access control (MAC) and the network layers. Various possibilities of compromising data confidentiality, data integrity, replay attacks and offline cryptanalysis are also discussed. Then various types of attacks in the MAC and the network layers are discussed. After enumerating the various types of attacks on the MAC and the network layer, the chapter briefly discusses on some of the preventive mechanisms for these attacks.Comment: 44 pages, 17 figures, 5 table