Key management for wireless sensor network security

Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) have attracted great attention not only in industry but also in academia due to their enormous application potential and unique security challenges. A typical sensor network can be seen as a combination of a number of low-cost sensor nodes which have very limited computation and communication capability, memory space, and energy supply. The nodes are self-organized into a network to sense or monitor surrounding information in an unattended environment, while the self-organization property makes the networks vulnerable to various attacks.Many cryptographic mechanisms that solve network security problems rely directly on secure and efficient key management making key management a fundamental research topic in the field of WSNs security. Although key management for WSNs has been studied over the last years, the majority of the literature has focused on some assumed vulnerabilities along with corresponding countermeasures. Specific application, which is an important factor in determining the feasibility of the scheme, has been overlooked to a large extent in the existing literature.This thesis is an effort to develop a key management framework and specific schemes for WSNs by which different types of keys can be established and also can be distributed in a self-healing manner; explicit/ implicit authentication can be integrated according to the security requirements of expected applications. The proposed solutions would provide reliable and robust security infrastructure for facilitating secure communications in WSNs.There are five main parts in the thesis. In Part I, we begin with an introduction to the research background, problems definition and overview of existing solutions. From Part II to Part IV, we propose specific solutions, including purely Symmetric Key Cryptography based solutions, purely Public Key Cryptography based solutions, and a hybrid solution. While there is always a trade-off between security and performance, analysis and experimental results prove that each proposed solution can achieve the expected security aims with acceptable overheads for some specific applications. Finally, we recapitulate the main contribution of our work and identify future research directions in Part V

A self-healing key distribution scheme based on vector space secret sharing and one way hash chains

An efficient self-healing key distribution scheme with revocation capability is proposed for secure group communication in wireless networks. The scheme bases on vector space secret sharing and one way hash function techniques. Vector space secret sharing helps to realize general monotone decreasing structures for the family of subsets of users that can be revoked instead of a threshold one. One way hash chains contribute to reduce communication overhead. Furthermore, the most prominent characteristic of our scheme is resisting collusion between the new joined users and the revoked users, which is fatal weakness of hash function based self-healing key distribution schemes

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

On the Security of a Self-healing Group Key Distribution Scheme

Recently, in Journal of Security and Communication Networks (5(12):1363-1374, DOI: 10.1002/sec.429), Wang et al. proposed a group key distribution scheme with self-healing property for wireless networks in which resource is constrained. They claimed that their key distribution scheme satisfies forward security, backward security and can resist collusion attack. Unfortunately, we found some security flaws in their scheme. In this paper, we present a method to attack this scheme. The attack illustrates that this scheme does not satisfy forward security, which also directly breaks the collusion resistance capability

Improving Dependability of Networks with Penalty and Revocation Mechanisms

Both malicious and non-malicious faults can dismantle computer networks. Thus, mitigating faults at various layers is essential in ensuring efficient and fair network resource utilization. In this thesis we take a step in this direction and study several ways to deal with faults by means of penalties and revocation mechanisms in networks that are lacking a centralized coordination point, either because of their scale or design. Compromised nodes can pose a serious threat to infrastructure, end-hosts and services. Such malicious elements can undermine the availability and fairness of networked systems. To deal with such nodes, we design and analyze protocols enabling their removal from the network in a fast and a secure way. We design these protocols for two different environments. In the former setting, we assume that there are multiple, but independent trusted points in the network which coordinate other nodes in the network. In the latter, we assume that all nodes play equal roles in the network and thus need to cooperate to carry out common functionality. We analyze these solutions and discuss possible deployment scenarios. Next we turn our attention to wireless edge networks. In this context, some nodes, without being malicious, can still behave in an unfair manner. To deal with the situation, we propose several self-penalty mechanisms. We implement the proposed protocols employing a commodity hardware and conduct experiments in real-world environments. The analysis of data collected in several measurement rounds revealed improvements in terms of higher fairness and throughput. We corroborate the results with simulations and an analytic model. And finally, we discuss how to measure fairness in dynamic settings, where nodes can have heterogeneous resource demands