A unified approach to combinatorial key predistribution schemes for sensor networks

There have been numerous recent proposals for key predistribution schemes for wireless sensor networks based on various types of combinatorial structures such as designs and codes. Many of these schemes have very similar properties and are analysed in a similar manner. We seek to provide a unified framework to study these kinds of schemes. To do so, we define a new, general class of designs, termed “partially balanced t-designs”, that is sufficiently general that it encompasses almost all of the designs that have been proposed for combinatorial key predistribution schemes. However, this new class of designs still has sufficient structure that we are able to derive general formulas for the metrics of the resulting key predistribution schemes. These metrics can be evaluated for a particular scheme simply by substituting appropriate parameters of the underlying combinatorial structure into our general formulas. We also compare various classes of schemes based on different designs, and point out that some existing proposed schemes are in fact identical, even though their descriptions may seem different. We believe that our general framework should facilitate the analysis of proposals for combinatorial key predistribution schemes and their comparison with existing schemes, and also allow researchers to easily evaluate which scheme or schemes present the best combination of performance metrics for a given application scenario

A hierarchical key pre-distribution scheme for fog networks

Security in fog computing is multi-faceted, and one particular challenge is establishing a secure communication channel between fog nodes and end devices. This emphasizes the importance of designing efficient and secret key distribution scheme to facilitate fog nodes and end devices to establish secure communication channels. Existing secure key distribution schemes designed for hierarchical networks may be deployable in fog computing, but they incur high computational and communication overheads and thus consume significant memory. In this paper, we propose a novel hierarchical key pre-distribution scheme based on “Residual Design” for fog networks. The proposed key distribution scheme is designed to minimize storage overhead and memory consumption, while increasing network scalability. The scheme is also designed to be secure against node capture attacks. We demonstrate that in an equal-size network, our scheme achieves around 84% improvement in terms of node storage overhead, and around 96% improvement in terms of network scalability. Our research paves the way for building an efficient key management framework for secure communication within the hierarchical network of fog nodes and end devices. KEYWORDS: Fog Computing, Key distribution, Hierarchical Networks

Deterministic Merging of Blocks in Combinatorial Design based Key Predistribution in Distributed Wireless Sensor Network

Sensor nodes have severe constraints in terms of its resources such as processing power, memory, communication range, battery power. Due to wireless nature of communication between nodes in a wireless sensor network, any attacker can intercept the communicating messages between sensor nodes. So the need for securing these messages is obvious. Due to resource constraints of sensor nodes, public key cryptography can’t be employed for securing the communication as public key cryptography demands much computational effort. So, private key cryptography is natural choice for securing the communication in wireless sensor network. Key predistribution has become obvious choice for distributing keys in sensor nodes for secured communication in a wireless sensor network. A pool of keys is first taken, and then a set of keys from this key pool is installed in every sensor node before their deployment. The keys predistributed to a particular sensor node can be drawn from the key pool probabilistically or deterministically. Combinatorial design which was originated as a branch of statistics and later found its vast application in coding theory and of late in cryptography plays a vital role in deterministic key predistribution. The connectivity and resiliency offered by some combinatorial design based key predistribution schemes can be sometimes offered by merging of blocks and then assign these merged blocks to sensor nodes. The question is how to choose blocks for merging? There is a prior general work on merging of blocks which has been studied on transversal design based key predistribution scheme. This approach is not deterministic, but heuristic. A deterministic algorithm for merging of blocks has been proposed. The orthogonal array based key predistribution scheme has been studied in detail and the non suitability of merging approach to improve its performance has been shown. In addition, a key establishment algorithm for transversal design based key predistribution scheme has been proposed

A hierarchical key pre-distribution scheme for fog networks

Security in fog computing is multi-faceted, and one particular challenge is establishing a secure communication channel between fog nodes and end devices. This emphasizes the importance of designing efficient and secret key distribution scheme to facilitate fog nodes and end devices to establish secure communication channels. Existing secure key distribution schemes designed for hierarchical networks may be deployable in fog computing, but they incur high computational and communication overheads and thus consume significant memory. In this paper, we propose a novel hierarchical key pre-distribution scheme based on “Residual Design” for fog networks. The proposed key distribution scheme is designed to minimize storage overhead and memory consumption, while increasing network scalability. The scheme is also designed to be secure against node capture attacks. We demonstrate that in an equal-size network, our scheme achieves around 84% improvement in terms of node storage overhead, and around 96% improvement in terms of network scalability. Our research paves the way for building an efficient key management framework for secure communication within the hierarchical network of fog nodes and end devices. KEYWORDS: Fog Computing, Key distribution, Hierarchical Networks

Key Predistribution Schemes in Distributed Wireless Sensor Network using Combinatorial Designs Revisited

A Sensor Node in Wireless Sensor Network has very limited resources such as processing capability, memory capacity, battery power, and communication capability. When the communication between any two sensor nodes are required to be secured, the symmetric key cryptography technique is used for its advantage over public key cryptography in terms of requirement of less resources. Keys are pre-distributed to each sensor node from a set of keys called key pool before deployment of sensors nodes. Combinatorial design helps in a great way to determine the way keys are drawn from the key pool for distributing to individual sensor nodes. We study various deterministic key predistribution techniques that are based on combinatorial design