A Fair and Secure Cluster Formation Process for Ad Hoc Networks

An efficient approach for organizing large ad hoc networks is to divide the nodes into multiple clusters and designate, for each cluster, a clusterhead which is responsible for holding intercluster control information. The role of a clusterhead entails rights and duties. On the one hand, it has a dominant position in front of the others because it manages the connectivity and has access to other node¿s sensitive information. But on the other hand, the clusterhead role also has some associated costs. Hence, in order to prevent malicious nodes from taking control of the group in a fraudulent way and avoid selfish attacks from suitable nodes, the clusterhead needs to be elected in a secure way. In this paper we present a novel solution that guarantees the clusterhead is elected in a cheat-proof manner

Securing Cluster Head Selection in Wireless Sensor Networks

Wireless Sensor network routing protocols are prone to various attacks as these protocols mainly provide the function of routing data towards the sink. LEACH is a one of the routing protocol used for clustered implementation of wireless sensor network with Received Signal Strength based dynamic selection of Cluster Heads. But, as with other routing protocols, LEACH is also prone to HELLO flood attack when the malicious sensor node becomes the Cluster Head. Cryptographic and non-cryptographic approaches to detect the presence of HELLO flood attack also exist but they lack efficiency in some way. In this paper, an efficient protocol is proposed for the detection and prevention of HELLO Flood attack in wireless sensor network. Cluster heads are vulnerable to various malicious attacks and this greatly affects the performance of the wireless sensor network. Cryptographic approaches to prevent this attack are not so helpful though some non-cryptographic methods to detect the HELLO Flood attack also exist but they are not too efficient as they result in large test packet overhead. In this paper, we propose HRSRP (Hello flood attack Resistant Secure Routing Protocol) extension to LEACH protocol so as to protect the cluster head against Hello flood attack. HRSRP is base on encryption using Armstrong number and decryption using AES algorithm to verify the identity of cluster head. The proposed technique is implemented in NS2, the experimental results clearly indicate the proposed technique has significant capability for the detection of hello flood attack launched for making the malicious node as the cluster head

Secure Cluster Head Sensor Elections Using Signal Strength Estimation and Ordered Transmissions

In clustered sensor networks, electing CHs (Cluster Heads) in a secure manner is very important because they collect data from sensors and send the aggregated data to the sink. If a compromised node is elected as a CH, it can illegally acquire data from all the members and even send forged data to the sink. Nevertheless, most of the existing CH election schemes have not treated the problem of the secure CH election. Recently, random value based protocols have been proposed to resolve the secure CH election problem. However, these schemes cannot prevent an attacker from suppressing its contribution for the change of CH election result and from selectively forwarding its contribution for the disagreement of CH election result. In this paper, we propose a modified random value scheme to prevent these disturbances. Our scheme dynamically adjusts the forwarding order of contributions and discards a received contribution when its signal strength is lower than the specified level to prevent these malicious actions. The simulation results have shown that our scheme effectively prevents attackers from changing and splitting an agreement of CH election result. Also, they have shown that our scheme is relatively energy-efficient than other schemes

Securing Cluster Formation and Cluster Head Elections in Wireless Sensor Networks

In wireless sensor networks, clustering plays a very important role for energy savings at each node because it reduces the number of transmissions through TDMA based communication. For secure clustering, it is very crucial to find compromised nodes and remove them during the initial cluster formation process. If some nodes are compromised and survive from the exclusion process of normal nodes, they can make some nodes have a different membership view in the same cluster and consequently separate a cluster into multiple clusters. To resolve these problems, we propose a robust scheme against such attacks in this paper. First, our scheme generates large sized clusters to improve the quality of clusters. Second, our scheme exploits the verification of two hop distant nodes to maintain the quality of the large sized clusters and avoids the separation of the clusters. In addition, our scheme prefers broadcast transmissions to reduce the energy consumption of nodes. We prove that our scheme generates fewer clusters and is more secure and energy-efficient than its rival scheme through security analysis and simulation results. With regard to CH election, we also propose a scheme which securely elects CHs by recognizing the compromised nodes and depriving them of their CH candidacy. To this aim, each node in a cluster calculates reputation values of other CH candidates according to their behavior and distributes them through a broadcast. Then each node extracts substantial reputation values of CH candidates using the distributed reputation values. Next, each node evaluates the substantial reputation values of other CH candidates and excludes some disreputable nodes from CH candidates. The scheme greatly improves non-manipulability and agreement property of CH election results in comparison with other rival schemes. Moreover, the scheme guarantees higher non-manipulability and agreement property than other rival schemes, even in a loss-prone environment

Computational aspects of voting: a literature survey

Preference aggregation is a topic of study in different fields such as philosophy, mathematics, economics and political science. Recently, computational aspects of preference aggregation have gained especial attention and “computational politics” has emerged as a marked line of research in computer science with a clear concentration on voting protocols. The field of voting systems, rooted in social choice theory, has expanded notably in both depth and breadth in the last few decades. A significant amount of this growth comes from studies concerning the computational aspects of voting systems. This thesis comprehensively reviews the work on voting systems (from a computing perspective) by listing, classifying and comparing the results obtained by different researchers in the field. This survey covers a wide range of new and historical results yet provides a profound commentary on related work as individual studies and in relation to other related work and to the field in general. The deliverables serve as an overview where students and novice researchers in the field can start and also as a depository that can be referred to when searching for specific results. A comprehensive literature survey of the computational aspects of voting is a task that has not been undertaken yet and is initially realized here. Part of this research was dedicated to creating a web-depository that contains material and references related to the topic based on the survey. The purpose was to create a dynamic version of the survey that can be updated with latest findings and as an online practical reference