5,122 research outputs found
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
Secure and Privacy-Preserving Data Aggregation Protocols for Wireless Sensor Networks
This chapter discusses the need of security and privacy protection mechanisms
in aggregation protocols used in wireless sensor networks (WSN). It presents a
comprehensive state of the art discussion on the various privacy protection
mechanisms used in WSNs and particularly focuses on the CPDA protocols proposed
by He et al. (INFOCOM 2007). It identifies a security vulnerability in the CPDA
protocol and proposes a mechanism to plug that vulnerability. To demonstrate
the need of security in aggregation process, the chapter further presents
various threats in WSN aggregation mechanisms. A large number of existing
protocols for secure aggregation in WSN are discussed briefly and a protocol is
proposed for secure aggregation which can detect false data injected by
malicious nodes in a WSN. The performance of the protocol is also presented.
The chapter concludes while highlighting some future directions of research in
secure data aggregation in WSNs.Comment: 32 pages, 7 figures, 3 table
Key Management Building Blocks for Wireless Sensor Networks
Cryptography is the means to ensure data confidentiality, integrity and authentication in wireless sensor networks (WSNs). To use cryptography effectively however, the cryptographic keys need to be managed properly. First of all, the necessary keys need to be distributed to the nodes before the nodes are deployed in the field, in such a way that any two or more nodes that need to communicate securely can establish a session key. Then, the session keys need to be refreshed from time to time to prevent birthday attacks. Finally, in case any of the nodes is found to be compromised, the key ring of the compromised node needs to be revoked and some or all of the compromised keys might need to be replaced. These processes, together with the policies and techniques needed to support them, are called key management. The facts that WSNs (1) are generally not tamper-resistant; (2) operate unattended; (3) communicate in an open medium; (4) have no fixed infrastructure and pre-configured topology; (5) have severe hardware and resource constraints, present unique challenges to key management. In this article, we explore techniques for meeting these challenges. What distinguishes our approach from a routine literature survey is that, instead of comparing various known schemes, we set out to identify the basic cryptographic principles, or building blocks that will allow practitioners to set up their own key management framework using these building blocks
A Survey of Access Control Models in Wireless Sensor Networks
Copyright 2014 by the authors; licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/)Wireless sensor networks (WSNs) have attracted considerable interest in the research community, because of their wide range of applications. However, due to the distributed nature of WSNs and their deployment in remote areas, these networks are vulnerable to numerous security threats that can adversely affect their proper functioning. Resource constraints in sensor nodes mean that security mechanisms with a large overhead of computation and communication are impractical to use in WSNs; security in sensor networks is, therefore, a challenge. Access control is a critical security service that offers the appropriate access privileges to legitimate users and prevents illegitimate users from unauthorized access. However, access control has not received much attention in the context of WSNs. This paper provides an overview of security threats and attacks, outlines the security requirements and presents a state-of-the-art survey on access control models, including a comparison and evaluation based on their characteristics in WSNs. Potential challenging issues for access control schemes in WSNs are also discussed.Peer reviewe
Security in Wireless Sensor Networks: Issues and Challenges
Wireless Sensor Network (WSN) is an emerging technology that shows great
promise for various futuristic applications both for mass public and military.
The sensing technology combined with processing power and wireless
communication makes it lucrative for being exploited in abundance in future.
The inclusion of wireless communication technology also incurs various types of
security threats. The intent of this paper is to investigate the security
related issues and challenges in wireless sensor networks. We identify the
security threats, review proposed security mechanisms for wireless sensor
networks. We also discuss the holistic view of security for ensuring layered
and robust security in wireless sensor networks.Comment: 6 page
KALwEN: a new practical and interoperable key management scheme for body sensor networks
Key management is the pillar of a security architecture. Body sensor networks (BSNs) pose several challenges–some inherited from wireless sensor networks (WSNs), some unique to themselves–that require a new key management scheme to be tailor-made. The challenge is taken on, and the result is KALwEN, a new parameterized key management scheme that combines the best-suited cryptographic techniques in a seamless framework. KALwEN is user-friendly in the sense that it requires no expert knowledge of a user, and instead only requires a user to follow a simple set of instructions when bootstrapping or extending a network. One of KALwEN's key features is that it allows sensor devices from different manufacturers, which expectedly do not have any pre-shared secret, to establish secure communications with each other. KALwEN is decentralized, such that it does not rely on the availability of a local processing unit (LPU). KALwEN supports secure global broadcast, local broadcast, and local (neighbor-to-neighbor) unicast, while preserving past key secrecy and future key secrecy (FKS). The fact that the cryptographic protocols of KALwEN have been formally verified also makes a convincing case. With both formal verification and experimental evaluation, our results should appeal to theorists and practitioners alike
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)
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