A Study of IEEE 802.15.4 Security Framework for Wireless Body Area Network

A Wireless Body Area Network (WBAN) is a collection of low-power and lightweight wireless sensor nodes that are used to monitor the human body functions and the surrounding environment. It supports a number of innovative and interesting applications, including ubiquitous healthcare and Consumer Electronics (CE) applications. Since WBAN nodes are used to collect sensitive (life-critical) information and may operate in hostile environments, they require strict security mechanisms to prevent malicious interaction with the system. In this paper, we first highlight major security requirements and Denial of Service (DoS) attacks in WBAN at Physical, Medium Access Control (MAC), Network, and Transport layers. Then we discuss the IEEE 802.15.4 security framework and identify the security vulnerabilities and major attacks in the context of WBAN. Different types of attacks on the Contention Access Period (CAP) and Contention Free Period (CFP) parts of the superframe are analyzed and discussed. It is observed that a smart attacker can successfully corrupt an increasing number of GTS slots in the CFP period and can considerably affect the Quality of Service (QoS) in WBAN (since most of the data is carried in CFP period). As we increase the number of smart attackers the corrupted GTS slots are eventually increased, which prevents the legitimate nodes to utilize the bandwidth efficiently. This means that the direct adaptation of IEEE 802.15.4 security framework for WBAN is not totally secure for certain WBAN applications. New solutions are required to integrate high level security in WBAN.Comment: 14 pages, 7 figures, 2 table

Attacking and Securing Beacon-Enabled 802.15.4 Networks

The IEEE 802.15.4 has attracted time-critical applications in wireless sensor networks (WSNs) because of its beacon-enabled mode and guaranteed timeslots (GTSs). However, the GTS scheme’s security still leave the 802.15.4 MAC vulnerable to attacks. Further, the existing techniques in the literature for securing 802.15.4 either focus on non beacon-enabled 802.15.4 or cannot defend against insider attacks for beacon-enabled 802.15.4. In this thesis, we illustrate this by demonstrating attacks on the availability and integrity of the beacon-enabled 802.15.4. To proof the attacks, we implement the attacks using Tmote Sky motes for a malicious node along with regular nodes. We show that the malicious node can freely exploit the beacon frames to compromise the integrity and availability of the network. For the defense, we present beacon-enabled MiniSec (BCN-MiniSec) and analyze its cost

Energy and delay trade-off of the GTS allocation mechanism in IEEE 802.15.4 for wireless sensor networks

The IEEE 802.15.4 protocol proposes a flexible communication solution for Low-Rate Wireless Personal Area Networks (LR-WPAN) including wireless sensor networks (WSNs). It presents the advantage to fit different requirements of potential applications by adequately setting its parameters. When in beaconenabled mode, the protocol can provide timeliness guarantees by using its Guaranteed Time Slot (GTS) mechanism. However, power-efficiency and timeliness guarantees are often two antagonistic requirements in wireless sensor networks. The purpose of this paper is to analyze and propose a methodology for setting the relevant parameters of IEEE 802.15.4-compliant WSNs that takes into account a proper trade-off between power-efficiency and delay bound guarantees. First, we propose two accurate models of service curves for a GTS allocation as a function of the IEEE 802.15.4 parameters, using Network Calculus formalism. We then evaluate the delay bound guaranteed by a GTS allocation and express it as a function of the duty cycle. Based on the relation between the delay requirement and the duty cycle, we propose a power-efficient superframe selection method that simultaneously reduces power consumption and enables meeting the delay requirements of real-time flows allocating GTSs. The results of this work may pave the way for a powerefficient management of the GTS mechanism in an IEEE 802.15.4 cluster

IEEE 802.15.4: a Federating Communication Protocol for Time-Sensitive Wireless Sensor Networks

Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) have been attracting increasing interests for developing a new generation of embedded systems with great potential for many applications such as surveillance, environment monitoring, emergency medical response and home automation. However, the communication paradigms in WSNs differ from the ones attributed to traditional wireless networks, triggering the need for new communication protocols. In this context, the recently standardised IEEE 802.15.4 protocol presents some potentially interesting features for deployment in wireless sensor network applications, such as power-efficiency, timeliness guarantees and scalability. Nevertheless, when addressing WSN applications with (soft/hard) timing requirements some inherent paradoxes emerge, such as power-efficiency versus timeliness, triggering the need of engineering solutions for an efficient deployment of IEEE 802.15.4 in WSNs. In this technical report, we will explore the most relevant characteristics of the IEEE 802.15.4 protocol for wireless sensor networks and present the most important challenges regarding time-sensitive WSN applications. We also provide some timing performance and analysis of the IEEE 802.15.4 that unveil some directions for resolving the previously mentioned paradoxes

Efficient GTS Allocation Schemes for IEEE 802.15.4

IEEE 802.15.4 is a standard defined for wireless sensor network applications with limited power and relaxed throughput needs. The devices transmit data during two periods: Contention Access Period (CAP) by accessing the channel using CSMA/CA and Contention Free Period (CFP), which consists of Guaranteed Time Slots (GTS) allocated to individual devices by the network coordinator. The GTS is used by devices for cyclic data transmission and the coordinator can allocate GTS to a maximum of only seven devices. In this work, we have proposed two algorithms for an efficient GTS allocation. The first algorithm is focused on improving the bandwidth utilization of devices, while the second algorithm uses traffic arrival information of devices to allow sharing of GTS slots between more than seven devices. The proposed schemes were tested through simulations and the results show that the new GTS allocation schemes perform better than the original IEEE 802.15.4 standard

Attacking and securing beacon-enabled 802.15.4 networks

The IEEE 802.15.4 standard has attracted timecritical applications in wireless sensor networks because of its beacon-enabled mode and guaranteed timeslots (GTSs). However, the GTS management scheme’s security mechanisms still leave the 802.15.4 medium access control vulnerable to attacks. Further, the existing techniques in the literature for securing 802.15.4 networks either focus on nonbeacon-enabled 802.15.4 networks or cannot defend against insider attacks for beacon-enabled 802.15.4 networks. In this paper, we illustrate this by demonstrating attacks on the availability and integrity of the beaconenabled 802.15.4 network. To confirm the validity of the attacks, we implement the attacks using Tmote Sky motes for wireless sensor nodes, where the malicious node is deployed as an inside attacker. We show that the malicious node can freely exploit information retrieved from the beacon frames to compromise the integrity and availability of the network. To defend against these attacks, we present BCN-Sec, a protocol that ensures the integrity of data and control frames in beacon-enabled 802.15.4 networks. We implement BCN-Sec, and show its efficacy during various attacks