Energy efficient privacy preserved data gathering in wireless sensor networks having multiple sinks

Wireless sensor networks (WSNs) generally have a many-to-one structure so that event information flows from sensors to a unique sink. In recent WSN applications, many-tomany structures are evolved due to need for conveying collected event information to multiple sinks at the same time. This study proposes an anonymity method bases on k-anonymity for preventing record disclosure of collected event information in WSNs. Proposed method takes the anonymity requirements of multiple sinks into consideration by providing different levels of privacy for each destination sink. Attributes, which may identify of an event owner, are generalized or encrypted in order to meet the different anonymity requirements of sinks. Privacy guaranteed event information can be multicasted to all sinks instead of sending to each sink one by one. Since minimization of energy consumption is an important design criteria for WSNs, our method enables us to multicast the same event information to multiple sinks and reduce energy consumption

An Efficient and Secure Certificateless Authentication Protocol for Healthcare System on Wireless Medical Sensor Networks

Sensor networks have opened up new opportunities in healthcare systems, which can transmit patient’s condition to health professional’s hand-held devices in time. The patient’s physiological signals are very sensitive and the networks are extremely vulnerable to many attacks. It must be ensured that patient’s privacy is not exposed to unauthorized entities. Therefore, the control of access to healthcare systems has become a crucial challenge. An efficient and secure authentication protocol will thus be needed in wireless medical sensor networks. In this paper, we propose a certificateless authentication scheme without bilinear pairing while providing patient anonymity. Compared with other related protocols, the proposed scheme needs less computation and communication cost and preserves stronger security. Our performance evaluations show that this protocol is more practical for healthcare system in wireless medical sensor networks

Efficient network camouflaging in wireless networks

Camouflaging is about making something invisible or less visible. Network camouflaging is about hiding certain traffic information (e.g. traffic pattern, traffic flow identity, etc.) from internal and external eavesdroppers such that important information cannot be deduced from it for malicious use. It is one of the most challenging security requirements to meet in computer networks. Existing camouflaging techniques such as traffic padding, MIX-net, etc., incur significant performance degradation when protected networks are wireless networks, such as sensor networks and mobile ad hoc networks. The reason is that wireless networks are typically subject to resource constraints (e.g. bandwidth, power supply) and possess some unique characteristics (e.g. broadcast, node mobility) that traditional wired networks do not possess. This necessitates developing new techniques that take account of properties of wireless networks and are able to achieve a good balance between performance and security. In this three-part dissertation we investigate techniques for providing network camouflaging services in wireless networks. In the first part, we address a specific problem in a hierarchical multi-task sensor network, i.e. hiding the links between observable traffic patterns and user interests. To solve the problem, a temporally constant traffic pattern, called cover traffic pattern, is needed. We describe two traf- fic padding schemes that implement the cover traffic pattern and provide algorithms for achieving the optimal energy efficiencies with each scheme. In the second part, we explore the design of a MIX-net based anonymity system in mobile ad hoc networks. The objective is to hide the source-destination relationship with respect to each connection. We survey existing MIX route determination algorithms that do not account for dynamic network topology changes, which may result in high packet loss rate and large packet latency. We then introduce adaptive algorithms to overcome this problem. In the third part, we explore the notion of providing anonymity support at MAC layer in wireless networks, which employs the broadcast property of wireless transmission. We design an IEEE 802.11-compliant MAC protocol that provides receiver anonymity for unicast frames and offers better reliability than pure broadcast protocol

Privacy Implications of In-Network Aggregation Mechanisms for VANETs

Research on vehicular ad hoc networks (VANETs) is active and ongoing. Proposed applications range from safety applications, and traffic efficiency applications to entertainment applications. Common to many applications is the need to disseminate possibly privacy-sensitive information, such as location and speed information, over larger distances. In-network aggregation is a promising technology that can help to make such privacy-sensitive information only available in the direct vicinity of vehicles instead of communicating it over larger areas. Further away, only aggregated information that is not privacy-relevant anymore will be known. At the same time, aggregation mechanisms help to cope with the limited available wireless bandwidth. However, the exact privacy properties of aggregation mechanisms have still not been thoroughly researched. In this paper, we propose a metric to measure privacy enhancements provided by in-network aggregation and use it to compare existing schemes

Security and Privacy Issues in Wireless Mesh Networks: A Survey

This book chapter identifies various security threats in wireless mesh network (WMN). Keeping in mind the critical requirement of security and user privacy in WMNs, this chapter provides a comprehensive overview of various possible attacks on different layers of the communication protocol stack for WMNs and their corresponding defense mechanisms. First, it identifies the security vulnerabilities in the physical, link, network, transport, application layers. Furthermore, various possible attacks on the key management protocols, user authentication and access control protocols, and user privacy preservation protocols are presented. After enumerating various possible attacks, the chapter provides a detailed discussion on various existing security mechanisms and protocols to defend against and wherever possible prevent the possible attacks. Comparative analyses are also presented on the security schemes with regards to the cryptographic schemes used, key management strategies deployed, use of any trusted third party, computation and communication overhead involved etc. The chapter then presents a brief discussion on various trust management approaches for WMNs since trust and reputation-based schemes are increasingly becoming popular for enforcing security in wireless networks. A number of open problems in security and privacy issues for WMNs are subsequently discussed before the chapter is finally concluded.Comment: 62 pages, 12 figures, 6 tables. This chapter is an extension of the author's previous submission in arXiv submission: arXiv:1102.1226. There are some text overlaps with the previous submissio

Finding routes in anonymous sensor networks

We consider networks of anonymous sensors and address the problem of constructing routes for the delivery of information from a group of sensors in response to a query by a sink. In order to circumvent the restrictions imposed by anonymity, we rely on using the power level perceived by the sensors in the query from the sink. We introduce a simple distributed algorithm to achieve the building of routes to the sink and evaluate its performance by means of simulations

Security and Privacy for Green IoT-based Agriculture: Review, Blockchain solutions, and Challenges

open access articleThis paper presents research challenges on security and privacy issues in the field of green IoT-based agriculture. We start by describing a four-tier green IoT-based agriculture architecture and summarizing the existing surveys that deal with smart agriculture. Then, we provide a classification of threat models against green IoT-based agriculture into five categories, including, attacks against privacy, authentication, confidentiality, availability, and integrity properties. Moreover, we provide a taxonomy and a side-by-side comparison of the state-of-the-art methods toward secure and privacy-preserving technologies for IoT applications and how they will be adapted for green IoT-based agriculture. In addition, we analyze the privacy-oriented blockchain-based solutions as well as consensus algorithms for IoT applications and how they will be adapted for green IoT-based agriculture. Based on the current survey, we highlight open research challenges and discuss possible future research directions in the security and privacy of green IoT-based agriculture