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

Protecting Contextual Information in WSNs: Source- and Receiver-Location Privacy Solutions

La privacidad es un derecho fundamental recogido por numerosas leyes y tratados entre los que destaca la Declaración Universal de los Derechos Humanos de las Naciones Unidas. Sin embargo, este derecho fundamental se ha visto vulnerado en numerosas ocasiones a lo largo de la historia; y el desarrollo de la tecnología, en especial la mejora de los sistemas de recolección, analisis y diseminación de información, han tenido gran parte de culpa. En la actualidad nos encontramos en un punto en el que el desarrollo y despliegue de sistemas ubicuos, encabezados por las redes inalámbricas de sensores, puede llegar a suponer un riesgo de privacidad sin precedentes dada su capacidad para recolectar información en cantidades y situaciones hasta el momento insospechadas. Existe, por tanto, una urgente necesidad de desarrollar mecanismos capaces de velar por nuestra información más sensible. Es precisamente éste uno de los objetivos principales de la presente tesis doctoral: facilitar la integración de las redes inalámbricas de sensores en nuestro día a día sin que éstas supongan un grave riesgo de privacidad. Esta tesis se centra en un problema de privacidad particular que viene derivado de la naturaleza inalámbrica de las comunicaciones y de la necesidad imperiosa de ahorrar energía que existe en estas redes de recursos restringidos. Para las redes de sensores, las comunicaciones suponen un gran porcentaje del presupuesto energético y, por ello, los protocolos de encaminamiento empleados tienden a minimizarlas, utilizando protocolos de camino óptimo. Aprovechándose de esta situación, un observador podría, mediante técnicas de análisis de tráfico no demasiado sofisticadas, y sin necesidad de descifrar el contenido de los paquete, determinar el origen y el destino de las comunicaciones. Esto supone, al igual que en los sistemas de comunicación tradicionales, un grave riesgo para la privacidad. Dado que el problema de la privacidad de localización en redes de sensores se reduce a una cuestión de análisis de tráfico, parece razonable pensar que las soluciones desarrolladas a tal fin en redes de computadores pueden ser de utilida. Sin embargo, esta hipótesis ha sido rechazada en varias ocasiones con argumentos vagos al respecto de las limitaciones computacionales y energéticas de las redes de sensores. Nosotros consideramos que esto no es motivo suficiente para descartar estas soluciones ya que, a pesar de la tendencia actual, en el futuro podríamos tener nodos sensores de gran capacidad. Por ello, uno de los objetivos de esta tesis ha sido realizar un análisis exhaustivo sobre la aplicabilidad de estas soluciones al ámbito de las redes de sensores, centrándonos no sólo en los requisitos computacionales sino también en las propiedades de anonimato que se persiguen, en los modelos de atacante y en las posibles limitaciones que podrían derivarse de su aplicación. Por otra parte, se ha realizado un amplio análisis de las soluciones de privacidad de localización existentes para redes de sensores. Este análisis no se ha centrado únicamente en estudiar las técnicas de protección de empleadas sino que además se ha esforzado en destacar las ventajas e inconvenientes de las distintas soluciones. Esto ha permitido desarrollar una completa taxonomía en varios niveles basada en los recursos que se desean proteger, los modelos de adversario a los que hacer frente y las principales características o técnicas empleadas por las diferentes soluciones. Además, a partir de esto se han detectado una serie de problemas abiertos y puntos de mejora del estado del arte actual, que se han plasmado en dos nuevas soluciones; una de las soluciones se ha centrado en la protección de la localización del origen de datos, mientras que la otra se ha enfocado a la protección de la estación base. Ambas soluciones tienen en cuenta atacantes con un rango de escucha parcial y capaces de desplazarse en el terreno para observar las comunicaciones en diferentes zonas de la red. La primera de las soluciones desarrolladas parte de la observación de que los mecanismos actuales se basan principalmente en el envío de paquetes siguiendo caminos aleatorios sin ningún conocimiento acerca de si estos caminos son realmente efectivos para hacer frente a un atacante local. La idea detrás de CALP es aprovechar la capacidad que tienen las redes de sensores para sentir lo que pasa en su entorno para desarrollar mecanismos de protección más inteligentes utilizando información acerca del atacante. De esta forma, se consigue reducir drásticamente el consumo energético de la solución y al mismo tiempo se reduce el retraso de las comunicaciones, ya que el mecanismo sólo se activa ante la presencia de un atacante. Aunque esta idea se ha aplicado únicamente a la protección de los nodos origen de datos, sus características indican que también sería posible aplicarla con éxito a la protección de la estación base. La segunda solución surge tras observar que las soluciones para proteger la estación base son demasiado costosas a nivel energético o, en su defecto, revelan información sobre su localización. Además, hasta la fecha ninguna solución había tenido en cuenta que si un atacante obtiene las tablas de rutas de un nodo obtiene información sobre la estación base. Nuestra solución, HISP-NC, se basa en dos mecanismos complementarios que, por un lado, hacen frente a ataques de análisis de tráfico y, por otro lado, protegen frente al nuevo modelo de atacante desarrollado. El primer mecanismo se basa en la homogeneización del tráfico en el entorno del camino y el segundo en la perturbación de la tabla de rutas, de manera que se dificulta el ataque al tiempo que se asegura la llegada de datos a la estación base

Secure and Reliable Routing Protocol for Transmission Data in Wireless Sensor Mesh Networks

Abstract Sensor nodes collect data from the physical world then exchange it until it reaches the intended destination. This information can be sensitive, such as battlefield surveillance. Therefore, providing secure and continuous data transmissions among sensor nodes in wireless network environments is crucial. Wireless sensor networks (WSN) have limited resources, limited computation capabilities, and the exchange of data through the air and deployment in accessible areas makes the energy, security, and routing major concerns in WSN. In this research we are looking at security issues for the above reasons. WSN is susceptible to malicious activities such as hacking and physical attacks. In general, security threats are classified depending on the layers. Physical, Transport, Network, Data link, and the Application layer. Sensor nodes can be placed in an unfriendly environments and it has lower power energy, computation and bandwidth, are exposed to a failure, and the WSN topology dynamically unstable. The recent wireless sensor protocols are intended for data communication transmission energy consumption. Therefore, many do not consider the security in WSN as much as they should and it might be vulnerable to attacks. Standard crypto systems methods aim to protect the authentication and integrity of data packets during the transmission stage between senders and receivers. In this dissertation we present Adel which is a novel routing protocol for exchanging data through wireless sensor mesh networks using Ant Colony Optimization (ACO) algorithm. Adel enhances security level during data transmission between sender party and receiver party in wireless network environment. Once the sensor nodes are deployed in a network, they need to inform their location and their data related to the security for the further communication in the network. For that purpose, ii an efficient mechanism is implemented in order to perform better communication among sensor nodes. Adel generates dynamic routing table using ACO algorithm with all the necessary information from network nodes after being deployed. Adel works with minimum routing restrictions and exploits the advantages of the three multicast routing styles, unicast, path, and mesh based. Since it takes a routing decision with a minimum number of nodes using the shortest path between the sender and the receiver nodes, Adel is applicable in static networks. Four essential performance metrics in mesh networks, network security analysis, network latency time, network packets drop, network delivery ratio, and network throughput are evaluated. Adel routing protocol has met the most important security requirements such as authorization, authentication, confidentiality, and integrity. It also grantees the absence of the cycle path problem in the network.This research reports the implementation and the performance of the proposed protocol using network simulator NS-2. The seven main parameters are considered for evaluation all experiments are security trust, packets drop, energy consumption, throughput, end to end delay and packet delivery ratio. The results show that the proposed system can significantly enhance the network security and connectivity level compared to other routing protocols. Yet, as expected, it did not do so well in energy consumption since our main goal was to provide higher level of security and connectivit

Wireless multimedia sensor networks, security and key management

Wireless Multimedia Sensor Networks (WMSNs) have emerged and shifted the focus from the typical scalar wireless sensor networks to networks with multimedia devices that are capable to retrieve video, audio, images, as well as scalar sensor data. WMSNs are able to deliver multimedia content due to the availability of inexpensive CMOS cameras and microphones coupled with the significant progress in distributed signal processing and multimedia source coding techniques. These mentioned characteristics, challenges, and requirements of designing WMSNs open many research issues and future research directions to develop protocols, algorithms, architectures, devices, and testbeds to maximize the network lifetime while satisfying the quality of service requirements of the various applications. In this thesis dissertation, we outline the design challenges of WMSNs and we give a comprehensive discussion of the proposed architectures and protocols for the different layers of the communication protocol stack for WMSNs along with their open research issues. Also, we conduct a comparison among the existing WMSN hardware and testbeds based on their specifications and features along with complete classification based on their functionalities and capabilities. In addition, we introduce our complete classification for content security and contextual privacy in WSNs. Our focus in this field, after conducting a complete survey in WMSNs and event privacy in sensor networks, and earning the necessary knowledge of programming sensor motes such as Micaz and Stargate and running simulation using NS2, is to design suitable protocols meet the challenging requirements of WMSNs targeting especially the routing and MAC layers, secure the wirelessly exchange of data against external attacks using proper security algorithms: key management and secure routing, defend the network from internal attacks by using a light-weight intrusion detection technique, protect the contextual information from being leaked to unauthorized parties by adapting an event unobservability scheme, and evaluate the performance efficiency and energy consumption of employing the security algorithms over WMSNs

Formal modelling and analysis of denial of services attacks in wireless sensor networks

Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) have attracted considerable research attention in recent years because of the perceived potential benefits offered by self-organising, multi-hop networks consisting of low-cost and small wireless devices for monitoring or control applications in di±cult environments. WSN may be deployed in hostile or inaccessible environments and are often unattended. These conditions present many challenges in ensuring that WSNs work effectively and survive long enough to fulfil their functionalities. Securing a WSN against any malicious attack is a particular challenge. Due to the limited resources of nodes, traditional routing protocols are not appropriate in WSNs and innovative methods are used to route data from source nodes to sink nodes (base stations). To evaluate the routing protocols against DoS attacks, an innovative design method of combining formal modelling and computer simulations has been proposed. This research has shown that by using formal modelling hidden bugs (e.g. vulnerability to attacks) in routing protocols can be detected automatically. In addition, through a rigorous testing, a new routing protocol, RAEED (Robust formally Analysed protocol for wirEless sEnsor networks Deployment), was developed which is able to operate effectively in the presence of hello flood, rushing, wormhole, black hole, gray hole, sink hole, INA and jamming attacks. It has been proved formally and using computer simulation that the RAEED can pacify these DoS attacks. A second contribution of this thesis relates to the development of a framework to check the vulnerability of different routing protocols against Denial of Service(DoS) attacks. This has allowed us to evaluate formally some existing and known routing protocols against various DoS attacks iand these include TinyOS Beaconing, Authentic TinyOS using uTesla, Rumour Routing, LEACH, Direct Diffusion, INSENS, ARRIVE and ARAN protocols. This has resulted in the development of an innovative and simple defence technique with no additional hardware cost for deployment against wormhole and INA attacks. In the thesis, the detection of weaknesses in INSENS, Arrive and ARAN protocols was also addressed formally. Finally, an e±cient design methodology using a combination of formal modelling and simulation is propose to evaluate the performances of routing protocols against DoS attacks

A Robot-Sensor Network Security Architecture for Monitoring Applications

This paper presents SNSR (Sensor Network Security using Robots), a novel, open, and flexible architecture that improves security in static sensor networks by benefiting from robot-sensor network cooperation. In SNSR, the robot performs sensor node authentication and radio-based localization (enabling centralized topology computation and route establishment) and directly interacts with nodes to send them configurations or receive status and anomaly reports without intermediaries. SNSR operation is divided into stages set in a feedback iterative structure, which enables repeating the execution of stages to adapt to changes, respond to attacks, or detect and correct errors. By exploiting the robot capabilities, SNSR provides high security levels and adaptability without requiring complex mechanisms. This paper presents SNSR, analyzes its security against common attacks, and experimentally validates its performance

Security of the Internet of Things: Vulnerabilities, Attacks and Countermeasures

Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) constitute one of the most promising third-millennium technologies and have wide range of applications in our surrounding environment. The reason behind the vast adoption of WSNs in various applications is that they have tremendously appealing features, e.g., low production cost, low installation cost, unattended network operation, autonomous and longtime operation. WSNs have started to merge with the Internet of Things (IoT) through the introduction of Internet access capability in sensor nodes and sensing ability in Internet-connected devices. Thereby, the IoT is providing access to huge amount of data, collected by the WSNs, over the Internet. Hence, the security of IoT should start with foremost securing WSNs ahead of the other components. However, owing to the absence of a physical line-of-defense, i.e., there is no dedicated infrastructure such as gateways to watch and observe the flowing information in the network, security of WSNs along with IoT is of a big concern to the scientific community. More specifically, for the application areas in which CIA (confidentiality, integrity, availability) has prime importance, WSNs and emerging IoT technology might constitute an open avenue for the attackers. Besides, recent integration and collaboration of WSNs with IoT will open new challenges and problems in terms of security. Hence, this would be a nightmare for the individuals using these systems as well as the security administrators who are managing those networks. Therefore, a detailed review of security attacks towards WSNs and IoT, along with the techniques for prevention, detection, and mitigation of those attacks are provided in this paper. In this text, attacks are categorized and treated into mainly two parts, most or all types of attacks towards WSNs and IoT are investigated under that umbrella: “Passive Attacks” and “Active Attacks”. Understanding these attacks and their associated defense mechanisms will help paving a secure path towards the proliferation and public acceptance of IoT technology