A survey on wireless body area networks: architecture, security challenges and research opportunities.

In the era of communication technologies, wireless healthcare networks enable innovative applications to enhance the quality of patients’ lives, provide useful monitoring tools for caregivers, and allows timely intervention. However, due to the sensitive information within the Wireless Body Area Networks (WBANs), insecure data violates the patients’ privacy and may consequently lead to improper medical diagnosis and/or treatment. Achieving a high level of security and privacy in WBAN involves various challenges due to its resource limitations and critical applications. In this paper, a comprehensive survey of the WBAN technology is provided, with a particular focus on the security and privacy concerns along with their countermeasures, followed by proposed research directions and open issues

Game Theory-Based Cooperation for Underwater Acoustic Sensor Networks: Taxonomy, Review, Research Challenges and Directions.

Exploring and monitoring the underwater world using underwater sensors is drawing a lot of attention these days. In this field cooperation between acoustic sensor nodes has been a critical problem due to the challenging features such as acoustic channel failure (sound signal), long propagation delay of acoustic signal, limited bandwidth and loss of connectivity. There are several proposed methods to improve cooperation between the nodes by incorporating information/game theory in the node's cooperation. However, there is a need to classify the existing works and demonstrate their performance in addressing the cooperation issue. In this paper, we have conducted a review to investigate various factors affecting cooperation in underwater acoustic sensor networks. We study various cooperation techniques used for underwater acoustic sensor networks from different perspectives, with a concentration on communication reliability, energy consumption, and security and present a taxonomy for underwater cooperation. Moreover, we further review how the game theory can be applied to make the nodes cooperate with each other. We further analyze different cooperative game methods, where their performance on different metrics is compared. Finally, open issues and future research direction in underwater acoustic sensor networks are highlighted

Securing Cognitive Radio Networks using blockchains

Due to the increase in industrial applications of Internet of Things (IoT), number of internet connected devices have been increased accordingly. This has resulted in big challenges in terms of accessibility, scalability, connectivity and adaptability. IoT is capable of creating connections between devices on wireless medium but the utilization of scarce spectrum in efficient manner for the establishment of these connections is the biggest concern. To accommodate spectrum allocation problem different radio technologies are being utilized. One of the most efficient technique being used is cognitive radio, which dynamically allocate the unlicensed spectrum for IoT applications. Spectrum sensing being the fundamental component of Cognitive Radio Network (CRN) is threatened by security attacks. Process of spectrum sensing is disturbed by the malicious user (MU) which attacks the primary signal detection and affects the accuracy of sensing outcome. The presence of such MU in system, sending false sensing data can degrade the performance of cognitive radios. Therefore, in this article a blockchain based method is proposed for the MU detection in network. By using this method an MU can easily be discriminated from a reliable user through cryptographic keys. The efficiency of the proposed mechanism is analyzed through proper simulations using MATLAB. Consequently, this mechanism can be deployed for the validation of participating users in the process of spectrum sensing in CRN for IoTs.publishe

Time synchronization in wireless sensor networks

Time synchronization is basic requirements for various applications in wireless sensor network, e.g., event detection, speed estimating, environment monitoring, data aggregation, target tracking, scheduling and sensor nodes cooperation. Time synchronization is also helpful to save energy in WSN because it provides the possibility to set nodes into the sleeping mode. In wireless sensor networks all of above applications need that all sensor nodes have a common time reference. However, most existing time synchronization protocols are likely to deteriorate or even be destroyed when the WSNs attack by malicious intruders. The recently developed maximum and minimum consensus based time synchronization protocol (MMTS) is a promising alternative as it does not depend on any reference node or network topology. But MMTS is vulnerable to message manipulation attacks. In this thesis, we focus on how to defend the MMTS protocol in wireless sensor networks under message manipulation attacks. We investigate the impact of message manipulation attacks over MMTS. Then, a Secured Maximum and Minimum Consensus based Time Synchronization (SMMTS) protocol is proposed to detect and invalidate message manipulation attacks

Interleaved Honeypot-Framing Model with Secure MAC Policies for Wireless Sensor Networks

The Wireless Medium Access Control (WMAC) protocol functions by handling various data frames in order to forward them to neighbor sensor nodes. Under this circumstance, WMAC policies need secure data communication rules and intrusion detection procedures to safeguard the data from attackers. The existing secure Medium Access Control (MAC) policies provide expected and predictable practices against channel attackers. These security policies can be easily breached by any intelligent attacks or malicious actions. The proposed Wireless Interleaved Honeypot-Framing Model (WIHFM) newly implements distributed honeypot-based security mechanisms in each sensor node to act reactively against various attackers. The proposed WIHFM creates an optimal Wireless Sensor Network (WSN) channel model, Wireless Interleaved Honeypot Frames (WIHFs), secure hash-based random frame-interleaving principles, node-centric honeypot engines, and channel-covering techniques. Compared to various existing MAC security policies, the proposed model transforms unpredictable IHFs into legitimate frame sequences against channel attackers. Additionally, introducing WIHFs is a new-fangled approach for distributed WSNs. The successful development of the proposed WIHFM ensures resilient security standards and neighbor-based intrusion alert procedures for protecting MAC frames. Particularly, the proposed wireless honeypot methodology creates a novel idea of using honeypot frame traps against open wireless channel attacks. The development of a novel wireless honeypot traps deals with various challenges such as distributed honeypot management principles (node-centric honeypot, secretly interleaved-framing principles, and interleaving/de-interleaving procedures), dynamic network backbone management principles (On Demand Acyclic Connectivity model), and distributed attack isolation policies. This effort provides an effective wireless attack-trapping solution in dynamic WSNs. The simulation results show the advantage of the proposed WIHFM over the existing techniques such as Secure Zebra MAC (SZ-MAC), Blockchain-Assisted Secure-Routing Mechanism (BASR), and the Trust-Based Node Evaluation (TBNE) procedure. The experimental section confirms the proposed model attains a 10% to 14% superior performance compared to the existing techniques

A critical analysis of research potential, challenges and future directives in industrial wireless sensor networks

In recent years, Industrial Wireless Sensor Networks (IWSNs) have emerged as an important research theme with applications spanning a wide range of industries including automation, monitoring, process control, feedback systems and automotive. Wide scope of IWSNs applications ranging from small production units, large oil and gas industries to nuclear fission control, enables a fast-paced research in this field. Though IWSNs offer advantages of low cost, flexibility, scalability, self-healing, easy deployment and reformation, yet they pose certain limitations on available potential and introduce challenges on multiple fronts due to their susceptibility to highly complex and uncertain industrial environments. In this paper a detailed discussion on design objectives, challenges and solutions, for IWSNs, are presented. A careful evaluation of industrial systems, deadlines and possible hazards in industrial atmosphere are discussed. The paper also presents a thorough review of the existing standards and industrial protocols and gives a critical evaluation of potential of these standards and protocols along with a detailed discussion on available hardware platforms, specific industrial energy harvesting techniques and their capabilities. The paper lists main service providers for IWSNs solutions and gives insight of future trends and research gaps in the field of IWSNs

Challenges of Misbehavior Detection in Industrial Wireless Networks

In recent years, wireless technologies are increasingly adopted in many application domains that were either unconnected before or exclusively used cable networks. This paradigm shift towards - often ad-hoc - wireless communication has led to significant benefits in terms of flexibility and mobility. Alongside with these benefits, however, arise new attack vectors, which cannot be mitigated by traditional security measures. Hence, mechanisms that are orthogonal to cryptographic security techniques are necessary in order to detect adversaries. In traditional networks, such mechanisms are subsumed under the term "intrusion detection system" and many proposals have been implemented for different application domains. More recently, the term "misbehavior detection" has been coined to encompass detection mechanisms especially for attacks in wireless networks. In this paper, we use industrial wireless networks as an exemplary application domain to discuss new directions and future challenges in detecting insider attacks. To that end, we review existing work on intrusion detection in mobile ad-hoc networks. We focus on physical-layer-based detection mechanisms as these are a particularly interesting research direction that had not been reasonable before widespread use of wireless technology.Peer Reviewe

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

Seamless key agreement framework for mobile-sink in IoT based cloud-centric secured public safety sensor networks

Recently, the Internet of Things (IoT) has emerged as a significant advancement for Internet and mobile networks with various public safety network applications. An important use of IoT-based solutions is its application in post-disaster management, where the traditional telecommunication systems may be either completely or partially damaged. Since enabling technologies have restricted authentication privileges for mobile users, in this paper, a strategy of mobile-sink is introduced for the extension of user authentication over cloud-based environments. A seamless secure authentication and key agreement (S-SAKA) approach using bilinear pairing and elliptic-curve cryptosystems is presented. It is shown that the proposed S-SAKA approach satisfies the security properties, and as well as being resilient to nodecapture attacks, it also resists significant numbers of other well-known potential attacks related with data confidentiality, mutual authentication, session-key agreement, user anonymity, password guessing, and key impersonation. Moreover, the proposed approach can provide a seamless connectivity through authentication over wireless sensor networks to alleviate the computation and communication cost constraints in the system. In addition, using Burrows–Abadi–Needham logic, it is demonstrated that the proposed S-SAKA framework offers proper mutual authentication and session key agreement between the mobile-sink and the base statio

DI-SEC: Distributed Security Framework for Heterogeneous Wireless Sensor Networks

Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) are deployed for monitoring in a range of critical domains (e.g., health care, military, critical infrastructure). Accordingly, these WSNs should be resilient to attacks. The current approach to defending against malicious threats is to develop and deploy a specific defense mechanism for a specific attack. However, the problem with this traditional approach to defending sensor networks is that the solution for one attack (i.e., Jamming attack) does not defend against other attacks (e.g., Sybil and Selective Forwarding). This work addresses the challenges with the traditional approach to securing sensor networks and presents a comprehensive framework, Di-Sec, that can defend against all known and forthcoming attacks. At the heart of Di-Sec lies the monitoring core (M-Core), which is an extensible and lightweight layer that gathers information and statistics relevant for creating defense modules. Along with Di-Sec, a new user-friendly domain-specific language was developed, the M-Core Control Language (MCL). Using the MCL, a user can implement new defense mechanisms without the overhead of learning the details of the underlying software architecture (i.e., TinyOS, Di-Sec). Hence, the MCL expedites the development of sensor defense mechanisms by significantly simplifying the coding process for developers. The Di-Sec framework has been implemented and tested on real sensors to evaluate its feasibility and performance. Our evaluation shows that Di-Sec is feasible on today’s resource-limited sensors and has a nominal overhead. Furthermore, we illustrate the functionality of Di-Sec by implementing four detection and defense mechanisms for attacks at various layers of the communication stack