Energy-Efficient Hybrid Key Management Protocol for Wireless Sensor Networks

In this paper, we propose a subnetwork key management strategy in which the heterogeneous security requirements of a wireless sensor network are considered to provide differing levels of security with minimum communication overhead. Additionally, it allows the dynamic creation of high security subnetworks within the wireless sensor network and provides subnetworks with a mechanism for dynamically creating a secure key using a novel and dynamic group key management protocol. The proposed energy-efficient protocol utilizes a combination of pre-deployed group keys and initial trustworthiness of nodes to create a level of trust between neighbors in the network. This trust is later used to allow secure communication between neighbors when creating a dynamic, high security subnetwork within the sensor network. Results of simulations of the protocol in Ns2 are presented and the complexity of the protocol is analyzed. The proposed protocol reduces delay by 50% and energy consumption by 70% over the existing dynamic group key management (DGKM) scheme

Group-Based Key Management Protocol for Energy Efficiency in Long-Lived and Large-Scale Distributed Sensor Networks

As wireless sensor networks grow, so does the need for effective security mechanisms. We propose a cryptographic key-management protocol, called energy-efficient key-management (EEKM) protocol. Using a location-based group key scheme, the protocol supports the revocation of compromised nodes and energy-efficient rekeying. The design is motivated by the observation that unicast-based rekeying does not meet the security requirements of periodic rekeying in long-lived wireless sensor networks. EEKM supports broadcast-based rekeying for low-energy key management and high resilience. In addition, to match the increasing complexity of encryption keys, the protocol uses a dynamic composition key scheme. EEKM also provides group-management protocols for secure group communication. We analyzed the energy efficiency and security of EEKM and compared it to other key-management protocols using a network simulator

A Secure Key Management Scheme for Hierarchical WSN

Many applications require WSNs to exchange sensitive information with the applications having high reliability requirements and a high level of security to succeed. The WSN nodes are often placed in hostile or adverse environment and their security concerns become a challenging issue. WSNs nodes are resource constrained and hence incorporating traditional security methods involving large computation overheads are not feasible. Key management is a fundamental part for any secure communication in WSNs. The key management system should be substantially secure, robust and efficient for a secure communication protocol. Many key establishment techniques have come up to address the tradeoffs between limited memory and security but choosing an effective scheme is debatable. Here in this paper, a new key management scheme is put forward based on authentication and key sharing for WSN. Our protocol is suitable for managing keys in a hierarchical network consisting of clusters with the aim of ensuring the survivability of the network. Keywords: Authentication, Clusters, Key Management, Wireless Sensor Network

Key Generation in Wireless Sensor Networks Based on Frequency-selective Channels - Design, Implementation, and Analysis

Key management in wireless sensor networks faces several new challenges. The scale, resource limitations, and new threats such as node capture necessitate the use of an on-line key generation by the nodes themselves. However, the cost of such schemes is high since their secrecy is based on computational complexity. Recently, several research contributions justified that the wireless channel itself can be used to generate information-theoretic secure keys. By exchanging sampling messages during movement, a bit string can be derived that is only known to the involved entities. Yet, movement is not the only possibility to generate randomness. The channel response is also strongly dependent on the frequency of the transmitted signal. In our work, we introduce a protocol for key generation based on the frequency-selectivity of channel fading. The practical advantage of this approach is that we do not require node movement. Thus, the frequent case of a sensor network with static motes is supported. Furthermore, the error correction property of the protocol mitigates the effects of measurement errors and other temporal effects, giving rise to an agreement rate of over 97%. We show the applicability of our protocol by implementing it on MICAz motes, and evaluate its robustness and secrecy through experiments and analysis.Comment: Submitted to IEEE Transactions on Dependable and Secure Computin

Secure and Efficient DiDrip Protocol for Improving Performance of WSNs

Wireless Sensor Networks consists of a set of resource constrained devices called nodes that communicate wirelessly with each other. Wireless Sensor Networks have become a key application in number of technologies. It also measures the unit of vulnerability to security threats. Several Protocols are projected to make them secure. Some of the protocols within the sensor network specialize in securing data. These protocols are named as data discovery and dissemination protocols. The data discovery and dissemination protocol for wireless sensor networks are utilized for distributing management commands and altering configuration parameters to the sensor nodes. All existing data discovery and dissemination protocols primarily suffer from two drawbacks. Basically, they are support centralized approach (only single station can distribute data item).This approach is not suitable for multiple owner-multiple users. Second, the protocols are not designed with security in mind. This Paper proposes the first distributed knowledge discovery and dissemination protocol called DiDrip which is safer than the existing one. The protocol permits multiple owners to authorize many network users with altogether totally different priorities to at an equivalent time and directly flow into data items to sensor nodes

Energy-aware and secure routing with trust levels for wireless ad hoc and sensor networks

This dissertation focuses on the development of routing algorithms for secure and trusted routing in wireless ad hoc and sensor network. The first paper presents the Trust Level Routing (TLR) protocol, an extension of the optimized energy-delay routing (OEDR) protocol, focusing on the integrity, reliability and survivability of the wireless network...The second paper analyzes both OLSR and TLR in terms of survivability and reliability to emphasize the improved performance of the network in terms of lifetime and proper delivery of data...The third paper proposes a statistical reputation model that uses the watchdog mechanism to observe the cooperation of the neighboring nodes...The last paper presents the results of the hardware implementation of Energy-Efficient Hybrid Key Management --Abstract, page iv

Key distribution and distributed intrusion detection system in wireless sensor network

This thesis proposes a security solution in key management and Intrusion Detection System (IDS) for wireless sensor networks. It addresses challenges of designing in energy and security requirement. Since wireless communication consumes the most energy in sensor network, transmissions must be used efficiently. We propose Hint Key Distribution (HKD) for key management and Adaptive IDS for distributing activated IDS nodes and cooperative operation of these two protocols. HKD protocol focuses on the challenges of energy, computation and security. It uses a hint message and key chain to consume less energy while self-generating key can secure the secret key. It is a proposed solution to key distribution in sensor networks. Adaptive IDS uses threshold and voting algorithm to distribute IDS through the network. An elected node is activated IDS to monitor its network and neighbors. A threshold is used as a solution to reduce number of repeated activations of the same node. We attempt to distribute the energy use equally across the network. In a cooperative protocol, HKD and Adaptive IDS exchange information in order to adjust to the current situation. The level of alert controls the nature of the interaction between the two protocols

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