A secure over-the-air programming scheme in wireless sensor networks

Over-The-Air dissemination of code updates in Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) have been researchers’ point of interest in past a few years and more importantly security challenges toward remote propagation of code update have taken the majority of efforts in this context. Many security models have been proposed to establish a balance between the energy consumption and security strengthen with having their concentration on constraint nature of WSN nodes. For authentication purposes most of them have used Merkle-Hash-Tree to avoid using multiple public cryptography operations. These models mostly have assumed an environment in which security has to be in a standard level and therefore they have not investigated the tree structure for mission-critical situations in which security has to be in maximum possible extent (e.g. military zones). Two major problems have been identified in Merkle Tree structure which is used in Seluge scheme, including: 1) an exponential growth in number of overhead packets when block size of hash algorithm used in design is increased. 2) Limitation of using hash algorithms with larger block size of 11 bytes when payload size is set to 72 bytes. Then several existing security models are investigated for possible vulnerabilities and a set of countermeasures correspondingly named Security Model Requirements (SMR) is provided. After concentrating on Seluge’s design, a new secure Over-The-Air Programming (OTAP) scheme named Seluge++ is proposed that complies with SMR and replaces the use of inefficient Merkle Tree with a novel method

SECURING MULTIHOP NETWORK BY DETECTING AND LOCATING POLLUTION ATTACKS USING SPACEMAC.

It has been widely observed that providing security is one of the challenging task in Wireless sensor network(WSN). Program images need to be updated continuously as network programming happens in WSN. Many Networking protocols provide an efficient way to update these program images running on sensor nodes. One of the cryptographically strong protocol called DELUGE exists to address this challenge, but it involves high computational cost such as power consumption and communication costs. So Multiple one way key chain is proposed to secure a multihop network programming protocol which is lower in power consumption and communication costs. Even though one way key chain is used to provide security, network with static topology is considered. Network is made dynamic by adding mobility nodes to it. But the extra node added may not always be the genuine node. If it is an attacker node, there can be several pollution attacks. Attacker node travels through the network, and pollute the entire network. Wirelesss sensor network may not be able to detect these pollution attacks. In this paper, we are proposing a MAC scheme called Spacemac. It expands the network by adding nodes to it. Using SpaceMac, i) it detects the polluted packets early at the intermediate nodes. ii) it identifies the exact location of an attacker and eliminates them

Factors Impacting Key Management Effectiveness in Secured Wireless Networks

The use of a Public Key Infrastructure (PKI) offers a cryptographic solution that can overcome many, but not all, of the MANET security problems. One of the most critical aspects of a PKI system is how well it implements Key Management. Key Management deals with key generation, key storage, key distribution, key updating, key revocation, and certificate service in accordance with security policies over the lifecycle of the cryptography. The approach supported by traditional PKI works well in fixed wired networks, but it may not appropriate for MANET due to the lack of fixed infrastructure to support the PKI. This research seeks to identify best practices in securing networks which may be applied to new network architectures

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

An Outline of Security in Wireless Sensor Networks: Threats, Countermeasures and Implementations

With the expansion of wireless sensor networks (WSNs), the need for securing the data flow through these networks is increasing. These sensor networks allow for easy-to-apply and flexible installations which have enabled them to be used for numerous applications. Due to these properties, they face distinct information security threats. Security of the data flowing through across networks provides the researchers with an interesting and intriguing potential for research. Design of these networks to ensure the protection of data faces the constraints of limited power and processing resources. We provide the basics of wireless sensor network security to help the researchers and engineers in better understanding of this applications field. In this chapter, we will provide the basics of information security with special emphasis on WSNs. The chapter will also give an overview of the information security requirements in these networks. Threats to the security of data in WSNs and some of their counter measures are also presented

Balancing Trade-off between Data Security and Energy Model for Wireless Sensor Network

An extensive effort to evolve various routing protocol to ensure optimal data delivery in energy efficient way is beneficial only if there is additional means of security process is synchronized. However, the security process consideration introduces additional overhead thus a security mechanism is needed to accomplish an optimal trade-off that exists in-between security as well as resource utilization especially energy. The prime purpose of this paper is to develop a process of security in the context of wireless sensor networks (WSN) by introducing two types of sensor node deployed with different capabilities. The proposed algorithm Novel Model of Secure Paradigm (N-MSP) which is further integrated with WSN. However, this algorithm uses a Hash-based Message Authentication Code (HMAC) authentication followed by pairwise key establishment during data aggregation process in a WSN. The extensive simulation carried out in a numerical platform called MATLAB that depicts that the proposed N-MSP achieves optimal processing time along with energy efficient pairwise key establishment during data aggregation proces