Tree based symmetric key broadcast encryption

The most influential broadcast encryption (BE) scheme till date was introduced in 2001 by Naor, Naor and Lotspiech (NNL) and is based on binary trees. This paper generalizes the ideas of NNL to obtain BE schemes based on k-ary trees for any k≥2. The treatment is uniform across all k and essentially provides a single scheme which is parameterized by the arity of the underlying tree. We perform an extensive analysis of the header length and user storage of the scheme. It is shown that for a k-ary tree with n users out of which r are revoked, the maximum header length is min(2r−1,n−r,⌈n/k⌉). An expression for the expected header length is obtained and it is shown that the expression can be evaluated in O(rlogn) time. Experimental results indicate that for values of r one would expect in applications such as pay TV systems, the average header length decreases as k increases. The number of keys to be stored by any user is shown to be at most (χk−2)ℓ0(ℓ0+1)/2, where ℓ0=⌈logkn⌉ and χk is the number of cyclotomic cosets modulo 2k−1. In particular, when the number of users is more than 1024, we prove that the user storage required for k=3 is less than that of k=2. For higher values of k, the user storage is greater than that for binary trees. The option of choosing the value of k provides a designer of a BE system with a wider range of trade-offs between average header length and user storage. The effect of layering on the k-ary tree SD scheme is also explored

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

Secure and Privacy-Preserving Data Aggregation Protocols for Wireless Sensor Networks

This chapter discusses the need of security and privacy protection mechanisms in aggregation protocols used in wireless sensor networks (WSN). It presents a comprehensive state of the art discussion on the various privacy protection mechanisms used in WSNs and particularly focuses on the CPDA protocols proposed by He et al. (INFOCOM 2007). It identifies a security vulnerability in the CPDA protocol and proposes a mechanism to plug that vulnerability. To demonstrate the need of security in aggregation process, the chapter further presents various threats in WSN aggregation mechanisms. A large number of existing protocols for secure aggregation in WSN are discussed briefly and a protocol is proposed for secure aggregation which can detect false data injected by malicious nodes in a WSN. The performance of the protocol is also presented. The chapter concludes while highlighting some future directions of research in secure data aggregation in WSNs.Comment: 32 pages, 7 figures, 3 table

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