Solutions and Tools for Secure Communication in Wireless Sensor Networks

Secure communication is considered a vital requirement in Wireless Sensor Network (WSN) applications. Such a requirement embraces different aspects, including confidentiality, integrity and authenticity of exchanged information, proper management of security material, and effective prevention and reaction against security threats and attacks. However, WSNs are mainly composed of resource-constrained devices. That is, network nodes feature reduced capabilities, especially in terms of memory storage, computing power, transmission rate, and energy availability. As a consequence, assuring secure communication in WSNs results to be more difficult than in other kinds of network. In fact, trading effectiveness of adopted solutions with their efficiency becomes far more important. In addition, specific device classes or technologies may require to design ad hoc security solutions. Also, it is necessary to efficiently manage security material, and dynamically cope with changes of security requirements. Finally, security threats and countermeasures have to be carefully considered since from the network design phase. This Ph.D. dissertion considers secure communication in WSNs, and provides the following contributions. First, we provide a performance evaluation of IEEE 802.15.4 security services. Then, we focus on the ZigBee technology and its security services, and propose possible solutions to some deficiencies and inefficiencies. Second, we present HISS, a highly scalable and efficient key management scheme, able to contrast collusion attacks while displaying a graceful degradation of performance. Third, we present STaR, a software component for WSNs that secures multiple traffic flows at the same time. It is transparent to the application, and provides runtime reconfigurability, thus coping with dynamic changes of security requirements. Finally, we describe ASF, our attack simulation framework for WSNs. Such a tool helps network designers to quantitatively evaluate effects of security attacks, produce an attack ranking based on their severity, and thus select the most appropriate countermeasures

Data sharing in secure multimedia wireless sensor networks

© 2016 IEEE. The use of Multimedia Wireless Sensor Networks (MWSNs) is becoming common nowadays with a rapid growth in communication facilities. Similar to any other WSNs, these networks face various challenges while providing security, trust and privacy for user data. Provisioning of the aforementioned services become an uphill task especially while dealing with real-time streaming data. These networks operates with resource-constrained sensor nodes for days, months and even years depending on the nature of an application. The resource-constrained nature of these networks makes it difficult for the nodes to tackle real-time data in mission-critical applications such as military surveillance, forest fire monitoring, health-care and industrial automation. For a secured MWSN, the transmission and processing of streaming data needs to be explored deeply. The conventional data authentication schemes are not suitable for MWSNs due to the limitations imposed on sensor nodes in terms of battery power, computation, available bandwidth and storage. In this paper, we propose a novel quality-driven clustering-based technique for authenticating streaming data in MWSNs. Nodes with maximum energy are selected as Cluster Heads (CHs). The CHs collect data from member nodes and forward it to the Base Station (BS), thus preventing member nodes with low energy from dying soon and increasing life span of the underlying network. The proposed approach not only authenticates the streaming data but also maintains the quality of transmitted data. The proposed data authentication scheme coupled with an Error Concealment technique provides an energy-efficient and distortion-free real-time data streaming. The proposed scheme is compared with an unsupervised resources scenario. The simulation results demonstrate better network lifetime along with 21.34 dB gain in Peak Signal-to-Noise Ratio (PSNR) of received video data streams

PAWN: a payload-based mutual authentication scheme for wireless sensor networks

Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. Wireless sensor networks (WSNs) consist of resource-starving miniature sensor nodes deployed in a remote and hostile environment. These networks operate on small batteries for days, months, and even years depending on the requirements of monitored applications. The battery-powered operation and inaccessible human terrains make it practically infeasible to recharge the nodes unless some energy-scavenging techniques are used. These networks experience threats at various layers and, as such, are vulnerable to a wide range of attacks. The resource-constrained nature of sensor nodes, inaccessible human terrains, and error-prone communication links make it obligatory to design lightweight but robust and secured schemes for these networks. In view of these limitations, we aim to design an extremely lightweight payload-based mutual authentication scheme for a cluster-based hierarchical WSN. The proposed scheme, also known as payload-based mutual authentication for WSNs, operates in 2 steps. First, an optimal percentage of cluster heads is elected, authenticated, and allowed to communicate with neighboring nodes. Second, each cluster head, in a role of server, authenticates the nearby nodes for cluster formation. We validate our proposed scheme using various simulation metrics that outperform the existing schemes

Improving IF Algorithm for Data Aggregation Techniques in Wireless Sensor Networks

In Wireless Sensor Network (WSN), fact from different sensor nodes is collected at assembling node, which is typically complete via modest procedures such as averaging as inadequate computational power and energy resources. Though such collections is identified to be extremely susceptible to node compromising attacks. These approaches are extremely prone to attacks as WSN are typically lacking interfere resilient hardware. Thus, purpose of veracity of facts and prestige of sensor nodes is critical for wireless sensor networks. Therefore, imminent gatherer nodes will be proficient of accomplishment additional cultivated data aggregation algorithms, so creating WSN little unresisting, as the performance of actual low power processors affectedly increases. Iterative filtering algorithms embrace inordinate capacity for such a resolution. The way of allocated the matching mass elements to information delivered by each source, such iterative algorithms concurrently assemble facts from several roots and deliver entrust valuation of these roots. Though suggestively extra substantial against collusion attacks beside the modest averaging techniques, are quiet vulnerable to a different cultivated attack familiarize. The existing literature is surveyed in this paper to have a study of iterative filtering techniques and a detailed comparison is provided. At the end of this paper new technique of improved iterative filtering is proposed with the help of literature survey and drawbacks found in the literature

Improved QoS and avoidance of black hole attacks in MANET using trust detection framework

In recent times, secured routing is a major research in MANETs. The behaviour of malicious nodes in this network increases the risk of threats and induces abnormal operations in MANETs. This affects the security of data transmitted between the nodes in the network. Hence, an effective technique is needed to prevent the abnormal nodes after the process of detection. In this paper, we propose an improved Trust Detection Algorithm to increase the probability of detection and prevention of Black Hole nodes in MANETs. The proposed framework observes the behaviour of each node using various trust metrics that includes the relationship between the sensor nodes, social and service attribute trust and QoS metric trusts. The behaviour of sensor nodes is found through the communication and mobility behaviour of each node. This method avoids the black hole nodes in MANETs, when the routing is carried out with Zone Routing Protocol (ZRP). Hence, the privacy of data is retained using the proposed method. The proposed method is tested in terms of different combinations of with and without trusts. The result shows that the proposed method is effective through various QoS metrics like overall throughput, packet loss, energy consumption, trust level, false acceptance rate and missed detection rate

Security Threats and Challenges for Wireless Sensor Network

A wireless sensor network is a network of a large number of independently working small sensing units which can communicate wirelessly. The basic plan of a Wireless sensor network (WSN) is to structural distribute self-determining devices using sensors to monitor physical or environmental conditions. Wireless communication technology performance different forms of security threats. WSN need effective security mechanisms because of these networks deployed in untended environments. Due to fixed limitations in wireless sensor networks, security is a crucial issue. The intent of this paper is to investigate the security-related threats and challenges in wireless sensor networks. The threats faced by this WSN are similar but not limited to those observed in a simple network of computers or Internet.We identify thesensorsecuritythreats, review proposed security mechanisms for wireless sensor networks