A Framework for Secure and Survivable Wireless Sensor Networks

Wireless sensor networks increasingly become viable solutions to many challenging problems and will successively be deployed in many areas in the future. A wireless sensor network (WSN) is vulnerable to security attacks due to the insecure communication channels, limited computational and communication capabilities and unattended nature of sensor node devices, limited energy resources and memory. Security and survivability of these systems are receiving increasing attention, particularly critical infrastructure protection. So we need to design a framework that provide both security and survivability for WSNs. To meet this goals, we propose a framework for secure and survivable WSNs and we present a key management scheme as a case study to prevent the sensor networks being compromised by an adversary. This paper also considers survivability strategies for the sensor network against a variety of threats that can lead to the failure of the base station, which represents a central point of failure.key management scheme, security, survivability, WSN

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

Enhancing Security and Energy Efficiency in Wireless Sensor Network Routing with IOT Challenges: A Thorough Review

Wireless sensor networks (WSNs) have emerged as a crucial component in the field of networking due to their cost-effectiveness, efficiency, and compact size, making them invaluable for various applications. However, as the reliance on WSN-dependent applications continues to grow, these networks grapple with inherent limitations such as memory and computational constraints. Therefore, effective solutions require immediate attention, especially in the age of the Internet of Things (IoT), which largely relies on the effectiveness of WSNs. This study undertakes a comprehensive review of research conducted between 2018 and 2020, categorizing it into six main domains: 1) Providing an overview of WSN applications, management, and security considerations. 2) Focusing on routing and energy-saving techniques. 3) Reviewing the development of methods for information gathering, emphasizing data integrity and privacy. 4) Emphasizing connectivity and positioning techniques. 5) Examining studies that explore the integration of IoT technology into WSNs with an eye on secure data transmission. 6) Highlighting research efforts aimed at energy efficiency. The study addresses the motivation behind employing WSN applications in IoT technologies, as well as the challenges, obstructions, and solutions related to their application and development. It underscores that energy consumption remains a paramount issue in WSNs, with untapped potential for improving energy efficiency while ensuring robust security. Furthermore, it identifies existing approaches' weaknesses, rendering them inadequate for achieving energy-efficient routing in secure WSNs. This review sheds light on the critical challenges and opportunities in the field, contributing to a deeper understanding of WSNs and their role in secure IoT applications

An Energy Aware and Secure MAC Protocol for Tackling Denial of Sleep Attacks in Wireless Sensor Networks

Wireless sensor networks which form part of the core for the Internet of Things consist of resource constrained sensors that are usually powered by batteries. Therefore, careful energy awareness is essential when working with these devices. Indeed,the introduction of security techniques such as authentication and encryption, to ensure confidentiality and integrity of data, can place higher energy load on the sensors. However, the absence of security protection c ould give room for energy drain attacks such as denial of sleep attacks which have a higher negative impact on the life span ( of the sensors than the presence of security features. This thesis, therefore, focuses on tackling denial of sleep attacks from two perspectives A security perspective and an energy efficiency perspective. The security perspective involves evaluating and ranking a number of security based techniques to curbing denial of sleep attacks. The energy efficiency perspective, on the other hand, involves exploring duty cycling and simulating three Media Access Control ( protocols Sensor MAC, Timeout MAC andTunableMAC under different network sizes and measuring different parameters such as the Received Signal Strength RSSI) and Link Quality Indicator ( Transmit power, throughput and energy efficiency Duty cycling happens to be one of the major techniques for conserving energy in wireless sensor networks and this research aims to answer questions with regards to the effect of duty cycles on the energy efficiency as well as the throughput of three duty cycle protocols Sensor MAC ( Timeout MAC ( and TunableMAC in addition to creating a novel MAC protocol that is also more resilient to denial of sleep a ttacks than existing protocols. The main contributions to knowledge from this thesis are the developed framework used for evaluation of existing denial of sleep attack solutions and the algorithms which fuel the other contribution to knowledge a newly developed protocol tested on the Castalia Simulator on the OMNET++ platform. The new protocol has been compared with existing protocols and has been found to have significant improvement in energy efficiency and also better resilience to denial of sleep at tacks Part of this research has been published Two conference publications in IEEE Explore and one workshop paper

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

Improved on an efficient user authentication scheme for heterogeneous wireless sensor network tailored for the Internet of Things environment

Recently, Farasha et al. proposed an efficient user authentication and key agreement scheme for heterogeneous wireless sensor network tailored for the Internet of Things environment. By using BAN-logic and AVISPA tools, they confirm the security properties of the proposed scheme. However, after analyzing, we determine that the scheme could not resist the smart card loss password guessing attack, which is one of the ten basic requirements in a secure identity authentication using smart card, assisted by Liao et al. Therefore, we modify the method to include the desired security functionality, which is significantly important in a user authentication system using smart card

Security protocols suite for machine-to-machine systems

Nowadays, the great diffusion of advanced devices, such as smart-phones, has shown that there is a growing trend to rely on new technologies to generate and/or support progress; the society is clearly ready to trust on next-generation communication systems to face today’s concerns on economic and social fields. The reason for this sociological change is represented by the fact that the technologies have been open to all users, even if the latter do not necessarily have a specific knowledge in this field, and therefore the introduction of new user-friendly applications has now appeared as a business opportunity and a key factor to increase the general cohesion among all citizens. Within the actors of this technological evolution, wireless machine-to-machine (M2M) networks are becoming of great importance. These wireless networks are made up of interconnected low-power devices that are able to provide a great variety of services with little or even no user intervention. Examples of these services can be fleet management, fire detection, utilities consumption (water and energy distribution, etc.) or patients monitoring. However, since any arising technology goes together with its security threats, which have to be faced, further studies are necessary to secure wireless M2M technology. In this context, main threats are those related to attacks to the services availability and to the privacy of both the subscribers’ and the services providers’ data. Taking into account the often limited resources of the M2M devices at the hardware level, ensuring the availability and privacy requirements in the range of M2M applications while minimizing the waste of valuable resources is even more challenging. Based on the above facts, this Ph. D. thesis is aimed at providing efficient security solutions for wireless M2M networks that effectively reduce energy consumption of the network while not affecting the overall security services of the system. With this goal, we first propose a coherent taxonomy of M2M network that allows us to identify which security topics deserve special attention and which entities or specific services are particularly threatened. Second, we define an efficient, secure-data aggregation scheme that is able to increase the network lifetime by optimizing the energy consumption of the devices. Third, we propose a novel physical authenticator or frame checker that minimizes the communication costs in wireless channels and that successfully faces exhaustion attacks. Fourth, we study specific aspects of typical key management schemes to provide a novel protocol which ensures the distribution of secret keys for all the cryptographic methods used in this system. Fifth, we describe the collaboration with the WAVE2M community in order to define a proper frame format actually able to support the necessary security services, including the ones that we have already proposed; WAVE2M was funded to promote the global use of an emerging wireless communication technology for ultra-low and long-range services. And finally sixth, we provide with an accurate analysis of privacy solutions that actually fit M2M-networks services’ requirements. All the analyses along this thesis are corroborated by simulations that confirm significant improvements in terms of efficiency while supporting the necessary security requirements for M2M networks