Secure Data Collection Using Randomized Multipath Routing

Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) are widely used in various real time applications such as surveillance, environment monitoring, studying wildlife habitat and so on. As the nodes in the network are resource constrained, they are vulnerable to various attacks. This is the reason there is need for secure data collection in such networks. Many solutions came into existence to provide secure communications in WSN. However, the solutions were based on different techniques. Minimization of packet failure rate is one of the objectives of many researchers in this area. The potential attacks on the network can jeopardise its purpose. Recently Alghamdi et al. proposed a solution using multipath routing in which the effect of adversaries is reduced besides ensuring secure data transmission in the presence of malicious nodes in the network. Our work is similar to this with certain improvements in terms of energy consumption and also packet delivery failure ratio. We implemented a WSN with simulations and our approach used a controller in the network which, in consultation with base station, can play a vital role in prevention of attacks. Since the solution is based on randomized multipath routing, it is able to withstand potential attacks and ensure that the failure of packet delivery is minimized and the overall network performance is improved. The simulation results reveal that the proposed approach has better performance in terms of performance level of protocol, network throughput, delay analysis, percentage of packet loss, and energy consumption. DOI: 10.17762/ijritcc2321-8169.150713

FALSE MISBEHAVIOUR ELIMINATION IN WATCHDOG MONITORING SYSTEM USING CHANGE POINT IN A WIRELESS SENSOR NETWORK

Wireless Sensor Networks are to be widely deployed in the near future for data monitoring in commercial, industrial and military applications. Though much research has focused on making these networks feasible and useful security has received very little attention. Sensor networks are exposed to variety of attacks like eavesdropping, message tampering, selective forward, gray hole attack, and Wormhole and Sybil attacks. Watchdog is a kind of behaviour monitoring mechanism which is the base of many trust systems in Ad hoc and Wireless Sensor Network. Current watchdog mechanism only evaluates its next-hop’s behaviour and propagates the evaluation result to other nodes by broadcasting, which is neither energy efficient nor attack resilient. The fundamental problem of secure neighbour discovery is studied which is importunate in protecting the network from different forms of attacks. In this paper an improved watchdog monitoring mechanism is proposed by using the process of change point detection. By implementing this change point detection algorithm in watchdog mechanism, the limitations of the existing watchdog mechanism are overcome. From this the exact malicious node can be found out and the data will be routed through a secure path bypassing the malicious node. Finally to analyze the efficiency of this algorithm, the results obtained from the proposed algorithm and the existing algorithms are compared

Protecting 802.11-Based Wireless Networks From SCTS and JACK Attacks

The convenience of IEEE 802.11-based wireless access networks has led to widespread deployment. However, these applications are predicated on the assumption of availability and confidentiality. Error-prone wireless networks afford an attacker considerable flexibility to exploit the vulnerabilities of 802.11-based mechanism. Two of most famous misbehaviors are selfish and malicious attacks. In this thesis we investigate two attacks: Spurious CTS attack (SCTS) and Jamming ACK attack (JACK). In the SCTS, malicious nodes may send periodic Spurious CTS packets to force other nodes to update their NAV values and prevent them from using the channel. In the JACK, an attacker ruins legitimate ACK packets for the intention of disrupting the traffic flow and draining the battery energy of victim nodes quickly. Correspondingly, we propose solutions: termed Carrier Sensing based Discarding (CSD), and Extended Network Allocation Vector (ENAV) scheme. We further demonstrate the performance of our proposed schemes through analysis and NS2 simulations

Protecting 802.11-Based Wireless Networks From SCTS and JACK Attacks

The convenience of IEEE 802.11-based wireless access networks has led to widespread deployment. However, these applications are predicated on the assumption of availability and confidentiality. Error-prone wireless networks afford an attacker considerable flexibility to exploit the vulnerabilities of 802.11-based mechanism. Two of most famous misbehaviors are selfish and malicious attacks. In this thesis we investigate two attacks: Spurious CTS attack (SCTS) and Jamming ACK attack (JACK). In the SCTS, malicious nodes may send periodic Spurious CTS packets to force other nodes to update their NAV values and prevent them from using the channel. In the JACK, an attacker ruins legitimate ACK packets for the intention of disrupting the traffic flow and draining the battery energy of victim nodes quickly. Correspondingly, we propose solutions: termed Carrier Sensing based Discarding (CSD), and Extended Network Allocation Vector (ENAV) scheme. We further demonstrate the performance of our proposed schemes through analysis and NS2 simulations

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