Wireless sensor networks (WSNs) are widely used in large areas of applications; due to advancements in technology, very tiny sensors are readily available, and their usage reduces the cost. The mechanisms designed for wireless networks cannot be implied on networks with tiny nodes due to battery and computational constraints. Understanding the significance of security in WSNs and resource constraintness of tiny WSNs, we propose a node authentication mechanism for nodes in wireless sensor networks to avoid security attacks and establish secure communication between them. In the proposed mechanism, a base station (BS) generates a secret value and random value for each sensor node and stores at the node. The sensor node authenticates using secret value and random number. Random nonce ensures freshness, efficiency, and robustness. The proposed mechanism is lightweight cryptographic, hence requires very less computational, communication, and storage resources. Security analysis of the proposed mechanism could not detect any security attack on it, and the mechanism was found to incur less storage, communication, and computation overheads. Hence, the proposed mechanism is best suitable for wireless sensor networks with tiny nodes.
K E Y W O R D Smathematical mechanism, cryptographic, node authentication, tiny nodes, wireless sensor networks
Enormous growth in digital electronics technology has paved path for the development of advanced networks, and smart environment is one among them. Smart environment is a network of smart devices connected to provide comfort, security, remote access and many more to end-users. Devices in smart environments usually collect very sensitive data of the end-users and disseminate it as required. The privacy of the end-user has to be ensured in these applications, and security becomes a prime concern. The security system in smart environments has to ensure privacy and need to be more resource-aware. An efficient authentication mechanism can ensure the privacy of end users and secrecy of the sensitive data; it may avoid unauthorized access of data and resources, ensuring privacy and security. In this paper, we proposed a mechanism for device authentication which enables smart devices to mutually authenticate each other. The proposed mechanism enables smart devices to acquire security credentials from the server and use these credentials to authenticate each other. The mechanism used exclusive OR (XOR), concatenation, one-way hash, and symmetric key encryption techniques. The security analysis of the mechanism is done and proved that the mechanism is secure. The performance analysis proved that the computational and communications overheads are 8% less than existing mechanisms and storage overhead is also least.
Summary
In an underwater environment, wireless sensor networks (WSNs) have more potential applications such as homeland safety, naval surveillance, and pollution & exploration monitoring. Underwater wireless sensor networks (UWSNs) help in decreasing the rate of causalities and provide efficient ways for monitoring the underwater activities of the other countries. UWSNs can be efficiently used by the navy to monitor suspicious activities and also to counter‐attack any terrorist or enemy attacks. As usual, deploying wireless sensor networks underwater is not only challenging due to environment and constrained resources but also is vulnerable to security attacks. Thus, security is an unexplored and crucial aspect of UWSNs. Here, we define a node authentication mechanism for UWSNs for securing frontier lines, maritime territory, and naval surveillance. The proposed authentication protocol is based on symmetric‐key cryptography and secures against impersonation, masquerade, Sybil, and many more other attacks. We have analyzed the proposed protocol both formally and automatedly and were unable to find any possible security attack on the proposed protocol. The experimental analysis of the mechanism proved that the proposed mechanism consumes less energy compared to the existing mechanisms. Hence, the proposed mechanism can be easily adopted for maintaining the security of maritime territory and reduce the causalities in naval operations.
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