An application-driven perspective on wireless sensor network security

Abstract

Wireless sensor networks (WSNs) have recently attracted a lot of interest due to the range of applications they enable. Unfortunately, WSNs are exposed to numerous security threats that can adversely affect the success of important applications. Securing WSNs is challenging due to their unique nature as an application and a network, and due to their limited capabilities. In this paper, we argue that the WSN security research generally considers mechanisms that are modeled after and evaluated against abstract applications and WSN organizations. Instead, we propose that an effective solution for WSNs must be sensitive to the application and infrastructure. We propose an application-specific security context as the combination of a potential attacker's motivation and the WSN vulnerability. The vulnerability is a function of factors such as the sensor field, the WSN infrastructure, the application, protocols and system software, as well the accessibility and the observability of the WSN. To reduce the vulnerability, we argue that WSN design must balance traditional objectives such as energy efficiency, cost, and application level performance with security to a degree proportional to the attacker's motivation. We illustrate this argument via two example applications.

A Literature Review of Security Threats to Wireless Networks

“…Eric Sabbah, et al, [13] explained attacker motivation, vulnerabilities and opportunities currently available to hackers. Wireless sensor networks are exposed to numerous security threats that can endanger the success of the application.…”

Security of Wireless Sensor Networks

“…Some protocols may expose the location of a destination in each packet, which could result in possible attacks on critical points of the infrastructure. These can be mitigated through the use of encryption at the cost of computational resources [3].…”

“…Adversaries could extract transmitted data and modify it to their wishes (injection of false data). The end result could lead to falsified location of enemy forces [3].…”

Wireless Sensor Networks - An Introduction

“…Many WSNs' applications heavily rely on coordinated services such as localization, time synchronization, and in-network data processing to collaboratively process data (Sabbah et al, 2006). Unfortunately, these services represent unique vulnerabilities such as: False data filtering; Clock un-synchronization; False data injection.…”