Combating key‐swapping collusion attack on random pairwise key pre‐distribution schemes for wireless sensor networks

Abstract

Random pairwise key pre-distribution schemes have been adopted extensively as a preferred approach to tackling the pairwise key agreement problem in wireless sensor networks (WSNs). However, their practical applicability is threatened by the key-swapping collusion attack (KSCA) whose goal is to ruin critical applications that requires collaborative efforts of sensor nodes such as data aggregation mechanisms, routing protocols, distributed voting schemes and misbehaviour detection systems, etc. In this paper, we propose a light-weight framework for thwarting the attack. Our proposed framework makes good use of a winning combination of incremental sensor node deployment and a diversified one-way hash chain. The framework thereby evades undesirable costly requirements of additional functionalities and resources to aggregators and base stations, topological knowledge in advance or costly location-based detection algorithms, yet maintaining network scalability. Moreover, the in-depth analytical and experimental analyses conducted on two node capture attack models show that the framework eradicates the KSCA under one attack while demonstrating most likely immunity under the other attack. Finally, the detailed performance evaluation carried out via simulations indicates the plausibility of the framework for use in the current generation of sensor nodes.This framework is applicable to any random pairwise key pre-distribution scheme. However, for ease of presentation and demonstration, we only consider Chan et al. random pairwise keys scheme [3] as a particular example. The main contributions of this paper are as follows:

Revisiting Key-Swapping Collusion Attack on Distributed Sensor Networks

“…In general, our previous contributions [25] [26] are motivated by the problem that most PKE schemes, if not all, for DSNs are susceptible to KSCA if the cryptographic secrets are not discarded after their first use in the key establishment process among neighboring sensor nodes. This problem can be solved if the cryptographic secrets are discarded after the first use.…”

“…Once the attacker compromises these nodes, she can read out all information stored in their memories and then reprogram to obtain the full control of the nodes. Furthermore, we accept the common assumptions about the node compromise model mentioned in [21,25,26,[28][29][30] that:…”

“…ii) It offers more tightened security than the work in [25,26] by providing the backward secrecy for KEKs. iii) It avoids undesirable requirements of additional functionalities and resources to nodes and base stations, a priori topological and deployment knowledge, and/or costly location-based detection algorithms.…”

“…In this paper, we first pinpoint the security flaws of the previous work in [25,26] and then propose a new countermeasure termed AntiKSCA against KSCA. Compared to the previous countermeasures, AntiKSCA makes the following contributions:…”

“…Recently, Tran and Agbinya proposed the first full-fledged effort to confront KSCA [25]. Nonetheless, this work as well as its extended version [26] fails to provide the backward secrecy for key encryption keys (KEKs), which are designed to protect the cryptographic secrets from being swapped illicitly by KSCA.…”