Diversify sensor nodes to improve resilience against node compromise

Alarifi, Abdulrahman; Du, Wenliang

doi:10.1145/1180345.1180359

Cited by 30 publications

(25 citation statements)

References 30 publications

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“…Node compromise in sensor networks and the need for their security has also received immense attention [Alarifi and Du 2006]. A large portion of current research on security in sensor networks has been focused on protocols and schemes for securing the communication between nodes [Liu and Ning 2003;Eschenauer and Gligor 2002;Malan et al 2004].…”

Section: Related Workmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…In [Alarifi and Du 2006], the authors assert the importance of physical compromise of sensor nodes and propose an obfuscation and diversification mechanism to protect the secret keys of the nodes. Unfortunately, little work has been done on the defense strategies when the compromise of a single node could be used to compromise other nodes over the air.…”

Section: Related Workmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 1 more Smart Citation

Deployment-aware modeling of node compromise spread in wireless sensor networks using epidemic theory

Liu

Das

2009

ACM Trans. Sen. Netw.

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Motivated by recently surfacing viruses that can spread over the air interfaces, in this article, we investigate the potentially disastrous threat of node compromise spreading in wireless sensor networks. We assume such a compromise originating from a single infected node, can propagate to other sensor nodes via communication and pre-established mutual trust. We focus on the possible epidemic breakout of such propagations where the whole network may fall victim to the attack. Using epidemic theory, we model and analyze this spreading process and identify key factors determining potential outbreaks. In particular, we perform our study on random graphs precisely constructed according to the parameters of the network, such as distance, key sharing constrained communication and node recovery, thereby reflecting the true characteristics therein. Moreover, a comparative study of the epidemic propagation is performed based on the effects of two types of sensor deployment strategies, viz., uniform random and group-based deployment. The analytical results provide deep insights in designing potential defense strategies against this threat. Furthermore, through extensive simulations, we validate the model and perform investigations on the system dynamics. Our analysis and simulation results indicate that the uniform random deployment is more vulnerable to an epidemic outbreak than the group based deployment strategy.

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Section: Related Workmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Related Workmentioning

confidence: 99%

Deployment-aware modeling of node compromise spread in wireless sensor networks using epidemic theory

Liu

Das

2009

ACM Trans. Sen. Netw.

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“…In [5], a code obfuscation mechanism for WSNs is proposed to improve the resilience to node compromise. The goal is a diversified key protection scheme for WSNs that diversifies data and code segments by creating different and obfuscated data and code segments for each sensor node in the network.…”

Section: Related Workmentioning

confidence: 99%

On handling insider attacks in wireless sensor networks

Krauí

Schneider

Eckert

2008

Information Security Technical Report

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Ehrenwörtliche Erklärung 2Hiermit erkläre ich, dass ich die vorliegende Arbeit, mit Ausnahme der in ihr ausdrücklich genannten Hilfen, selbstständig verfasst habe.1 gemäß §20 Abs. 3 der Promotionsordnung der TU Darmstadt 2 gemäß §9 Abs. 1 der Promotionsordnung der TU Darmstadt AbstractWireless sensor networks are a relatively new technology for information gathering and processing. A sensor network usually consists of many, resource constrained sensor nodes. These nodes perform measurements of some physical phenomena, process data, generate reports, and send these reports via multihop communication to a central information processing unit called sink. Depending on the scenario, information gathering and processing is collaboratively performed by multiple sensor nodes, e.g., to determine the average temperature in a certain area.Sensor networks can be used in a plethora of application scenarios. Emerging from military research, e.g., sensor networks for target tracking in a battlefield, sensor networks are nowadays used more and more in civil applications such as critical infrastructure monitoring.For ensuring the functionality of a sensor network, especially in malicious environments, security mechanisms are essential for all sensor networks. However, sensor networks differ from classical (wireless) networks and this consequently makes it harder to secure them. Reasons for this are resource constraints of the sensor nodes, the wireless multihop communication, and the possibility of node compromise. Since sensor nodes are often deployed in unattended or even hostile environments and are usually not equipped with tamper-resistant hardware, it is relatively easy to compromise a sensor node. By compromising a sensor node, an adversary gets access to all data stored on the node, such as cryptographic keys. Thus, deployed security mechanisms such as node-based authentication become ineffective and an adversary is able to perform attacks as a "legitimate" member of the network. Such attacks are denoted as insider attacks and pose a serious threat for wireless sensor networks.In this thesis, we develop concepts and mechanisms to cope with insider attacks in wireless sensor networks. The contribution of this thesis is twofold. First, we propose a new general classification to classify the different approaches to protect against insider attacks. Second, we propose several security protocols to protect against insider attacks.In our classification, approaches to protect against insider attacks are first distinguished by the implemented security strategy. The respective strategies are further subclassified by the applied mechanisms. Related work is integrated in the classification to systematically identify open problems and specific properties in the respective areas. The results may be a basis for future protocol design.The protocols, proposed in the second part of this thesis encompass different areas. First, we propose a protocol to protect against a serious Denial-of-Service attack where an adversary injects or replay...

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“…Code Obfuscation: Code obfuscation is a process that has been studied well previously [5,15,30] and it can be described as follows. Suppose that (part of) an algorithm consists of a loop where the execution of a given set of instructions depends on certain input values.…”

Section: Obfuscationmentioning

confidence: 99%