Light weight authentication protocol for WSN using ECC and hexagonal numbers

Abstract

Wireless Sensor Network (WSN) is a spatially distributed network. It contains many numbers of distributed, self-directed, small, battery powered devices called sensor nodes or motes. In recent years the deployment of WSN in various application domains are growing in a rapid pace as with the upcoming boom of Internet of Things (IoT) and Internet of Everything (IoE). However, the effectiveness of the WSN deployment is restricted due to the constrained computation and power source. Hence, many researchers have been proposing new approaches and models to improve the efficiency of the domain specific WSN deployment procedures. Though, many research communities addressing various issues in WSN deployment, still the privacy and security of such networks are susceptible to various network attacks. Thus, it is necessary to practice different models for authentication and privacy preservation in a highly dynamic resource constrained WSN environment to realize the effectiveness and efficiency of the deployment. Hence, this paper addressing an authentication scheme that can reduce energy consumption without compromising on security and privacy. In order to provide a light weight authentication mechanism, this paper proposing an authentication mechanism for WSN deployment by combining the features of Elliptic Curve Cryptography (ECC) and Hexagonal numbers. The feature of ECC is used to reduce the key size and the effectiveness of generating hexagonal numbers is used for minimizing the energy consumption in a resource constrained WSN environment. The results of the proposed approach are evaluated with the different authentication models and the results were indicating that the proposed approach can perform better than the other approaches.

Internet of things: security requirements, attacks and counter measures

“…A system is considered secure when all the security requirements are met successfully [1,8]. These essential requirements range from confidentiality, integrity, authentication, availability, authorization, non-repudiation to privacy, for each one of them we need to ensure security at a different layer from different threat.…”

“…The data reaches to the intended nodes without being accessed by some third party. In order to ensure confidentiality in IoT, cryptographic techniques such as encryption and hashing need to be implemented, keeping in mind that each attack is specific in nature, the IoT layer and its security impact on overall system, so we need different security mechanisms against each attack [8,10]. Here we discuss each attack in detail and its impact followed by the security measure specific to that attack.…”

“…So the security must ensure tempering as well as deletion of data. [1,8,10] Integrity must be ensured at multiple levels in a system either by proper encryption or access control but specific integrity attacks need special solutions. Here we will discuss attacks that intend to effect system integrity in detail.…”

“…This attacks is only possible when the attacker can successfully change a node first. This attack effects system's data and its effect can vary from low to medium depending upon the application domain of IoT [1,6,8]. 1525 eliminate malicious data.…”

“…Smart plugs [5] are only a subpart of smart homes, still they are vulnerable to device scanning, brute force, spoofing, and firmware attacks. Poor understanding of the issue is also one of the leading factors towards average security in IoT [1][2][3][4][5][6][7][8] and we believe that good understanding of underlying architecture, security issues, and solutions will lead to improved security in IoT.…”