Secure Dynamic Key Management for Sensor Networks
01 Nov 2006-pp 1-5
TL;DR: This work presents a novel approach in which original keys to be used for securing communication are never transmitted across the insecure medium, and methods for generating these keys are distributed across the network in such a way that nodes in single cluster are able to generate the same cluster wide key.
Abstract: Secure key management in sensor networks is fundamental for data protection. However securing key management process is not a trivial task. Especially key generation and key distribution phases require extreme care. Most cited current research work focuses on finding appropriate methods to securely transmit a key generated by some master node in the insecure wireless sensor network. This work presents a novel approach in which original keys to be used for securing communication are never transmitted across the insecure medium . Instead methods for generating these keys are distributed across the network in such a way that nodes in single cluster are able to generate the same cluster wide key. This approach not only saves energy by minimizing the communication overhead in establishing keys among sensor nodes but also provides high connectivity even when some nodes are in sleep state.
Citations
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Proceedings Article•
26 Jul 2010TL;DR: It is argued that node mobility is a realistic characteristic of sensor nodes that needs to be taken into consideration in future sensor networks and discussed security gaps that are present in existing research for next generation sensor networks.
Abstract: Existing security research in wireless sensor networks is based on specific assumptions about the nodes and the network environment that are tied to specific usage scenarios. Typical scenarios consider sensor nodes that are immobile and have pre-defined communication patterns. We argue that node mobility is a realistic characteristic of sensor nodes that needs to be taken into consideration in future sensor networks. Mobility capabilities can address the objective challenges raised in mission-critical applications, such as in disaster relief, where their environment characteristics fluctuate over time. It is imperative to investigate the way security is affected in mobile sensor networks and identify the challenges that will need to be addressed in future security protocol design. We present our vision for future sensor networks through a realistic scenario and discuss security gaps that are present in existing research for next generation sensor networks.
8 citations
Cites background from "Secure Dynamic Key Management for S..."
...Another aspect that would need more investigation with regards to key management is energy in light of nodes that utilize the active/sleep state ( Riaz, Ali, Kim, Ahmad and Suguri, 2006 )....
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TL;DR: A UAV-aided CH election framework where a UAV delivers the critical information collected from sensors to the sink, and the sink reselects a set of well-behaved and qualified CHs considering the information is proposed.
Abstract: UAS (Unmanned Aerial Systems) are now drawing a lot of attention from academic and research fields as well as the general public. The UAS is expected to provide many promising applications such as intelligent transportation system, disaster management, search and rescue, public safety, smart delivery, wild species monitoring, and wireless service area extension. More specifically, as a part of the wireless service extension, we deal with the information dissemination and collection using a UAV in this paper. In this application, because the UAV communicates with each CH (Cluster Head) to collect data from sensor nodes or to disseminate information to the sensor nodes, well-behaved and qualified nodes should be elected as CHs and their integrity should be preserved. Even though a UAV makes the information dissemination and collection process efficient in a WSN, we can make the UAV help the election of new CHs to mitigate the threat of compromised CHs. To this aim, we first propose a UAV-aided CH election framework where a UAV delivers the critical information collected from sensors to the sink, and the sink reselects a set of well-behaved and qualified CHs considering the information. Then, we classify the existing security-driven CH election schemes into several categories and explain the principle of each category and its representative schemes. For each representative scheme, we also explain how to adapt it into the UAV-aided CH election framework. Next, we identify some desirable security properties that a CH election scheme should provide and reveal the security level that each representative scheme reaches for the desirable security properties. Next, we compare communication and computation overhead of the security-driven CH election schemes in terms of the big O notation. In conclusion, we reveal what we have learned from this survey work and provide a future work item.
8 citations
Journal Article•
TL;DR: Simulation and analysis results show that compared with related works, EEHS supports the networks with more energy efficiency, longer lifespan and stronger resilience to node compromise.
Abstract: Key management is a critical issue for wireless sensor networks security.This paper proposes EEHS,a novel Energy Efficient and Highly Survivable dynamic key management scheme for large-scale clustered wireless sensor networks based on Exclusion Basis System(EBS).The major advantages of EEHS are strengthened network security,enhanced energy efficiency,high dynamic performance and good support for network expansion.In EEHS,a novel polynomial-based key—the common polynomial key,is designed and employed as the administration key in the EBS,which can enhance the network survivability under attack.All system keys can be refreshed and revoked according to the compromise of sensor nodes.The function of key assignment and key generation are dispatched to different functional nodes in one cluster and sensor nodes also rotate to act as functional nodes in order to improve the energy efficiency and the network robustness.Simulation and analysis results show that compared with related works,EEHS supports the networks with more energy efficiency,longer lifespan and stronger resilience to node compromise.
5 citations
18 Sep 2007
TL;DR: A secure key generation mechanism is presented that aims at optimizing communication and a sleep schedule cognizant protocol is presented to prevent ID spoofing of sleeping nodes and a post attack mechanism is proposed to prevent the compromised nodes to join the network.
Abstract: In dynamic key management systems, while frequent control messaging may be necessary for robustness of security, it is detrimental to energy resources of wireless sensor networks. The problem is further exacerbated for sleep enabled sensor networks as a) malicious nodes penetrate into a network by spoofing the IDs of legitimate nodes that are in sleeping state b) it is possible for legitimate sensor nodes to be entirely compromised. In this paper, the above mentioned aspects of keying are addressed as tierce to optimize communication. First a secure key generation mechanism is presented that aims at optimizing communication. Second, a sleep schedule cognizant protocol is presented to prevent ID spoofing of sleeping nodes. Third, a post attack mechanism is proposed to prevent the compromised nodes to join the network. Our threesome solution not only saves energy by minimizing the communication overhead in establishing keys among sensor nodes but also provides high but secure connectivity for sleep state nodes.
4 citations
Cites background from "Secure Dynamic Key Management for S..."
...Once KCL is generated, each CL generates seed SCi different from SCL....
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References
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TL;DR: The current state of the art of sensor networks is captured in this article, where solutions are discussed under their related protocol stack layer sections.
Abstract: The advancement in wireless communications and electronics has enabled the development of low-cost sensor networks. The sensor networks can be used for various application areas (e.g., health, military, home). For different application areas, there are different technical issues that researchers are currently resolving. The current state of the art of sensor networks is captured in this article, where solutions are discussed under their related protocol stack layer sections. This article also points out the open research issues and intends to spark new interests and developments in this field.
14,048 citations
"Secure Dynamic Key Management for S..." refers background in this paper
...However securing key management process is not a trivial task....
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18 Nov 2002
TL;DR: A key-management scheme designed to satisfy both operational and security requirements of DSNs is presented, which relies on probabilistic key sharing among the nodes of a random graph and uses simple protocols for shared-key discovery and path-key establishment, and for key revocation, re-keying, and incremental addition of nodes.
Abstract: Distributed Sensor Networks (DSNs) are ad-hoc mobile networks that include sensor nodes with limited computation and communication capabilities. DSNs are dynamic in the sense that they allow addition and deletion of sensor nodes after deployment to grow the network or replace failing and unreliable nodes. DSNs may be deployed in hostile areas where communication is monitored and nodes are subject to capture and surreptitious use by an adversary. Hence DSNs require cryptographic protection of communications, sensor-capture detection, key revocation and sensor disabling. In this paper, we present a key-management scheme designed to satisfy both operational and security requirements of DSNs. The scheme includes selective distribution and revocation of keys to sensor nodes as well as node re-keying without substantial computation and communication capabilities. It relies on probabilistic key sharing among the nodes of a random graph and uses simple protocols for shared-key discovery and path-key establishment, and for key revocation, re-keying, and incremental addition of nodes. The security and network connectivity characteristics supported by the key-management scheme are discussed and simulation experiments presented.
3,900 citations
"Secure Dynamic Key Management for S..." refers methods in this paper
...After assignment, keys are delivered to their designated nodes in Key Distribution phase....
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11 May 2003
TL;DR: The random-pairwise keys scheme is presented, which perfectly preserves the secrecy of the rest of the network when any node is captured, and also enables node-to-node authentication and quorum-based revocation.
Abstract: Key establishment in sensor networks is a challenging problem because asymmetric key cryptosystems are unsuitable for use in resource constrained sensor nodes, and also because the nodes could be physically compromised by an adversary. We present three new mechanisms for key establishment using the framework of pre-distributing a random set of keys to each node. First, in the q-composite keys scheme, we trade off the unlikeliness of a large-scale network attack in order to significantly strengthen random key predistribution's strength against smaller-scale attacks. Second, in the multipath-reinforcement scheme, we show how to strengthen the security between any two nodes by leveraging the security of other links. Finally, we present the random-pairwise keys scheme, which perfectly preserves the secrecy of the rest of the network when any node is captured, and also enables node-to-node authentication and quorum-based revocation.
3,125 citations
"Secure Dynamic Key Management for S..." refers methods in this paper
...After assignment, keys are delivered to their designated nodes in Key Distribution phase....
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07 Mar 2004
TL;DR: It is shown that the performance of sensor networks can be substantially improved with the use of the proposed random key pre-distribution scheme, which exploits deployment knowledge and avoids unnecessary key assignments.
Abstract: To achieve security in wireless sensor networks, it is important to he able to encrypt messages sent among sensor nodes. Keys for encryption purposes must he agreed upon by communicating nodes. Due to resource constraints, achieving such key agreement in wireless sensor networks is nontrivial. Many key agreement schemes used in general networks, such as Diffie-Hellman and public-key based schemes, are not suitable for wireless sensor networks. Pre-distribution of secret keys for all pairs of nodes is not viable due to the large amount of memory used when the network size is large. Recently, a random key pre-distribution scheme and its improvements have been proposed. A common assumption made by these random key pre-distribution schemes is that no deployment knowledge is available. Noticing that in many practical scenarios, certain deployment knowledge may be available a priori, we propose a novel random key pre-distribution scheme that exploits deployment knowledge and avoids unnecessary key assignments. We show that the performance (including connectivity, memory usage, and network resilience against node capture) of sensor networks can he substantially improved with the use of our proposed scheme. The scheme and its detailed performance evaluation are presented in this paper.
1,001 citations
"Secure Dynamic Key Management for S..." refers methods in this paper
...After assignment, keys are delivered to their designated nodes in Key Distribution phase....
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17 Apr 2007
TL;DR: This work surveys the major topics in wireless sensor network security, and presents the obstacles and the requirements in the sensor security, classify many of the current attacks, and finally list their corresponding defensive measures.
Abstract: As wireless sensor networks continue to grow, so does the need for effective security mechanisms. Because sensor networks may interact with sensitive data and/or operate in hostile unattended environments, it is imperative that these security concerns be addressed from the beginning of the system design. However, due to inherent resource and computing constraints, security in sensor networks poses different challenges than traditional network/computer security. There is currently enormous research potential in the field of wireless sensor network security. Thus, familiarity with the current research in this field will benefit researchers greatly. With this in mind, we survey the major topics in wireless sensor network security, and present the obstacles and the requirements in the sensor security, classify many of the current attacks, and finally list their corresponding defensive measures.
487 citations
"Secure Dynamic Key Management for S..." refers background in this paper
...This work presents a novel approach in which original keys to be used for securing communication are never transmitted across the insecure medium ....
[...]