Key Technologies For The Security Of Sensor Networks

Sensor networks integrated sensor technology, embedded computing technology, distributed information processing and communication technologies, to collaborate in real-time monitoring, sensing and capture distribution network in the region to monitor a variety of environments or objects, and the information processing transmitted to the user. Since the sensor nodes strictly limited resources and its own wireless sensor network characteristics, and its security is facing enormous challenges. In this paper, the key sensor networks security technologies, including:a sensor networks key management mechanism, sensor networks broadcast authentication mechanism and the sensor networks access control mechanism. The author’s major contributions are outlined as follows:1. A key management mechanism is a basic of sensor networks security. The proposed mechanisms provides a key management and node authentication method for a sensor network in which the sensor networks can be provided with confidential communication and an end-to-end node authentication service. In a technical solution of the propsoed mechanisms, it provides a key management and node authentication method for a sensor networks, identity authentication with the created pair-wise key prior to formal communication with another node to verify the identity of the other node for legality and validity.2. Broadcast authentication is one of the most important security primitive in sensor networks. The proposed scheme named AKB-OTS (assistant-key based one time signature) which introduces Assistant-Key and Merkle Hash Tree mechanism, and also proposed a broadcast authentication protocol for multi-sender sensor networks based on AKB-OTS. The analyses and experiments have shown that the proposed protocol have several advantages over the current broadcast authentication methods of low cost in computation, communication and storage, and resistance to brute-force, chosen message and DoS attacks, which makes it more applicable to the large-scale multi-sender sensor networks. Another proposed scheme named μTPCT-based broadcasting authentication protocol which mainly rests on constructions of μTPC (μTESLA Parameters Hash Chain) and μTPCT(μTPC Merkle Hash Tree). Analysis and experiments have shown that our proposed protocol not only possesses both excellent resistance to DoS attacks against the distribution of μTESLA parameters and the ability to revoke authenticating capabilities of compromised nodes on time, but also greatly outperforms the Tree-based μTESLA by largely reducing the cost of computation, communication, and storage needed, making it more applicable to large-scale sensor networks.3. Access control is a critical security service in sensor networks. The current access control scheme need users to be hold still when they querying sensing data, which limits strictly the applicability of those schemes. The proposed access control scheme can be applied to a user who’s mobile randomly for the first time. It designs a THC (Two-Hop Covered) algorithm to expand the applicability of access control schemes to mobile users firstly, and then proposes an access control scheme mainly based on THC algorithm and the mechanism of One Way Chain and Merkle hash tree, which can be applied to all kinds of users. The analyses and experiments have shown that the proposed scheme very effectively, and have several advantages over the current access control methods of low cost in computation, communication and storage, and resistance to node capture, query replay and DoS attacks.