Abstract
The applications of wireless sensor networks (WSNs) are continuously expanding. Recently, consistent research and development activities have been associated to this field. Security ranks at the top of the issues that should be discussed when deploying a WSN. This is basically due to the fact that WSNs are, by nature, mission-critical. Their applications mainly include battlefield control, emergency response (when a natural disaster occurs), and healthcare. This chapter reviews recent research results in the field of WSN security.
Key Terms in this Chapter
Wireless Sensor Network (WSN): Dense collection of tiny sensor motes deployed in a region of interest to gather information about a specific phenomenon for later analysis. WSNs allow efficient, distributed, and collaborative control of various natural and human events
Rate Monitoring Attack: A rate monitoring attack simply makes use of the idea that nodes closest to the base station tend to forward more packets than those farther away from the base station.
Denial-of-Service Attack: An attack aiming at disrupting the acquisition of information within a geographical zone or preventing the communication of alert and signalling messages between sensor nodes.
Wormhole Attack: In a wormhole attack, an attacker receives packets at one point in the network, “tunnels” them to another point in the network, and then replays them into the network from that point
Key Management: Process of generating, validating, exchanging, and renewing asymmetric and symmetric keys
Camouflage: Adversaries can insert their node or compromise the nodes to hide in the sensor network. After that these nodes can masquerade as a normal node to attract the packets, then misroute the packets