Denial of Service in Sensor Networks

Sensor networks hold the promise of facilitating large-scale, real-time data processing in complex environments, helping to protect and monitor military, environmental, safety-critical, or domestic infrastructures and resources, Denial-of-service attacks against such networks, however, may permit real world damage to public health and safety. Without proper security mechanisms, networks will be confined to limited, controlled environments, negating much of the promise they hold. The limited ability of individual sensor nodes to thwart failure or attack makes ensuring network availability more difficult. To identify denial-of-service vulnerabilities, the authors analyzed two effective sensor network protocols that did not initially consider security. These examples demonstrate that consideration of security at design time is the best way to ensure successful network deployment.