Achieving robust message authentication in sensor networks: a public-key based approach

Given the extremely limited hardware resources on sensor nodes and the inclement deploying environment, the adversary Denial-of-Service (DoS) attack becomes a serious security threat toward wireless sensor networks. Without adequate defense mechanism, the adversary can simply inundate the network by flooding the bogus data packets, and paralyze the partial or whole sensor network by depleting node battery power. Prior work on false packet filtering in sensor networks are mostly based on symmetric key schemes, with the concern that the public key operations are too expensive for the resource constrained sensors. Recent progress in public key implementations on sensors, however, has shown that public key is already feasible for sensors. In this paper, we present PDF, a Public-key based false Data Filtering scheme that leverages Shamir’s threshold cryptography and Elliptic Curve Cryptography (ECC), and effectively rejects 100% of false data packets. We evaluate PDF by real world implementation on MICAz motes. Our experiment results support the conclusion that PDF is practical for real world sensor deployment.

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