On providing anonymity in wireless sensor networks

Securing wireless sensor networks against denial of service attacks that disrupt communications or target nodes serving key roles in the network, e.g. sinks or routers, is instrumental to network availability and performance. Particularly vulnerable to these attacks are the components of any communications or operation infrastructure in the network. In this paper, we address a class of wireless sensor networks where network protocols leverage a dynamic general-purpose virtual infrastructure; the core components of that infrastructure are a coordinate system, a cluster structure, and a routing structure. Since knowledge of this virtual infrastructure enables 'smart' cost-effective DOS attacks on the network, maintaining the anonymity of the virtual infrastructure is a primary security concern. The main contribution of this work is to propose an energy-efficient protocol for maintaining the anonymity of the network virtual infrastructure. Specifically, our solution defines schemes for randomizing communications such that the coordinate system, cluster structure, and routing structure remain invisible to an external observer of network traffic during the setup phase of the network.