Authenticating messages in wireless sensor networks

Unethical and illegal messages can be easily obstructed by suitably authenticating them; in wireless sensor networks (WSNs), it is imperative that such messages should not be redirected. WSNs are trivial, low rate, and low battery-operated nodes wherein interconnection among nodes occurs via wireless links in a location that is extremely harsh and limited with few resources. It has been observed that WSNs are mainly used in unsupervised locations; so, they are highly susceptible to stalkers. To overcome such problems, there have been various authentication methods that have been initiated that are based on symmetric and public key cryptography. Message authentication is one such method that decreases illegal attacks in WSNs. Nonetheless, the method suffers from problems like large computational operating cost, lack of flexibility to node attacks, and scalability. Therefore, to surmount these problems, we develop a system that is based on modified elliptic curve digital signature. We also compare our developed system with modified ElGamal signature system, and the results seem quite promising. Moreover, in our developed system, there is no threshold for messages that are to be transmitted.