Security and Attacks in Wireless Sensor Networks

Understanding data security is crucial to the daily operation of Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) as well as to the further advancement of security solutions in the research community. Unlike many surveys in literature that handle the topic in close relationship to a particular communication protocol, we provide a general view of vulnerabilities, attacks, and countermeasures in WSNs, enabling a broader audience to benefit from the presented material. We compare salient characteristics and applications of common wireless technologies to those of WSNs. As the main focus of the chapter, we thoroughly describe the characteristics of attacks and their countermeasures in WSNs. In addition, we qualitatively illustrate the multi-dimensional relationship among various properties including the effectiveness of these attacks (i.e., caused damage), the resources needed by adversaries to accomplish their intended attacks (i.e., consumed energy and time), and the resources required to defend against these attacks (i.e., energy overhead).

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