On the Security Issues in Wireless Body Area Networks

The emerging Wireless Body Area Networks (WBANs) have great potential to revolutionize the future of ubiquitous health technologies. They provide unprecedented opportunities to monitor the patient’s health status with real-time updates to the physician. Since WBAN devices are used to collect sensitive (lifecritical) information and may operate in hostile environments, they require strict security mechanisms to prevent the malicious interaction with the system. However, unlike Wireless Sensor Network (WSN) devices, these devices are limited in terms of power efficiency and communication, and therefore pose numerous security challenges than traditional WSNs. In this paper, we first highlight major security requirements and Denial of Service (DoS) attacks in a WBAN. Then we discuss different security modes (originally proposed for IEEE 802.15.4) for a WBAN that include AES-CTR, AES-CBC-MAC, and AESCCM modes. Keyword WBAN, security, DoS, threats, AES-CTR, AESCBC-MAC, AES-CCM