Wireless Body Area Networks: Attacks and Countermeasures

Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) have been identified for their utility in a variety of different fields such as military sensing and tracking, environmental monitoring, patient monitoring and tracking smart environments. Wireless Body Area Network (WBAN) technology is the consequence of the existing WSN technology. These networks are a composition of tiny, inexpensive and low-power biomedical nodes, fundamentally considered for healthcare monitoring applications. The main purpose of these applications is to ensure a monitoring of vital parameters of sick people without any interruption, while giving them the freedom of motion. The more scientists try to develop further cost and energy efficient computing devices and algorithms for WBANs, the more challenging it becomes to fit the security of WBANs into such a limited environment. As a result, being familiar with the security aspects of WBANs is necessary before designing WBAN systems. In this paper, we review the security requirements for WBANs, the different kinds of possible attacks, and also some security mechanisms used to overcome these attacks.