Intrusion-resilient integrity in data-centric unattended WSNs

Unattended Wireless Sensor Networks (UWSNs) operate in autonomous or disconnected mode: sensed data is collected periodically by an itinerant sink. Between successive sink visits, sensor-collected data is subject to some unique vulnerabilities. In particular, while the network is unattended, a mobile adversary (capable of subverting up to a fraction of sensors at a time) can migrate between compromised sets of sensors and inject fraudulent data. In this paper, we provide two collaborative authentication techniques that allow an UWSN to maintain integrity and authenticity of sensor data – in the presence of a mobile adversary – until the next sink visit. Proposed schemes use simple, standard, and inexpensive symmetric cryptographic primitives, coupled with key evolution and few message exchanges. We study their security and effectiveness, both analytically and via simulations. We also assess their robustness and show how to achieve the desired tradeoff between performance and security. © 2011 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.