Defending against false-endorsement-based dos attacks in wireless sensor networks

ABSTRACT

Node compromise is a serious threat in wireless sensor networks. An adversary can use compromised sensor nodes to inject false data to deceive the base station or he can try to deplete the energy resources of the sensor nodes. One approach to mitigate the impact of node compromise exploits the redundancy property of many wireless sensor networks. If a node initiates a report generation for the base station, then this report must be endorsed by multiple neighboring sensor nodes. Already proposed schemes using this approach introduce a new possible attack, called False-Endorsement-Based Denial of Service attack, where a compromised node sends a false endorsement which invalidates the collaboratively generated report. We propose an extension scheme, which enables the detection and exclusion of false endorsing nodes and is efficient in terms of storage and energy consumption.

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INDEX TERMS

Primary Classification:
  C. Computer Systems Organization
  C.2 COMPUTER-COMMUNICATION NETWORKS
      C.2.0 General

General Terms:
Algorithms, Security

Keywords:
denial-of-service attacks, node compromise, report generation, security, wireless sensor network