Group-based key pre-distribution in wireless sensor networks

ABSTRACT

Many key pre-distribution techniques have been developed recently to establish pairwise keys for wireless sensor networks. To further improve these schemes, researchers have proposed to take advantage of sensors' expected locations to help pre-distributing keying materials. However, it is usually very difficult, and sometimes impossible, to guarantee the knowledge of sensors' expected locations. In order to remove the dependency on expected locations, this paper proposes a practical deployment model, where sensor nodes are deployed in groups, and the nodes in the same group are close to each other after the deployment. Based on this model, the paper develops a novel group-based key pre-distribution framework, which can be combined with any of existing key pre-distribution techniques. A distinguishing property of this framework is that it does not require the knowledge of sensors' expected locations and greatly simplifies the deployment of sensor networks. The analysis also shows that the framework can substantially improve the security as well as the performance of existing key pre-distribution techniques.

REFERENCES

• 1: I. F. Akyildiz , W. Su , Y. Sankarasubramaniam , E. Cayirci, Wireless sensor networks: a survey, Computer Networks: The International Journal of Computer and Telecommunications Networking, v.38 n.4, p.393-422, 15 March 2002 [doi>10.1016/S1389-1286(01)00302-4 ]
• 2: Stefano Basagni , Kris Herrin , Danilo Bruschi , Emilia Rosti, Secure pebblenets, Proceedings of the 2nd ACM international symposium on Mobile ad hoc networking & computing, October 04-05, 2001, Long Beach, CA, USA [doi>10.1145/501436.501438]
• 3: Carlo Blundo , Alfredo De Santis , Amir Herzberg , Shay Kutten , Ugo Vaccaro , Moti Yung, Perfectly-Secure Key Distribution for Dynamic Conferences, Proceedings of the 12th Annual International Cryptology Conference on Advances in Cryptology, p.471-486, August 16-20, 1992
• 4: D.W. Carman, P.S. Kruus, and B.J.Matt. Constrains and approaches for distributed sensor network security. Technical report, NAI Labs, 2000.
• 5: H. Chan and A. Perrig. PIKE: Peer intermediaries for key establishment in sensor networks. In Proceedings of IEEE Infocom, March 2005.
• 6: Haowen Chan , Adrian Perrig , Dawn Song, Random Key Predistribution Schemes for Sensor Networks, Proceedings of the 2003 IEEE Symposium on Security and Privacy, p.197, May 11-14, 2003
• 7: Jing Deng , Richard Han , Shivakant Mishra, Security support for in-network processing in Wireless Sensor Networks, Proceedings of the 1st ACM workshop on Security of ad hoc and sensor networks, October 31, 2003, Fairfax, Virginia [doi>10.1145/986858.986870]
• 8: W. Du, J. Deng, Y. S. Han, S. Chen, and P. Varshney. A key management scheme for wireless sensor networks using deployment knowledge. In Proceedings of IEEE INFOCOM'04, March 2004.
• 9: Wenliang Du , Jing Deng , Yunghsiang S. Han , Pramod K. Varshney, A pairwise key pre-distribution scheme for wireless sensor networks, Proceedings of the 10th ACM conference on Computer and communications security, October 27-30, 2003, Washington D.C., USA [doi>10.1145/948109.948118]
• 10: Laurent Eschenauer , Virgil D. Gligor, A key-management scheme for distributed sensor networks, Proceedings of the 9th ACM conference on Computer and communications security, November 18-22, 2002, Washington, DC, USA [doi>10.1145/586110.586117]
• 11: David Gay , Philip Levis , Robert von Behren , Matt Welsh , Eric Brewer , David Culler, The nesC language: A holistic approach to networked embedded systems, Proceedings of the ACM SIGPLAN 2003 conference on Programming language design and implementation, June 09-11, 2003, San Diego, California, USA
• 12: Jason Hill , Robert Szewczyk , Alec Woo , Seth Hollar , David Culler , Kristofer Pister, System architecture directions for networked sensors, Proceedings of the ninth international conference on Architectural support for programming languages and operating systems, p.93-104, November 2000, Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States
• 13: L. Hu and D. Evans. Secure aggregation for wireless networks. In Workshop on Security and Assurance in Ad Hoc Networks, January 2003.
• 14: Dijiang Huang , Manish Mehta , Deep Medhi , Lein Harn, Location-aware key management scheme for wireless sensor networks, Proceedings of the 2nd ACM workshop on Security of ad hoc and sensor networks, October 25-25, 2004, Washington DC, USA [doi>10.1145/1029102.1029110]
• 15: Joengmin Hwang , Yongdae Kim, Revisiting random key pre-distribution schemes for wireless sensor networks, Proceedings of the 2nd ACM workshop on Security of ad hoc and sensor networks, October 25-25, 2004, Washington DC, USA [doi>10.1145/1029102.1029111]
• 16: C. Karlof and D. Wagner. Secure routing in wireless sensor networks: Attacks and countermeasures. In Proceedings of 1st IEEE International Workshop on Sensor Network Protocols and Applications, May 2003.
• 17: Donggang Liu , Peng Ning, Establishing pairwise keys in distributed sensor networks, Proceedings of the 10th ACM conference on Computer and communications security, October 27-30, 2003, Washington D.C., USA [doi>10.1145/948109.948119]
• 18: Donggang Liu , Peng Ning, Location-based pairwise key establishments for static sensor networks, Proceedings of the 1st ACM workshop on Security of ad hoc and sensor networks, October 31, 2003, Fairfax, Virginia [doi>10.1145/986858.986869]
• 19: D. Niculescu and B. Nath. Ad hoc positioning system (APS). In Proceedings of IEEE GLOBECOM '01, 2001.
• 20: Adrian Perrig , Robert Szewczyk , Victor Wen , David Culler , J. D. Tygar, SPINS: security protocols for sensor netowrks, Proceedings of the 7th annual international conference on Mobile computing and networking, p.189-199, July 2001, Rome, Italy [doi>10.1145/381677.381696]
• 21: Roberto Di Pietro , Luigi V. Mancini , Alessandro Mei, Random key-assignment for secure Wireless Sensor Networks, Proceedings of the 1st ACM workshop on Security of ad hoc and sensor networks, October 31, 2003, Fairfax, Virginia [doi>10.1145/986858.986868]
• 22: Bartosz Przydatek , Dawn Song , Adrian Perrig, SIA: secure information aggregation in sensor networks, Proceedings of the 1st international conference on Embedded networked sensor systems, November 05-07, 2003, Los Angeles, California, USA [doi>10.1145/958491.958521]
• 23: Anthony D. Wood , John A. Stankovic, Denial of Service in Sensor Networks, Computer, v.35 n.10, p.54-62, October 2002 [doi>10.1109/MC.2002.1039518 ]
• 24: Z. Yu and Y. Guan. A key pre-distribution scheme using deployment knowledge for wireless sensor networks. In Proceedings of ACM/IEEE International Conference on Information Processing in Sensor Networks (IPSN), April 2005.
• 25: Sencun Zhu , Sanjeev Setia , Sushil Jajodia, LEAP: efficient security mechanisms for large-scale distributed sensor networks, Proceedings of the 10th ACM conference on Computer and communications security, October 27-30, 2003, Washington D.C., USA [doi>10.1145/948109.948120]

INDEX TERMS

Primary Classification:
  C. Computer Systems Organization
  C.2 COMPUTER-COMMUNICATION NETWORKS
      C.2.0 General
          Subjects: Security and protection (e.g., firewalls)

Additional Classification:
  D. Software
  D.4 OPERATING SYSTEMS
      D.4.6 Security and Protection
          Subjects: Cryptographic controls

  K. Computing Milieux
  K.6 MANAGEMENT OF COMPUTING AND INFORMATION SYSTEMS
      K.6.5 Security and Protection (D.4.6, K.4.2)

General Terms:
Algorithms, Design, Security

Keywords:
key management, key predistribution, pairwise key, sensor networks