Securing Wireless Sensor Networks Against Spurious Injections

• Published in: 2007 2nd International Conference on Communication Systems Software & Middleware : Bangalore, India, 7-12 January 2007 pp. 1 - 5
• Main Authors: Chowdhury, Atanu Roy, Tripathy, Somanath, Nandi, Sukumar
• Format: Conference Proceeding
• Language: English
• Published: IEEE 01.01.2007
• Subjects: Actuators; Bandwidth; Data security; Flash memory; Hardware; Open source software; Sensor phenomena and characterization; Telecommunication traffic; Wireless communication; Wireless sensor networks
• ISBN: 1424406137; 9781424406135
• DOI: 10.1109/COMSWA.2007.382600

Wireless sensor networks (WSNs) are best suited for perceiving a phenomenon, which in turn forms the basis for controlling an actuator in a corrective plane. However, before the corrective action can be invoked, it is necessary to validate that the data was not injected with a malicious intent. To this end we propose CADA (cellular automata based data authentication mechanism), a lightweight protocol to authenticate data from valid nodes. Unlike its predecessors, it is designed to assume scarcity of multiple resources viz power, processing, storage, bandwidth and radio range.CADA takes advantage of the concurrent operations in cellular automata components and is therefore not only fast but also easily realizable in hardware.