We present a series of building blocks needed for secure sensor network communication. Secure sensor routing is clean-slate approach to a new sensor network routing protocol with security and efficiency as central design parameters. SPINS is the first approach at a secure communication architecture that provides for secure point-to-point as well as broadcast communication for resource-constrained sensor nodes. As follow-up work to SPINS, MiniSec is a secure sensor network communication protocol that provides for stronger security properties while simultaneously consumes less energy.

Secure Sensor Network Routing: A Clean-Slate Approach

The deployment of sensor networks in security- and safety-critical environments requires secure communication primitives. In this project, we design, implement, and evaluate a new secure routing protocol for sensor networks. Our protocol requires no special hardware and provides message delivery even in an environment with active adversaries. We adopt a clean-slate approach and design a new sensor network routing protocol with security and efficiency as central design parameters. Our protocol is efficient yet highly resilient to active attacks.

We have demonstrated the performance of our algorithms with simulation results as well as an implementation on Telos sensor nodes. Currently, we are expanding our testbed of sensor nodes and improving the robustness of our algorithms. We are also developing a version of the protocol that only utilizes symmetric key cryptography.

SPINS: Security Protocols for Sensor Networks

As sensor networks edge closer towards wide-spread deployment, security issues become a central concern. So far, much research has focused on making sensor networks feasible and useful, and has not concentrated on security.

We present a suite of security building blocks optimized for resource- constrained environments and wireless communication. SPINS has two secure building blocks: SNEP and uTESLA. SNEP provides the following important baseline security primitives: Data confidentiality, two-party data authentication, and data freshness. A particularly hard problem is to provide efficient broadcast authentication, which is an important mechanism for sensor networks. uTESLA is a new protocol which provides authenticated broadcast for severely resource-constrained environments. We implemented the above protocols, and show that they are practical even on minimal hardware: the performance of the protocol suite easily matches the data rate of our network. Additionally, we demonstrate that the suite can be used for building higher level protocols.

MiniSec: A Secure Sensor Network Communication Architecture

Secure sensor network communication protocols need to provide three basic properties: data secrecy, authentication, and replay protection. Secure sensor network link layer protocols such as TinySec and Zigbee enjoy significant attention in the community. However, TinySec achieves low energy consumption by reducing the level of security provided. In contrast, Zigbee enjoys high security, but suffers from high energy consumption.

MiniSec is a secure network layer that obtains the best of both worlds: low energy consumption and high security. MiniSec has two operating modes, one tailored for single-source communication, and another tailored for multi-source broadcast communication. The latter does not require per-sender state for replay protection and thus scales to large networks. We present a publicly available implementation of MiniSec for the Telos platform, and experimental results demonstrate our low energy utilization.

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