Simple Evasive Data Storage in Sensor Networks
Zinaida Benenson, Peter M. Cholewinski, Felix Freiling · 2005
We study a new countermeasure to the well known threat of node capture in sensor networks. A node capture occurs if an adversary completely takes over a sensor node and uses it to spy on the data which is stored and processed within the sensor network. In case this data has some value it needs to be protected from unauthorized access through a security mechanism. Merely encrypting the data is sufficient to protect its contents from eavesdroppers but not from node capture. We present a new approach, namely Evasive Data Storage, that intends to improve security features at the data storage level. The idea of Evasive Data Storage is that data moves around the sensor network instead of remaining at a fixed location. In this way, an adversary, who has once (through node capture) had access to the data stored at some particular node, must compromise more sensors in order to maintain his illegitimate access to the sensor data. Through simulation we show that the new notion of Evasive Data Storage effectively decreases the probability that the adversary finds the data again even though he knew where the data once resided. Hence Evasive Data Storage offers an interesting possibility to secure data in sensor networks.