Security in wireless sensor networks - eScholarship
Adrian Perrig, John A. Stankovic, David Wagner · 2004
IN S ECURITY W S N IRELESS ENSOR ETWORKS By A DRIAN P ERRIG , J OHN S TANKOVIC , and D AVID W AGNER They are susceptible to a variety of attacks, including node capture, physical tampering, and denial of service, while prompting a range of fundamental research challenges. ireless sensor network applications include ocean and wildlife monitoring, manufacturing machinery performance monitoring, building safety and earth- quake monitoring, and many military applications. An even wider spectrum of future applications is likely to follow, includ- ing the monitoring of highway traffic, pollu- tion, wildfires, building security, water quality, and even people’s heart rates. A major benefit of these systems is that they perform in-net- work processing to reduce large streams of raw data into useful aggregated informa- tion. Protecting it all is critical. Because sensor networks pose unique challenges, traditional security techniques used in traditional net- works cannot be applied directly. First, to make sen- sor networks economically viable, sensor devices are limited in their energy, computation, and communi- cation capabilities. Second, unlike traditional net- works, sensor nodes are often deployed in accessible W areas, presenting the added risk of physical attack. And third, sensor networks interact closely with their physical environments and with people, posing new security problems. Consequently, existing security mechanisms are inadequate, and new ideas are needed. Fortunately, the new problems also inspire new research and represent an opportunity to prop- erly address sensor network security from the start. Here, we outline security issues in these networks, discuss the state of the art in sensor network security, and suggest future directions for research. We cover several important secu- rity challenges, includ- ing key establishment, secrecy, authentication, privacy, robustness to denial-of-service attacks, secure routing, and node capture. We also cover several high-level secu- rity services required for wireless sensor networks and conclude with future research challenges. CAREN ROSENBLATT A Secure System Security is sometimes viewed as a standalone com- ponent of a system’s architecture, where a separate module provides security. This separation is, however, COMMUNICATIONS OF THE ACM June 2004/Vol. 47, No. 6