Peer to Peer Authentication for Index-based Distributed Data Collection: A Zero-Knowledge-based Scheme to Security for Wireless Sensor Networks
Aline Zebaze Tsague, Elie Fute Tagne, Emmanuel Tonyé, Adnen El Amraoui · Zenodo (CERN European Organization for Nuclear Research) · 2019
A primary concern of a wireless sensor network (WSN) is to gather data from the immediate environment of it sensors while minimizing the use of limited network and computational resources. Several studies have focused on how to efficiently store and process sensed data in WSN. Generally, the appropriate method to store sensed data depends on the application for which the WSN was deployed. No matter the application, data collection appears to be a primary function of a WSN. The execution of this function must be coordinated and effective in order to provide WSN with current security standards such as privacy, data integrity and end entity authentication between communicating peers. In this paper, we propose an efficient authentication-based security scheme for data retrieval in WSN. This security scheme combines zero-knowledge proofs (ZKP) and pre-shared key method to provide secured and authenticated communication during data retrieval by a mobile sink in WSN. The security mechanism proposed works on a clustered network topology with an index-based data dissemination scheme. The network employs the concept of Connected Dominating Set (CDS) to form storage and index node sets. Upon a successful peer authentication, the index, located on the index node, is used for efficient retrieval of data. The scheme also provides end-to-end confidentiality given that data is being encrypted before transferred and can be decrypted only at the base station. Security and performance analysis of the proposed scheme show that it addresses all of the aforementioned issues while also satisfying zero-knowledge proofs properties. It is also suitable for devices with limited computational resources as the network can fulfil the purpose of data collection and can be deployed in large-scale wireless sensor networks.