Examining the Security Processes at the Zigbee Network Level in Real and Simulation Environments
Marieta Haka, Aydan Haka, Veneta Aleksieva, Hristo Valchanov · 2025
This research examines the security processes at the ZigBee network level by analyzing the establishment of the network key (NWK) and the trust center link key (TCLK) in real and simulated environments. Traffic in the ZigBee network is analyzed using Wireshark in the real environment and a simulator developed by the authors in the simulated environment. A comparison of the key exchange procedures in the two environments reveals that, despite the additional control and confirmation messages in the real environment, the sequence and structure of the messages are consistent between the two environments. This is because the simulation environment reproduces the basic security procedures defined by the ZigBee standard. The results of the experiments demonstrate that the simulation environment functions correctly and accurately and reflects the real environment. This makes the simulation environment a reliable platform for researching and developing ZigBee network security.