Wireless Sensor Network Security Issues and Attacks
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SHAGUN KHANNA, Department of IT, sheenu_92@live.com
SHALU JAIN, Department of IT,shalujain064@gmail.com
NEELESH MISHRA, Department of IT, neeleshmishra@rkgitw.edu.in
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Abstract: Wireless Sensor Networks will give
an outstanding opportunity to control the
environment .WSNs has many applications,
some of them are very sensitive in nature. Due
to some limitations in WSNs, maintaining
security is a vital issue. In this paper, we have
made an effort to submit all the security issues
in WSN and have provided the directions for
research towards counter measures against the
threats posed by some issues.
I. INTRODUCTION
Wireless sensor network (WSN) usually
comprises of number of sensors and actuators
with limited resources. Sensor networks
require unique security challenges because of
their inherent limitations in communications
network is to disperse tiny sensing devices
include a data processing unit, sensing
equipment ,a short range radio device, and a
battery, which are capable of sensing some
changes in environment. The other two
components are called aggregation and base
station. In Aggregation, the data from the
neighbouring nodes are collected, integrated
and forwarded to the base station for the
further processing. Some of the applications of
WSNs are farming, buildings and bridges,
monitoring soil make up and variety of smart
and intelligent systems.
RADIO
TRANSRECEIVER
POWER
SENSORS
CONTROLLER
MEMORY
Fig. 1 Sensor node components
II. SENSORS NETWORK TYPES
A. Terrestrial WSNs
In these, sensor nodes are either
randomly placed into the target area
by dropping it from plane or placed
according to grid or optical
placements, these are known as ad hoc
manner and pre-planned manner
respectively. Solar cells are also used
for extra battery charge as the power is
limit.
B. Underwater WSNs
In these, the sensor nodes are located
under the water. For collecting data,
autonomous vehicles are used.
Scattered deployment of the nodes is
done.
Related
issues
while
communicating are long propagation
delay, signal fading and limited
bandwidth.
C. Underground WSNs
The underground conditions are
monitored by sensor nodes buried
underground or in cave. The
information gathered are forwarded
through sink nodes that are on ground
to the base station. As these can give
more reliable communication through
water, rock and soil than the terrestrial
sensor networks, therefore these are
expensive.
D. Multimedia WSNs
Cameras and microphones are
equipped with low cost sensor. These
guarantees Coverage as they are
placed in grid and optical manner in a
pre-planned way. Main problems are
high energy consumption, data
processing
and
compression
techniques, and high bandwidth and
cross layer design.
III. WSN SECURITY
The goal of creating security in Sensor
networks is that what data we are going to
protect. Security is one of the major aspects of
each and every system. The four major
security goals in sensor networks are –
Confidentiality, Integrity, Authentication and
Availability.
Confidentiality is an acceptance of authorised
access to information from a certified sender
to a certified receiver. In this, encryption is
used for secure communication. A secret key
is available to authorised user only.
Confidentiality is the ability to conceal
message from the passive attacker.
Integrity is the ability to confirm that the
message is not tempered, altered or changed
while transferring through the network. It also
ensures that nothing is added to the content of
the packet.
Authentication is the assurance that the
communicating entity is the one that it claims
to be. An adversary can change the entire
packet stream by adding extra packets to it.
The authentication service is concerned with
assuring that a communication is authentic.
Availability refers to that authorized parties
are able to access the information when
needed and to determine that if node has the
ability to consume the resources and the
network is always available for the
transmission of the messages.
SECURITY CLASSES
PFleeger has four classes of security in
computing system. We can integrate these four
threat classes in sensor networks. In sensor
networks, our goal is to protect the network
itself, the nodes and the communication taking
place between them. The four classes is given
below
In an interruption, a communication link in
sensor networks becomes lost or unavailable.
Examples of this sort of threats are node
capture, message corruption, addition of
malicious code etc.
An interception means sensor network has
been compromised by an adversary where the
attacker gains unauthorised access to sensor
node or data in it. Example of this attack is
node capture attacks.
Modification means a malicious user party not
only have accesses to the data but tampers it,
for example modifying the data packets being
transmitted causing a denial of service attack
such as flooding the network with bogus data.
In fabrication, an attacker enters the false data
and compromises the trustworthiness of
information.
IV. ATTACKS ON WSN
WSNs are power-constraint networks which
have limited energy and computational
resources due t which these are more exposed
to the attackers. The broadcast nature is the
reason why sensor networks are susceptible to
security attacks. In WSNs, it is easy for an
attacker to assume the security mechanisms.
Base stations are regarded as most trustworthy
in WSNs.
A. Node subversion
Capture of the node may reveal
Cryptographic keys to the attacker
hence compromising the whole sensor
network.
B. Jamming
This attack is on physical layer of
WSN’s structure. Jamming is of two
typesIntermittent
jamming
(communication by the nodes are
periodic not continuous) and Constant
jamming (jam the whole network).
C. Collision
This is the type of link layer jamming
in which collision occurs when two
nodes transfer data at the same time
and with same frequency without
sensing the channel. This attack
reduces the network perfection as
some packets are discarded during
collision and re-transmitted by the
sender.
D. False Node
Addition by the adversary of the
malicious node to inject the false data.
False node is more robust.
E. Homing
In this attack, attacker firstly senses
the traffic on the channel to interpret
the cluster heads. And then attack the
crucial nodes to physically destroy the
network.
F. Sybil attack
This is a network layer attack. An
awful node represents more than one
illegal identities by stealing identies of
legitimate nodes. Data integrity,
security and geographical routing
protocols are affected.
G. Node outage
It halts the working of the nodes by
disturbing their respective routes. It
affects the availability and integrity.
G. Traffic Analysis
Traffic analysis is the process of
intercepting and examining messages
in order to deduce information from
patterns in communication.The
messages are transferred in encrypted
form but there is high probability of
being intercept by an attacker.
H. Sinkhole Attack
These are the network layer attacks
also called Black holes. It creates a
fake node which attracts the
neighbouring nodes by presenting the
low cost route due to which maximum
traffic flow towards these fake nodes.
This results in collision and message
destruction.
I.
Flooding
In this, the adversary sends request for
the connection establishment with the
selected node. This may result in the
bombarding of energy resources and
the effusion of the memory.
CONCLUSION
In this paper, we present a brief survey
on
wireless
sensor
network’s
characteristics and some of its types.
Then we discussed about the security
in sensor networks, security issues and
DoS attacks on different layers and
Pfleeger four classes of security in
computing system .Security is an
important requirement of any network
and complicates enough to set up in
different domains of Wireless Sensor
Network (WSN). We also discuss
various dimensions of security (that
are
Confidentiality,
Integrity,
Authentication
and
Availability)
directed by different physical attacks
and active attacks. In this paper we
have discussed threat models and
unique security issues faced by
wireless sensor networks.
REFERENCES
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Physical Attacks on Wireless Sensor
Networks”, IJET, Jan 2013.
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Cayirci, “A survey on sensor networks”,
104–112
[3] I.F. Akyildiz, Stuntebeck, “Wireless
underground sensor networks”, (2006)
[4] Kriti Jain, Upasana , “Survey on Wireless
Sensor Network”, JSTM, Vol. 3 Issue 2, 8390, Sept 2012.
[5] C.P. Fleeger, Security in computing, 3rd
edition, Prenticl Inc. 2003