A Smart Cryptographic measure for Data Survivability in Unattended Wireless Sensor Networks

Abstract

An Unattended Wireless Sensor Network (UWSN) wherein a sporadically visiting sink tries to collect data absorbed by the motes. This setup is most suitable in hostile environments where the collected valuable data becomes the target for a mobile adversary. Unattended sensors cannot instantly transmit collected data to some safe external entity. Though there is an intermittent visit by the sink, a powerful mobile adversary can easily compromise the valuable data collected by sensor nodes between the intervals. Therefore, the data needs to be preserved to be handed over to the sink in its next visit. This property of unattended WSN is called as Data Survivability. We propose a symmetric key cryptosystem that tackles sensor collected data erasure, modification, or disclosure as a support for data survivability in UWSNs. The proposed model has been designed using Linear Feedback Shift Registers (LFSRs) embodied with less power dissipation mechanism that operates on mask method. This is critical to any application running in unattended environments. We have compared our design with other standard works and have substantially proved the trustworthiness. Our work has been assessed using NIST test suite and found reliable.