Intrusion Detection and Prevention Mechanism Implemented Using NS-2 Based on State Context and Hierarchical Trust in WSNs

Abstract

Wireless Sensor Networks are ubiquitous. The use of WSN saves a lot of man-power and instrumentation for a lot of healthcare and especially industrial applications. This paper describes the work done on securing cluster based WSNs using IDP mechanism. An Intrusion Detection and Prevention Mechanism is proposed here based on State Context and Hierchical Trust in cluster based WSNs. An IDP system will prevent and detect attacks on WSN nodes before they happen and jeopardize the whole network. The paper proposes a system which is flexible and is suitable for the WSNs that are constantly changing, characterized by changes in their perceptual environment, transitions of state of nodes and variation in trust value. A multilevel 2-tier hierarchical trust mechanism at the level of SNs and CHs evaluated on the basis of interactive trust, honesty trust and content trust is put forward, which is a combination of direct evaluation and feed-back based evaluation in the fixed-hop range. The calculation of interactive trust and honesty trust is done based on the interaction and behavior of the sensor nodes during routing. While the calculation of content trust is done based on the deviation of data transferred with respect to the rest of the members in the cluster during data aggregation. CHs evaluates the trust of the cluster member SNs, while the trust of the CH is evaluated by its neighboring SNs. When the trust evaluation process is done, then the data from low trust cluster members are avoided. Forwarding of data through low trust cluster members is avoided. Initially the attacker node tries to communicate to the rest of the nodes via fake control messages for getting itself elected to the level of CH. The mechanism proposed here in this paper will not only prevent the attacker node but also reduce the overall resource overhead while improving network performance. This paper tries to give its small contribution in the security of cluster based WSNs using IDP mechanisms.