Secure erasure and code update in legacy sensors

Abstract

Sensors require frequent over-the-air reprogramming to patch software errors, replace code, change sensor configuration, etc. Given their limited computational capability, one of the few workable techniques to secure code update in legacy sensors would be to execute Proofs of Secure Erasure (PoSE) which ensure that the sensor’s memory is purged before sending the updated code. By doing so, the updated code can be loaded onto the sensor with the assurance that no other malicious code is being stored. Although current PoSE proposals rely on relatively simple cryptographic constructs, they still result in considerable energy and time overhead in existing legacy sensors. In this paper, we propose a secure code update protocol which considerably reduces the overhead of existing proposals. Our proposal naturally combines PoSE with All or Nothing Transforms (AONT); we analyze the security of our scheme and evaluate its performance by means of implementation on MicaZ motes. Our prototype implementation only consumes 371 bytes of RAM in TinyOS2, and improves the time and energy overhead of existing proposals based on PoSE by almost 75 %.